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Really, these phisers really aren’t trying that hard any more.
Ok so it turns out that you can get broadband access in Kent, who knew? Anyway as I am away this weekend I have only have time for a few awards,
The Award for A Joke That No One In Their Right Mind Would Ignore of the Week,
Former US Vice President (and Dark Lord of the Sith) Dick Cheney has had a pump fitted into his chest to assist his heart. Mr Cheney has spent most of his life battling with congestive heart failure and, some far, has had 5 heart attacks, the first of which occoured when he was only 37.
One of the stranger side effects of this sort of pump is that Dick now has no pulse. Come on admit it, we are all think the same thing, I didn’t know he had a heart.
The Award for Oddest David Cameron Description of the Week,
The Daily Express describe David Cameron as Ironman Cameron, no it really did! Look there, under the headline, “Ironman Cameron Slams The Release of Evil Al Megrahi”
Oh come on that’s funny. Ironman! He is a Superhero to the Express it seems.
The Award for a Sentence That Will Cheer Most People Up of the Week,
Goldman Sachs profits fall by 82%. Whilst it is a shame that they are still in business it is heart warming to know that they are making less money.
The Award for Not Being a Great Surprise of the Week,
Earlier this year the Times newspapers online edition disappeared behind a paywall. It was seen as a bold experiment by News International as very few other media outlets were charging for their online newspapers. What would happen? Would revenue from adverts drop away as traffic numbers fell but be replaced by subscription charges so that the site broke even or maybe, possably turned a profit? Who knew? Well no one did and they still don’t as News International are not releasing any figures. What we do know is that traffic through the site is down by about 90%.
The Award for Having an End Clearly Written By Disney of the Week,
Muttiah Muralitharan, perhaps the world's greatest bowler has retired. Some will still claim that his bowling style is illegal within the rules of cricket, these people are idiots. Yes he has a funny looking arm but it is still a legal bowling action.
Anyway, enough angry Wisden style rants, his last game finished on Thursday. When it began he had taken 792 test wickets, already way ahead of his nearest rival, but would he make the magic 800 wickets? During the game he had taken 7 wickets leaving him on 799.
During the second Indian innings his bowling partner Lasith Malinga was ripping through the team, would there be one wicket left for Muralitharan?
Of course there would. By it's very nature, when the last Indian batsman was out it was the end of their second innings whatever bowl of the over it was, so if Muralitharan was bowling you could legitimately claim that he got his 800th wicket with his last ever ball in professional cricket. Can you guess what happened? Of course you can.
Muralitharan bowled, Pjagyan Ojha edged it and Mahela Jayawardene took the catch in the slips. 800 test wickets for Muttiah Muralitharan.
That he is the greatest bowler is not up for discussion but he still has not bowled the single greatest ball of all time. That honour goes to the mighty Shane Warne,
There's a song about that ball you know, it's by the Duckworth Lewis Method and it called Jiggery Pokery and it's fantastic,
The Award for Possibly Ironic Award of the Week,
The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom has given a “Quality Badge” to a zoo in Wraxall, near Bristol, in recognition of its educational programme. What is wrong with that you may ask, well the full name of the zoo is Noah’s Ark Zoo. Getting anything yet? Noah's Ark? Where is that from....umm... oh yes that is mentioned in Genesis isn't it, the first book of the bible. Oh indeed it is well educated reader of mine, for this is a creationist zoo, and yes, such places do exist.
It looks like a very good zoo, the website is lovely, but there, on the end of the navigation bar is the problem. The bit marked Evolution and Creation.
To be fair to the Council for Learning Outside of the Classroom (who need a snappier name by the way) the zoo may have a very well run and excellently organised education system, it;s just that they are teaching absolute bollocks.
I think that will do, I'm off to Whitstable Oyster Festival. Have a good week what ever you do. Oh and if you haven't listen to it yet, maybe you might like to give the podcast a brief moment of your time. Click here to listen
Good news, it's not just the Express that prints pictures of Princess Diana on their front page, sometimes other people do too. Look, here she is on The Times,
I'm in a bit of sports frenzy at the moment what with the World Cup, Wimbledon, Cricket and a Grand Prix this weekend as well. I am barely leaving the house at the moment which is a shame because the weather is lovely.
Depending on when you read this England are about to play Germany or have played Germany in the World Cup so I say this*, Come on England/Well played England/Not out on penalties again/Well, they were the better team on the day/That ball is awful, so light and round. *delete as appropriate.
Have you seen Star Wars? What do you mean no? Stop reading this, go and buy it on DVD and watch it and then continue reading otherwise you won't get the next reference.
You know that bit in Episode 4 when the Death Star destroys Alderaan and when it happens Obi-Wan says he has felt a disturbance in the Force, like 1 million people cry out at once and then were silent? You remember that bit? See told you this would mean nothing to you if you hadn't seen the film. Anyway, that's how I felt when I heard the Nadine Dorries and David Tredinnick had managed to weasel themselves onto the Science and Technology Committee. 1 million Geeks, Nerds and Skeptics cried out at once and then were silent. Well until they got their breaths back from the collective scream and started Twittering and blogging about this adoration.
Now I know that to get onto a committee you have to want to get onto that committee but surely there should be some sort of test to see if you are qualified to pass judgement on the subjects the committee will discuss, in this case maybe GCSE science. Here come the Dark Ages, austere Dark Ages at that.
I would go and hide in a cave until it is all better but for the fear that Prince Charles would be there extolling the virtues of this kind of architecture.
This however is not a time for retreat, the morons are strong but we can be stronger. They may have one or two people now on the inside and Prince Charles is still interferes more than a constitutional Monarch should (I know that technically he is not yet the Monarch but he should be practising the sort of opinion withholding that his mother does so well.) but this is the perfect time for the rational people to strike back. Let them witter on about how Surgeons don't operate under a full moon because it effects blood clotting or how a foetus can punch it's way out of a womb (maybe she was misquoting a Chuck Norris joke), they get some attention for themselves and look silly but then the way is open for sensible people to correct them and look, well, sensible.
Remember when strangely faced Michael Gove was trying to sell us all the idea of Free Schools? Do you remember how we heard the word “Sweden” more times then the Divine Comedy album Fin De Siecle? Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, Sweden.
He point was that Sweden used the free school system and it was bloody brilliant. What we needed was some sort of study that could tell us if he was right or not.
What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? No, it's a study about the Swedish free schools system and guess what, they are not as good as Tory Boy (and I mean that in an unpleasant way) has been making out.
A report, published in Research in Public Policy, has found what we all thought. Those that do best from this sort of system are pupils from educated, professional homes. Report author Rebecca Allen from the Institute of Education has found that "The impact on low-educated families and immigrants is close to zero," well that's ok, this Government don't really seem to like them anyway. The report went on, "The researchers also find that the advantages that children educated in areas with free schools have by age 16 do not translate into greater educational success in later life.”
"The evidence on the impact of the reforms suggests that, so far, Swedish pupils do not appear to be harmed by the competition from private schools, but the new schools have not yet transformed educational attainment in Sweden."
So the evidence shows that this system does not help ALL pupils but only those from the right sort of family, so why do this? It seems that this Government (mostly the Tory bits) are making the decisions on ideological grounds rather than based on evidence. That would explain the budget, a small mention of which later.
First they refuse to introduce proper regulation of landlords despite the fact that their trade organisation thinks that it is a good idea and now they cap housing benefit. People will be forced to live in cheap, unpleasant housing that may well be dangerous and there will be nothing that they can do about it.
Run free little markets, run free. Don't you worry who you hurt, you just go and have fun, make as much money as you can for a very small number of people.
Far be it for me to criticise the mighty BBC but I do feel that they went for the salacious angle of this story when they went with the headline “GP admits viewing pornographic images at Dorset surgery.”
Now that is a very stupid thing to do but this GP was up in front of the GMC, it can't have just that can it?
Well, the person who wrote this piece seems to think that it is important, or at least the most interesting to the sites readers. If you read on, however, you learn a little more about how spectacularly inappropriate this Doctor was.
In paragraph 3 we learn he may have been “drunk at the surgery in 2007” and may accessed patient records whilst suspended in 2008 and 2009.
In paragraph 5 we learn he was accused of “inappropriately touching three female colleagues”. Paragraph 6 brings news of a webcam he set up in his surgery and we finish with paragraph 7 that tells us that “Dr Vadas also faces allegations about his care of eight patients and is accused of making threats against a witness”.
Really I don't thing that the porn thing matters that much, it just made a better headline.
Let's get on with the Awards as we all have more important things to do with our day,
The Award for Massive Insanity of the Week,
Jim Corr from the Corrs (you remember them, 3 cloned women and some bloke, he was the bloke) seems to have become more than a little mad.
Thank you to Michael Marshall on twitter for pointing everyone towards Jim Corr's website which is filled with pretty much every conspiracy theory you have ever heard of and many you haven't. The man is a loon.
This is what happens if you hang around with 3 beautiful woman all the time that you have to keep reminding yourself are your sisters and you shouldn't be looking at them like that.
The Award for Incredible, Passionate, Refusing to Loose Sporting Achievement Of The Week,
Yes, yes England played pretty well on Wednesday against the Slitheen (and may also do so again today) but that doesn't even come close to our award winner.
Nicolas Maihut and John Isner played an epic 5 setter at Wimbledon this week.
There is no tie-break in the 5th set at these championships so you play on until somebody is ahead by 2 games.
The first break points didn't come up until the 101st game of the set. Yes you did read that right. The score was 50 games all. At this point they had been playing for nearly 9 hours, over 2 days.
Until Wednesday the longest match at Wimbledon had lasted 6hr and 9 minutes, the 5th set of this match alone lasted longer than that.
The 5th set ended 70-68 after 11 hours and 5 minutes of play. It was played over 3 days. Both players served over 100 aces. It was just incredible.
The Award for Fantastic Misdirection Of The Week,
David Cameron was so very proud of the Conservative Party restoring the link between pensions and earnings, so proud in fact that he mocking Labour during Prime Minister's Questions for not doing it whilst they were in office.
Is it such a great thing? I mean, it would have been a great thing when earnings rises were high and inflation was low. I wonder what it's like now?
Well, George Osborne announced that public sector pay will be frozen for a few years and, as we all know, the general economy is a bit fucked and many private companies have frozen pay as well. What about inflation you ask? Inflation is creeping up, well it's about 3.4%, down from 3.7% the month before but still higher than it was.
So it seems that inflation is higher than the rise in earnings. The increase in pensions for your Granny is going to be less under the Tories than it would have been if they had left the system alone and yet they trumpet this a “progressive”. Welcome to our brave new world.
The Award for Getting More Than You Bargained For of The Week,
So you are in Canada and you decide to steal a lorry. You think, that looks like a nice lorry and the keys are in the ignition, I'll have that one. Really you should check the back of the lorry to see what's in it shouldn't you? No, you're in a hurry, after all you are nicking it, you are sure whatever is in there will be easy to sell on the black market later on. Just take the truck.
After the crime is committed you have time to see what's in the lorry. As you approach the doors you notice that it seems to be making some rather odd noises. With some trepidation you open up the lorry only to be faced with a a Bengal tiger called Jonas and camels named Todd and Shawn.
If you are the person that stole them would you mind terribly giving them back to Bowmanville Zoo in Ontario, they are a little concerned for their animals.
No real mentions for BP this week, oil still floods out into the Gulf of Mexico and they have finally decided to put someone else in charge of capping the leak, but there is a video on YouTube that claims to be footage of some sort of oily rain. I, obviously, can't confirm it's validity but have a look yourselves,
The sun still seems to be out in Britain and it confuses us, although it could be the Tardis burning up I suppose, because it rarely happens we feel we should make the most of every last second of it despite the fact that we know our skin will turn pink, cause us a lot of pain and then peel off. I did see a man on Weymouth seafront on Friday wearing only Speedos and trainers, this is not a good look.
I wish it would rain a little bit, I'm fed up watering the allotment.
Anyway enough of my moaning about how nice the weather is here, have a nice week all.
There is a report on the front of the Times today that claims that they have seen a leaked report from the BBC about the future of the, ummm, BBC.
The report is going to say, when it is released properly, that the BBC has grown to big and must shrink back. Well maybe, it did buy the Lonely Planet guides for no good reason, but the rumoured cuts seemed aimed at some slightly strange targets.
It has been suggested that the excellent BBC website (the first website I look at everyday) will be cut back by half and that the BBC's Asian Network will take a hit. There is also some slightly odd thinking in the paper, suggesting that the BBC should close it's Switch and Blast! services (whatever they are) which are aimed at teenagers so not to compete with E4 and ITV but they will leave BBC3 alone. You know BBC3, the channel whose stated demographic is 16-35. Hmmmm.
Anyway the thing that has riled me (and Twitter) the most is the suggestion that BBC 6Music should be closed. Noooooooooooooo! It's my favourite radio station, well maybe joint favourite with Radio4, but anyway, Noooooooooooooo!
No reason seems to be given in the article as to why 6Music should go but the decision (if it has been made) seems to be based on making it easier for commercial rivals, after all the BBC isn't supposed to compete directly with them. Fair enough I suppose, the BBC does have a bit of an advantage, but I don't think that that is a relevant argument here.
Commercial radio, by it's very nature, has to appeal to either a quite limited demographic or the widest possible (My local commercial broadcaster has gone for people who neither like music or coherent and interesting talking), where as 6Music appeals to quite a wide range of music lovers. This morning they played The Pixies followed by Naughty by Nature. How many advert funded efforts can say that? And how many radio stations (and I'm including the rest of the world here) have ever used the phrase “And now something from SquarePusher” as Stuart Maconie did last Sunday? I would imagine that it is quite a small number.
I'm not doing special pleading here because I like the station but I am pointing out the the argument is floored. I am not aware of a single other radio station that would bring you such a wide range of interesting people presenting programmes as 6Music has. Look at Sundays for instance. Huey Morgan (Fun Lovin' Criminals), Jarvis Cocker (in his first showed he read out a short story and played a Sir John Betjeman poem, is that happening on XFM?), Stuart Maconie (player of Square Pusher) and Guy Garvey (Elbow).
There is clearly some other reason for picking on the Asian Network and 6Music. The fact that the leak was to the Times (owned by Rupert Murdoch, hater of the BBC) is also significant.
This is a tacit admission on behalf of Mark Thompson, the Director-General, that he thinks the Tories will win the General Election and he wants to get the first move in. The report was even written by the former head of the Conservative policy unit, John Tate, who co-wrote the party’s 2005 manifesto with David Cameron but is now director of policy and strategy at the BBC.
He is trying to save the BBC from too much Tory interference when they come to power. He is saying, yes I understand the things that you think are wrong with the BBC, see I'm changing them, please leave us alone. 6Music has become a sacrificial lamb on an alter to David Cameron, so that Mark Thompson may continue in his job. Hmmmmm.
I read one criticism of the Save 6 Music campaign (by the way, you can write to the BBC trust by clicking on here) is that we were all suggesting other things to be cut like sport, celebrity programs and BBC3. There is a reason for that, these things do compete with commercial broadcasters but 6Music doesn't.
Please don't let this happen, I like music and want to listen to it without having cheap double glazing advertised at me.
