Brief notes
I’ve been a bit remiss recently, and haven’t been blogging as much as I used to. Yes, the Song Of The Day feature continues unabated but where’s all the other good stuff? Well, to try and put that right, here’s another in my series of Brief Notes. This one is a bunch of news stories that have caught my eye recently, for one reason or another.
File under tolerance
A number of stories over the last few days have highlighted the lack of tolerance of other people’s views / lifestyles / religions / whatever that exists in society today. Which, really, is not a very cheerful thought and doesn’t inspire hope for the future.
A priest in London has come under fire for suggesting that all gay people should have their backsides tattooed with the words “Sodomy can seriously damage your health”. He maintains that he was being satirical, attacking the militant promotion of homosexuality by groups such as Outrage. The type of viewpoint that insists everyone is gay, they just don’t know it yet.
While Rev Mullen’s words might have been a little ill-thought out, is his stand against militant gay groups necessarily wrong? Shouldn’t those on both sides of this argument be able to see the other’s point of view?
Priests are not having a good time of it just lately; Yvonne Hobson, a parish priest in Cornwall, has received death threats simply because she’s a woman priest. Not exactly the peace and love that religion supposedly teaches us, is it? Why does the fact that Ms Hobson is a woman affect her ability to be a priest, or her ability to believe in God? I know they can be a bit insular down there in Kernow, but even so…
Once again, Muslims are getting their knickers in a twist - this time over a novel. Seems that we can’t say anything about their faith - good or bad - without them wanting to firebomb the infidels. As with so many religions, the fundamentalist view seems to be the only one that hits the headlines, and the millions of peace-loving Muslims across the world are tarred with the brush of their violent, bomb-happy brethren.
Every religion has been guilty of this at some point in history, but the modern world offers much greater capacity for death and destruction than existed at the time of the Crusades. Again, isn’t religion, belief in God, supposed to be about peace, love and understanding?
Even Corrie has had to pander to minority opinion recently, after they received complaints about a Scottish character suggesting that he could never support Rangers. Apparently, Rangers fans - being the delicate, sensitive souls that they are - felt hard done by over this, and Corrie bosses have changed future scripts to remove similar references.
Two things about this: first, it’s only television - it’s not real! Second, why is television programming being changed according to the wishes of a very small percentage of the viewing population? I don’t watch Corrie and couldn’t care less about Rangers, but what worries me is the trend we seem to have at the moment to not want to upset anyone, however much of a minority they might be. TV is already bland enough, if we continue on like this there won’t anything left to watch, no programmes out there to question what is happening in the world, no hope for the future.
We’re all green
Starbucks have come under fire again (they must be used to it by now), this time for wasting millions of litres of water every day. Apparently, staff are not allowed to turn off taps that are used to clean spoons; this helps to reduce the growth of bacteria and helps the global chain to achieve health and safety standards. I’ve never been in a Starbucks (because I have a kettle at home and know how to make a cup of coffee for myself), but I can’t imagine that the experience is worth the waste of so much water.
Lung disease is set to kill 83 million people in China over the next 30 years, according to a recent study. Mainly because of widespread use of wood burning stoves for heating and cooking and the fact that the Chinese smoke one third of all the cigarettes in the world.
China has a population of just over 1.3 billion people, crammed into a land mass of about 9.3 billion square kilometres (as opposed to the US where 303 million people live in about 9.1 billion square kilometres), so you’d think they might be glad of the extra room.
Got him at last
We all knew it had to happen some time; OJ has finally been thrown in jail. Not, as you might expect, because they’ve found some way to find him guilty of his wife’s murder after all these years, but because he committed an armed robbery.
But we all know that really he’s been put away because no-one ever believed he was innocent of his wife’s murder.
Not our fault
Apparently, the fact that they shot an innocent man seven times in the head, on a crowded London tube train, is not the fault of the officers with the guns, nor of the Metropolitan police as a whole. It’s the fault of the nation for not preventing the 21 July bomb attempts of which Mr de Menezes was suspected. And, just to make sure that we all feel re-assured, it has been said this sort of thing could happen again. Is DAC Cressida Dick living up to her name?
And finally, a Max Moseley story
Max has been in the news again, saying that Formula One needs to drastically cut costs if it wants to remain credible. Which I think is a bit much, really, coming from the one man who has done more than any other person (except perhaps for Bernie Ecclestone, who insists on taking the sport to tracks that even Ferrari don’t like) to make Formula One a laughing stock across the world.
If Max wants to make F1 credible again, then he should stand down as president of the FIA.
Brief notes
1. Apparently Richard O’Brien has not given his blessing to the proposed re-make of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, despite reports that he is to co-produce. He’s been quoted as saying that “I have no view on whether it should be remade but it doesn’t have my blessing”. I know that there’s a lot of people out there who’d like to see it re-made (Collin is looking for guesses on who could play the various roles) but, frankly, I’m not one of them. I love the film - it’s up there in my top five - but have never seen the stage show. Consequently, for me only Tim Curry can fill Frank’s corset and only Susan Sarandon could ever be Janet.
The fact that the re-make is being produced by Sky Movies and MTV also does not inspire confidence that this will be a quality film. And in today’s prudish prime-time climate, how much is the story going to get butchered? If you feel like me on this one, head over to Stop The Remake and make your feelings known.
2. Gary Glitter, 70’s leader of the gang and 90’s paedo, is heading back to the UK. His prison sentence in Vietnam ends on Tuesday and he’s going to be deported. It’s expected that he’ll move on to another Asian country, but when he lands in the UK he can expect to be interviewed by the police. But they won’t be placing him on the sex offenders register. Which seems a bit odd to me; here’s a guy who has committed repeated child sex offences in this country and abroad yet he’s not on the register? Doesn’t that make the register a bit of a waste of time?
3. Yet a father who gave his 13 year old daughter a slap for disobedience has had his job prospects ruined and had to give up his community work because he accepted a police caution rather than demanding his day in court. Years ago, back before we lived in such a nanny state, had the daughter called the police because her Dad had slapped her, they would have given her a clip round the ear for wasting their time. But now, parents are not allowed to use physical means to discipline their children and, if they do, their children can apparently get them arrested without any trouble at all.
But I’m sure that the continuing rise in violent crime (21 teenage deaths through violence in London alone so far this year) isn’t linked to this lack of discipline society that we live in.
4. Colin Stagg is back in the news, for the £700,000 compensation payout that he’s received over his wrongful arrest for the murder of Rachel Nickell. He was cleared in 1994. From all that I’ve read of the case, it seems that he was quite comprehensively set-up by the Met (who, let’s face it, have somewhat of a history in this area) and compensation is due. After all, in the mind of a lot of the public he will be forever guilty and the chances of him ever being able to get a job again are fairly small.
The problem comes with the amount he’s been awarded when you compare it to the amounts that have been awarded to wounded soldiers or victims of the London bombings. Mr Stagg is still in possession of all his limbs and is in good health. Many of the soldiers awarded compensation of less than a tenth the figure he got, have lost limbs, eyes, other organs in the service of their country. The system seems a bit cocked-up if deserving cases like theirs are seen as less important than cases like Mr Stagg’s.
Brief notes
1. I’ve been talking this week with an old friend from school, and one of the subjects that came up was names and how we’d both not really liked ours for one reason or another. But having read this story, I can see that we got off easy. I mean, I thought Moon Unit, Fifi Trixibelle and Zowie were bad enough - but Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii? Come on, how stoned do you have to be to lump your daughter with a name like that?
2. The BPI has pressurised the Government into pressurising the major UK ISP’s to make it their problem to deal with illegal online file-sharing. So, if you’ve been sharing files illegally you might soon be getting a letter from your ISP to tell you to stop it. I’m not sure that I agree it is the ISP’s problem - what about the people that produce the software that make it possible?
3. It’s official; Max Moseley is not a Nazi. Son of a fascist, bad for motorsport in general and Formula One in particular, an embarrassment to his family, and £60,000 richer after the verdict - but not a Nazi.
4. Poor old David Cameron, Conservative leader and (in)famous cyclist. He’s had his bike stolen while out shopping. Wonder if it’s up on eBay yet?
5. Fans of Beaker should check out this clip. Priceless.
Brief Notes
1. As part of the surveillance nation we now live in, 20,000 cars have had their number-plates scanned as they visited Bluewater shopping centre. Just in case any of them was involved in a crime. God forbid that law-abiding people should be able to go about their daily business without being subject to scrutiny such as this. What were the police expecting to find? A few outstanding parking tickets?
Yet, as with the proposed ID card scheme and the proliferation of CCTV cameras the majority of us seem prepared to sit back and let it happen. The argument that I hear most is “If you’ve not got anything to hide, what does it matter?”. Well, the answer to that is “If I’ve got nothing to hide, why must I be subject to constant surveillance?”. It doesn’t help to stop crime and it doesn’t help to solve crime. It takes police off the streets, because they end up sitting in front of screens all day.
2. Lewis Hamilton wins again! Despite his team making an error of judgement over pit stops, Lewis won the German Formula One Grand Prix and has now pulled slightly clear of his main rivals Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen. The remainder of the season promises to be just as exciting as last year.
3. There’s apparently a scheme in the pipeline to reward surgeons with bonuses when patients don’t die. Surely, that’s supposed to be what they’re trying to achieve anyway? We seem hell-bent on completely screwing up the NHS and this is just the latest in a long line of ‘initiatives’.
Brief notes
1. What do you do when your helicopter breaks down in Snowdonia? Call in the RAF to airlift it back to base for repairs. I think this qualifies as “amazing footage of the week”.
2. Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton for winning the British GP this weekend; he’s now back in the running for the championship. Commiserations to David Coulthard for crashing out early in his last ever home race. And well done (!) to Bernie for finally doing what he’s been trying to do for years and taking the GP away from Silverstone. Given that one of his objections has always been the lack of facilities at Silverstone, I’m not sure how he thinks that Donnington is a suitable replacement, when it needs even more work than Silverstone.
I don’t know who it is at the BRDC that Bernie doesn’t like, but there’s obviously someone! Or perhaps it’s just that the BRDC told him where he could stick his outrageous demands for money. The sooner that the premier class of motorsport is not controlled by such a devious, manipulative and two-faced person as Bernie Ecclestone, the better that it will be. Between him and Max “not a Nazi, but definitely the son of a fascist” Moseley, the sport long ago descending into farce and it needs to be stopped.
3. You’ve probably seen much talk of this around the Net over the last few days, but in case you missed it a judge in the US has ruled that Google must hand over a log that contains details of the videos that You Tube users have watched. The log, which “contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details” has to be handed over to Viacom in an argument over copyright infringement.
Quite rightly, privacy groups are up in arms that this information is to be handed over, as it contains data that could allow individuals to be identified and is a massive breach of privacy. But what worries me, additionally, is why this information is being kept in the first place. Yes, I can understand you want to know which videos are popular, etc, but why do you need to keep personal information? Isn’t it enough to know that a video has been watched 100,000 times? Why do you need to know which 100,000 people watched it?
There has been some speculation that Viacom may use this information in an attempt to prosecute individual users, so I’d recommend that if you’re a You Tube user you only watch non-copyright infringing clips from now on.
4. In a related issue, Virgin Media is warning file-sharers that they risk being taken to court if they illegally download music. It’s part of a BPI initiative to stop the illegal downloading of music by making the ISP’s responsible for it. Years ago we had “Home taping is killing music (and it’s illegal)” stickers on LPs and cassettes; now we have its online equivalent. But the “Home taping” campaign back then was based on a fallacy, and it’s the same today; music was never at risk. What was at risk was the strangle hold that the music industry had on it, while they milked it for every penny they could. They can’t (and never have been able to) move with the times and want to protect a profit margin that really doesn’t belong to them anymore. If it was all about protecting the artists, as people like the BPI would have us believe, I could give it more support but it isn’t; it’s all about record label profits.
If I download an album through iTunes or any of the other online music stores, rather than buying the CD, why should I have to pay the same price as the CD? There’s no physical product that has to be manufactured and shipped to a retail outlet, after all, and my consumer experience is reduced because there’s no cover artwork or inlay card, etc and no handy CD to enable me to take my music on the road with me. Why, then, was my recent purchase of Melody Gardot’s Worrisome Heart only £0.30 more for the CD than it would have been for a download version? (And, in fact, at the moment it’s actually cheaper for the CD!)
The music industry needs to wake up to reality and rather than going after people who illegally download music, they should be making it much easier to download music legally. Which must also include getting rid of DRM completely, and making artist’s back catalogue’s more readily available.
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