our new mini-site.....

Thursday Stuff

Masters of spin & little else:
Here’s the thing some Education Minster Sion Simon is on the radio tis morning wriggling about on a John Humphrey’s barb because his department via a quango have reneged on funding for FE colleges including my alma mater (new definition of progress: 20 years on and kids still being taught in prefabs?) leaving them potetially insolvent.

One reason for the problem is that the Minister seemed to have a greater knowledge of media jargon than of the problem at hand. He mentioned 2/3 phrases that showed he’d spent longer in media training than in lessons on setting and keeping to budgets etc.

10% Nonsense:
Do I have to repeat this? I got a new wallet for a replacement Oyster card this morning and inside Southeastern had stuck a little advert proudly telling us that in the last year 90% of their trains had run on time. So let’s see why don’t we all pay 22 quid a week instead of 25 seeing as 90 % is good enough?

The UK the cheap bast*rd of Europe
Seems we are going to charge 50 quid to foreign students and migrant workers to pay for public services they use during their time here. Now I have a suspicion that seeing as VAT etc hits poorer people harder than the well off (because it’s a higher proportion of their basic/limited spending) they already pay their share.

And of course Fred “scot-free” Godwin’s pension would pay for about 320,000 “foreigners”. But well it’s easier( and more politically expedient) to extract a day’s pay out of some Polish lass doing something useful like working in a shop or serving food than to chase down some failed feckless unqualified banker for his ill gotten and fraudulently obtained millions.

Can you judge people by the company they keep?

Freud and theory of your public self*:

In G2 today they have ridiculously long article about Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud, not sure why, I think the media is more impressed by high flying media people than the rest of us.


It’s a bit of a long piece so I couldn’t be arsed reading it, I mean what with the cartoons, the ingredient list on a packet of viscounts and TFL’s refund policy to read my times full, but from the pictures it must be a stitch up as they show Freud hobnobbing with some the slimiest wretches going (his sister, Kevin Spacey and George Martin excepted) I mean once you’ve shaken hands with Mandleson, Piers “ Toad of Toad hall” Morgan** and Angus Deayton how many fingers would you have left and that’s before you share a Christmas morning breakfast table with Rupert Murdoch.

Obviously maybe Freud turns Pier Morgan’s stomach that being the case can you imagine how grim he must be, it would like being a piece of discarded day old kebab meat that even the gulls won’t fight over.

* I included the picture of the couch to piss the Freuds off, who I bet are hacked off with all their puns and jokes based around their forebear.

** I know toads are wonderful animals and not at all slimy we need something that doesn’t criticise blameless animals but is really horrible but is balanced I mean the only other things I could think of were tyrants and murders and that’s not really proportional any suggestions we need something more than just “rancid turd”

"Rain not tears"

Lewis Hamilton World F1 Champion

Well that was exciting. well done Lewis. Don't leave it to the last corner next time!!!

Mr Angry of Deptford

Me, me,me,me,me

At the risk of causing a media feed backloop, my little blog is in the paper today. Without me even trying, my review of the cold war show at the V&A linked to a Victor Keegan piece about taking photos in galleries and the paper found it via technocrati and published it (in extract) in the paper.

Here's the link the to page on the guardian website ,if you want the real artifact it's in the techy section page 4.

here's my piece in full before those terrible Guardian subs cut it to pieces......

Post 600 :Trivia (no change there then ed.)

365 - 238 - in the movies, originally uploaded by the brownhorse.

Small things that annoy me more than they should
London cinema times:

Monopoly free market capitalism (how's it going guys oh that bad shame) has done some terrible things namely Simon Cowell, the Bho Pal disaster, the film titanic and renaming chocolate bars randomly one of the most trivial but telling is that in London it tries to cram two showings of films into one evening .

The upshot being that the first sitting is too early 5.50pm and the later one that bit too late 8.50 sometimes. On an evening you want to go to the flicks at 7 ish or perhaps half past so you can have a spot of tea or a pint and then catch the film not rush to the cinema straight from work or for the later showing hang around in town drinking too much waiting for the film to start and them getting home late on a school night.

But no the xfactorsrunningsnickernamingpopcornpeddlers do their best to ruin your evening.

Like I say a minor thing but annoying.

Small things that please me in order to balance irrational annoyances above.

I found a fiver in the ticket pocket of Jeans; I decided to call it lunch.

The Met office has a spokesman called Barry Gromett, it’s not his fault but if you are deliberately putting yourself in the public eye don’t have a hilarious tip top name like Barry Gromett. Is Barry a name that’s died out? I think I like it almost as much as the woman on the radio who seems to be called Fenella Fudge or even the reporter Julia Caesar.

Notes on my 600th post:

People often wax lyrical at such "landmark" points in time and tell you what they've learnt etc, all I know as off today is that:

Mono is spanish for Monkey,

that the yellow snow is never someone's spilt limeade

that you should never play cards with Sicilians

that you shouldn't fight a land war in Europe on 2 fronts

Oh and that you should never miss the opportunity to wish your friends, family and types you bump into on the net the best of health and happiness. Keep yourselves warm and safe and if your going to that London put some money in your sock.

yours as ever C... oh sorry BLTP

Some black jacks, some fruit salads and Metal Guru Please..

Woollies is to stop selling singles which looks like the on going story of the slow decline of record selling on the high street.

However it was only after researching a recent flea market find did I find out that for a time woollies not only sold but also made records. Their label (as some of you probably) know as Embassy it seemed to specialise in covers or transatlantic knock offs.
Anyway apart from their own label I’m sure many people here bought stuff from woollies; I know I use have it on my tour of the records shops on Saturday morning and if the price was right I would buy stuff there.

What did people get amongst the pick and mix?

Did anyone get anything esoteric?

Here’s an good site for more on Embassy records

My find was by Jaybirds it’s sub “that’ll be the day” fare but interesting none the less.

Things that cheer me up part 6 (?)

Free Godzilla posters with the paper.

I think the world is a better place for more Godzilla.

Flickring Images

Video killed the photographic star.
Something strange has happened at Flickr, you can now upload videos hmmmm, I'm not sure this is good thing the best thing about Flickr is that it's about doing ie taking pictures yourself and sharing them (there is the odd scan on my bit but you I know what I mean).
Youtube god bless it is a passive thing ie a small number of people upload stuff the rest just surf and browse. I fear that Flickr will get cluttered with hilarious guff . Admittedly it's only 90 sec burst so pop videos are out, we'll see.

News Round up!

Booze Britain: According to one paper today "Britian is being destroyed from within by drunken teenagers" and I thought it was Al-Quaida and single mums.

The Olympics: The Chinese are whingeing that people are making the games political; they always where! For some reason the Olympics is the most political sporting event going, more so than even the World cup. If it wasn't a huge polictical event the Chinese Government wouldn't be spending billions supporting it. It's shameful of us all that so much support is being given to such corrupt totalitarian government.

Consumer update: Tescos et al aren't cheaper because you always buy more than you went for, they are really slow at serving you, horrible places to be and if you don't have a car they couldn't give fig for your custom.

Transport news: Still no improvement to my morning train; overcrowded and stopping randomly (slow) the same goes for every other one in Britain.

Cheap Skates

Watched a bit of the BBC4's film about Windsor Castle, which gave further proof if we needed it today that one of the reasons rich people stay that way is that they'll be dammed if they spend a shilling on other people unless they have to.

Case in point for a state visit of Jacques Chirac to celebrate a 100years of the Entente Cordiale (ie Us and the French giving up on a 1000 years of war); what do Betty and the other Windsors lay on for the Prez's private mini bar, some nice decanters of booze including some dry sherry, fine but then comes the whiskey (perhaps Britain's most universally respected drink, the best most complex, most varied, most most spirit going). But what brand do Windsors knock out, a £15 quid bottle of Famous Grouse*.

I thought things had picked up when the french sommelier point to the last bottle which I thought he said was "Golden Gin" that's better, oh no he meant "Gordon's Gin". I mean even I would stretch to a bottle of Macallan if Jacques and their lass where coming round.
And don't say they are just saving our money as they had one bloke just employed to raise the flag when cheap Lizzy rolls through the gates.

Plus they only had three courses and Liz even vetoed the Mandarin oranges to go with the pud ,god she's a tight cow.

* It's Phils favourite blend apparently insert I thought he prefered Metaxa joke here. In the pic above Phil's laughing at the poor.