Blah Blah Flowers

Labels: Gogol Bordello, music, YouTube

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from filtering content for UK users.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to commission a momument to Oliver Postgate, Peter Firmin and the children's TV characters they created.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to acknowledge that a large proportion of the workforce in this country is single, and that reference should be made to 'the hard-working population' of this country rather than the constant references to 'hard-working families'.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap ID cards. (again!)

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to cancel the 2012 Olympics in the face of the current recession and the country's existing debt burden.

Labels: censorship, children, Government, ID cards, internet, Internet Service Providers, Olympics, petitions, Television

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has no idea how the Internet works.

Film-style age ratings could be applied to websites to protect children from harmful and offensive material, [he] has said...

He said some content, such as clips of beheadings, was unacceptable and new standards of decency were needed. He also plans to negotiate with the US on drawing up international rules for English language websites.

Yeah, good luck with that one. I've just finished reading Nick Cohen's Pretty Straight Guys from 2002 and although there are several sections where he drinks deeply from the cup of crazy to lambast everyone who didn't want the US and UK to bomb Iraq to buggery he does have a fairly effective go at the Blair Nineties. And this just reeks of the whole 'let's take hoodies to cashpoints and make them pay the police fines on the spot!' nonsense that one of that crowd proposed way back when.

Knee-jerk nonsense just to grab a few headlines before being quietly abandoned when someone sits the relevent Government minister down and explains how life is in Real Town is no way to run a Government.

Labels: Government, internet, stupidity

Labels: Harold Pinter, The War Against Terror, YouTube

I hope you're all having a wonderful Christmas. In this country you can barely move for Christmas traditions, the most long-standing one of which being that Russell T Davies empties out his drawer marked 'any old shit', sticks some fake snow on it and presents it to us as his Christmas Doctor Who show.

The Next Doctor is the fourth Christmas special now and, I think it's safe to say now that the Christmas Specials will always be shit. The Christmas Invasion was dull, The Runaway Bride was fun and the exception that proves the rule and Voyage of the Damned was hell on toast. The Next Doctor is halfway between Bride and Voyage, the half of the story with Doctor David Tennant and Doctor David Morrisey was quite fun and the two of them are clearly having fun. The other half of the story with Cybermen and Dervla Kirwan is confused dribble that makes no sense. Clearly there are a number of ideas that RTD wants to cram into Doctor Who before he leaves (Cybermonkeys! Giant steampunk Cybermen!) and is seeing his last chance here. I mean, why do Cybermen need children to work in their engine room? Have the Cybermen erased all emotions from their soul except the one to doss around and not really do much? Why do they need a Cyber King when they have a Cyber Controller? Exactly why is Miss Hartigan able to override the cyber-process (though to be fair we did have that in the finale to season two)? And what exactly does the Doctor do that defeats Miss Hartigan and the Cybermen? I'll buy the 'psychic feedback from her kills all the other Cybermen (the Cyberman army mysteriously depleting down to four men and someone in the monkey suit)' argument, but he zaps her with Cybermen data pods and she 'gets back in touch with her lost humanity which we weren't even aware she'd lost'? What?!

The David Morrisey side of the story is equally daft but at least he's putting some effort into it, for most of the proceedings Dervla looks extremely bored, though to be fair she's probably paid much less to appear in this than she gets making the food porn for Marks and Spencers and she doesn't even get any good lines. The gig is up within about ten minutes but he has the right amount of bombast to amuse, but what is Rosita doing? She seems at first to think that he is The Doctor, then to be some sort of nursemaid to a mentally-ill man, then falls in with the Doctor and helps him out no questions asked. She seems to be there because someone needs to be saying things at certain times between the start and Jackson realising the truth. The rest of the time, like Miss Hartigan, she becomes surplus.

The story would have been better without Miss Hartigan. Often in Doctor Who you have humans helping aliens mainly because they can speak quicker (I'm not sure the Patrick Troughton stories in which the Ice Warriors try to take over Earth have even finished yet) and explain the plot. These new, chatty Cybermen don't need that. Removing her doesn't alter the plot at all. Have them kill Rosita, so that either both Doctors or just Doctor Morrissey can emote over her death (and then point out how callous the Doctor can sometimes be (especially considering what the Doctor says at the end about not wanting to travel with a companion for a while because it's too much heartbreak)) and then explain what the children are doing in the Cybermen's Torchwood Hubpower plant. Actually, the more I think about this, the more it annoys me. No matter how you try and work it out, they only do about half an hours work. What are they doing that Cybermen can't? It's not that RTD needs the Doctor to follow the children as the only way to find the Cyber-base, it's in the basement of Jackson's house. Again, the Cybermen kill Jackson's wife and steal his son what must be at least three or four days before the Doctor arrives, if you try and figure out the timeline. What happens between that time and when all the other children arrive. Do the lazy Cybermen make him try and run all the engines on his own? Or do they just stick him up at the top of the scaffold and wait for him to starve to death?

So yes, a complete turkey of a Christmas episode. And the prospect of four more helpings of tripe before RTD finishes off next year. It's a sad day when even enormous steampunk Cyberman towering over Victorian London isn't enough to make an episode a classic.

Labels: Doctor Who, Television

Have physicists finally worked out how the universe started, not with a bang but a bounce?

Labels: science

Labels: Brighton, Flickr

Labels: Brighton, Flickr

Labels: Brighton, Flickr

Some good news in the whole arena of 'Religious people discriminating against gay people and then claiming that they are the ones being discriminated against when they are taken to court or dismissed from their jobs' (hmmm, I need something catchier for that): Christian ex-registrar did not lose her job for her religious beliefs, she lost them for being an intolerant fool, tribunal decides.

Labels: Fundamentalists- Christian

Warren Ellis: King of the Internet.

Labels: humour, Warren Ellis

Kids these days don't know they're born. Anyone who was young in the Seventies or early Eighties will have been touched by the hand of Postgate.

Labels: children, Television, YouTube

I'm just about to leave for work so don't know whether I've ever written here or not about my love for A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I'll check that later. In the meanwo, Mitch Benn has narrated the book in five easy to digest chunks here. He does a great job of it too, and it reminds us that in these supercharged Michael-Bay-tastic attention-deficit-disorder multimedia days what simple pleasure we can get from just listening to someone read. It's worth a listen, especially if you've not actually read the story before.

Labels: Charles Dickens, Christmas, podcasts, stories/storytelling

This is why drugs are bad, especially in the creative process.

Now, I should make it clear I did intend to go see Star Trek: Nemesis in the cinema. I based this purely on a very effective poster and only my shitty time-management skills stopped me. This turned out to be lucky as when I finally got round to watch it it was on DVD and for free, so I didn't feel the need afterwards to go and pummel the undeserving cinema staff until I got my money refunded.

After watching the trailer for Star Trek By The Bell (a.k.a. Sarek Valley High, That's so Romulan, erm... The Naughtiest Girl in the Starfleet, give me a second and I'll think of some more...) I'm trying to work out how much Paramount would have to pay me so I didn't feel cheated after watching it.

Luckily we'll mostly be spared over here as I doubt the great British public will be much interested in this pile of toss. Sure, everyone knows who James T. Kirk is in the same way that they know who the Daleks are, but just because Doctor Who made a comeback don't expect the same for Star Trek, I'm not even totally sure as to whether Enterprise was ever shown right to the end on terrestrial TV. I doubt the prospect of young Kirk will be much of a pull for non-Star Trek fans and possibly those of us who like to look down our noses at enthusiasts who actually speak Klingon or who think the Federation is a nice place to live (oh don't get me fucking started sunshine...).

So that leaves the fans, who are about to be given a film which the creator is taking pains to say he isn't writing for them, he doesn't know much about the universe and he's creating a movie for people who won't be interested in it. The closest thing to a star name it has over here is Simon Pegg, again Lost isn't big news over here. And when a series set in the franchises own past doesn't even last long enough to make it to the seven year marker like the rest of it's sister shows, what insanity is it that makes people think "let's make a film on that same concept!"? This will hopefully land Star Trek into the creative hiatus the whole franchise needs until it can think of some new ideas.

(Got it, Degrassi Junior Hirogen).

Labels: movies, science fiction, Star Trek

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to condemn the media witch hunt of social workers.

Labels: child abuse, children, petitions, scapegoating

Jury returns an open verdict in the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes after they were told they weren't allowed to return a verdict that he was unlawfully killed.

Labels: courts, Jean Charles de Menezes, police

After the ridiculous climb-down by Waterstones in the face of of the bankrupt one-man Christian demonstrator Stephen Green, members of the Welsh Assembly have organised a reading of Patrick 'Nicky Wire's brother' Jones for tonight. The charmless bigots, Christian 'No, our membership is bigger than just Stephen Green, sitting in his bedroom, weeping bitter tears at the futility of his life' Voice, are predictably unhappy.

The poems aren't actually much good, they hardly rhyme, they rarely scan or have rhythm, but they possibly have enough profanity and references to female genitalia to get the literati excited. One of them, to which Christians are taking the greatest exception, includes the blasphemous assertion of sex between the poet and someone Jones calls 'mary magdelene' (sic), and Jesus.

Maybe Stephen figures that the best way to pay back the money he owes the BBC for wasting their time is to get a job reviewing poetry on Newsnight Review?

Labels: Christian Voice, Fundamentalists- Christian, poetry, Stephen Green

I'm moderately confident that this is a joke, but whether it's at Christians who can spectacularly miss the point or at the kind of people who rename things as 'personhole' in order to avoid offense I'm not sure.

Meet the man who wants to say good-bye to the word "hello." Leo Canales wants us all to say "heaveno" instead.

Labels: Christianity, stupidity

The Julie Bindel Clearing House. For all your hilariously out-of-touch transphobic needs.

Labels: Julie Bindel, transphobia

Labels: gay, homophobia, humour, lesbians

Labels: art, Flickr, sculpture

Labels: art, Flickr, sculpture

Labels: art, Flickr, sculpture

Cool science! By using video goggles and tactile stimulation scientists were able to fool people into believing that mannequins and the bodies of other people were actually their own.

I don't know why but this really interests me. Still...

Dr Ehrsson said that the findings could be used to create new therapies for people with abnormal body image, as well as to confront bigotry by allowing people to identify with people of different races and sexes. It could also be used to improve robotics technology and even virtual reality video games.

What's the betting this becomes something to add on to your Wii before it makes it to be something actually beneficial?

Labels: science

The inquest into the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by armed police at Stockwell tube station has reached the end of the evidence bit and is now over to the jury for them to render their verdict. To save the blushes of the police, the armed response wing of which tends to turn into three year olds and scream and sulk every time there is any danger that they might get prosecuted for killing innocent people in cold blood, the coroner has directed that the jury are not allowed to return a verdict that he was illegally killed by the police.

Never mind that people say the police broke the rules and gave no warning, never mind that police admitted the command structure for such a situation was unclear, never mind the police have been found to be tampering with evidence. At the start of this whole thing the coroner told the jury to forget everything they've seen, heard or read about the case. What was the point of that if he wasn't going to allow them a free choice?

Something that I believe I picked up from the late Robert Anton Wilson was the idea that, in American courts, if the judge directs a jury to make a particular decision, they are not legally required to follow it, they could be told to find someone not guilty but could still return a verdict of guilty. I wonder if the British inquest courts also have that rule?

Labels: courts, Jean Charles de Menezes, police