The blog of a student, Still Learning. Politics, music, Formula 1, commuting, life, etcetera... If this is your first visit, welcome! This is an archive page. Get with the times!

I have a headache, but never mind about that...

I've tidied the page up a bit, and added a lot more links to the right-hand panel.. It really is true that once you start checking a couple of blogs, you suddenly discover about a dozen.


How evil are you?

More later perhaps.

Bloggerheads seems like a good place which I've just discovered. Here's what I've unearthed this afternoon:

Please please please a thousand times click the link below:


Time to save the BBC

Thom Yorke in The Guardian on Hutton - better than his last one, but he still ain't a journalist.

The new BBC testcard


And, more generally, Why politicians need weblogs,


...and now for the light relief. An interesting article in Guardian Unlimited about the popularity of BBC Radio 2.

And another quiz, this time about my BBFC certificate!

My life has been rated:
See what your rating is!

NP New New York Tes

I wrote the following on the BBC Collective website - I think I should post it here aswell, because I think I made a lot of good points in it!

The only 'winner' from the Hutton Inquiry is Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats.

Thought anyone?

Clearly it's not been a good time for the BBC; definitely no winners there.

The government? Nah. The report's one-sided nature has made people even more suspicious and want a fuller inquiry, and the government has almost been in danger of seeming smug.
Alastair Campbell is just even more of a jerk with his recent interviews showing that he hasn't learned a single lesson from this whole affair.

The Conservatives, as I predicted, have blown it. Michael Howard's dangerous tactic of predicting Hutton's findings have backfired spectacularly, and perhaps unsurprisingly led to him being booed in the House of Commons.

The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, have nothing but positives coming out of this report. Kennedy's rational nature has avoided any Howard-esque embarassment. At the same time, his consistent opposition to the war has put him in a far stronger position to attack the government about the whole affair than Howard. Tony Blair himself praised Kennedy's approach:

"To be fair to the right hon. Gentleman, he has not made allegations of lying against me personally throughout the past few months. Because of the position that he took on the war, he is obviously in a stronger position to ask some of those questions than the Leader of the Opposition."

Menzies Campbell on Question Time and what I heard of Charles Kennedy on Any Questions? were much stronger than anybody else, in my opinion.

Any thoughts?

Read what Greg Palast has to say about it

Clearly, when Alastair Campbell said that he wanted "a clear win and not a messy draw," he didn't really mean it. What he meant was that he wanted to drive the BBC and its values into the ground.
I was rather more measured yesterday because I could see that the BBC was clearly partly at fault. But today I feel as though the entire public has been stitched up. I think Hutton has completely missed the point, and the public seem to agree aswell, in today’s opinion poll in The London Evening Standard – hardly the BBC’s best pal.
Alastair Campbell has got away with murder. If he hadn’t become so angry about one little badly-worded report which few people listened to and was never repeated then things definitely would not have got out of control. (I’ll repeat once again that the accusations made in the Andrew Gilligan’s report were mostly correct, and were reported in every reasonable media outlet. The story was very clearly in the public interest. Gilligan’s badly-chosen words were never repeated beyond that original 6:07am report. It was Campbell who blew this out of all proportion.) And once again, on last night’s Newsnight, he managed to turn a rather civil interview about the Hutton report into yet another adversarial the-BBC-versus-the-government argument. Yet again, Campbell has shown himself up. And Number 10 aswell. Asking for an apology from the BBC even though Greg Dyke apologised very clearly last night was sickening. These are exactly the same aggressive tactics which the government used against the BBC last summer, and which ultimately led to the death of a very highly respected civil servant. Because Hutton yesterday exonerated the government of all blame, the government now thinks it can get away with this sort of crass, controlling and pious behaviour comparable to the most authoritarian of Communist regimes. Because of the government's behaviour, Dyke and the BBC today are vindicated.
Greg Dyke (who, incidentally, used to be criticised for being a crony of the Labour government – surely these events are proof positive that the BBC is impartial when it comes to party politics) was a brilliant leader for the BBC. He made the BBC dynamic and contemporary – he made sure that the BBC served the public like it properly should, unlike any of his media rivals. He told his employees to 'cut the crap' and bureaucracy was reduced, diverting the license fee payers' money into programming, where it should be. Under Dyke, the BBC managed to increase audiences without compromising the quality of its programming. Dyke’s resignation – following that of BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies – has left the Corporation rudderless in a time when it needs leadership the most.
The BBC now faces an enormous challenge. It must remain independent of the government in order to maintain its hugely important values of impartiality and public service. But with the government now bullying the BBC around, seemingly almost for the fun of it, it is difficult to see how the BBC can remain independent of the government. Journalists who get a good story in the public interest but which could offend the government may well think twice before reporting it having seen what's happened to Andrew Gilligan. The person up to the job must be appointed as the new Director General of the BBC for the sake of impartiality in the media, and therefore for democracy.

My ideal replacement? Michael Jackson perhaps.

Genius

Well, that was a bit of a surprise, huh? Just a few weeks ago he had to delay it because he couldn't decide how to aportion blame? And now it's overwhelmingly the BBC's fault apparently. What a turnaround.

Here are some thoughts I'm currently having:
This mustn't be used as an excuse to privatise the BBC - a former big-wig from ITN said that many of the BBC's errors were also reported on ITV and other outlets and went unnoticed. It seems to me that a mistake by an admittedly poor journalist has been blown out of all proportion just because it was on the BBC - as usual. If the BBC were to be privatised, then people would find out what real bias is about. The Murdoch outlets in particular are hardly in a position to preach to rivals the need for unbiased reporting.
Andrew Gilligan was a bad journalist who used the wrong words in a live two-way at 6:07am. The BBC management / Board of Governers should have checked the facts before leaping to support him - especially in the knowledge that he had been reprimanded for his 'loose use of language' before. The BBC should consider whether unscripted live two-ways should be allowed. However, Alastair Campbell reacted too strongly. It is no surprise that the BBC finally snapped after yet another letter of complaint about BBC News coverage. Campbell's performances like that on Channel 4 News surely didn't help matters either. Infact, I think Campbell's behaviour was by far the worst out of all the major players. He was a complete disgrace frankly.
But imagine the BBC getting a story like that from a reputable source like Dr David Kelly and not reporting it. It's not as if the BBC was the first to get the story either - newspapers had cottoned on to it in the days leading up to the BBC's report. So it's hardly as if the BBC was really reporting anything controversial.
But in my view there is a definite reform which the BBC needs to carry out in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry. It cannot be self-regulated. There is just no justification for it in my opinion. It should be under the control of Ofcom. Reform is needed to restore trust in the BBC - and resignations are [were] needed.
Finally, a couple of words about The Sun: poor show.

Well, I WAS going to post my views on these top-up fee things since they're so topical at the moment. But I can't make my bleedin' mind up! I've never had such trouble coming to a conclusion. Maybe in bed tonight I'll scribble down my thoughts and think of something clever to say about it for tomorrow. But probably not, since I have to stay up unti half past midnight if I want to see Liquid News...

Jack McConnell is on HardTalk tonight! For the unenlightened, he's the one who reckons he speaks for Scotland - our First Minister. I'm looking forward to Tim Sebastian challenging him on his being an arse and his immensely strange walk.
The last time I managed to watch a full in-depth interview with him was on Newsnight Scotland before the election, last April. He had such a smug grin on his face when it was over. Smug arse.

NP Chromoshop The Matthew Herbert Big Band

EDIT:
Just remembered - good news from exam-o-land. Media Studies exam is being delayed. In a way, this is very good news indeed. In another way, it's bad news, because tonight I have become a slacker. I watched even more of the news than usual. Perhaps for understandable reasons, since it was so interesting, despite the fact that I can't take a side. "Typical Lib Dem", eh?

Also interesting: I think I'm going to start up the notebook again. Anybody remember that? Especially when we were slacking in English, it was just the most entertaining way to spend a double period. Happy times. Anyway, I think this one will be a private notebook. Maybe like a diary, except without dates. I'm going to be notebooking again because I always liked writing down my dreams and I think I'll be a happier person if I could actually write my private thoughts down as opposed to just letting them circulate round and round in my head until I find the worst-case scenario and become convinced that it will come true. I like to be as open as possible on the blog, but with some things I sense it is just not going to happen. :-/

John Humphrys versus Jack Straw

Hope that works. In a sort of 'showing you what music I'm listening to now' way. Very nice. It doesn't mean the end of the 'now playing' at the bottom of each post. Oh no! Well, that's so long as I can be arsed. Anyway, I feel obliged to link to the clever people who provide the service.

Well I've not been posting much lately. I've given up being arsed. Well that's not true, I'm just mainly tired really... Lots of revision to do for the prelim exams coming up next week. I scored my third unconditional acceptance out of three, so going to university looks pretty much like a certainty now. [The only problem is the whole Edinburgh versus Dundee debate, but I'll perhaps do that in a future post.] So it's not as if they're important or anything. But it would be a real bastard if I were to get poor grades. A wasted year. Nice. Two exams land on on the Thursday, and the other is on Monday. Although we've been told 'not to panic' about our Media Studies exam - nudge-nudge, wink-etc. because Mrs Victory's been off for the past three weeks or something on-and-off. So anyway, I probably won't be 'blogging' that much over the next week or so because of these oh-so-important exams. Although what I have been doing is more work on the website. Extra tweaks here and there. And the small matter of content and dead links to fix. Very good.

I had the scary coffee morning with Mister Mackenzie and Mister Robertson today. The warning was not as advance as they had us believe - infact, it was barely more than an hour. So barely any time to think up decent response to such questions as, "how would you change the school?" and "what's your favourite stairway in the school?" It's actually not too scary though; quite informal and relaxed; no challenging questions which your future school life depends upon. And I learned, after almost six years, where the conference room is.

I finished reading both Shite's Unoriginal Miscellany and The Age Of Consent over the weekend [although I skipped a big bit out of the latter because I couldn't get my head around it]. I began the Greg Palast book today. Seems quite good so far. Anyway, enough boredom for you. Back to what you were doing...

A picture of Paddy nicked from the BBC

World-famous broadcasting legend Patrick O'Connell seems to be appearing less and less on our television screens. Not only has Celebdaq been taken off the air until March, but he's also been punted as presenter of the programme! [Apparently he was keen to carry on presenting the programme, so there.] Paddy was the ideal man for the job of course, having had a background in business reporting and as one of the main presenters of the entertainment programme Liquid News. And now Liquid News itself is being axed for good - but not before it gets shifted to the graveyard slot of midnight. Paddy deserves better than this of course. Apparently, the guy doesn't even use an autocue. Incidentally, why doesn't Paddy have huge muscles yet? - he's got to carry Claudia Winkelman for half an hour every day! Boom boom etcetera.
Mister O'Connell first caught my eye during the nocturnal days [nights] of the summer holidays 1999, where he presented World Business Report, a BBC World programme which also got broadcast on BBC News 24. Telling us of the latest goings-on in the business world, he presented two-way stylee with Richard Quest, whose gritty voice and chant of, "..and I'm Richard Quest in New York," will never be forgotten. O'Connell's style impressed me immediately. He had the right mixture of humour and seriousness. He was informal without being impolite. Before the commercial break for BBC World, he would say, "Do rejoin us again - if you can." Other presenters would demand that you watch the second part of the programme. Paddy didn't demand; I didn't have to rejoin him if I didn't want to. But I always did anyway, because he asked so nicely.
Somehow he was enticed away from the bright lights of BBC World business reporting to BBC Three, a channel which barely ever registers 100000 viewers. He fronted Celebdaq and then became a presenter of Liquid News, replacing the hilarious but inferior Colin Paterson. I've been watching Liquid News this week because it was the final week of live programming. Only Paddy O'Connell would say, "Join us tomorrow, because we're being axed soon." What a guy! From now on, though, I'll have to stay up until midnight to watch. I understand that Liquid News and Celebdaq have been particularly poor performers for BBC Three, but I always saw them as flagship programmes. Of course, Liquid News has never been as good since Christopher Price died. What a true hero Price was. Just when Liquid News was surely approaching a mainstream terrestrial slot other than the BBC One / News 24 late night repeats, Price went the wrong side of ... uh, the life / death line. And Liquid News has been on the descendancy since. A shame really, because it's still a hilariously funny programme.
Here's hoping Paddy O'Connell stays on our television screens beyond this dark time indeed.

AT LAST! I managed to wake up in time today for Broadcasting House! I did quite like it, although you know what it's like listening to radio in bed - you don't quite absorb it all. I'll try to be a regular listener from now on though.
I carried on the news theme by switching to the Julian Worricker programme on Five Live. Michael Howard was on explaining why Scottish MPs shouldn't vote on 'English-only' matters. I do like Worricker's programme. Like Broadcasting House, it's a fine mix of the serious and light-hearted. Today's Five Live Report was about awards ceremonies, which is a nice light change.
After a bit of a break I tuned into the C-SPAN programme on BBC Parliament. That is a weird one. It's reassuring to know that they can have serious news programmes over the pond aswell, but I don't understand a few things. What does 'C-SPAN' actually mean? And why don't their callers get any names!?
"Hello caller."
"Hello?"
"Caller?"
A caller from Scotland said Happy New Year - "It's never to late to say 'Happy New Year'." It's a good programme, a good way to find out about American politics.
BBC Parliament also had a fairly cool programme called Good Week, Bad Week. I bet you can't guess what it's all about... Well Stephen Pound was there trying to shrug off the Today debacle. Another laid-back programme. Good work!
And then it was News 24, which seems more analytical and relaxed on Sundays. Less fast-paced, you know? Simpson's World is an awful programme though. A good idea, but bloody awful. And that's my guide to Sundays. w00tylicious,

In other drv-related news, WATMM is back up, and I'm feeling a bit down. Again. Directionless, uh?

NP Mokeylips LFO

Warp's fantastic pro-active mp3 initiative, Bleep, has launched. A very pleasent surprise to see rarities included.

It's been an odd few days again. 'Odd' is nowadays becoming synonymous with 'depressing' for me, but never mind. Things might be on the up.. hopefully. Otherwise it's just regrettable.

Ah yes, my CDs came. Reviews soon probably, yess.

We went to Dalgety Bay today to have a wee walk along the coastal path. A lovely place, it was quite a feeling to be there. It was very bright and very cold - very Boards Of Canada if you ask me. But in the end it was too bright [the sun reflected off the water and caused havoc when trying to.. see] and too cold. So we came back. Anyway, it was nice to get out of the house for a change, cos I haven't been outside the house [except to go to school and stuff] for about two weeks.

That was incohesive really, but there will be more later I should think.

NP Heavy Petting Red Snapper

Today I had another piano lesson. I didn't practice enough AGAIN. Infact, I never practice until Wednesdays, and I have to on Wednesdays really, otherwise I'll be caught much more than I get caught anyway. Still, I got caught today. I've been 'working' on Coldplay's Amsterdam for about two months or something and apparently it's about Grade 2 standard, and my playing is still crap. My teacher asked me why I've not been practicing it as much and I said that there isn't really any incentive. He told me that the incentive should be the enjoyment that I get out of it, and that if I don't enjoy it then there isn't any point.

NP  [dauðalagið] Sigur Rós

Well our Modern Studies unit assessment hit us hard first thing [for me] on Monday morning. It left us all rather scratching our heads; nobody seemed to know how to answer a question about a 'pilot survey'. I can't find any mentions of it in our revision notes, and everybody's best guesses has led to questions 1a and 1b having very similar answers. Today's assessment was much better though. Nice.
Media Studies is pretty bad at the moment. Mrs Victory's off, so we're currently stuck in past-paper hell. Which is good in a way since I didn't have a clue what is actually in a Media paper. It's bad in the sense that I don't really do the past-paper anyway... And I was on my own today aswell, so it was basically an hour of sitting there and thinking and stuff... Our substitute teacher today was a person who has scared me somewhat ever since I apparently "almost killed" him because he was unfortunate enough to be standing at a door which I opened. The fact that the door is entirely opaque clearly had nothing to do with the situation. Anyway, I've been a little nervous around him ever since.

Chaps with eyes may have noticed that doctorvee.disko.co.uk is down. The blog is still up though, of course. It doesn't look too bad without the CSS nonsense.. The booky pages will seem unfathomable though.
I won't bother Mister Collie about it though. He's a good chap, and besides his own incredible Jimmy Hill site is also down.

My Warp CDs will be coming tomorrow at last! Hurrah!

Read what poor Max Munton has to say today... Sometimes I feel the same. Things just seem a little boring in certain respects at the moment.. We'll see.

NP Dubs That Don't Match Prefuse 73

Satisfying

Oh deary me Channel 4. They screwed up the scheduling of the WRC so much that the powers that be have resorted to awarding the contract to ITV! ITV are apparently going to dedicate a permanent slot for it [yeah right, we'll soon see how long that lasts]. Meanwhile Channel 4 are saying that "the irregularity of the sport's calendar means that in an increasingly competitive television environment we are unable to continue guaranteeing the slots for it." This is from the channel whose programmes seldom actually start on the hour, but more usually five minutes past the hour. Presumably, they're wanting more space to show people either trying not to fall asleep or failing not to fall asleep [ie. falling asleep]. Nice one Channel 4, you've managed to kill two of your only decent programmes within three weeks of each other! [The other, fellows, is RI:SE for Kate Lawler's legs and / or pants.]

The archive is now working! Woo woo! I'm going to be adding a few more bits to the website in a wee bit - by the time you read this they'll probably be there. It'll probably only be the front page and the contact section for the moment.

Whoa, it's been almost a week since I last updated the blog.. First week back at school = tired. And my glasses are extremely dirty, making it difficult to see much.

First of all, it appears that I'm not alone in using green more often! Green is definitely in, according to BBC Four's new world news programme, cunningly but piously called The World.

Kilroy has been axed at last! Hurrah! Well, actually it's been cancelled, but I don't really envisage the BBC recommissioning it. The curious thing is, though, that Robert Kilroy-Silk's offending article had already been published - last April - without any fuss at all. I didn't even hear of it until yesterday.

And I can't believe I haven't mentioned the new Williams yet! A somewhat radical design, eh what? They must really have found something spectacular to be prepared to use a design as leftfield as that. Although the BAR design guy says they've looked into it before and that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages, so it'll be interesting to see how things shape out. With McLaren also having an out-of-the-ordinary front-end, it will be interesting to see how things compare. Nice to see there being fewer Ferrari-clones anyway.

So, school. Nyess, I've got some unit assessments to nicely start things off this term. I had two Media Studies ones [although one of them is my own bloody fault], and a Social Science Research Method [aka 'Crap'] unit assessment for Modern Studies.

The website? It's going slowly. I've not done anything for it this week - partly because I'm tired from school, partly because I'm quite obsessed with Freeview. I'll probably just update the site page-by-page as and when I get it done, as opposed to just one big update. Even though it'll result in a multitude of dead links, it'll just be good to get some of this stuff out of the way.

Good day!

NP Theme Of Sudden Roundabout Autechre

The right-wing press' latest obsession - stealth taxes - has taken a bizarre and absurd twist in the past few days. Usually those on the right like to be seen as 'tough' on crime. And yet they've decided that Labour's policy of fining those who break the law is somehow deceitful and shifty. 'Stealth fines'? If they're so stealthy, how come we know all about them? The government is even advertising some of them! Solid Snake would surely disapprove?
The Sun is up in arms about 'chilling' fines for people who don't pay their taxes, drop litter, give their children holidays during term time, and drive too quickly. So what's the alternative? Shall we let these criminals get away with it? I don't know about you, but I happen to think fines are perfectly reasonable in those situations. And as for Liberty's suggestion that "Dishonest people won’t pay the fines because they won’t be caught. Honest people will get caught and end up paying" - well, that's a bit like saying we shouldn't imprison people because dishonest people won't get caught.
There is a case for giving appeals for people who are in hospital when they have to get their car tax disc renewed. That is a fine proposal, and one which ought to be enforced. But don't ruin it by turning it into a case against the government's 'stealth taxes' and 'stealth fines'. There's no such thing as a stealth tax - if there was, we wouldn't know about them, and the press wouldn't have anything to write a story about. Taxes and fines are there for a very good reason.

Conversation

Back to school on Monday. Eek.

We went into Edinburgh today, and I got a hell of a lot of stuffs! HMV is pretty good, it has to be said.

The Decline Of British Sea Power British Sea Power
Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada Godspeed You Black Emperor!
Vitalogy Pearl Jam
A Hundred Days Off Underworld

And a book: Shite's Unoriginal Miscellany A. Parody. From what I've read of it so far, it's very funny - highly recommended.

Better later.

I've just found out what the winner of the Today programme's listeners' law poll was. 'The Kill Bill'. I am astonished. This, "The proposal to authorise homeowners to use any means to defend their home from intruders," has the potential to make murder a more acceptable crime than trespassing. Never must it be allowed to happen. I should expect it to be thrown out in parliament.

Remember the Political Compass test I did earlier on last year? Well, I've decided I'm going to repeat it every year to see how my opinions change over time...

Here is my 2004 result

Compare with my result from earlier last year.

Surprisingly little change if you ask me. I thought I'd changed quite a lot in the past year, but there you go...

Hello! Like the new design? The whole site's gonna look like this some time soon. In the meantime, sorry about the dead links in the lime green navigation table - go here in the meantime.

So Happy New Year then! I've been a little bit merry, but I've been shovelling in the coffee and tea aswell. 2004 is gonna be a big year, what with university and so on.. Let's hope it all goes well.

I don't think I'll be doing much over the next couple of days. Shops won't be open for a couple of days, because Scots are lazy shites. Seeya later.

NP Alpha And Omega Boards Of Canada