Prodge's views

The best psychology lesson I've ever had

2011-07-04T18:56:00.005+01:00

Ever had someone trying to wind you up? There's way of dealing with it. Most of you already know how to correctly react. I only learnt in my early 20s. I share this story, as I still come across folk who fly off the handle whenever they're goaded.

Back in the era of grunge, indie and Britpop™ when I frequented a local nightclub for its alternative nights, I pretty much resembled Neil from The Young Ones. This wasn't an issue for the crowd I hung around with, who were pretty much mandated to wear Kurt Cobain tribute shirts and mosh/dance/rave about to the sounds of Rage Against The Machine/Kinks/Chemical Brothers.

You could paint your face fluorescent green and wander in there wearing a fishnet smock, just as long as you weren't a 'townie'. Townies, a tracksuit-clad fag-end-sucking bumfluff-moustache-sporting social group, were pretty much our social nemeses. I suppose these days, the terminology used for such folk would be "chavs", a term I'm not proud to cite here, as it tends to make people (wrongly) think I'm anti-working class. But, hey, we hated townies and townies hated us.

Goodness knows what label we actually were. We didn't quite have a label as such, and have never really craved such a thing. In any case, we were a diaspora of eclectic social circles. Some of us were fairly gothic/industrial, others were hardcore metallers. The BritPop crew - who would happily wave their forearms with their elbow seemingly attached their hips when dancing to Shed Seven or Longpigs - were fairly adept at doing their own thing, to the point where they formed their own club nights at other venues. (At its peak, they had separate themed nights that could cater for genres such as film/TV themes and retro-hammond-organ funk.)

Oh, and I must give an honourable mention to a contingent of villagers would always bop around to rap-metal, with dreadlocks proudly on display. Bless you, Irchy Boys.

With cheap beer and a playlist that ranged from Megadeth to Elastica, the Alternative Night on Wednesdays at the long-gone Network in Wellingborough town centre, attracted all sorts. I particularly remember on my first night there, a savage looking bullet-belted metaller with the phrase 'I EAT CHRISTIANS FOR BREAKFAST' scrawled in Tipp-Ex over a ripped black t-shirt.

In the eyes of the townies, we were "grebos", "grungers" or "moshers". All of us. Even the quirky suited-to-the-nines Mod chap who would would calmly trot along to the Small Faces.

Yes, some of us, in our Nirvana smiley face t-shirts, German Army jackets, striped tights and Doc Martens, did conform to the stereotype.

We viewed the townies as trouble-makers. This is actually a fairly irrational condemnation, as I've been friends with such people, and really have no justification for smearing them all like that, although we did use the term specifically for the ones who did go out of their way to cause a bit of aggravation.

So, with the pubs shutting at half eleven and low price beer on offer, Network would occasionally attract the type of people who certainly didn't want to come along for Ned's Atomic Dustbin or Kingmaker. (Can't say I'd blame them for the latter.)

I spent much of the 1990s walking round with long hair, and came into two types of grief. Trying to dry it on a winter's morning (I remember it froze one day when walking to work) and of course, townies. I was a "fucking hippy", "poof", "headbanger" and sometimes all three, despite the presence of a Prodigy t-shirt, and, on the odd occasion, a girl who fell for my charms.

Looking like that, you had to develop a thick skin, and also to beware of provocation. On a number of occasions, a dozen or so future-Jeremy-Kyle-Show-loyalty-card-holders would pop in, get beered up, and try and start fights with the clientele. In particular, Karl was a target of their jibes. He was a tall thin guy who would regularly be plastered in eyeliner of all colours, with an outrageous flamboyant hairstyle that leave your retinas working overtime.

One 'grebo-bating' incident sticks out in my mind for the way it was dealt with. Gary, a guy who had recently been hanging out with us, had fairly long blonde hair, and was sitting in a quiet corner of the club. To be fair, Gary wasn't exactly a textbook definition of a Kerrang reader. Other than his long locks, nothing distinguished him from being particularly "alternative". In fact, he had confided in me that he loved R&B. Most of the time he was after a rather sexy black-bobbed girl who would writhe around to Nine Inch Nails and Sheep On Drugs, decked out in the kind of plastic skirts you'd see in sex shops. He feigned an interest in industrial music whenever he was chatting to her, and didn't really succeed.

Back to the story and three knuckle-dragging reprobates, all decked out in JJB Sports' finest, were trying to goad him. I remember Gary just calmly rolling up a cigarette while these yobs mocked his hair, loudly vocalising their false assumptions on his sexuality.

Gary just looked up slowly and... blew them a kiss, smiling as he did so.

All hell broke loose, with the goader-in-chief picking up an ashtray hurling it at Gary, which was the cue for nightclub security to rugby tackle them to the ground and escort them out of the premises, as we all pointed and laughed.

I'm no stranger to being insulted, and with the rise of social media, there's all kind of opportunities to do such things to me. What Gary did there, was a valuble lesson to me, as I felt, that had I been in his position, I'd have probably ended up having a war of words, or more likely, cowering away in the corner hoping they'd go away.

There's plenty of examples in my past where I've reacted badly to someone provoking me. I cringe at these memories.

Looking back on what Gary did was awesome. Not getting angry at the situation - which is what the instigators wanted. Bonus points for handing out a reaction they weren't expecting, and the star prize for getting them dropped in the shit.

There will always be comments designed to make me spew out anger, and that's exactly what the author intends. Question the motives of anyone aiming something unpleasant at you, otherwise you'll end up swallowing their bait. They'll be chomping on the popcorn as you dance to their tune.

So, with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and whatever flavour-of-the-month website comes next, look out for the Annoyance Seed planted in front of you. I know this is screamingly obviously to the bulk of my friends, but you'd be surprised at the sheer gullibility of people out there who let themselves get wound up by digital goading.

My MP3 complaint to Tesco Entertainment

2010-12-15T22:43:00.001Z

Dear Technology People Still Stuck In The 1990s,

I've shopped at tescoentertainment.com to get an MP3 for the first time. It's an experience I'd compare to touching an electric fence - you're curious but you'd never try it again.

What I have seen tonight has been astonishingly shocking. I've bought MP3s from many websites, and always found the process quite easy. This evening my jaw dropped lower than the dignity of an ITV2 reality television star, because your download process has to be the most backward and needlessly complex system I've seen. I've worked in computing for 20 years, I've issued guidelines on usability and have designed ecommerce systems from the groun up, and frankly, whoever designed your diabolical user-torturing system shouldn't be trusted with an abacus.

I understand the need to record an email address, password, credit card details and billing address. I don't understand why you enforce us to install a separate program to download the MP3s. One that insists on us using Windows, so it's a good job I wasn't using my iMac or a Linux partition at the time. It also wants Microsoft's laughably-bad Silverlight platform on our PCs, along with .NET framework 3.5. What's wrong with simply delivering the MP3 through my web browser? That's what it is made for, and other MP3 vendors do exactly that.

The amount of mouse-clicks I've had to do to get my download would instigate RSI in a caffeine-swilling woodpecker. The time taken to obtain this 8.57 MB file - despite being on a ~5Mbps broadband connection - is needlessly long thanks to your ridiculous end-user software demands. Quite frankly, I reckon I'd have done a direct download of the file off a 33.6kps dial-up modem in half the time.

Is there any need for a company in the 21st Century to act with such disrespect for tech-savvy customers? I battled my way through this because I'm fairly proficient with computers, but I fear the average customer would simply give up. You're not exactly going to keep Steve Jobs awake at night with your clumsy cumbersome MP3 store.

I have seen another Internet service doggedly insist on its users having separate programs and a razor-thin choice of operating systems. It was AOL, and that was in 1996. These days they exist as a punchline to a joke.

Sort yourselves out.

Peter Thomas.

50 Things More Gothic And Respectable Than Twilight

2010-05-18T21:55:00.003+01:00

Rentaghost
A child shining a torch upwards onto their face
Derek Acorah
The Trap Door
Long-forgotten ITV Saturday morning show Ghost Train
An actual ghost train
A lolly stick with "What do ghosts eat for dinner? Spookhetti!" printed on it.
A werewolf glove from a joke shop
The Groovy Ghoulies
Shakespear's Sister
A pair of novelty plastic Halloween fangs from ASDA, 9p
The Amityville Horror and the seven diabolical sequels that followed
The Demon Headmaster
Babylon Zoo
Count Duckula
Secretly keeping your hand hidden behind a door or desk and then making it 'strangle' you as if it's someone else's hand
The Monster Mash
Covering yourself in toilet roll as a cheap mummy costume for Halloween
A rubber bat on a piece of elastic
The Sarah-Jane Adventures
In comic strips, where the main character has an angel and an devil version of himself that give good/evil advice
Plan 9 From Outer Space
That ancient trick where you make your thumb appear detached from your hand
The skeleton baddies in arcade game Golden Axe
Ghostbusters 2
In The Night Garden
The joke "Why didn't the skeleton attend the ball? Because he had nobody to go with"
Evil Michael Knight
Cyndi Lauper
The flaming skulls in Sega arcade game Wonder Boy
Keith Harris & Orville's Messy Monsters game
Any October 31st editions of Whizzer and Chips
Alan Partridge's 'abstract zombie'
The Munsters
Meat Loaf
Caspar the Friendly Ghost
That one from Bananarama dressed as a devil in their video for Venus
The drama segment 'Dark Towers' from BBC Schools programme Look & Read
Dr and the Medics
Shiver and Shake comic
Carry On Screaming
Spray-on cobwebs
Any bored 6 year old girl dressed as a witch for a carnival
TNA wrestler Daffney
Grotbags the witch from Emu's World
Red-and-black striped tights
A badly-rendered drawing of an Iron Maiden album cover on a school exercise book, made by that greasy-haired kid who smells of marzipan
Those novelty eyes-on-springs glasses
Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde
Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein

Wellingborough MP Peter Bone can't handle web critics

2010-04-13T23:42:00.005+01:00

Enjoying your internet connection? Like browsing the web? You've been let down.

"You can be punished for the actions of a friend or even a neighbour who has used your Internet connection." - OpenRightsGroup on the Digital Economy Bill.

"Essentially translating as “We can, via the secretary of state for business, take down any website we don’t like simply by citing a connection to some form of copyright infringement” - Jamie Thompson on the Digital Economy Bill.

The UK is ready to get China-style censorship of the internet, with the forthcoming Digital Economy Act that was voted in against the tens of thousands of wishes expressed by ordinary computer users. A despicable collection of MPs voted in favour of online censorship.

Politicians are a breed of people who have a lowly reputation, wedged somewhere between a orphanage arsonist and a commercial radio DJ. With the shameless expenses scandal, and a national economy so broken not even Cash Converters would accept it, there appears to be no hope for MPs trying to prove they share the same DNA as us.

It's no wonder that over half the population would rather vote on Big Brother or whatever Simon-Cowell-fronted sneer-fest is running at the moment. If you're in the company of friends and mention that you take an interest in politics, you may as well have sprayed concentrated halitosis in their faces.

There's simply no interest in Parliament these days, and I think the MPs rather like that. With the heavily articulate wordings of proposed laws, the endless exchange of statistics and monotone speeches, it's no surprise Joe Sixpack doesn't tune in.

Besides, when have you had a politician actually LISTEN to you? They don't do that, do they?

Recently, the Digital Economy Bill was proposed by the Labour government to impose censorship on UK internet services, all in the name of "reducing piracy". Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long to realise that the bill had been lobbied for by the BPI - the UK's record industry. In fact, large portions of this censorship law had been written by the BPI.

We know the record industry is angered at the millions of MP3s available illegally on the internet, and have pushed an anti-piracy agenda so heavily that they ignore the bigger picture - why piracy occurs in the first place.

Digital files are easy to copy and distribute, they cost almost next-to-nothing, they don't take up physical space and are theoretically infinite in supply. Compared to the physical product (such as a CD or vinyl record), there's a lot of convenience.

Yet the record industries still persist in selling their downloads at equivalent prices to the CD. They get a bigger margin, refusing to pass on any of the cost savings to the consumer.

Let's not forget the record industry tried to ban MP3 players back in 1999, so I don't have sympathy for the wailing dinosaurs. Imagine if they got their way! We know they spent most of the noughties coming up with rival formats, all of them were cumbersome and highly restrictive. No wonder they failed!

However, one small victory for the record industry is that Peter Mandelson recently holidayed with record boss David Geffen. And just by pure "coincidence", Mandelson later decided to put forward a law forcing all UK ISPs to regulate what you look at online, in the interests of copyright.

Those of you who've read this blog will know how I exposed Lily Allen for her copyright-infringement, along with Lily's response to me falling flat on its face.

Well, last week I discovered that Peter Mandelson has followed in Lily's footsteps as a copyright hypocrite. Again, I reported the story to techdirt.com, who are always keen to showcase the "do as I say, not as I do" arrogance of politicians and musicians who insist copyright should be stronger, despite masses of economic studies showing that lighter copyright laws benefit both publishers, creators and consumers alike.

My local MP is Peter Bone from the Conservative Party. In the run up to the Digital Economy Bill being debated (and I use that term loosely), various online compaigns were set up encouraging us to contact our local MP.

Thanks to the wonderful TheyWorkForYou.com website, it's easy to write a letter to Peter Bone. As my friends know, I'm not exactly a fan of the Conservatives, but I did vote Tory in protest at Labour's support of the ongoing illegal and unethical wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There you have it, I'm admitting to having voted Tory. (Well, in the ward I lived in at the time, it was just Labour vs Conservative, no other options.)

I confess to having not known much about Peter before. I do recall my friend Kat Fiction a few years back, stating her shock at how the Tories prepared an election leaflet for Mr Bone, using the fact he resembled then-England-manager Sven Goran-Eriksson as a positive campaign point.

Oh hang on, there is something quite disturbing about Peter Bone. He opposed the minimum wage, and continues to oppose it. Such was his conviction that Peter Bone paid just 87p-an-hour to one of his workers back in 1995. "The minimum wage would condemn hundreds of thousands to the dole queue", he was quoted as saying.

However, when it comes to Peter Bone employing his wife, he thinks she deserves £40,000 a year.

So, should I have anything to do with this hypocritical charlatan? Something else stirred the memory banks. Drinking buddy Richard Lockwood wrote to to ask why the MP supported the laughable bunkum known as 'homeopathy', which would clearly be a waste of NHS money. The reply he got back from Peter Bone was, er, minimal to say the least.

Still, I felt so strongly about the Digital Economy Bill (and still do), that I decided to write to Peter Bone and see where it would take me. It wouldn't matter if I didn't like the man, what would matter is him speaking against it. After all, a lot of businesses in Wellingborough do depend on an open web to do commerce. I'm affected by any such changes, being a local web-designer, web-programmer and SEO consultant.

A look at Peter Bone's voting record shows some signs of a soul. He wanted an investigation into the Iraq war, voted against the government's draconian 'anti-terror' laws and is heavily against ID cards. Pretty commendable, I have to say.

However, with his stance against gay equal rights, he shows himself up as an embarrassing social dinosaur, no better than the US politicians who denied civil rights for black people. The Conservatives try to position themselves as a modern party, but the homophobia isn't far away.

Still, I announced my intention to write to Peter Bone, urging him to vote against the Digital Economy Bill, and a few of my friends followed my lead. I even got a reply:

One of my key roles as your representative in Parliament is to listen to my constituents and campaign on your behalf - in fact, this is the whole philosophy behind my "Listening to Wellingborough and Rushden" campaign.

You have raised an important issue and I have accordingly forwarded it onto the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport so that the government can fully take your opinions into account. I have also requested a response from the Department and I will, of course, forward on to you any that I may receive.

Sounding very nice indeed. Unfortunately, Peter Bone could not be bothered to turn up to the second reading of the bill. Actually, to be fair, 95% of MPs - our so-called 'public servants' - also could not be bothered to attend this essentially important debate.

And thus, we entered the next step as the technically-illiterate MPs present outnumbered those who actually understood the importance of a free internet for the UK's economy.

Yeah, cheers Peter Bone. Well done for your apathy. Well done for ignoring such an important issue. Obviously sitting in a £15k-a-year rented flat paid for by us taxpayers was a much better option?

I wrote back, airing my disappointments on his lack of action, and my intentions to blog about his failure to represent his constituents' views. His response:

Thank you for your e-mail. You will know that I have one of the best voting
records of any Conservative Member of Parliament and my attendance in the
House of Commons is second to none. You will also know that I fully support
the Conservative Party on the Digital Economy Bill. I am sure you will also
appreciate that sometimes Members of Parliament have to be in their
constituency and not in the Palace of Westminster. Unfortunately, Members
of Parliament are not able to be in two places at once.

With regards to your attack on me for being anti-gay-rights, you are
entitled to your opinion, but it is not correct. You may be interested to
hear that I was recently voted by Liberal Democratic Voice to be one of the
62 most Liberal non-Lib Dem MPs.

The "you are entitled to your opinion" statement is such a poor cop-out. A terrible cliche that is a verbal white flag. It signifies the fear of his old-fashioned views being held up to rationality.

In a similar fashion, he states that he supports the Bill (Conservatives back it) yet will not even dare discuss why he supports it.

I'd like to put it to this pauper-wage-loving technically-illiterate gay-despising taxpayer-money-wasting waste-of-space that he dare not enter into any debate, because he knows he will lose. He's backing whatever the Conservative Party say, because that's his easy career - claiming huge expenses from hard working people, denying them rights, imposing censorship and wishing he could cut their wages to a fraction of what they are.

Naturally, I won't be voting for this knowledge-lacking tosswit, and since his views have been spread via Facebook, other locals agree...

"I'm not voting for that useless twat, who didn't have the honesty to admit, on his first reply that he had no intention of voting against the bill."

"it is HIS JOB to be entitled to MY opinion. So the oily, lazy waste of space can drop dead."

"I've emailed him 6 times. Had 3 responses, two of which were pretty much stock letters and the third was a little more detailed, but boiled down to "I'll be talking to the secretary of state about it". My question was explicitly about his behaviour, nothing to do with the government or anyone else.

Now, my understanding is that an MP is supposed to represent their constituents. Ignoring them is not representation.... See more

I want him gone, unless he learns to
1) Read
2) Turn up on debates that matter instead of the pointless ones that just bump up his numbers"

"make all the candidates in a constituency work as a waiter in a 'Frankie n Bennys' for a month....whoever gets the most tips in that time obviously has the right work ethic and becomes the MP.....shimples!!"

"if they could be in two places at once they'd be claiming expenses for both"

To conclude, I've just realised why Peter Bone is in favour of a law that censors the web.

If you are a UK music fan, follow these instructions

2010-03-02T20:15:00.007Z

Anybody who has ever gritted their teeth at the third play of a tedious James Blunt song during their working day will know how feeble commercial radio is for those who value music with passion, soul and sincerity.

If you're a fan of heavy rock, drum 'n' bass, punk, indie, reggae, ska, hard dance, electronica, funky house, Northern soul, blues, metal, etc, you will be all too familiar with the agony of Groundhog FM - the nightmare that is some witless local DJ churning out the same old tracks you heard yesterday, in between double-glazing adverts and his own 'in the newspapers today...' spiel.

The fact these charismaphobes are allowed near a microphone and feel no shame in inflicting the likes of Phil Collins, Dido and Bon Jovi on an entire county surely must be in breach of the Geneva Convention.

I'm no music snob, I do actually like plenty of mainstream music, quite a lot of it new. I admire the production behind Girls Aloud, I appreciate the simplistic exuberance of the Black Eyed Peas, and the punchy sound of Lily Allen.

However, there are times when the Clash's 'I Fought The Law' needs to be pelted out full blast. Times when the severely underrated M.I.A. should be on the airwaves, times when some full-on skanking from Toots And The Maytals can brighten an evening, and times when a long-forgotten Elastica track can stick a smile on your face.

To satisfy such desires, I've always recommended BBC 6 Music, a station that plays tracks that other broadcasters don't touch. From Craig Charles' Funk Show to the heart-warming surreal musings of Adam and Joe, with the wit and whimsy of Andrew Collins, this station is a pure gem, a rare showcase for esoteric tuneage.

You may not have heard of it (until recently) as it's stuck in the wastelands of DAB. According to the BBC's own surveys, the station has a mere 20% awareness among adults. I was surprised it was as high as that, as the Beeb have never done a good job of promoting 6music.

In the news today of course, BBC director general Mark Thompson has announced his intention to axe BBC 6 Music along with BBC Asian Network. The timing of which has to be brought into question, as a Conservative government is likely to be established soon. It seems like a sacrificial lamb offering.

Also, the BBC are continually blasted by the right-wing press for their dominance in mainstream media. The criticism is a curious parodox which is rarely questioned. One line is "you're doing too well, you're harming the business of your commercial rivals", and the other line is "incredibly low ratings, it should be axed". The idiots who spew out this bile, from the likes of bigot Richard Littlejohn and the ironically-surnamed Jon Gaunt, do so without acknowledging their own spectacular broadcasting failures.

Naturally, music lovers are starting petitions, Facebook groups, and even a flashmob to prevent the closure of 6music.

Whilst these are all very well and good, nothing can be going to the Powers That Be. In this case, the BBC Trust. The news may scream "BBC axes radio stations", but actually it's only a proposal there is time to save it.

Please e-mail the BBC Trust at srconsultation@bbc.co.uk to air your support of BBC 6music. Without significant recognition of this quality station, we could lose it at the end of 2011. BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons has admitted if "there's massive public concern that we need to take account of then we will go back to the director general to rethink the strategy before it's approved".

If an e-mail is inconvenient for you to write, you can always submit your views in the online consultation from the BBC Trust, all listeners and viewers invited to take part before 25th May, that also goes for the e-mails.

With that, I reproduce below the e-mail I sent.
Edit: As my friend Nic says in the comments to this blog entry, don't copy-and-paste this, just let it inspire you. Organisations don't look fondly on lots of people sending the same thing in!:

Dear BBC Trust,

I'm stunned at the proposals to close down digital radio stations 6music and Asian Network. The Director General believes 6music is competing too closely with commercial offerings and is too expensive to run, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Within your established national portfolio of stations, 6music is easily the most unique. The intelligence, passion and eclectic choices in music - past and current - makes 6music an astonishing and well loved arena for people whose tastes are simply not served by any competing broadcaster.

The same cannot be said for many of your other digital services. BBC Three is currently a poor performer that's in the shadow of E4 and ITV2. Shows such as 'Joe Swash: I Believe In Ghosts' and 'My Man Boobs And Me' are cheap tawdry tabloid fare which has little appeal to its target audience.

I've also never understood why the BBC dedicate two channels for children's television. I'm not questioning the quality of CBBC or CBeebies, which are a breath of fresh air in comparison to commercial rivals' offerings (simply toy adverts masquerading as cartoons), yet I feel you could preserve costs by placing the pre-school output (CBeebies) during times when the usual CBBC audience are supposed to be attending school. The extra bandwidth saved could be used for a second HD service.

Of course, my issue is with the plans to decimate your digital radio services under the questionable notion that there's a feeling of overreaching into areas that are normally the preserve of commercial radio.

The irony is that your analogue-based stations have long been on commercial radio's doorsteps.

Global's Heart are moving in to mirror Radio 2, and judging by significant audience increases, it's up to the Beeb to make the next move. Radio 3 of course has a distinct commercial competitor in Classic FM, its popularity eclipsing your offering. Radio 5 thankfully outdoes the rather downmarket talkSPORT, but both chase the same audience.

BBC 6music costs just £9 million a year to run. Out of the TV License fee income of £4.6 billion, I would say that represents extremely good value for money. I only wish I could say the same for BBC Three, costing £115 million a year, with very few 'hits' to date.

The nearest commercial station to 6music? I feel embarrassed at even mentioning Xfm or Absolute Radio, two stations that play token 'alternative and indie' songs in daytime only if they've become big chart breakthroughs. They're usually overplayed and when it's a new band, it's just their one song they'll play.

Xfm's commitments to the listener are laughable. DJs have been made redundant in favour of an automated playlist that is narrow, safe and repetitive. It's no surprise that such DJs - Lauren Laverne, Shaun Keaveney, Guy Garvey, Adam and Joe, Stephen Merchant, etc - have found homes at 6music and have offered better shows as a result.

Absolute Radio's diet of soft rock and anthemic pop, with a prohibition on dance and hip-hop, is an anathema to the tastes of 6music listeners. There is simply no room for esoteric choices in obscure music when commercial interests have to be served.

Mark Thompson also states "low audience awareness" for 6music, yet this is down to the lack of promotion the station gets. BBC 1Xtra is continuously plugged on Radio 1 throughout the day, yet 6music (which has massive crossover appeal with Radio 1 listeners) is never mentioned. I'm not surprised at low figures.

If the cuts are allowed to go ahead, it would not just make a mockery of the BBC's public service commitments, it also devalues DAB as a platform, something which the BBC have been pioneers in introducing to the UK.

Need I remind you that commercial ventures with DAB have been predictable failures? On the television side of things, I'm sure we're familiar on how Granada and Carlton spectacularly let down all those who bought ON Digital/ITV Digital boxes, and it to the BBC's credit that it founded Freeview, which is now a highly acclaimed platform, serving as the most popular method of digital television for UK viewers.

With so much simulcasting of existing analogue stations, DAB is not a highly attractive offering, yet the BBC have done well to provide 1Xtra, 5Live, 6Music, Radio 7 and Asian Network. In wide swathes of provincial Britain, these are the only stations setting the platform apart from standard FM/AM radio. You have made DAB viable for me, in spite of commercial broadcasters fleeing the platform.

For the BBC's continued survival, it is important to support low-cost services which have a passionate audience. It's unquestionable value for the license payer and is true commitment to underserved audiences. I could not think of anything more 'BBC-esque' than what 6music does.

More people listen to 6music than buy the Times newspaper. Even with the station treated like a red-headed stepchild by the Corporation, its listener figures are actually commendable.

The BBC wisely paid tribute when John Peel died, a man whose ethos is represented by 6music. Why undo all that work by closing down a station due to questionable political pressure from vendetta-based campaigns run by press barons who wish the BBC quashed so they can monopolise the market for news?

I know this is going to be one of many thousands of emails sent to you on the subject of 6music, which simply reinforces why the station should be kept and hopefully, promoted!

Yours faithfully

Peter Thomas.

The avoidable downfall of a town centre pub

2010-02-06T20:24:00.000Z

Running a pub must be a right laugh, eh? You're the life and soul of the party, you're at the heart of the action, you're the hub of everyone's social life.

Well, no. Having known several people who have managed (and continue to manage) pubs, it's actually a hard job. You start several hours before the pub is even open, scrubbing away at the detretrius of the previous night, and then you're onto way past midnight. Granted, it looks like fun, but being a bar manager is not for me. Especially when you consider over 50 pubs a week are closing down in the UK. Added to that, the life behind the bar contains risks like fights breaking out, mardy customers and increased supermarket competition. I'm grateful for sitting at a desk 40 hours a week, and I take my hat off to long-suffering bar staff.

Which makes it a bit tricky to tackle the story of how a Wellingborough town centre pub threw away every opportunity that appears like commercial suicide. I really do not want to appear like I'm mocking their failure, yet I feel compelled to detail the catastrosphic details of this pub's brief biography. The irony is that I never entered the place during its brief spell of activity, yet what I write here can be confirmed by friends, customers, ex-workers, Facebook screen-grabs, video and photographic evidence.

I doubt I could run a pub for anything more than a week, but when you hear how badly Woodies Retro Bar performed, I reckon I'd have converted it into a mecca of decadance. Let this posting serve as a warning to others on how NOT to run a pub.

Woodies opened on the 4th December 2009, on Wellingborough's Silver Street, part of the main pub crawl circuit. The venue's previous role was as a branch of the Litten Tree pub chain from the now bankrupt Laurel Pub Company. Imagine an overpriced Wetherspoons, and you get the picture. With the huge space in the venue (originally built as a TSB bank), the place served as a quasi-nightclub in the early Noughties, and was tremendously successful, taking many customers away from Wellingborough's only major nightclub, Bar Life.

Eventually, the rot set in. Violence can be a regular occurence of any provincial night-club, and the Litten Tree's attempts to stop the scraps were beyond farcical, with a few occasions where security staff got involved in the rucks. With the place changing door staff on an almost monthly basis due to the violent problems, and regular fights on the dancefloor, the pub went far beyond what most drinkers see as acceptable. Airport-style security was installed at the door, with each punter being searched by a metal detecting wand, having to empty out their wallets before entry. A police car and ambulance parked outside would be an ensured sight most weekends, so much so that any blue-light vehicle blaring a siren would be referred to as a 'Litten Tree taxi'. With the parent company collapsing, it saw to the end of the dismal pub, having earnt its 'Litter Tray' nickname.

Having sat dank and dark, daubed with whitewash and an optimistic estate agent's sign for around two years, it was optimism that greeted the news on the re-opening, as Woodies Retro Bar.

Landlady Karlee Edmunds told the local paper: "...we are confident that a retro concept is just what Wellingborough town centre needs. ...we will immediately start to fit out the premises with the theme being a '70s discotheque. We are planning a very kitsch interior with mannequins, including Austin Powers".

So far, so tacky. But you can't blame her, as there have been bar chains built on retro concepts, such as 'Flares' for the 1970s and 'Reflex' for the 1980s. (Actually, when the time is right, I'll trademark 'Common People' and 'Rehab' for the 1990s and Noughties respectively.)

What became a worry was that Karlee had taken over an existing Wellingborough pub and caused it demise three times over. A few years ago, Around Town in Cambridge Street was given to Karlee and her friend Debbie to run. It wasn't long before the place began resemble the Marie Celeste, and so they opted for a rebrand...

Urban Knights was the result, sounding more like an album title from a short-lived r'n'b boy band. As you can see from the tacky lettering, it brought forth all the charm of a diarrhea-filled skip. Stripper nights were part of the 'delights' on offer.

It didn't survive long in this incarnation, quickly morphing into Charlie Dee's. Sadly I have no pic to show you, but the glossy sign was in a nice 1930s New York art-deco font, and admittedly added a touch of class over what previously stood there. The schedule made mention of live rock bands and addition of an afternoon grill showed promise. Alas, these were axed within a matter of weeks, and the place soon fell back into the same routine, with the stripper nights returning. Pubs with hot food offerings tend to do well on a busy circuit or a main road, none of which Charlie Dee's played host to.

Unsurprisingly, Charlie Dee's closed its doors in 2009, with Karlee and Debbie quitting the venue. (It's since re-opened under new management as Bailey's.)

This brings us back to Woodie's Retro Bar, described by the Northants Evening Telegraph "a bar for the over-25s, and it has already employed 12 members of staff" back in October 2009.

An over-25s bar in Wellingborough? Very ambitious, and quite daring. It obviously cuts out a significant amount of clientele, yet could be attractive to a wide audience who would prefer familiar music and less of the testosterone-fuelled argy-bargy seen in a typical club. But by November, the management had already decided to scale back this parameter by taking the age limit to just 21...

Ironically, some of the bar staff were aged under 21. Yet deputy manager Matt Armstrong (himself aged 20) stated on Facebook that it would still retain the right kind of crowd. Well, he did so with far less tact than that...

I witnessed the opening night. As I've stated earlier, I've never entered Woodies, but while out on a pub crawl we walked past the place, playing thumping house music (not exactly 1970s) while two teenaged girls were standing outside having a cigarette break. To give it its due, it was fairly crowded.

However, I was later told by those who went, that the bar only had one till with no change available. It was a case of "exact fare only", as they say on the buses. To put the icing on the cake, a fight broke out, instigated by one of the security staff, which cleared the dance floor. This was intepreted as a minor incident on the bar's official Facebook wall...

Woodies dealt with their critics using Facebook in a belligerent manner...

...and bare-faced optimism...

Yet it wouldn't quash the criticism...

Woodies continued with their mocking tone, not realising it was building up massive hubris...

So, sneering at their kebab shop neighbours for being the Wellingborough branch of Fight Club, eh? Bear that in mind. Meanwhile, a change of age limit policy...

So much for keeping the "riff raff out". And then, we learn that despite their previous slating of the kebab shop, it turns out they are "friends", thanks to them supplying bottles of coke...

Barmen Shane Geraghty and Matt Armstrong continued to insult the customer elsewhere on Facebook, with talk of violence and a smattering of homophobia...

So, when you have your deputy manager publicly stating "guys like that need a fuckin kick in the face", do you continue to employ him? Woodies certainly did.

Come to think of it, there's also public evidence of Matt Armstrong supporting a racist organisation...

As you can see, BNP supporter Matt Armstrong continued to be employed by Woodies right up to the end. Still, it's not like this guy was in a hive of activity, as the decline of Woodies became apparent...

By this time, it was common to see Woodies play host to roughly 2-3 people every Saturday in the daytime. The pub itself could fit in 200, yet it was virtually empty, having failed to capitalise on its opening week.

What could be putting people off?..

Still, at least Matt Armstrong could rely on his heavyweight intellect, a feat proclaimed by, er, himself...

Woodies continued with its consistent policy of being inconsistent...

To play house, garage and dubstep in a so-called 'retro' bar is like serving up rare steaks in a vegan restaurant. A clearly dumb move. Even when situated within a pub themed around dance/r'n'b music (Urban Knights), this plan didn't work.

What's even dumber is charging £3 for admission when all other pubs are free to enter. Let's not forget this takes place on 2nd January, a time when the vast majority of punters have spent the last of their disposable income on New Year's Eve. As you can tell by the comments, the night was a flop.

So what new ideas did Karlee Edmunds have to turn around this ailing joint?

Yes, it's back to the strippers. Observe how there's two separate nights, one for lads to ogle a couple of classy female strippers, and one for ladies to salivate over two hunks. Although for £2.50 a throw, I guess I'm being generous with the terms of "classy" and "hunk". Still, Woodies believes in equal opportunities.

In spite of previous failures with stripper events, staff were hyped up beyond the realms of all rational optimism...

As you can see, barman Shane is reasonably sceptical of the event's expected success. Matt is ambiguous yet ludicrously optimistic. However, with the pub continuing to be about as popular as a bacon sandwich in a mosque, management decided to lay someone off. I bet you can guess who that would be...

Classy and professional, huh? Shane took it in his stride, and brought an alleged under-age drinking incident to the public's attention...

Naturally, the "extreemly (sic) intelligent" Matt Armstrong has something to say about this allegation...
So, one worker feuding with an ex-worker, threatening to kick his head in. Not the first time Matt has spewed out his violent tendencies. Remember all this is going on in the comments area of a message posted by the Woodies Retro Bar Facebook account.

A further comment from Shane shines the light on what Karlee and Debbie promised their 12 bar staff when Woodies opened...

And it continues with Matt, who actually calls for a fight at Woodies...
In case the subtlety has been lost, Matt states exactly how he is going to beat up his former colleague...
Thankfully Shane gets the 'conversation' back on track, and with him no longer on the Woodies payroll, he's able to post some home-truths about how badly the pub is doing...

Back to the proposed stripper events, and the Woodies Facebook account continued pasting the two stripper adverts continuously, sometimes three times in one day, just in case you weren't aware. They even reduced the tickets to £1 each during the last week of January. The stripper events got a total of 43 mentions, yet didn't exactly go down well with their Facebook friends...

Hmm, jealous of someone stripping in Woodies at Poundland prices?

By late January, I had heard on the grapevine that their barrels were starting to run out. It wasn't long before they resembled a 1980s Soviet Russian supermarket...

There is an unconfirmed rumour of someone going in there, asking for two pints of Stella. The barman apparently stated how they were unable to offer it on draught. The customer said to use the bottles in the fridge.

According to the rumour, the barman pours several bottles into the two pint glasses, and says "that'll be £12 please", basing it on the cost of the bottles. Twelve quid!? Common sense would dictate that you'd charge the customer the same price as a draught pint. Should there be any wonder why this pub failed?

This past Thursday, I was informed of the pub's closure...

A quick real-life glimpse on the door to confirm...

Yes, that familiar message, "closed for refurb". Seen frequently on businesses that end up being closed permanently, such as the Old Swan nearby, which died after hedging its bets on ladies' nights.

Let's not forget that the Woodies venue was actually done up back in October and November in time for its opening, so why the sudden need for a refurb? There's already cynics out there on the Woodies Facebook wall...

So, just a "refurb", right? That's the official line, and the pub wouldn't contradict itself? Well, take a look at this explanation on their Facebook profile...

It doesn't seem likely that Woodies will ever resurface. I could be wrong, and that's why there's a comments box at the bottom of this post.

Bear in mind that the location for Woodies is on a main stretch of the town centre circuit. At night, there's a buzz of people all heading down towards the Horseshoe Inn and/or Bar Life. Woodies is situated in a position where the Star Bar and Wetherspoon's Red Well act as 'feeder' pubs, yet once news of the fights and dismal atmosphere spready quickly, people actively avoided Woodies.

One Wellingborough Pubwatch report I've heard was that the venue had a total of 19 customers on one weekend night. Ten people were in there, as they left, nine people headed in. That was their entire custom that night. This was a typical audience for the venue.

Having no seating didn't help. Being painted in the colour scheme of a Wacky Warehouse didn't help. The constant spamming on Facebook of their doomed-to-fail stripper nights didn't help. In short, I'm not sure how you could deliberately run a worse pub than this. I have considered that it might actually be a taxloss.

For now, I think I'll leave the last words to the BNP-supporting violence-threatening deputy manager Matt Armstrong, a man whose intelligence is eclipsed many times over by his optimism...

The strange, lonely and troubling death of Jan Moir's career

2009-10-17T11:18:00.000+01:00

The news of the death of Jan Moir's integrity was hardly shocking. The ridicule of yet another Daily Mail article in recent days just adds to the pointlessness of the bigotd newspaper.

Through the recent travails and sad of the Daily Mail's deeply ficticious cancer vaccine reports, readers know to expect the least of this despicable extreme right-wing rag - particularly if the so-called journalists are incapable of offering an appropriate apololgy.

There are hundreds of sick-minded Daily Mail contributors, from both past and present.

Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phllips, Peter Hitchens, Julie Burchill, Norman Tebbit, we all know who they are. And we are not being ghoulish to anticipate, or to be mentally braced for, their bad end: a long night, a mysterious stranger, we can herald a sudden death.

In the morning, Jan Moir's apology has already turned cold, as her feigned sympathies reach out to touch an icy celebrity shoulder. It is not exactly a new storyline, is it?

In fact, it is rather depressingly familiar. But somehow we should always expect it of the Daily Mail. No sincere apologies. Not even from Paul Dacre.

In the witch-hunting environs of Associated Newspapers, Jan Moir is one of many hypocritical writers. Her raison d'etre at the Mail stable is to be the token Glenda Slagg...

"What is this I see before me? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it mad old Madge auditioning for a role in Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb - The Viagra Years? Whatever it is, I do wish it would disappear. Now.

Just like the birds that flew into the US Airways plane over New York last week, Madonna is beginning to smell distinctly of cooked goose.

Hardly a week goes by without some tragic new photographs of the half-naked 50-year-old being unleashed upon the long-suffering public."

- Jan Moir, 22nd Jan 2009, Daily Mail.

"Isn't she [Madonna] looking marvellous? Give or take a bulging vein or two.
...
And the older she gets, the more I admire mad Madge, despite the ever-present Kabbalah weirdness and general preposterousness.

At an age when many women are happy to take a nap with their cats or plant hollyhocks of an evening, she is out there shaking her bot in big girl pants and not giving a damn.

She runs her business and lives her life exactly as she pleases. She is properly awesome."

- Jan Moir, 21st Aug 2009, Daily Mail.

Moir came out as a bigot in 2009 after discovering that thousands of internet users planned to submit complaints to the PCC on her sickening homophobic article in the Daily Mail newspaper.

Although she was effectively smoked out of the closet, she has been hailed by a tiny handful of Mail readers as a champion of gay-bashing.

At this time, Moir is worried that the revelations might end her career as a columnist, and she received an overwhelmingly hostile response from thousands of people worldwide, some of them being Stephen Gately fans, some of them having no time for Boyzone or any other boy band, yet united in a comdemnation of disgustingly inaccurate homophobic articles from a past-it harpy.

Based on the homophobic and factually questionable Daily Mail article by Jan Moir, 17th Oct 2009.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html

Lily Allen's delete key doesn't work

2009-09-25T18:04:00.000+01:00

Good news for all of those following the Lily Allen vs Techdirt debacle. We've managed to get Lily to change her mind. Not fully, but she has made a step in the right direction, and TechDirt attributes this to my exposure of her mixtape MP3s.

TechDirt's latest post on the ska popstress explains it very well, citing a Times article published this morning, with the headline Blow for music industry as Lily Allen says Peter Mandelson's plans too draconian.

Now that's the kind of thing I like to see. Not perfect, as the 100+ group of artists want bandwidth cut down for suspected infringers to a trickle. Nobody in the FAC or any other musician or producer has ever stated how they can be 100% sure they will be targeting illegal downloaders.

As a web designer, programmer and creative worker with over 20 years experience in IT, I can confidently state it's impossible to grab all illegal downloaders. If it were possible, we'd have rounded up spammers by now. Any legislation against internet filesharing will just drive it to a point where it's encrypted all time (see VPN) , practically untraceable, people will just swap MP3s on memory sticks, mobile phones and portable hard drives. Actually, a lot of folk do that frequently aready!

Sadly, a lot of the mainstream press were concentrating on Lily's announcement to quit pop music. This was one the last things Lily said on her pro-copyright blog before it got deleted, and I honestly believe it was another of her media stunts, designed to take attention away from the fact she distributed music illegally. Fortunately, not all media outlets are convinced, as it's not the first time Lily has stated she's quitting music. The NME and even The Sun poured cynicism on this announcement, but it did the trick for her, by eclipsing the revelation of her mixtape MP3s still being online.

However, I did discover last night that the MP3s were now deleted. These were the URLs you could obtain them from...
http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/music/demos/5geuj0iedc/MyFirstMixtape.mp3
http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/music/demos/csd23dsms7/LilyAllenMixTape2.mp3

Whether it was Lily or an EMI staffer who took down those links, there's one thing they should learn. The internet doesn't really forget anything. Those MP3s can and will resurface elsewhere, and I was contacted today with new URLs for these (admittedly very good) music compilations:
http://rapidshare.com/files/284888793/MyFirstMixtape.mp3
http://rapidshare.com/files/284895983/LilyAllenMixTape2.mp3

This does relate to Lily's response aimed at me yesterday...
Anyway the snippets of songs you hear on those mixtapes are about 30 seconds to 1 minute in length,
I said this wasn't true, and here's the proof. Here's the tracklistings with my timings:

Lily's First Mixtape
LDN - Lily Allen (2.5 mins, admittedly Dizzee's beats come in after 1 min)
Fix Up Look Sharp - Dizzee Rascal (1.5 mins, not counting earlier beats)
Dub Be Good To Me - Beats International (over 2.5 mins)
Smile - Lily Allen (3 mins)
The Potion - Ludacris (over 2.5 mins)
Popshots - Premier (over 2.5 mins)
taxi fare - Mr Vegas (over 1 min)
Who Say Meh Dun - Cutty Ranks (over 3 mins)
She Taught Me How To Yodel - Kenny Roberts (over 1 min)
Born On The Bayou - Creedance Clearwater (over 1.5 min)
Get Out My Life Woman - Lee Dorsey (1.5 min)
Stay With Me - Rod Stewart (3 mins)
Up The Junction - Squeeze (3 mins)
Knock 'Em Out - Lily Allen (over 2.5 mins)
Go DJ - Jammin (Zinc) (repeated samples)
Drifting - Jammin (Zinc) (over 1 min)
Oi - More Fire Crew (over 2.5 mins)
Friday Night Saturday Morning - The Specials (2.5 mins)
Who's The Bad Man - Dee Patten (over 1 min)
Joe Le Taxi - Vanessa Paradis (3 mins)
Silly Games - Janet Kay (over 2 mins)
Cheryl Tweedy - Lily Allen (3 mins)
Incredible - M-Beat featuring General Levy (over 3.5 mins)

Lily's Second Mixtape
Nan You're A Window Shopper - Lily Allen (over 2 mins)
Put You On The Game - The Game (2 mins)
Only Love Can Break Your Heart - St Entienne (2.5 mins)
Wrigleys - Red Rat (over 1.5 mins)
Ready She Ready - Tubby T (over 2 mins)
Shake Your Money Maker - Black Grape (2 mins)
Dirt Off Your Shoulder - Jay-Z (over 3 mins)
Truth - Lily Allen (over 2.5 mins)
Sweet Love - Y2K (over 2.5 mins)
Soul Survivor Remix - Young Jeezy feat Akon, Shabba Ranks, Vybz Kartel & Sizzla (over 2 mins)
Oh My God (Kaiser Chiefs cover) - Mark Ronson featuring Lily Allen (over 3 mins)
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane (over 2 mins)
Cosmic Dancer - T-Rex (3 mins)
(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me - Sandie Shaw (over 2 mins)
Badman Forward Badman Pull Up - Ding Dong (1.5 min)
Cubik - 808 State (2.5 mins)
Alfie - Lily Allen (over 2 mins)
Do As I say - Sia (over 3 mins)
Friday Night - Lily Allen (over 2.5 mins)
Never Let You Go - Tina Moore (over 1 min)
I Luv U - Dizzee Rascal (over 2 mins)
Gangsters - The Specials (over 2 mins)
On A Ragga Tip - SL2 (over 3 mins)
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks (over 3 mins)

Onto Lily's next lie about these MP3s...

i made those mixtapes 5 years ago

Hold on a sec, I got the tracklisting for the first one off Lily's MySpace blog (which she admits she personally runs), dated in Jan 2006. That ain't five years ago, it's more recent than that.

And on that very blog, what do I see on March 2006?

What the fuck ? my shit is on Limewire , you naughty people . Oh well , I haven't got a problem with it , so long as a few of you buy the album

Thank you Lily! Deep down, you know you get the point. One final thing about the blog that was deleted...

i've shut down the blog, the abuse was getting too much.

As TechDirt stated, yes, there were childish and abusive comments (though having listened to the lyrics of Nan You're A Window Shopper on the second mixtape, this is clearly a case of glass houses and rocks), but they did fade away, and more intelligent comments were coming through, almost all of them critical of Lily's pro-record-label stance, with articulate backing and reasonable questioning.

Google's normally trustworthy Cache can't even revive the blog, but luckily I've got a tab open on one of the final pages, on the NME story about Lily and Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, showing some of the recent comments aimed at Lily. Have a read through and see if any of this is "abuse", because I don't think it is...

Planespotter said...: lol, what a bad piece of Jounalism that piece is. Big banner headline of "I agree with Lily Allen on file-sharing" followed by a chunk of text that completely contradicts that opening statement!

Lily wants the government to legislate ISPs to disconnect file-sharers (who are downloading and uploading, thats how file sharing works)

Ed completely disagrees with that proposal, Ed, rightly believes, that the system needs to change, that prices need to fall, new concepts of distribution need to come into play and that YOU have to enage with your fans.
luke said...: "Every generation has a different method," said Radiohead guitarist and FAC Board of Directors member Ed O'Brien. "File sharing is like a sampler, like taping your mate's music."

http://pitchfork.com/news/36545-lily-allen-tangles-with-radiohead-over-illegal-file-sharing/
nuno miranda ribeiro said...: http://www.last.fm/music/Lily+Allen

You have, to this minute, 25,752,726 plays of your songs in Last.fm.

But in the top 15 of your most listened to songs, only one, "Smile", can be listened to. Do you expect people to click on the "buy it" button before listening?

How do you expect people like me, that do not have any CD or ilegal files of your songs, to listen to your work?

See other artists, smaller than you (and let me tell you 25 million in Last.fm is huge, not small), I'll find an example.

Oneida (one of the best rock bands ever, mixing vintage synthesizers with Sonic Youth like guitars):
http://www.last.fm/music/Oneida

They only have 502,540 plays in Last.fm. And that is very little in Last.fm (some portuguese bands there are only known in Portugal have more than that, oh, and there are only 10 million portuguese).

Look at Oneida's top 15! Only one song is not available to be listened, all other 14 songs are.

So, you, your record company or both think that if you don't let people listen to your songs, they will be forced to buy it. Well, I never downloaded your songs, and I don't think I will ever buy your CD's.

With Oneida it's another thing.
And they are incredibly smaller than you (only in cash flow, not in musicallity).

I would love to hear what Oneida members have to say about your claims on file-sharing.
Prodge said...: Sorry Lily, this campaign is simply not working for you at all. I love your music, I liked your attitude until now... where far from the fresh-faced ska-tinged rebel you once were, you're now a puppet of the establishment.

When you're standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Gary Barlow, James Blunt and Tim Rice-Oxley, you're not on the side of music lovers.

Your anti-piracy blog has been a big disaster from the beginning. You support the unethical policies of Lord Mandelson - a minister whose own corruption and seen him twice booted out of office - and you probably haven't even realised you fall afoul of them.

Mandelson supports the idea that users should be CUT OFF from the internet if they are ACCUSED 3 times by the record industry. Not proven of guilt, just merely accused. Very Orwellian.

It's astonishing to think that you issued a well-thought-out song against George W Bush on your latest album, but when it comes to seeking a profit, you ape his idea of justice.

I'm astonished Mick Jones got you, of all people, to cover a Clash song. Listen to yourself, do you think that Joe Strummer, if he were alive today, would champion your Elton-John-backed cause of making luddite record labels richer?

File-sharing is going to happen anyway. Attempting to prevent it is like opening up a cocktail umbrella to shield yourself from a tsunami.

Fine, bring laws in to cut off filesharers. You know what will happen? They'll move even faster to encrypted technologies, where the record industry won't have a clue who is uploading what. Need I mention VPN? (Google it, or look on Wikipedia - it's your nightmare.)

Musicians expecting a pension from selling overpriced plastic discs of their past work have to wake up and smell the coffee. That era is OVER. Why even join the ranks of the dinosaurs who are in that club?

Embrace filesharing, and enjoy the attention. Everyone knows that live gigs are where you make the money anyway. You admitted to Q magazine that you hardly make money from album sales. Stand by your words, and stop siding with conveyor-belt-musak stars like Gary Barlow.

Already in your blog, YOU have been caught taking website content without permission...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090922/0310156273.shtml
...and you did it a further two times when you put up newspaper scans in the PRESS COVERAGE entry.

Three strikes of copyright infringement, eh? Looks like Mandelson should cut off your internet access, Lily.
sonic said...: Everyone seems to be losing sight of the facts. All the studies on file sharing agree that it is only responsible (if at all) for a tiny proportion of the reduction of sales in the music industry. You can find the studies on-line please read them yourself!!!

Some studies even suggest that file sharing has a positive impact. The most damming report only suggests that file sharing is responsible for 30% reduction in sales ( while most studies suggest the impact is only 5%). So the studies suggest that over 70% of the decline in the music industry (possibly up to 100%) is due to other factors.

The industry is in decline, jobs will be lost -Fact-. Nothing Lily or anyone else is doing will prevent that. Clamping down on file sharing isn’t going to save them as file sharing isn’t responsible for the majority of the decline in the industry.

Wasting tax payers money on legislation which will only have a tiny impact on sales would harm the industry even more. Higher public spending + more expensive internet access = less money in Joe publics pocket and less record sales.

I would suggest that it might be an idea to address whatever it is which is causing the majority of the decline in sales??? Anyone have any ideas what may be causing this? What can be done about it?
Timothy said...: Attenion: Lily, guys, girls, children, parents, adults - Look, this is really, REALLY simple. If pirating were "destroying the music industry", why in the world is PRS's own study showing that the UK music industry is GROWING!
http://www.prsformusic.com/creators/news/research/Documents/Will%20Page%20and%20Chris%20Carey%20(2009)%20Adding%20Up%20The%20Music%20Industry%20for%202008.pdf

GROWING, guys. This smokescreen of pirating that the labels, who are the ONLY ones effected negatively by piratng (except when the pass those negative effects onto the artists) is being used to draw MORE money out of artists and the curtail the rights of the public.

This is REALLY easy to figure out folks. Pirating has NEVER been a war on artists, or the music industry. It is a war on what is an obsolete business model trying to be perpetuated by record labels that need to understand that their job now is essentially to be a PR firm. Distribution has been taken care of by the P2P networks.
Prodge said...: Hey, Lily, how come I have EVIDENCE of YOU distributing major artist's music without their permission?

Check out this 2006 blog posting, everyone...
http://whatbecameofthelikelybroads.blogspot.com/2006/08/finally-lily-allen-mixtape-2.html

Can't be true, can it? Surely Lily isn't giving out music by the Kinks, T-Rex, The Specials, Dizzee Rascal, etc? (Good taste btw, I have to admit that).

Well, check the link out in the entry. It's on the lilyallenmusic.com domain. That's her EMI-funded website.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we have caught Lily Allen in the act of MUSIC PIRACY. She's even more of a hypocrite than ever before!

Don't worry Lily, as you say in the title of your latest album... Everyone's At It!
Rob said...: Why oh why do people continually miss the point... it amazes me.

Legislation isn't the answer, has legislation worked for illegal drug use? has it worked taking knives and guns off the street? The simple answer is NO.

What are the root causes, find them out, embrace the technology and mold it so that not only do people get what they want but also so that you make a profit from it....

Criminalising millions of people isn't the way forward, diconnecting mum and dad from the internet 'cos their 13 year old downloaded a Sugarbabes single on bittorrent isn't the way.
sonic said...: http://whatbecameofthelikelybroads.blogspot.com/2006/08/finally-lily-allen-mixtape-2.html

So are we saying Lily has been giving away other peoples music for free in order to promote her own music? Is this true? If so it puts her on pretty shaky ground morally, Its almost file sharing for profit. What do the artist whose music she was giving away for free think about this?

Come to think of it hasn't Mark Ronson put out a load of mixes as well? Has he been paying the artists whose music he`s been giving away?
blazinbadzula said...: I don't pirate music anymore simply because I don't want to get sued for millions of dollars for stealing $20 worth of music. I think if record companies make singles cheaper or some up with some affordable plan for people who will buy instead of steal music. I only buy CDs if the music is good or if I'm a big fan of theirs (Amy Winehouse for example). I think record companies and musicians should stop being so greedy and don't think you guys are above us. After all, we are the ones who make your paychecks.
wideawakewesley said...: Radiohead talk sense, education, better distribution systems, better pricing and incentives are all much better ways to fight against duplication and illegal distribution of music. Look at the fantastic success Spotify is having with an ad supported model. Their users are going legal in huge numbers because the distribution system and pricing are the best legal system that's been devised to date. Once there is competition in that space, you'll see even greater innovation that will attract even more customers and provide an even better experience.
nattiel8522 said...: Although I understand your stance and sympathise with the struggles of emerging artists, I can not for the life of me understand why you would want to alienate us, the consumer, in this way. I think that to place the blame at our door and not at that of the people that have the power to make real change, the music industry is completely unfair. And here’s why:

1. If we consider the recent U2 tour which it has been reported as the most expensive ever, you can surely understand how we the consumer/music fan struggle to sympathise too heavily with the music industry. To me this expense, during the current economic crisis, is vulgar and just proves how detached artists have become from the consumer. I understand that the financial structure of touring differs to that of recording and producing music, but I also apply this argument to the cost of producing music videos and promoting acts etc. While my business struggles to survive and I count every single penny, all I see are expensive big budget videos on my screen and label clad ‘stars’ in the pages of magazines. Surely you can understand that when bombarded with these images I find it hard to accept that it is my downloading that is the crux of the problem the industry faces.

2. We are loyal to you and are supportive of you. If some of you weren’t so detached from the people who give you your success and those who enable you to make a career out of the one thing you love then maybe you would begin to understand that it is not us that you should be joining forces against but is the companies that have made no attempt to meet us somewhere in the middle. Instead I feel that the music industry has ripped off the consumer for years, and even when faced with such a problem makes no attempt to compromise.

3. Katherine Monaco of the Sirens wrote that they ‘discovered at least 20,000 examples of illegal downloading’ of their single. There seems to be an assumption throughout this debate that those who download have done so instead of buying and so resulting in loss of revenue for the act. Who is to say that all or even some of those 20,000 examples would have gone out to buy the single? It is my experience and the experience of those around me that we download things that we would not go out and buy, thus supporting the argument that downloading does diversify the listener which can only ever be a good thing for any act.

It seems that the industry is completely detached from the consumer, the fan, technology and struggles that the world is facing. If the music biz looked inward you and realised that the music industry, like any other industry relies on consumer confidence and this is what is missing. Just because something is available for free doesn’t mean that we will automatically take it. If that were true then bottle water wouldn’t be one of the biggest selling drinks.

So, Lily and your army, I ask you to turn to your industry partners and direct your completely justified concerns to those in real power to make the changes needed and stop laying the blame at our door!......If you dare!
Wi_ngo said...: What Prodge, Sonic and others have pointed out is like the ultimate irony of all freaking time. Lily herself has in the past mass-distributed copyrighted works of dozens of artists to promote herself. (As of now - these 'mixtapes' are still available, actually.)

So, should we cut off Lily's internet, or just fine her a couple of million dollars?

She is just as guilty of 'copyright infringement' as anyone who has been prosecuted for it, if not more so. ON AN EMI-SPONSORED WEBSITE, no less.

Wake up, Lily dear. Either you are a colossal hypocrite, or your are just simply doing the same thing that the 'criminals' you seek to punish are doing - 'violating copyright' by just using the internet and not doing anything intentionally malicious or criminal.
Angel said...: I just don't understand how cutting off someone's internet is going to make them buy your stuff?? This makes no sense to me.

I'm more than willing to pay money for good music, But why can't the industry come into the 21st century and realize that their business models are dated?

The internet is not the enemy it's a new way of distributing things. Make your music/movies/software...etc..etc...etc. reasonably priced and people will buy it, plain and simple.

By the way how come nobody ever got fined $9.2 Million dollars for borrowing an LP, CD, or Tape and making a recording of it?

Phe-eew... yes, I quoted two of my own comments, that's my ego at work (and I realise I got her album title wrong!) but you can see that what I said about the hypocrisy, along with Sonic's viewpoints and the TechDirt articles, these were the catalyst on getting Lily to re-think her position.

And you know what? I'm actually slowly warming to her again. Not just because she used 808 State's awesome Cubik on that second mixtape...

Her second latest tweet is a BBC News URL that refers to her TechDirt/mixtape copyright infringement incidents. I'm glad it's permeating into music fans' knowledge.

Her newest tweet is a response to @upstartblogger, who has found himself unfairly targetted by EMI's legal team.

@upstartblogger (or Ashley Morgan as he's called outside of Twitter) claims to have some inside information from an EMI insider, and this caught Lily's eye, resulting in Lily's newest tweet, which seems to be an offer to contact him about how EMI are apparently conducting an underhand campaign against him. Could this be an olive branch? Ashley responded in a civil manner, meeting Lily's request, hope it all smooths out the nasty legal trouble, and I really hope this has been an education for Lily. Don't piss off your customers.

Update: The @upstartblogger thing has resulted in Ashley removing his content. He insists it's not a conspiracy. This is his explanation.

Lily Allen: My Part In Her Downfall

2009-09-24T20:02:00.000+01:00

So, I get into an argument on the internet - nothing new there - but this one ends up as worldwide news, and what seems to be the end of a pop star's career.

It's been about 24 hours since I sent an e-mail to an influential website which has seen Lily Allen called out for being a hypocritical lying music pirate. This morning, Lily responded to my revelation with a factually inaccurate statement.

I'll have to explain this one in full. I'm a huge fan of TechDirt.com - a technology news-and-commentary blog that keeps us geeks up-to-date on how the digital revolution is ripping up the rulebook, and how luddites continually strive to pass backward outdated laws to keep things the same. Naturally, the articles are strongly against persecution of P2P filesharers.

But this is no pro-piracy blog that offers "l33t nu moviez and albumz". TechDirt is simply acting as the messenger boy, pointing out the old ways of selling overpriced plastic shiny discs are over, and that the record industry should not fight digital, but embrace it, accepting that the infinite supply of MP3 should really drive down the price of recorded music.

There's no point in trying to stuff the genie in the bottle. Even the most dense of computer users knows where the Pirate Bay is. DRM - the unwanted protection scheme on some CDs and DVDs - has been nothing but a huge disaster for the media industry, causing legitimate customers to complain about their purchases not playing on various equipment. Treating the very people who pay your wages as potential thieves is never going to work, and yet, the pirates have the last laugh by offering the same media in a superior format - free of all hassle and easily copiable, just like we've always had in the past.

Besides, how is copying music equal to "theft"? Pro-copyright lobbyists always insist it is "stealing", and I'm sure we've seen that patronising "you wouldn't steal a car" trailer at cinemas and on DVDs.

Thing is, it's completely false. A copy of something is not theft, has never been theft, and never will be theft. Even the law stipulates it is different to theft.

If I nick your car, you don't have a car any more. If I sat outside your house and somehow made a 100% exact copy of your car, you wouldn't be deprived of anything. No crime committed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should download copies of all music out there just because we can. I go to gigs, I go to festivals, I certainly put my fair share in. I used to be very anti-filesharing about 10 years ago.

After having seen the way the record industry has been reacting to filesharers, and, through having worked for a couple of labels and befriending quite a few artists, I've learnt just how much mark-up there is to the labels and how bands just get ripped off.

It doesn't have to be this way. The real money is in live performance and genuinely scarce goods. CD singles and music videos have always been a loss-leader anyway, they have since before the internet was in nappies.

I am totally not convinced about the piracy fearmongering from famous people who are clearly not educated in the subject. I'm sick of it, that's why I did something about it.

Lord Peter Mandelson - the non-elected government minister who twice had to resign because of his financial scandals - is proposing a disgusting law that criminalises almost every internet user in the UK, usng a guilty-before-proven-innocent basis.

It sickened me to see Lily Allen backing such a terrible Orwellian policy. On top of this, she cited support from the likes of James Blunt, Elton John and Take That's Gary Barlow. That's right, the big names she has on her side consist of a guy whose only positive contribution to society is a new piece of Cockney rhyming slang based on his name, a dreary ballad performer who once stated the internet should be shut down for five years and the songwriter for Steps. If filesharing didn't look good before, it sure does now!

Not that this is good enough for Lily Allen, who this week, launched her own blog dedicated to fighting digital piracy and slurring filesharers as "thieves".

This has been nothing short of a disaster for the feisty ska-tinged popstrel. With the mundane and moribund queueing up to slap her on the back, music fans started questioning her stance. The comments on her blog were filled with criticism.

On Monday, the following report about rapper 50 Cent appeared on her blog:

Famed rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) was apparently on CNBC recently talking about his "business acumen." I have to admit that having three different people all trying to interview him at once is rather annoying -- as they almost never let him complete a thought. However, when they ask him about piracy, and whether or not it makes him angry (around 2 minutes), he responds that: he sees it as a part of the marketing of a musician, because "the people who didn't purchase the material, they end up at the concert." He says that people can fall in love with the music either way, and then they'll go to concerts. He notes that you can't stop piracy either way, so why try to fight it? He also talks about other business opportunities for musicians.

this is particularly selfish in my view, he seems to only be thinking of how piracy effects him. What about the guys that work in the studio and the kids that run around town putting his posters up,the people that designed his artwork, the people that run his website. Is he giving them a cut of his live fee?

Now, that first paragraph - expertly written, and just one of many reasons why filesharing MP3s is actually good for musicians - gave me a sense of deja vu. The second paragraph is obviously Lily's own commentary. You can tell by the patronising tone and logical flaws. But what's particularly galling is... well, the attribution? Who wrote that first paragraph? Ah yes, it was lifted from TechDirt, without permission, despite being copyrighted.

So there we have Lily Allen breaking copyright. I guess that's "strike one" under the Mandelson Regime. Luckily for Lily, Michael Masnick at TechDirt doesn't take copyright infringement as a massive problem, happily reporting on the incident, and the obvious irony surrounding it.

With the attention focused on Lily's infringement, especially as TorrentFreak reported on her copyright hypocrisy, she eventually had to issue attribution...

I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS THAT I WASNT TRYING TO PASS OF THOSE WORDS AS MY OWN , HERE IS A LINK TO THE WEBSIITE I ACQUIRED THE PIECE FROM. Apologies to Michael Masnick.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090914/0348436181.shtml

The insincere tone didn't go down too well, and when she posted two scanned newspaper articles later on, the mocking nature of her critics went into overdrive.

Here's where I come in...

Sick of the way she shamelessly ripped off TechDirt without so much of a linkback or a credit, I did some digging around. I am actually a fan of Lily Allen, although I can't say I like her much as a person any more.

I remember Lily popping up on the radio back in 2005-6, when she was an up-and-coming artist with a rebellious tone and fairly witty and incisive lyrics that compare to some of Jarvis Cocker's best work.

The internet was cited as her way of doing promotion at little cost. She kept up with the then-popular MySpace fad, and she posted 'mixtape' MP3s where her songs would be sandwiched between ska/pop/rave/rock/indie classics...

Wait a second, she did what? Oh yes, she uploaded the digital equivalent of C90 compilations. Beautiful creations, yet copyright-infringing.

Surely these have disappeared into the digital ether by now? Well, no! I reckoned that a few might pop up on places like rapidshare.com.

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this blog posting about her second mixtape, with a tracklisting of some pretty damn famous songs, such as:

Dirt Off Your Shoulder - Jay-Z
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
Cosmic Dancer - T-Rex
(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me - Sandie Shaw
Gangsters - The Specials
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

I hovered over the link to the MP3, and I was stunned - it begins with www.lilyallenmusic.com - her official website! Yep, that's where it is hosted, and at time of writing it is still there, along with her first mixtape MP3. That's three strikes now, isn't it?

Well, I did what any decent-thinking citizen would do, and so I e-mailed ~~Peter Mandelson so that her internet connection could be cut off, that freeloading harlot should be burnt alive in oil~~ TechDirt, so that could expose the story.

10 minutes later, and my revelation is on the front page of TechDirt. You have no idea how much my ego expanded at that moment. It was at Kanye West proportions. I had always wanted to submit an exclusive to that site for years, and here I was with my first submission accepted in a near-instant.

It meant even more to me, knowing that Lily herself would actually see it. I hoped she would respond. In the meantime, it was quickly picked up by the P2P supporters at TorrentFreak.

What an embarrassment. Lily Allen exposed as a complete hypocrite and a liar. What would her record label, EMI, make of it? And would we get a response?

In the late morning, my exposure had reached Lily, who blogged about it. Except that I can't link to this blog entry nor can I quote it in full, because she deleted the entire blog within half-an-hour of learning how we caught her red-handed, indulging in copyright infringement.

Luckily, it's TechDirt who are again the heroes, because Michael quotes some of what she said about my dirt-digging.

I've been dying to respond to her, yet have been at work, and busy with the ATVLand.net site so here goes, with Lily first:

i made those mixtapes 5 years ago, i didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry back then...

Yet it worked in your favour, didn't it? Can you honestly tell me that it wasn't a factor in connecting with your fans? They're bloody good mixtapes by the way, so even if you do claim you're quitting music, please continue making them. I'm especially chuffed you stuck in a Specials B-side and 808 State's Cubik. You do note that on the blog that lists the tracks, there are people there commenting on how they're off to buy the music? I don't think anyone lost out, there's certainly no evidence of it.

As your article clearly states , lilyallenmusic.co.uk is an EMI run website, which is exactly why i don't acknowledge it (i think theres a link to it on my myspace(which i do run), thats purely because, my record contract states i cant sell my merchandise online anywhere else on the net . i don't post on there, i dont even look at it. the record company run it.

I can spot a contradiction in that first sentence, but aside from that, you came up with those mixes. You distributed them, and although the recordings from Dizzee Rascal, The Specials and SL2 are legally held by EMI, there quite a few non-EMI artists on there, such as the Kinks. Jay Z and 808 State. Now, what about "the guys that work in the studio and the kids that run around town putting [...] posters up,the people that designed [...] artwork, the people that run [the] website." Are you "giving them a cut" of your live fee?

Think about what you are proposing now. The Lily Allen of 2009 wants to see the Lilly Allen of 2005 prosecuted. That's it. That's the sheer insanity of it all. Would you like some ketchup on that foot of yours?

Anyway the snippets of songs you hear on those mixtapes are about 30 seconds to 1 minute in length, in traditional mixtape style, it is infringement, correct, but it's not my site, it's EMI's.
Lily, you are lying about "song snippets". That second mixtape is exactly one hour long, and contains 19 tracks. A quick bit of maths reveals that splitting 60 minutes in 1/19 gets you 3.16 minutes - that's the mean average of each song. And many are in there practically in full, with the closer - the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset - being 100% complete.

I do like the way you state "traditional mixtape style". Yes, tradition, style - that's what it is about! You know it's been going on for years, we know it's been going on for years. Yet now you've become a bit *cough* richer, you want to criminalise this activity! You're pissing on your very own roots.

The term "sell-out" isn't used as much as it used to be in music fan circles, but right now I'm calling you out as one.

i am not a hypocrite, i don't illegally download music, and i still think unauthorised file sharing is wrong.

It's not about the downloading of music, which is virtually impossible to trace. Record labels go after uploaders, they can see the IP address quite easily when there's a 'supplier'.

You're a total joke to state that filesharing is wrong, because as I have proven, you have indulged in it yourself. This "do as I say, not as I do" attitude is EXACTLY what a hypocrite does. This is what you have become.

Don't worry about filesharing, as to cite a certain album title - Everyone's At It. Including you, Lily.

Regrettably, some of the critical comments on Lily's blog were very juvenile and spiteful. This was cited by Lily as a reason why she deleted the blog. I don't believe that for a second, it's pretty obvious her copyright infringements did her no favours, but I do distance myself from the personal insults hurled at her. Thankfully there were many many viewpoints that ripped apart Lily's argument in a civil manner.

So, Lily deleted the entire blog, and even stated she's quitting music because of piracy.

The story has gone wild. Google News have it on their front page, with at least 140 articles related to it. The Daily Telegraph are reporting it. DigitalSpy are talking about her mixtape piracy.

A Facebook friend of mine urgently wanted my e-mail address, as his friend is an editor of a national music magazine, and I'm to be interviewed about this debacle.

I've had celebrity blogger Perez Hilton e-mailing me with "love it!", though to be fair, he's definitely no fan of the white-trainer'd songstress.

Plenty of my friends are finding it hysterical, that me, some unknown podgy guy with an opinion, has just managed to cause havoc for a well-known A-list pop star. I wonder if she's summoned in for a carpetting at EMI Towers?

To be humble though (I can sometimes manage it), this isn't about me. It's about the power of the internet, the digital democracy. If I didn't report it, someone else would have done. I'm very much in favour of the story continuing to spread.

As it stands, I've had a hand in severely damaging the dinosaurs' pro-copyright campaigning, I am so chuffed at that. I started embracing MP3s 12 years ago, when I ran a fan site about the Prodigy, and ended up on the receiving end of a £500 legal settlement bill from the BPI's solicitors because we had live concert recordings (commercially unavailable ones) online. Despite the fact none of this ever harmed the finances of The Prodigy or XL Recordings - quite the reverse in fact!

So I'm quite happy the record industry is running around like a headless chicken, losing money everywhere because they just cannot satisfy the market with the same old same old. No amount of remastered Beatles albums is going to save the day. Give up on the plastic discs, and concentrate on providing VALUE for the consumer.

If you want further positive reasoning why MP3s should be priced at virtually zero pence, and why record labels should actually gear themselves up as PR services rather than the outdated shifters of CDs, please pop over to TechDirt.com and take their advice on all matters digital.

My thanks to Ryan Lambie for the rather egotistical subject line suggestion!

Don't listen to the nerd!

2009-06-07T09:27:00.000+01:00

God forbid I actually give correct advice to people. It seems wallowing in ignorance and suffering the inconvenience of a faulty setting is the 'popular' option over believing anyone who knows what they're talking about. The phrase "cutting your nose off to spite your face" has been adopted as a rule.

Yesterday, in a beer garden, a friend had her netbook out. None of the websites being viewed were being seen in full, and when it came to Facebook, everyone in the photos looked like bulimia sufferers. Also, to read the pages fully, you had to scroll left and right in addition to the usual scroll down.

Now, netbooks by their very nature are low-specification computers. They don't have a lot of features, they will never win-out to a proper laptop, but of course, they are low cost. That's the point of them, they'll come with late 90s technology for half the price of its big brother.

It'd be understandable if my friend's netbook had to display things in obese-o-vision because of no other settings, given the low price she paid for it. However, this was a modern machine, only purchased last year, and it was made with a widescreen-shaped display. The designers would have been pretty retarded if it was limited to stretch-o-scope visuals.

However, having looked at the netbook for her a while back to check the wireless settings, I remember setting the display correctly by increasing the resolution (that's the amount of pixels on the screen). That way she could view 99% of webpages without having to scroll left-and-right, like some kind of tunnel-vision affliction, and that we had left the Land Of The Balloon People.

So, quietly setting the display back to normal, keeping all nerd-fuss to a minimum and no need to even mention the fly-over-everyone's-head merits of 1366 x 768 vs standard VGA, or incomprehensible principles of anamorphic distortion.

And indeed, this is the point that justifies my actions. Web surfing continued, without the horizontal scrolling, and with pictures of people looking relatively slim. This actually continued for about an hour, no problems whatsoever.

Until she closed the browser. Then all hell let loose. "Aaargh, he's been on my computer again!" she shrieked.

It was the desktop background that did it. It wasn't "fitting" the screen. Hmm, I don't know about you, but how often do you sit there looking at your desktop background? It's not even vaguely important. This particular background was obviously made for a 1990s PC, and of course it didn't fit. It didn't matter. It could have been tiled, anyway.

All reasoning would not satisfy the grumbler. The desktop background HAD to fit. It simply had to. A fellow drinker reached over, and went into the settings, and it was back to being a fat and pixelly hell-hole, back to seeing only a portion of any webpage... just so that vital background reaches the edges!

Any attempts to explain what they were doing was insane, was met with glares of disbelief, as though as I was being "nerdy" for the sake of it. She wanted her display to look all stretched, and that was it, simple as that. Never mind it's the equivalent of making your car three-wheeled because you "don't like the look of that ugly fourth wheel". Never mind it's actually proven to affect your eyesight. Her netbook's only major capability of matching a laptop had to be disabled so that a background photo of some palm trees looked okay. And woe betide anyone who knows what she is doing is objectively incorrect.

That's the cruel thing about modern society. You exhibit any knowledge about a particular subject, and you're faced with "nerd", "geek" and "anorak" insults. Intelligence has become the anti-cool. Knowing what you're talking about, is the new social anathema.

Attempt to assist anyone in technological matters, and you may as well empty a box of dandruff over your head, and spray yourself in tramp's body odour.

Actually, even writing this blog posting, what with it having substantially more to say than the entire published output of Heat magazine, may well put me in for more criticism from the folk I refer to.

Strange as it is, there's a quirk in knowledge-o-phobia. It doesn't appear to afflict experts on cars or football. If you can fix a girl's gearbox, well, you'll be in her box, if I may be so crude. Citing the entire first-team line-up for a Premiership team about to play in a cup final gets nods of appreciation from your male brethren.

Computers? Oh, they're cool for wirelessly sending over stag night photos and viewing the latest cat-falls-off-a-table video on YouTube. But don't actually talk about the equipment allowing you to do these things, don't even suggest ways to make things better for them. As I found out, they just don't want to know. Well, until they're unable to connect to the interwebs, then you're in need.

But boy, if you know to use an IP proxy or even record to dual-layer DVD, you may as well join me on Digital Leprosy Island. If you're caught knowing anything more than how to plug in a USB cable, then you're confined to the domain of the "nerd", with armchair psychologists all lining up to label you as terminally suffering from Asperger's Syndrome.

Being right doesn't matter any more, you only have to look the mentality of newspaper letters pages to see that. "Oi fink dat ID cards are good idea, 'cuz like, if you don't have anyfink to hide, you don't have anyfink to fear", "Dat Brazilian guy shouldn't have been here anyway so it don't matter if the police shot him, they were only protecting us from terrorororists". The wilfully ignorant are breeding.

Going back to technology (at the risk of being a social hermit), the widescreen television is now commonplace, and sadly, almost matching the ubiquitity, is the Fat-O-Scope setting. A strange paradox, where people were bothered enough to shell out hundreds on replacing their old boxy 4:3 telly, to one that's displaying exactly the same area of picture information, simply because they've never figured out how to set it correctly.

Given that sets in Currys and Comet are often set to stretched, like a 21st century wacky-house-of-fun distorted mirror, most of the British public think this is the norm. There's a chain pub in town with really expensive widescreen plasmas, and yet, they'll feed in Sky Sports all stretched in that 'techno-lard' setting, so the footballers are kicking an oval, and your head does overtime trying to guess the angle where the ball is really meant to be heading. Five button presses on the remote control would reset it, permanently, correctly.

If you're still not convinced by what I'm saying, there's this conversation from the early 90s that vindicates my views:

Friend: "My mate's got one of those new stereo televisions"

Friend's mum: "Oh, is it any good?"

Friend: "Yeah, sounds a lot better. Only there's this problem."

Friend's mum: "What's that?"

Friend: "When you change channels, it goes silent for a second 'cos it's got to tune into stereo"

Friend's mum: "Ugh, I won't be getting one of those then!"

I have no idea how she feels given every new television set 'suffers' from this. Actually, the minor problem is even more significant with digital television, where you get a blank screen as well as silence for a full second (or more). I've not seen her in ages, maybe she's sheltering hoarding the remaining televisions out there, and creating a petition to prevent the transmitters from going digital-only.

Gah, I jest. Of course not. It's something she got used to. Like yesterday, when the netbook was set up all nicely and the user didn't even notice. The funny thing is, the bloat-o-stretch option is actually a resolution setting for those wanting to connect an old (4:3) monitor to the laptop!

The resolution is actually so low, it was outdated years back in web standards! When you can't even view BBC.co.uk pages (optimised for huge audiences, every setting approved by committee) in full, you're doing it wrong. Sorry, I appear to be knowing what I'm talking about, and if you're not into web-design, you've probably skipped this paragraph. Or more likely, this entire posting.

I also recall my friend's dad, who had the usual Amstrad stereo music centre from Dixons (it was UK law to own these in the 1980s). He wanted to listen to his cassette music in his lounge, and his kitchen. Rather than buy a cheap portable stereo, he kept the music centre in the lounge, drilled through the kitchen wall, and fitted his left stereo speaker in there. This had the unfortunate effect that both the kitchen and the lounge had to have the same music on at the same time, and you could only ever hear it in mono.

My uncle, a thoroughly intelligent chap who worked at British Aerospace back in the day, is now a gibbering technophobe. He refuses to upgrade to DVD, even though players have been on sale for little more than a tenner, and insists on videotape. He actually stated that DVD is "just a fad". I'm expecting a call a year's time when the local transmitter stops pumping out pictures to his stream-driven telly.

Being an expert (well, a near-expert) on techy matters these days is akin to being Cassandra. You can be right, but you can't be cool. Uttering a word more than three syllables is like farting in a lift.

The fitting end to this mammoth blog posting? All high definition tellies out there force everything on HD channels to be displayed correctly. The broadcasters stick out their old 4:3 programmes with the black areas down the sides, which will piss off the "must fit the screen" brigade, but frankly, the nerds have won. Same thing will apply to computers in the future.

We're right, and you, the Great British public, are wrong. That sounded arrogant, but as the old quote goes, "it ain't bragging if you can back it up". The geek shall inherit the earth. A v-sign to every fool currently watching their soulless diet of mundane soaps and screaming-harpies-in-an-attention-box in distorted bulimiavision.

Blogging for blog’s sake...

2007-09-03T13:57:00.000+01:00

[A little note... This blog post originally appeared on my MySpace blog. It's all about why I decided not to bother blogging there any more, and why MySpace has turned into a stale turd. You'll find me on Facebook these days.]

Apparently I'm supposed to be blogging about something. Well, I don't want to disappoint those who are looking out for a blog from me, so, um, this is it.

Truth to be told, I'm rather tired of keeping this blog up, as it's on MySpace - a service that is rendered nigh-on unusable thanks to so many excrable and inexcusable things...

1) "An unexpected error has occured". This happens so often when I'm using MySpace that the term 'unexpected' really is void.
2) Tom's 'apology' for errors. They nearly always end in "don't e-mail me about this, just wait it out". Yeah, f--king fine, mate! You just sit there on your arse doing sod-all. If people think I'm being ungrateful because MySpace is free, well, get out the inverted commas, because it's only 'free' due to the advertisers. If I was an advertiser on this godawful site, I'd want my money back. The site is utterly poor design-wise anyway!
3) The users. Please please please stop writing pathetic bulletins that end in "pass this on in 5 mins or you will die". Do not ever post up a cut-and-paste checkbox survey that delivers insights such as "[x] Have your ever drunk milk?" or "[x] Ever kissed someone?". And get some f--king co-ordination in check when you attempt to customise your pages. Animated gif backgrounds are so 1990s Geocities!

So, I now announce that my social networking site of choice is of course, Facebook - a website that urinates on MySpace from a great distance. It's tidy, no-one can customise their profiles with gaudy designs, and you can choose the bolt-on applications that are floating about. Tricky to understand at first, but after a week of using it, you'll wonder why you ever bothered with MySpace.

Don't get me started on Bebo, because I won't. The username 'prodge' is already taken up, so I'm not signing up on principle.

Right, this is probably the end of my blog on MySpace, so if you've enjoyed this mixture of topical ranting mixed with a few splashes of self-pitying muse, then I suggest http://prodge.blogspot.com where this blog will reside in future once I can get my arse in gear to migrate all the entries there.

You're best off contacting me through Facebook (search for "Horseshoe Inn" once you've logged in), as I only check MySpace once a week now. Come to think of it, a few of my friends have deleted their accounts due to having seen the light that is Facebook, I may join them soon.

Oh, and before I go, well, I suppose I'd best relate the latest in my tales of personal tragedy, but I can't be arsed. It's not as if the other two blog entries on it were truly worth it. A load of words on a website isn't going to solve my problem, and at this point in time, I don't see it so much as 'my' problem, just someone else's, to be frank. I guess I should be grateful that the burden appears to have gone, but I'm not a total arsehole, I do like to think "what if...", as I know I always had the best of intentions at heart. And in this case, the "what if" is "what if I was listened to?".

Blah, too much information. I'd trim it, but what the heck, my internet connection has been up and down all day (thank you, Tiscali, you incompetant twunts), and I've got work in a few hours. Despite being a writer, I just can't be arsed to trim down that above controversial paragraph, which will get me into trouble. Maybe later. At the moment, I feel good about what I've written. I'll have another look-see when I'm sober...

Mock the afflicted, it's easier...

2007-06-05T12:01:00.000+01:00

Time to top up my blog with more random spewings of vitriol. I've never really picked on barn door sized targets in my blogs, as I prefer a challenge. However, there's a lack of anything topical to write about really. I considered writing about the forthcoming public indoor smoking ban in England, pointing out the futility of splashing out a fiver every day to burn some dead leaves wrapped up in paper, although I've covered that last year.

I now find myself relying on that old comedy standby, the British National Party - an ever decreasing section of society that still believes "the blacks" are out to get their jobs.

Now, I know the vast majority of my readers are already against the BNP, and frankly, so is anyone with an IQ that runs into double figures or higher. I'm at risk of preaching to the choir here. The thing is though, the BNP itself loves to maintain that it has a non-racist attitude, that it's simply all about immigration issues, and "freedom of speech".

A few months ago, around Christmas time, a BNP supporter interrupted a conversation I was having with some friends at a taxi rank. He made it clear that he did not like my views, and made violent threats against me. Not just to me, but to the woman I was waiting there with too. So that's the respect they have for "freedom of speech".

Hang on, aren't I just tarring the entire British National Party with the same brush, based on the actions of a semi-literate knuckle-dragging can't-handle-his-drink tosser?

Well, the funny thing is that you can get an official view by visiting the BNP's official website. Look at their forums. You can only view and post on them if you're a member of the BNP. You have to give them money to even look at their views. Where else would "free speech" cost you money?

Luckily, they do have something resembling a letters page, representing the result of what could happen if scientists taught vermin to write.

"Islam is not a religion of peace. It's an advocate of murder and savagery. And a paranoid one at that." writes Pete McClintock from Manchester, who evidently skipped Sunday school when it came to learning some of the more unsavoury parts of the Holy Bible ("He who sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed" - Exodus 22:20).

Note the suggestion of paranoia in there. "I hope the organisers of this 'demonstration', and anyone who turns to take part, are arrested and charged with incitement", continued Mr McClintock, in a totally un-paranoid fashion, indeed.

Over to Arthur Hunt in Hull, who is a complete and utter hunt... "This small island will hold 40 million reasonably comfortably without undue strain on the environment, we passed that mark decades ago,at 60 million the tensions are beginning to show, more people will be unbearable."

S'funny, official statistics show that non-white people only make up just under 10% of the UK population, so we have 54 million whites. Mr Hunt here is being out of step with BNP policy if he wants to kick out 20m people. Obviously, they'd want all 6m non-Caucasians out, but then they're going to have to remove approximately 14,000,000 white British citizens in order to please the Crazy World Of Arthur Hunt. I wonder if BNP leader Nick Griffin is willing to adopt the slogan "We're The Party That Will Kick Out More Whites Than Non-Whites" for his next election ~~failure~~ campaign? I can't see it going down well with the sub-amoebic cretins who normally vote for the BNP. Perhaps Arthur's idea is one of voluntary self-induced euthanasia.

BNP supporter Brian Hargreaves doesn't give any indication of his location, so I'm leaving this open to you, the reader, to suggest where he may live. Crack den? Cardboard box? HM Glen Parva? The choices are yours. Mark your envelopes with the phrase Twat Finder General. Anyway, Brian has some strong views on the "left", as if it's one collective group with no differing opinions whatsoever. "They think it is immoral for the BNP to say that the indigenous British should have priority over foreign immigrants in their own country, which their parents and grandparents fought and died for."

Yeah, it's funny to see a bunch of xenophobic social-inadquates bring up the issue of that whole Second World War thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the United Kingdom defeating a load of despicable hate-filled racists. It makes me wonder why Nick Griffin chooses to daub the letters in the BNP logo with the Union flag, when Britain's greatest moment was actually playing a major key factor in the downfall of people who shared the BNP's views. As a 100% full British citizen, I'm wondering about setting up a class action lawsuit against Nick Griffin for misusing the term "British" and for daring to use the red, white and blue of my country's flag for his odious and ailing party.

The BNP have had very little success recently in elections. Last year, there were reports of bouncing cheques. I feel almost ashamed in taking the piss out of these sorry know-nothings, but then I think of the face of that BNP-supporting drunk muppet at the taxi rank who wanted to have a fight with me.

Always playing the victim, while wanting to victimise others, the BNP is the biggest hypocrite among the minor political parties of this country. They have a webpage where they attempt to counter "smears" from the "left-wing press". A lot of leaflets from anti-racist campaigners were distributed in the run up to the local elections, and the BNP's webpage begged for their supporters to print it out and to distribute it to friends and colleagues.

It's wild of them to assume that their voters actually have friends, but on the colleague front, how would you feel about a workmate handing you a printout where the first paragraphs are on why mixed-race marriages should be outlawed?

"Environmentalists are always keen to preserve unique animal species in the wild, so why shouldn't the same principle apply to people?" What a fantastic defence, eh? Taking that logic to its fullest extent, I feel pressured into starting a new career as a butcher, breaking into BNP HQ, finding all their members, humanely stunning them, and then serving them up as burgers and sausages for public consumption. Why shouldn't the same principle apply to people?

"The British National Party is not 'homophobic'" says their paragraph on homosexual attitudes. You can pretty much guess what happens next, can't you? First of all, we learn that the BNP recognises "homosexual relationships do not produce offspring". Blimey! These guys are on the ball, aren't they? Nothing gets past them.

"Homosexuality should not be promoted or encouraged" says the not-at-all-homophobic policy. The BNP is "opposed to the flaunting or celebrating of homosexuality which 'civil partnerships' represent". So, nothing remotely anti-gay there. If you're gay, well, you just have to learn to shut up while everyone else can talk about their relationships. Isn't that fair? Hmm...

"The definition of a racist is someone who hates people of other races. We do not hate anybody", they say, having just informed us of how gay people should not have the same rights as straight people, and how mixed race marriages should be discouraged.

After clarifying how anti-racist they really are, honest guv, you only need skip a few paragraphs to read a heading entitled "Why don't you let blacks and Asians into the BNP?" - which then leads into a rant that confirms they truly do not let blacks or Asians into the party. "The BNP isn't racist, but our purpose is to cater for the interests of the indigenous British population", continues the credibility-free argument, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of us indigenous Brits are actually quite happy to mix with people with darker skin colours. It's called tolerance, a word missing from all five pages of the BNP dictionary.

"Your leader is on record denying the Holocaust ever happened and claiming that Jews control the media – you are clearly an anti-Semitic party" is a rare glimpse of truth on the otherwise bovine-excrement filled page.

"Not at all. Dredging up quotes from 10, 15, 20 years ago is really pathetic and, in a sense, rather fascist." Hmm. I'll take that as a "yes" then. Speaking of which, in literally ten seconds, I've found some musings from Nick Griffin under the not-at-all-anti-semitic heading of "It's all a zionist scam", written in 2005.

My head is still reeling from the idea that quoting people from one or two decades ago is "rather fascist". I thought fascism was an authoritarian political ideology, but it's a different meaning in Griffinland. Then, further down, we have some definition of 'British' - "Britain was created as a nation, around 1,000 years ago". Ignoring that Mr Griffin has curiously rewritten his rule on dredging up the past, it's interesting to know that this rain-attracting lump of land stuck in north west Europe didn't exist before 1007AD.

Personally, I thought it was down to the last major ice age which took place around 10,000 years, causing this place to no longer be a peninsular on the Eurasian tectonic plate, resulting in a mix of Danes, Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, French, Irish, Italians and others over the years to populate this wind-swept tea-drinking isle. Hang on, that's a bit too multi-cultural for the likes of the BNP to understand. No wonder the next bit complains that "there are parts of our towns and cities which have become visibly foreign".

"We want a traditional Britain" claims the manifesto. Great. They want your wife to be raped by Scandinavian pirates, to have our monarchy handed over to any hasty arrow-flinging Frenchman, and have Italian anti-Christians running London. On the latter point, the neo-Romans might throw out the Congestion Charge, so there are in fact some positives among this drivel. No idea if your Oyster card would work on a Londinium Council horse and cart though.

"The BNP is, in fact, the most democratic party in Britain", says the same page that informed us that black and Asian people are banned from joining.

Any concerns about voting for this party? "No senior member of the BNP has any serious criminal convictions". As assurances go, this is rather like saying "95% of the orange juice you're about to drink does not have any semen in it". Just like the party's track record in trying to attract the electorate, you'll find it hard to swallow.

BNP supporters may comment on this blog entry, but they must do so in very large green lettering, in a font that resembles the kind of scrawl from a five year old's Crayola spree. This is in keeping with their non-digital style of writing, you see.

Eyeliner and girls' jeans are TOOLS OF EVIL

2006-09-21T14:01:00.000+01:00

Whilst I should not expect any common sense or accuracy from The Daily Mail, my jaw has dropped big time at their news story about the new "Emo" craze (which gives you some idea how slow they are to catch up on these things).

I reckon my jaw is halfway to Hades, at the staggering amount of bullshit propagated in this terrible article. The full thing is here - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=400953&in_page_id=1770 - and I'd like to thank Amy for alerting me to it. You don't have read it, because I'm going to dissect it for your pleasure, or something. It'll be a change from whining about myself, anyway...

So, "one of the key looks" of current fashion "especially at the younger end of the fashion spectrum, is Goth" says professional liar Sarah Sands, who is a 'journalist' for the paper. The whole thing reads like a piece of satire in Private Eye, only more exaggeratedly false.

"Fashion acknowledges those of us who lived through it first time round - Elder Goths, as opposed to Baby Bats, who are the under-30s. It even nods to a working population, permitting Corporate Goths, who wear black trouser suits."

Right, I've heard it all now. Any work colleagues in black trouser suits? They're goths they are. The Daily Mail, that bible of happening trends, says so. Tony Blair? Goth!

"The Emos - short for Emotional - regard themselves as a cool, young sub-set of the Goths" - they may well do, but no-one else regards them as cool. They're the ones sitting on the steps outside Birmingham Central Library, getting in my way.

On the subject of self-harm, we're told that one "governor of a famous boarding school told me that it was as serious a problem as binge drinking, but rarely discussed for fear of encouraging more girls to do it". Well, good job you're not condemning the practice in the nation's second most-read newspaper then, eh?

The inaccuracy gets even more ridiculous, reaching the levels of ficticiousness you'd only hear from Iraq war apologists, or mobile phone salesmen...

"The internet has many sites dedicated to Emo fashion (dyed black hair brushed over your face, layering, black, black, black), Emo bands (Green Day, My Chemical Romance), Emo conversation (sighing, wailing, poetry)."

Green Day are an emo band? These days they're more like U2 in eyeliner, and their previous heyday - the Dookie era - while praised by almost everyone I knew, came across as a poor man's poor man's Buzzcocks tribute band. Granted, some people foolishly described them as punk rock back then, but that's closer to the mark than "emo". I believe My Chemical Romance recently declared themselves out of the genre too.

Sighing, wailing and poetry is "emo conversation"? So basically, anyone doing a Whitney Houston cover at the local karaoke bar is talking exclusively to people with layered black hair. Normal folks' ear frequencies just won't pick up the signals.

"The Instant Emo Kit site gives advice on identity. Wear a child's T-shirt with a slogan such as 'Unhappy Chick' and drive a Vespa."

At what point does this woman need to be locked up? If you wear a child's t-shirt and drive a vespa, you'll look like a homeless mod who's been raiding the skips behind Mothercare. Is that 'in' for this season?

Sarah Sands then quotes a line from a so-called "emo" song: "Don't jump around when I go to shows, I must be an Emo". By now, parents of Westlife fans will be shocked at this (although they should be shocked at their choice in 'music').

"'Stop my breathing and slit my throat, I must be an Emo". No, you must be a murder victim.

Let's get this straight - that song, which is actually called 'Emo Kids', is a piss-take AGAINST Emos. It's comedy rap, from a comedy rap duo. Here's their official MySpace page, have a listen - http://www.myspace.com/adamandandrew

Sarah then stops quoting from the tongue-in-cheek song (which she takes seriously as genuinely 'Emo', maybe she reckons Sandi Thom is the second coming of the Sex Pistols), and continues writing her bile...

"The courting of misery and death is a long-established teenage tradition. How many bedroom walls have been plastered with posters of drippy pre-Raphaelite heroines, or Marc Bolan or Kurt Curbain?" What!? Has this woman ever listened to T-Rex? Marc Bolan wasn't a doom merchant. He happened to be in a car that went into a tree, that's how he died. Hey, should all teenagers put up posters of Princess Diana?

More black-is-white-isms are in abundance. "The word femme-fatale is Goth based" - oh, not, say, FRENCH-based? Or have Goths now got a monopoly on the French language? Vous parlez beaucoup de merde, Mademoiselle Sands, vous cul enorme.

"Many of the alluring women of our time - Nigella Lawson, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Lily Allen - have a touch of the Goth about them."

WHAT THE BLEEDING FUCK!? Hello!? Lily Allen is a bit goth? On what planet? Sophie Ellis-Bextor, gothic? And not the singer behind a cheesy-albeit-floor-filling one-hit-wonder?

I was going to say that the only thing these people have in common with "goth" is black hair, but you can't say that about Debbie Harry. Which would make Victoria Beckham, Lisa Stansfield and Cher more appropriate to fit that list of 'goths', although it resembles the female cast list for the next I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

Russell Brand, we 'learn' is "is about 90 per cent Goth". Clearly this hack has just been looking at a picture in a Heat-style magazine and thought "ooh, bloke in eyeliner, that's um, very goth!"

I'm willing to bet a busful of asylum seekers with the Daily Mail, that Sarah Sands has never ever once heard Russell Brand talk or watched one of his shows. He's a massive fan of the Dirty Pretty Things (presumably a goth band to Sarah if Lily Allen has now entered the fold), plays them, The Who and Oasis on his BBC 6music radio show quite a lot.

Having now pretty much summed up an entire musical genre as inaccurately as possible (and you'd be hard pressed to deliberately trounce her article, although I will make two attempts now - Ronan Keating is a Norwegian black metal trio, and Ice T is a Venezualen children's folk choir), Sarah signs off with her 'concern' (her real concern being reaching the target word count so she can get paid for her factually-divorced article)...

"What worries me is that teenagers are less equipped to manage strong emotions and a cult of suicide could have real and horrible consequences."

Well Sarah, it could be worse. They could end up reading the Daily Mail, with its horrific slurs on immigrants (just like German newspapers did in the mid-1930s, not that I'm trying to drop a hint, mein fraulein).

But wait! I still have the most daftest quote, and I haven't mentioned it yet...

"While I loved punk for its energy, Goths were too bloodless to lift a finger."

Right, Sarah Sands there, pretending to have been associated with punk. Got that?

Now read this...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=398677&in_page_id=1787

If those are the words of a "punk", then I'm off to wail poetry with Lily Allen outside Birmingham Central Library...

Oh, and ending on a personal note, thanks for the feedback on my last two blog articles. I've had a very good message today, no praise in it (thankfully, I don't deserve it, as I said), but from someone who did something similar and also regrets it. I've also seeked treatment, which is on its way.

These incidents have made me realise that prejudice against people with depression and/or mental health issues, is simply not on. Paul Merton, Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock - they have suffered with these things, and yet, became great great people. There are a few people I know personally who have such issues, and now I can emphasise with them.

Now that I've blogged my usual sort of article today, it doesn't mean that I'm feeling "better", I'm still the same, but trying to focus on everyday stuff, because if I lose the ability to do that, my life will be even less deserving of merit.

Do feel free to comment on the actual Emo/Goth bullshit story, as I know the feedback for my last two blog articles remained private (for fair reasons).

On the goth front, I own 'greatest hits' albums from Joy Division and The Damned. I have worn eyeliner, and I've dyed my hair black many times. I wouldn't in a million years describe myself as a "goth", but maybe the Daily Mail have me down as one, alongside Mr Benn (he wore a black trouser suit, y'know).

And isn't ironic that one of the biggest names in gothic music, Andrew Eldritch, went around with bleached blonde hair?

Gervais - The Board Game

2006-09-14T13:57:00.000+01:00

You rightfully sneer at those humour-free people who worship tiresome comedy catchphrases such as "Am I bovvered?" and "I'm a laydee!". Move forward one space.

Wasn't that you reprising the David Brent dance at Live8? Move back two spaces.

You get another universally-mocked faded celebrity on your show and write abusive lines for them to say, which is getting just as tiresome as the bunch of cliched catchphrases you targetted earlier. Move back five spaces.

You find one of Bernard Manning's old joke books in a skip behind the Embassy Club in Manchester. Move forward six spaces but miss your next turn while you think of ways to use the jokes in your next show in an 'ironic' context.

Do Not Adjust Your Set, It's Dubya

2006-08-30T13:56:00.000+01:00

US broadcaster CNN has apologised after an speech by George W Bush was accidentally broadcast over the top of an anchorwoman's chat with a colleague.

The conversation between Kyra Phillips and another woman would have been clearly heard, but the network accidently aired live footage of Mr Bush talking to New Orleans.

During the chat, President Bush feigned concern for non-white people, and ignored the issue of his administrations' failure on environmental control.

CNN apologised to viewers and Ms Phillips, citing "audio difficulties".

The programme was broadcasting about 90 seconds of the anchorwoman's conversation during what has been described as a bathroom or hair and make-up break, but viewers also heard Mr Bush's speech live from New Orleans.

The gaffe happened when an outside broadcast team thought it apt to air the views of the neanderthal cretin, spewing false platitudes in the very city he failed to protect. This action was akin to handing round a West Midlands Police Force Benevolent Fund tin at the release party for the Birmingham Six.

CNN issued a statement apologising for the error. "We apologise to our viewers for the president making the disruption."

Science Friction

2006-08-14T13:54:00.000+01:00

Right now we have a bunch of international astronomers gathering in the Czech Republic, to settle that age-old argument of "that Pluto, eh, is that a planet or an annoying cartoon dog?"

I'm not quite sure why you have to jet off to Prague to make this decision, although I do suspect it's to stage a pub crawl across the city. If the planet-ists make it across Charles Bridge for their final pint of Budvar, then yes, Pluto will cling on to the status its shares with Mercury, Venus, Earth, Wind and Fire.

It's a fascinating thing to hear of experienced sages reclassify things we've known all our lives. I, for one, cannot wait until this Pluto argument is sorted out, and we can have these boffins sort out more urgent matters of reclassification.

Such as Luton. I put forward the idea that this so-called "Bedfordshire town" is not a geographical 'town' in any sense, but is in fact a virus. Those who disagree with me should try spending any length of time in the wretched place.

Also, the words "Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper" will appear in The Daily Star, for reasons that have always been unclear to me. I should not need any scientist to point out the errors in that assumption, and hope that the Post Office rectify this mistake immediately.

We, the general public, are told Graham Norton is a "comedian", and not a "one trick pony who would only be funny if his testicles were wired up to the National Grid".

Scientific experts must also speak out against the popular misconception of Big Brother contestant Nikki being "entertaining" and "lovable". Granted, there is no Latin species name for "spoilt and irritating tortoise-faced gremlin with a penchant for naturally impersonating Veruca Salt at any given opportunity", but the biologist community must invent one, and insist that Heat magazine use it as a prefix to all their headlines about the whiny Baby-Jane-esque brat over the next six months.

I see so much work for the Tefal-heads. The misinformation out there is intense. The Vicar Of Dibley is a "comedy", Keane are a "rock band" and Coca-Cola Zero has a "great" "taste".

Somebody out there in Prague, please fix these things immediately. Just as soon as you've finished ogling the lapdancers at some neon-lit bar in Wenceslas Square.

No man is an island, no man watches Love Island

2006-07-20T13:53:00.000+01:00

Being one of those people who has worked on and off for television programmes in the past, I like to indulge in a piece of shaudenfraude every now and then at TV stations I'm no longer associated with.

The current sitting duck is ITV, and has been for the past six years. Before we fill our blunderbusses with yet more lead, let's remind ourselves that it is a barn-door-sized target, and is facing a lot of flak from the press and advertisers. It's such a huge and predictable thing to mock, that I need not bother. Why kick a man when he's down?

However, I am an evil bastard, and it's what I do. Besides, this is a myspace blog from someone sitting in his pants, and accepts that scoffing three packets of Morrisons' own brand crisps will suffice as lunch. You're not gonna get Proust here, let's face it.

So, dispensing with any pretensions towards an articulate and wittily sardonic prose that cuts into the media world, let's sum up ITV1's ratings decline with three words everyone is thinking.

ITV IS SHIT.

Yes, that's pretty much all there is to say. It really is shit. Absolute grade A fertilizer. It's wall-to-wall banality, almost as if they want to lose viewers.

With the amount of cathode-ray-tube-targetted faeces being pumped out by ITV1, I initially thought they hired Alan Partridge and Roger Melly as programme commissioners.

Obviously, this is incredibly wrong, because programme ideas such as 'Arm Wrestling With Chas And Dave' and 'Celebrity Shitbucket' would be ten times more entertaining than ITV1's current centrepiece.

In case you haven't caught it, ITV1's current televisual gem is entitled 'Well-Off People Sent To Exotic Foreign Island In Which You Can Send Money To Them Via Text Message And Premium Rate Phonelines As Aforementioned Well-Off People Moan About The Swimming Pool Being A Little Bit Cold'.

Some wags in the papers have coined the nickname 'Love Island', which is hilariously being used as though it was an official title in some quarters. Granted, it's shorter than the real title I mentioned earlier.

What's wrong with this programme then? Well, why let my foul supermarket-own-brand-crisp-tinged rantings pollute your impressionable young minds?

Here are the cold hard figures from July 19th...

4.5m [BBC1] Ten O'Clock News
2.3m [BBC2] Grumpy Old Holidays
2.2m [ITV1] Love Island
2.3m [CH4] Lost
2.4m [Five] CSI:New York

Yes, astonishingly, ITV still haven't realised that their output is so bad, that twice the amount of people would rather watch the latest results of the tit-for-tat semitic war from the middle east (Hezbollah are one up on penalties, by the way) than see the ITV1-funded antics featuring the daughter of a woman who was married to an abusive man who had his peak of fame sixteen years ago for crying on television and was last seen kicked out of a job at a struggling Conference football club.

Whilst it's all very easy to sneer at 'Love Island', we must applaud it for an excellent breakthrough in the science of languages and lexicon.

It's because of 'Love Island' that professional linguists have been teamed up with graphic designers to create a new western alphabet with 2,493 new characters, to be tacked on the end of those tawdry and 'tired-looking' 26 we currently use.

The final, and 2,519th letter is known as "kloom" (phonetic sound: "klwah"). It looks like the letter F turned 90 degrees, but with three new left serifs and the figure of Roger Moore standing behind it in a pose not unlike that energetic bit of the Macerena dance. Ah, you'll know what I mean when you order a new keyboard. (I believe it's a combination of CTRL, ALT, SHIFT and new letter "smrudge".)

Why? Well, you see, the letter 'Z' isn't up to the purpose of describing the absolute nothingness of these people's alleged 'fame' in the context of "[insert-lowly-comedy-letter-here]-list celeb". (I feel guilty for only using one set of inverted commas there - can that team come up with some new punctuation that would convey appropriate contempt at the millennia of light years away that Gazza's ex-wife's daughter's cousin's uncle's niece is away from anything approaching genuine fame?)

Many years ago, my father pointed out a man in a cafe, having recognised him as an actor who played a hotel manager in an episode of 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em'. He even went up to him, and asked him what he was up to these days. No irony or anything! It got worse. Shame-facedly, I was brought up to meet him too. Now, bless his socks, that man isn't actually bad or evil or anything, he was just a glorified extra in a 1970s sitcom, and he knew it. I think he looked as bewildered as I did, when he was 'spotted'.

What's my point here? Well, that man is about a thousand times more famous than any of those... people... on 'Love Island', put together.

Hell, I am more famous than them. I was in the audience for Chris-Evans-produced flop '18 Stone Of Idiot', and I had my name read out on BBC local radio last week. If anything, I should have my own ITV-branded digital channel, such is the way I am an interstellar uber-Elvis compared to the camera-hungry plankton currently playing out to no-one and his dog.

Can you believe that the channel that gave us Death On The Rock, Death Of A Princess, and the almighty Tiswas, is now paying actual cash for Kloom-list celebs to have a free holiday?

Why is this formerly mainstream broadcaster paying money for these people to have a holiday at the expense of the advertisers? Good hard-working honest companies, of the likes of Ocean Finance, do not need to see their ad budgets frittered away by someone-who-was-in-Hollyoaks-for-ten-minutes being flown to Fuji for a few weeks and then flown back to Britain. It wouldn't be so much a problem if the latter flight didn't happen.

"Ah, but Pete", you say. "You are being unduly harsh on a station now in a multi-channel environment", at which point I'll nod. "And for fuck's sake, put some trousers on, your potato sacks are all on display you slob", at which point I'll castigate you and flick the V-sign. "Okay, okay," you'll say, "getting back on the subject, what would YOU do about it?".

Well, the answer is quite simple. Given that 'Well-Off People Sent To Exotic Foreign Island In Which You Can Send Money To Them Via Text Message And Premium Rate Phonelines As Aforementioned Well-Off People Moan About The Swimming Pool Being A Little Bit Cold' is being tanked in the ratings by non-celebrity plain-vanilla common-or-garden now-in-its-seventh-year Big Brother, the answer is in us, the general public.

I certainly have some people in mind. Yes, the remaining viewers of 'Love Island', who can be found here on the interweb.

The interweb does attract some pretty strange freaks. When you realise that menwholooklikekennyrogers.com is an actual website, and that someone somewhere saw fit to create a fetish portal based on the concept of "Girls Custard-Pied While Wearing White Jeans", you know you'll find all kinds of wierdos. Like that loud-mouthed canine-hating trouserless prick on myspace with his six-year-old "look at me, I went to New York once" photo on his profile.

And so, the interweb, the one medium where man is truly without shame, we have the Official Love Island forums, where the output of the forum participants is 24-carat comedy gold.

It is, I propose, that these people - not the Kloom-listers - that should be the real stars of ITV1. Hell, let them run the channel. Why? I'll tell you why...

All of the following quotes are completely real. All of the following quotes are taken from just one thread (which shows how unintentionally funny the entire place is). All of the quotes are on the subject of 'Love Islands' ratings woes. Read on...

"Perhaps scheduling it away from the BBC news will help" says 'George Formby', who gives us the insight that the kind of person who wants to watch an ex-Hollyoaks actor sitting round a pool is being driven away by in-depth coverage of the politically-motivated Lebanon air-strikes.

"nothing to do with bb as that is rubbish this year, i personally think its the stopping for the news that is putting people off and no red button." - 'whatever', who fails to realise that Big Brother has 2-3 times the amount of viewers of 'Love Island' on any given night, thus his argument is that is own choice of viewing is at least 200 percent "rubbish".

"Why don't they move the news to ITV4?" suggests 'Rich Flair', who may already be on the ITV payroll with a comment like that.

"y don't dey get da luv islanders 2 read da news? dat way we get da best of both worldes and more viewers." - James Stoker, afflicted with Nine-Year-Old-Chav-Writing-A-Text-Message Syndrome.

Actually, why don't we go one better and have James Stoker reading the news? Lord knows we need cheering up. I can picture it now - "yo dis is da news type thing, and like, dere's been really hot weather, but I is not sayin' like that da weather is stolen, I is saying dat da weather is like really hot, ya know, and by the way dere's been some heavy shit going on in da middle east wid all dem arabs and whatever the other dudes are, sikhs or hindus or summat."

"gonna give up on this programme. everybody is making fun of it and saying people who watch it is sad with no life and with low IQ, you no not very bright. I dont want that reputation. even the sun r saying pp who watch love island r thick. its not fare. everybody is saying we r thick, they shud try wotching the show" - 'ohtheshame'. This is beyond parody.

"The Daily Sport might cover it." - 'Theeditor'. Yes, unwanted newspapers are often used to soak up piles of vomit, so this is not a radical change in purpose.

"I need a broadsheet to cover all my shitty stuff." - says 'Richflair', and I include it, only for another response from my favourite poster...

"i dont undustand wot some pp r saying on here. wot is a brodsheet" - 'ohtheshame', yes, the very one who said it was "not fare" that "who watch love island r thick".

"Look, I put a pit bull terrier next to a baby and took a photo!"

2006-06-01T13:51:00.000+01:00

MySpace is commonly abused by the hard-of-thinking for many ill-advised agendas. Like that crap folk singer who sings about the previously unknown concept of flower-donning punk rockers (surely the most lyrically incorrect hit since Alanis Morrisette's 'Ironic', and similarly annoying). Oh, and missing persons alerts, virus warnings, etc, which nobody ever seems to check to see if they're genuine. The potentials for a hoax are enormous.

If that weren't bad enough, there's the ever-increasing presence of "this MySpace user was killed a few days ago" messages, which sparked off from a genuine incident, although, to be honest, why not just leave the grieving to friends and families of the bereaved?

Today I have witnessed what is quite possibly the most retarded political petition ever.

Unknown to me, it appears that a mayor in California wants to pass a law that would require all pit-bull terrier dogs to be put down. Lovely stuff. I obviously don't live in California, and it'll never affect me, so I'd love to sign a petition in favour of ridding the world of these nuisance animals.

Unfortunately, the message came to me via a bulletin in which we were asked to pledge support AGAINST this new law. Which is never going to get my support, I'm a cat person. You don't get cats humping your leg, they don't chew the furniture, and they don't constantly bug you. Oh, and they know where to defecate. Canines always seem to be missing a few brain cells, social skills and a hygiene element.

Now, some schmuck has set up a website trying to gain sympathy for their luvvly cuddly ickle cootsy wootsy killer dogs' plight. The website - www.sorryagain.com - invites owners of dangerous dogs to send in photos of their pet, with the stipulation that there should be a caption mentioning the word "SORRY", as if the dog is apologising for the reputation it has.

The bulletin came to me with various images from the site, clearly made by people with the creative skills of a wet moth. I don't condone computer viruses normally, but if there was one to wipe out MS Paint on people's PCs, it'd get my support.

Tugging at the heart-strings, plenty of these photos showed treasured pets positioned conveniently next to the owners, and in some cases, small children and babies. Yes, great idea guys, get a potentially lethal animal and stick it next to a baby.

Still going for your hearts, the campaign site photos usually have the dog in a calm sedate pose, and gaining bonus points for being wide-eyed like a cutesy wutesy Japanese cartoon character. Aw! It's a sweet ickle pit bull! It means no-one any harm!

This is the kind of schmaltzy crud I'm on about...

I don't know about you, but anyone who places a deadly animal next to a baby is asking to be dressed in the next season's Strait-jacket Collection by Westwood.

Now, don't get me wrong. Not all pit-bull terriers are vicious cold-hearted killers. In fact, I work in an office with one that often wonders in, and it's really gentle, it's like a cat, only with very poor hygiene and an attention seeking complex.

Would I want to see them all destroyed? Not quite. I do have to question the sanity of whoever breeds or buys them, as, objectively, these are potentially killer animals - what is the point of owning one? I think it's small penis syndrome, like gun-owning nutters. You don't need it, but it makes you look hard! Yeah! Isn't that cool?

As I speak, the poor ickle doggy-woggy bulletin is winging round MySpace, being forwarded on by very naive folks. (I must say goodbye to the two people who have deleted me from their friends list due to objecting to babies being placed next to killer dogs, how nasty of me.)

The website continues to invite pit-bull-related pictures for display on their site.

Well, I do have a picture for their campaign and anybody who agrees with it. Just two seconds in Google, a hit of my PrtScrn button, and I have this...

Yep, just reinforcing the point that these dogs aren't that innocent at all. I do speak from experience - a schoolfriend was scarred for life across his body after his dog turned on him.

"Oh, but he must have been taunting him, pit-bulls do that when under attack" is a common excuse used by the defenders of dangerous dogs, which I've seen on web forums where the proposed California law is under fire. Well, in this case, no. What brought it on was hot weather. Just that, nothing else. Think about that if you're currently setting up your Kodak to get a nice piccy of Tyson sitting next to Junior.

Now, where does this madness end? What is the point in owning any breed of dangerous dog? They don't make you tough. They are tough, not the owner. Why not just get a normal dog? Far more photogenic, and the baby-savaging rates are quite low.

Better still, get a cat. Cats are the dogs bollocks, if you excuse the irony.

Hang on, I feel a change of heart. I'm thinking of starting a new crusade, with the aim to be even more absurd and moronic than sorryagain.com. Are you ready for this?

savemyhungrytiger.com

I'm gonna buy me a tiger, starve it for three days, and let it out in the streets for walkies. When the authorities turn up to destroy it, I'll be on the internet as quick as a flash, (because online petitions are highly respected and always work) uploading photos of my tiger sitting next to a two year old toddler.

Maybe I should take the photos seperately, and Photoshop them together later. He's starting to lick his lips...

Politician found to be incompetant shocker!

2006-04-25T13:49:00.000+01:00

Isn't it amusing to hear a detestable loathsome cretin act all pious and criticise us all, only for them to have some disgusting secret which will eventually be made public. I have come across such people in my life, but while there's no national recognition for the shameful oafs I've embarrassed (and am about to embarrass soon), we'll have to settle for Charles Clarke.

Charles Clarke is a member of the Labour Party, which makes him a full-time professional tosser. In fact, he's a cabinet minister, so a very high-ranking tosser indeed. Come to think of it, he's the chappy pressing for ID cards to be made compulsory for us Brits, because of the "war on terrrrrrism" invented by George Walker Bush, president of the 'Land Of The Free' (where they execute the mentally ill, and homosexuality is still outlawed in four states).

Despite the fact that 9/11 occurred in an ID-card-filled country, and that Spain had ID cards well before the Madrid train bombing took place, Mr Clarke still thinks they are useful devices. Well, maybe they would be if it weren't for the fact that they'll be created with information from our existing databases, already filled with bogus entries, and are hardly like to deter any terrorist.

PC: "Excuse me, what are you doing with that rucksack?"

Terrorist: "You filthy pig-dog westerner, I am going to blow up a bomb in Trafalgar Square, killing loads of non-believers, their blood will fuel our cause, Allah be praised!"

PC: "Er, do you have an ID card on you?"

Terrorist: "Er, come to think of it, no."

PC: "Right, go home son."

Terrorist: "Okay. Sorry to have bothered you."

Fittingly, parts of our media have exposed the folly of ID cards, and also the rather disgusting bully-boy actions of the US administration over their "mission of peace" (er, an illegal military invasion) to two third-world countries (verdict: not a lot of peace going on there at the moment, must try harder, 'World Superpower').

Mr Clarke, being a world class tosser doesn't like this one bit. Here's what he said last week on the media: "As these descriptions and language are used, the truth just flies out of the window, as does any adherence to professional journalistic standards or any requirement to examine the facts and check them with rigour ... "

Well, well, I guess we must get on fact-checking and ensuring jobs are carried out with the utmost professionalism then.

With that out of the way, I'll end this entry with an update from BBC News.

The home secretary says he "regrets" that 1,023 foreign prisoners have been allowed to walk free when they were meant to be considered for deportation.

They include three murderers and nine rapists, Home Office figures show.

Charles Clarke said he could not say "hand on heart" that they would all be tracked down but said he did not think it was a "resigning matter".

Don't offend my new found religious beliefs

2006-04-03T13:47:00.000+01:00

Despite massive poverty in their country, the Pakistan authorities have a strange idea of priority.

The Pakistan government are "seeking an internationally applicable law against blasphemy", says BBC News, based on their outrage against websites that have been inviting people to draw cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea, but falls flat as the basis that we are all Muslims, is somewhat false. Therefore someone drawing a picture of Mohammed rolling in pig faeces would not be blasphemy to me.

Every day I thank God I'm an agnostic. I don't have to put up with the bullshit of some book written thousands of years ago. I don't have to have dumb superstitions about contraception. I can eat crawfish if I want to do so. I even say hello to gay people.

Why is it that people who claim belief in religion try and stop my rights? A few years ago, some total moron working in a chemists decided not to sell the morning-after pill to someone because they (the worker that is) were Catholic. That's right, not the customer - this guy was putting his religious beliefs onto other people. It was the only chemists open at the time, too. Scum bag.

"Oh, but Peter", some of you may whine, "that's what he believes, he should be allowed to do that". Fine, as long as he accepts a deservedly given P45. If you're working in a chemists, you have to expect to serve contraception to people, yes, people who somehow have chosen not to share your narrow-minded religious belief. He picked the job, he should know what comes with it.

So there's no need to drag religion into anything, especially when you consider almost all the major religions have, in their holy books, policies encouraging all or any of the following:

* Male superiority.
* Homophobia.
* Forced marriages.
* Slavery.
* Discrimination against non-believers

The last thing the world needs is more religious law. "Blasphemy" is a pretend offence. It's about as valid as crying over someone telling you that Santa Claus isn't real. (Actually, come to think of it, there's more evidence for Santa Claus being real than there is for any "god" of a major religion being real. Apologies to any Claus-ites out there.)

Still, if we are going to have a religion or religions protected by international law, then we need to include the one me and my friends invented a few years ago down the pub.

We are the Church of Gary Wilmot. We are the best religion because:

* None of our preachers have interfered with small children, so we're better than the Catholic church.
* We're not involved with the bigoted Ian Paisley at all, so we've risen above Protestants..
* We can pick up that weekend overtime pay, so that places us above Judaism.
* We won't force you marry anyone, so we've eclipsed Hinduism.
* Your property is yours, let's face it, and thus, we're above Buddhism.
* Here, have some blood transfusions. We score over Jehovah's Witnesses.
* We couldn't give a damn about what two consenting adults do in private as long as no-one is harmed, this gives us wins over all branches of Christianity and Islam.
* The existence of our god is actually provable, quite a novelty for any religion these days. We've eclipsed all the others!

As a founder of this religion, I'd like to add in some rules however. Rules forcing everyone to make fun of religious icons (yes, even our own, to be fair, that Wilmot is asking for it), use contraceptives and to drink beer daily.

By default, followers of most other religions will cause blasphemy against us if they go about their beliefs, so we can file suit against them. And wipe out every other religion by the power of the lawyer!

Hell yes! I never thought I'd say something positive about lawyers.

And here concludes the most offensive blog entry I've ever written. Not that it's offensive to me, but hey, if you need an imaginary friend to tell you what to do, that's your problem.

Stuck between soft rock and a hard choice

2006-03-09T13:46:00.000Z

"It's just Spinal Tap isn't it? It's just a lark. I'm not sure they think so, though. I think they take it seriously. They made a little splash in the US but, man I don't get it at all."

This was a comment made against novelty joke rock band The Darkness. Whilst I'm all for mocking the pretensions of Justin Hawkins, there is one problem with the above quote. It's made by Jon Bon Jovi. A hairspray queen who has made a career out of singing the same song for two decades, and it's not even a good song.

I'm still baffled at the decision to degrade Spinal Tap too. As if Bon Jovi are above that! Face it, they're a boy band that happen to hold guitars, and make 'music' for housewives.

Foxtrot, Oscars

2006-03-07T13:44:00.000Z

I continue spewing my thoughts onto the interweb with a vague attempt at being topical, because it sure beats dullard blogs that tell you "I had a cheese sandwich for lunch at work today".

UN estimates show how catastrophic the proportion of seriously uninteresting blogs are. 31ill be on the subject of having a bad day at work. 12ill inform you of the colour the author is painting their room. 9ill be a report of meeting a famous celebrity, but it'll turn out to be an apocryphal account from a friend of a friend who read it on Popbitch anyway.

Right, we've just had the Oscars, have we not, and a bunch of media luvvies are in a tis over some gay cowboy movie that triumphed at Sundance, failing to do well at the Oscars. This despite the fact that many years ago, South Park well and truly ripped the piss out of Sundance because every movie in it was about gay cowboys. Hey, Hollywood, get some original ideas.

And with that, here is another buckletload of my opinion, that relates to the film industry. The ten most important films of all time. Not necessarily the best, or technically outstanding. Just ones that are significant to me. And what matters to me, will matter to you. Because I say so.

10) DIGBY, THE BIGGEST DOG IN THE WORLD
Was this really on at the cinemas? A wacky Jim Dale 'romp' which sees the family pet, well, the title gives it away, doesn't it? Could be filling the gaps in any bank holiday schedule back in the days when ITV was a patchwork of wildly varying companies. Anglia would stick this on one week, and you would find it on the next, if you could pick up Central (or "ATV" as we say in the old money).

9) WATERSHIP DOWN
Children's cartoons are there to entertain us with falling anvils and acme bird seed, are they not? Well, this is a strange tale of some rabbits on a farm. For a children's feature, it took the genuinely eerie step of highlighting death. Depicted by mangy rabbit corpses. And a dark disembodied scarlet-eyed rabbit head 'ghost'. If that wasn't frightening enough, you had to contend with Simon and Garfunkel providing the sound track.

8) CARRY ON ABROAD
An introduction to holidaying stereotypes via this almost satirical look at the 70s boom in Spanish package holidays. Rather out of form for Carry On to have Charles Hawtry NOT playing the ambiguously gay character, and so it languishes at this lowly spot in the chart. Would have been further down still, if it were not for Peter Butterworth's comedy-foreigner character calling Stuart Farquar (Kenneth Williams) "Mr Farty-Arse".

7) BUGSY MALONE
I despise musicals. They're all crap. Except for three of them. This one decided to go with an all-child cast, set in the context of America's prohibition era of the 1920s. The really surreal twist is that all the gangsters use gunge and cream pies, which are fatal to anyone on the receiving end. A good job that universe didn't have Tiswas then, that'd be a live weekly massacre broadcast to the nation. Still, you have to admire the reasoning - you can't have real blood and gore mixed with children. Bonnie Langford was in this. Now that she's old enough, I'll get my gun.

6) GHOSTBUSTERS
"But you can't see that, it'll scare you", said my ill-informed mum in 1984, not realising that 1) this is a comedy and 2) any idea of ghosts 'succeeding' is obviously quashed by the film's title. About eight years later, I did get to see, as afternoon filler on the telly. I liked it. I bought the DVD. I even bought the DVD to the sequel. Oh dear.

5) GREASE
The only other musical in this list. "But Pete", I hear my audience of one reader cry, "you said you liked three musicals". Well, yes. The remaining one is the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and that appears to be set-up to parody 50s horror b-movies. Thing is, that's a subject that has been parodied many many times since. By the time I actually got round to watching Rocky Horror, I couldn't see what the fuss was about. Hence it doesn't appear in this top tne. Richard O'Brien's good though, and Meatloaf gets killed, so those are two positive factors about the film. The crossdressing/lingerie idea is a bit fun, but I suspect it's the major thing that this film has a cult following - lots of repressed folk wanting to put on fishnets. That's wrong, because 1) fishnets are damned itchy and 2) I have been associating fishnets, and indeed, suspender belts, with speeded-up chase sequences from Benny Hill. Hence not even the hottest FHM model will do anything for me when they're in such items. Oh yes, back to Grease - damned catchy tunes and a plotline that eight-year-old me could follow. Just. American Graffiti is better though.

4) CARRY ON CAMPING
Best Carry On film ever. It's Charles Hawtry announcing his name as "Muggins, Charles Muggins". The unrivalled double-act of Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw as the sleaze-merchant and accident-prone hanger-on. Their prudish girlfriends. Peter Butterworth saying "paahnd". I won't mention THAT bit with Barbara Windsor, it's overrated.

3) MONTY PYTHON'S QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
"How do you know he's a king then?"
"He's not covered in shit"

2) THREADS
Stick yer Exorcist, yer Omen, yer Amityville, yer Friday the 13th, yer Evil Dead... this is genuinely the most scariest film ever, because of the possibility of it being real. It's a BBC-funded project, that followed the realistic aftermath had a nuclear bomb got dropped on Sheffield in the mid-80s. Those were the days, with a crazy extreme-right-wing American president who believed in military might no matter how many innocent people could be in the firing line. Thank goodness things aren't like that any more...

1) MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN
"Python is Satan" said one placard waved by a handful of Christian fundamentalists who wanted this film banned, not realising that it actually says nothing against Jesus Christ or Christianity, but in fact pokes fun at followers of religion who get it wrong. As well as pissing off people who worry about coveting their neighbour's oxon (never bothered me, my neighbour's got a bloody terrific ox, and I'm not ashamed to admit that), this is the only comedy film where every gag generates a belly-laugh. Not even Airplane gets me laughing as much as this film. The timing is flawless, the satire is heavy while being incredibily subtle, and it's thankfully low on catchphrase-based humour, so because it doesn't generate "Ni! Ni! Ni!" from pub bores when you mention it, this is why it marginally beats '....Holy Grail'.

And none of these films won an Oscar. Titanic and Gladiator did.

Foxtrot Oscars.

Smack My Brits Up

2006-02-23T13:42:00.000Z

Like a geography teacher dancing at a sixth form disco, there's nothing as amusing as someone terminally uncool trying their damnedest to be hip. Here in the UK, we have a national institution dedicated to such an endeavour. It's called the Brit Awards, organised by the BPI. The mere handful of people over the age of 12 who do sit up and value this ceremony of giving meaningless tokens to meaningless acts confirm that Darwin's theory remains unproven.

In any case, I should be getting a bit of flak, because it's been over a week since the Brit Awards occurred. A whole seven days! That's the average career-span of a typical boy band these days. Sorry for being late with this one.

Every year, the record market shrinks ever more, thanks to people within the BPI insisting on daft chart regulation. We used to get four tracks on a CD single, but in the late 90s, the industry kow-towed to demands by manufactured pop acts into setting the maximum amount of tracks to three. And these pillocks wonder why they're not selling records any more.

Let's focus on one BPI member - former WEA chief John Reid, who once signed someone to a 500,000 five-album deal, stating "he is very talented singer and fans will buy his records because of that".

That 'singer' was Craig Phillips, a member of the public who won a reality show. He did have a single out, it flopped. Not really surprising, as Craig admitted to the press "I've never sung in the bath, let alone a recording studio".

Still, in 2002, the BPI saw fit to elect Mr Reid to their council. So now have a little insight into who actually votes for these Brit Awards. I'm not sure what substance was in the coffee that night at the BPI's AGM, but perhaps the management were having a laugh in deciding to have this failure of a man on board. He could be there for comic relief, alongside that Decca official who famously said "four-piece guitar bands are out, Mr Epstein".

You only need to see the headless-chicken-like panic at the way the recording industries are worried about MP3s. These emporers lauded it about with their new clothes for ages, and the public took the right stance by telling them where to stick their overpriced CDs. As this battle raged on, I recall one Sony executive in a newspaper making a statement as to why record labels were necessary. "We have invested in talent," said this exec, "such as Big Brothas". If you're saying "who?", don't worry. Like the failure of Craig Phillips to be the next, well, anything, the phrase 'Big Brother' does not tie in with music.

Lest we forget, let's take a look at some of the past winners of Brit Awards. These are all genuine, and more's the pity...

1987
British Group: Five Star
Around this time, the band were on a phone-in on children's Saturday morning show Going Live, where one child caller asked the band "Why are you so fucking crap?". Clearly a rhetorical question.

1988
British Single: Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up"
"Can't sing, can't play, can't dance... you'll go far!" went the pseudo-witty Kit-Kit TV commercial of the time. What they should have said was "can't sing, can't play, can't dance, you're Rick Astley, that dignity-divorced arse-monkey".

British Producer: Stock/Aitken/Waterman
"Oh, we hated them at the time, but now it's all so good" say so many 'post-ironic' pundits. No. No, no, no. They were shit then. They are shit now. They will always be shit. Apply this to the Take That reunion, the Spice Girls, Vanilla Ice, etc. Cheese has a sell-by date for a reason.

British Breakthrough Act: Wet Wet Wet
People will argue about musical tastes 'til the end of time, the fools, not realising that my taste remains the best on the planet. Whilst indie kids will moan at R&B/urban (oblivious to the excellent output from Outkast, Beyonce, Blackstreet, Aaliyah, etc), and chavs will sneer at rock/metal/punk (ignorant to the passionate rage of The Clash, Deftones, Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols, etc), there is one musical genre that is total excrement through and through. That is LOVE SONGS. Crooners who sing about love - why? They aren't singing that because they are in love, they're doing it for the money. Look at the most prolific of them - Phil Collins and Chris De Burgh. Both cheated on their wives. Proof that romantic music has about as much sincerity as day-old plastic bucket of petrol garage forecourt flowers. I'm supposed to be focussing on Wet Wet Wet here, and I am unaware of any polygamous goings on from their chief warbler Marti Pellow. But then, that's not surprising, it is Marti Pellow after all.

1989
British Male Solo Artist: Phil Collins
Around the time he had that hit 'Another Day In Paradise' that purported to be about the suffering of Britain's homeless. That juxtapositioned itself well with Phil's public adoration of the then Conservative government.

British Breakthrough Act: Bros
Picking on Bros would be like punching a baby. Well, twin babies at least. Clad in denim. With Grolsch bottle tops on their trainers. And singing "Oooh-yeah" in an attempting-to-be-macho-but-coming-out-really-camp voice that has only been topped by Will Young. Sod it, let's roll up the sleeves.

1991
International Breakthrough Act: MC Hammer
The 20th Century's answer to Nelly.

1993
British Breakthrough Act: Tasmin Archer
Known only for two things. 1) The chart hit 'Sleeping Satellite'. 2) Being a target of a surreal 'celebrity badger' running gag by Harry Hill. I have made that list in reverse order.

1995
International Breakthrough Act: Lisa Loeb
An old joke: "How do you confuse an idiot? Fish!". The gag achieves its aims to most people, I guess, but if you do have a fetish for seeing people confused, simply ask them the title of Lisa Loeb's second chart hit.

British Dance Act: M People
The post-rave fallout, the rise of house superclubs, the DJ culture, the Prodigy winning over rock-orientated festivals with a hybrid of critically acclaimed sound, The Chemical Brothers' first steps towards a decade of chart limelight, the seeds of Big Beat being sown, the explosion of Ibiza, yes, that was Britain's globally-important dance music scene in 1995. So let's give the award to a hotel cabaret act with a female singer who sounds like a man with his testicles in a vice.

British Breakthrough Act: Oasis
I'm not knocking Oasis here, I raise this point to highlight the ineptitude of the Brit awards - that typical policy they have of placing votes against bands already made very popular in the past 12 months. The surefire bet, all done at the expense of being a exponent of risk-taking cutting-edge talent. Arctic Monkeys won an award this year, great band, but you know the Brit committee just looked at their headlines rather than listen to their album. The Brits - voted for by Heat magazine. Probably.

1997
International Breakthrough Act: Robert Miles
A man who created a plinky-plonky piano house-lite annoyance, called it music, and got a hit with it. He then did this again, about two or three times with the notes slightly rearranged.

British Female Solo Artist: Gabrielle
It's 1997. I am Princess Diana, and Gabrielle is a Paris underpass pillar. Resultant metaphor: Gabrielle goes right through me.

1998
British Female Solo Artist: Shola Ama
Quirky fact! Peter Townshend and Roger Daltry really won this Best Female Solo Artist award. Well, it seemed like it to me, because I'm pretty damned certain that as this no-mark Shola Ama walked towards the stage, the audience were shouting "WHO!?".

1999
Freddie Mercury Award: Jubilee 2000
An award not seen since, er, 1999. And in case you're wondering, "Jubilee 2000" was a campaign to get big western nations to cancel the debt of third world nations. I saw Geldof taking notes. Meanwhile, it's 2006. Britain gets 1.1billion a year from poor nations that owe money to it.

British Female Solo Artist: Des'ree
"Life! Oh, life! Doo-do-doo!" screeched soul harpy Des'ree. Ironic really, hearing her using the word "life" so many times instigated a sucidal tendencies.

British Male Solo Artist: Rodney Williams
Where the emporer picked up his new clothes...

2000
Outstanding Contribution: Spice Girls
Do I even have to add a comment to this?

International Female: Macy Gray
Thankfully, ths one's fallen off the radar. Seems like the chart-buying public got tired of this professional Marge Simpson impersonator.

Pop Act: Five
Granted, pop music in the noughties is going to carry more excrement than a nursing-home duvet, and I suppose I shouldn't be picking on it that much. I'd try to say something nice about Britain's premier 'unconvincing-thug' boy band Five, but all I can come up with is that they are not Daphne and Celeste.

British Album: Travis "The Man Who"
Twelve years after winning their first Brit, too! A canny idea for Marti and the boys to rename their band to Travis, and continue putting out the same bland monotonous dirges. Record shops mistakenly placed this stuff in the "indie" section. Yes, what cutting edge stuff we have here. A song about a piece of wood, well done guys. And then using the word "turn" many many times in place of meaningful lyrics, and titling the resulting blandfest with that word. A feat they repeated in 2001 with "Sing". Let's not forget how this antithesis-to-all-that-is-Clash made their mark either, with their anthem that goes "Why does it always rain on me, is it because I lied when I was 17?", which completely ignores the issues of atmospheric fronts and the water cycle, much like the band have ignored the issues of soul, punk rock, energy-injected tunes and stabbing Embrace in their faces instead of emulating them.

2001
British Female Solo Artist: Sonique
Songs can be like buses. Take the justifiably-forgotten Sonique. She waited ages for a hit, got three at once. And just like buses, her hits didn't sound at all pleasant, were overpriced, and regularly took shortcuts to complete the stop quota at Willesden Green. Er, scrub that last one.

British Breakthrough Act: A1
Jesus weeping on a bicycle! They've applied the term "breakthrough" to a boy band that impersonate a third rate Take That tribute band, minus Rodney, Mark, Howard and Jason.

2002
British Female Solo Artist: Dido
This 'singer' has a relative in Faithless, the band that produced Insomnia. Dido herself takes a contrary role to that. Within a mere minute of hearing her dull-as-porridge ballads, Insomnia is completely cured.

2003
British Urban Act: Ms Dynamite
Ah, the anti-war celebrity who recently started a fight. It's no surprise that this person is billed as a cutting-edge passionate and talented singer, yet turns out not to be so. Dynamite blows.

2004
British Urban Act: Lemar
It is decreed by the British music industry that some runner-up of a reality TV show is better than the Streets. Given what I said above about one of the judges having been responsible for giving a Big Brother winner a 500,000 five-album deal, I was expecting Nadia's single to elevate him/her to Outstanding Contribution To Music status. That didn't happen, but I did get told that 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' winner Kerry Katona once had a record deal for some reason or other, singing with two other reality TV show contestants.

2005
British Breakthrough Act: Keane
Did these Coldplay-wannabes ever turn up to pick up their award? It'd be pushing it gone 8pm, well past their bedtime.

BRITs25 - The Best Song Award: Rodney Williams - "Angels"
An award dedicated to the past 25 years of British music, with the obvious intent in avoiding the cliche of Bohemian Rhapsody or Imagine when it comes to asking the public what their favourite song is. And the British public need taking out with a crossbow, for choosing this overrated dirge as the best thing from two and a half decades of music! It was up against Joy Division's ':Love Will Tear Us Apart' and Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights'! Where's your taste, UK? This slushy ballad has as much genuine sentiment as an Asda 8p Valentine's card. One that's fallen from the shelf, too. With several footprints on it. Handed to your loved one in November. Christ, it's not even Rodney's best song! (Not that picking his best song would be a pleasant task - it's like having a beauty contest on a leper colony.)

British Single: Will Young "Your Game"
Will has fought hard for his success in the charts, scraping his way to the top by only having the support of a prime-time television series and a multi-millionaire record chief.

At the first awards, things were very interesting. The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was awarded best British Album, and the Fab Four themselves (John, George, Ringo and the other one) won best British Group. Only one problem, this was the year 1977, a full decade after the album was released, and quite a while after the Beatles had split up. Fitting in with this glorious inconstistency was Queen winning best British single for their 1975 hit Bohemian Rhapsody.

The final item I must note from that very first awards ceremony, is that Richard Burton won something for best "non-musical record". I'm surprised they haven't brought this back for this year. James Blunt gets my vote for that.

Fags for the memory

2006-02-15T13:41:00.000Z

"Typical nanny state", yelled one smoker yesterday. Actually, substitute 'wheezed' for 'yelled', because that was the state this guys' lungs were in. Not that I'm mocking the afflicted, oh no, I'm just mocking the chemically addicted.

Yes, by summer 2007, pubs and clubs in England and Wales won't allow smoking. Already, there are phlegms of disgust across the nation.

Normally, I'd be on the side of those ranting against the government's latest plan to tell people what to do. The argument at first sounds rational. Why shouldn't smokers continue as they are? Why is Tony taking away their right to enjoy a cigarette? They know it's unhealthy and they've made the choice to continue that habit, much like beer drinkers and people who nick chips off your plate. There's much muttering of 'civil liberties' and 'human rights', but hold on, I don't think the smokers can see the wood for the trees. Probably because there's too much haze emanating from their Silk Cut. I think it's time to address a few smokers' cliches.

"Wot about drinking and junk food? That's bad for you too, but you don't see the government cracking down on that."

When I make the choice to scoff down a mustard-laden hot dog, or quaff a Guinness, it's purely me who is consuming that, no-one else. My messy eating habits would have to escalate to the point where I look like an epileptic on Tiswas before anyone else gets my grub in their gob.

The same is not true of cigarette smoke. When there's a smoker next to me, I'm having a cigarette, whether I want to or not. The audacity of the complaining smokers in the newspapers this week makes me wonder if they'll start charging me for quaffing a portion of their John Cancer Specials.

"We pay proportionately more than non-smokers for the NHS through the cigaratte taxes"

Yes, indeed you do. And you'll be needing the NHS proportionately more than non-smokers too. Still, it's your choice to effectively burn a five pound note every day.

"It's for my nerves, I can't get through the day without one!"

I'm not sure how I've managed to survive three decades without following the 'advice' of this statement.

There are few things that get on my nerves. Rising bills, country invasions described as peace missions, James Blunt, piss-poor public transport, religious fundamentalists and rising council tax.

Not ever in my life, has the fact of not having a burning toxic stick laced with over 2,000 carcinogens, ever worried me.

Also, why is that smokers buy deodorant? What a pointless task and waste of resources. It's like buying football boots for Stephen Hawking.

"Look, we're going to die some day, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow."

And this is why Planet Earth will be better off without you. You've took the decision place a stick of dead leaves, wrapped up in paper, and plugged in with a mouse tampon, into your mouth, and to set fire to it. You utter schmuck. In your head, you're James Dean. In reality, you're Dot Cotton.

And one of your ultimate expectations of life is to be killed by the number 23 to Streatham Hill. Well, I won't be missing you, and neither will the bus driver.

I can avert the national terrorist threat.

2006-02-14T13:39:00.000Z

The recent pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners have risen tensions in the Gulf, already a hotbed of unrest that has had its fires stoked in recent times by the crisis over the Danish newspaper cartoons.

As such, we are being warned to be on our guard against Islamic militants who are prepared to strike the UK as revenge for the West's invasion and exploitation of the Middle East.

I have a perfect solution that will appease the both the anger-fuelled Muslims and the open-minded westerner. We have to accept that the culture in the Gulf is one of 'an eye for an eye'. With that in mind, I have constructed this flawless proposal.

We, the British people, are saddened that some of our armed servicemen have abused their role. We offer compensation by handing over a highly prolific former soldier who has served in the British Army.

This man is James Blunt, who, for some reason, has shifted more albums than anyone else last year. Quite tragic really. I am willing for James Blunt to be handed over to anyone in the Middle East, even the most extreme anti-western groups (especially them), and they can do what they like with him. I recommend slow torture, preferably involving sulphuric acid and pliers.

"But Peter", I hear you cry, "this is irrational and you can't seriously propose that". You'd be right. We can't just jet that caterwauling fop off to the Gulf for an imminent (and welcome) death. More than one perpetrator was involved in the abuse scandal, and so, I nominate more of Blunt's ilk - like Daniel Powter, that bloke from Kubb, and all the other lamentable Tesco Value Chris Martins that the tone-deaf record industry are signing up even though the sound of a bedwetting school-bully-target warbling the word 'beautiful' every other second is something that has the shelf-life of milk.

Al-Jazeera can charge sky-high pay-per-view fees for Blunt's execution. I'd personally like to sign up to buy the DVD rights. On second thoughts, there'd be a queue so long that you'd need a full tank of petrol to reach the end of it.

A multi-millionaire makes a romantic gesture to me.

2006-02-13T13:37:00.000Z

This morning, I saw a red envelope on the doormat, addressed to me. "Ah," thought I. "How nice, the missus has got me a Valentine's card already", at exactly the same time a burden of guilt dropped on me as I realised I've done precisely nothing in gearing up for this year's annual Reason For Florists To Get The Rounds In.

Thing is, the envelope's writing was not that of my girlfriend's. What could it be? Someone playing a cruel hoax to make it look like I'm cheating on her? Someone doing a wind-up on me? Or even possibly a real actual Valentine from someone who doesn't know I'm attached?

Well, there was a real proper Valentine's card inside. It was from a businessman called Rupert. Now, I'm not that way inclined, but this bloke I do know about, and he is loaded. Was this a strange Indecent Proposal? Hey, I could do with the money. I would sleep with a guy for a few million pounds, oh yes. (I'd have to make sure the money is on the table first, I'm not falling for that trick again.)

Sadly, he wasn't offering his wealth of riches to me, but a different service. That of his satellite television business. It was actually an advertising shot from Sky. I've led quite a riddle here, with "Rupert" being that famous antipodeon billionaire with a huge stake in BSkyB.

No point taking up such an offer of romance from Mr Murdoch even if it did exist, because with the above-inflation price increases I had to accept in Sky's contract last year, I feel that Rupert has already screwed me.

As for the envelope, that was printed in a handwriting-like font, and has probably gone out to the seven million other Sky susbcribers out there.

Rupert, you're such a slut...

In the beginning, there was nothing.

2006-02-11T13:31:00.000Z

Blogs, eh? 99% of the bloody things appear to be social dullards talking about what they're going to have for dessert, and how their pet dog is recovering from an illness.

Well, none of that here, at least I hope not. I lead an ultimately boring life, peppered with the odd bit of fame when I go out and do things in the meeja industry. So, basically, I sit at home and watch DVDs, surf the interweb, but just occasionally have to speak to a celeb or someone vaguely celeb-like in the course of my travels.

I pretty much despise all blogs. They clutter up the internet with tales of nothingness, and opinions that really don't matter at all. Which is why I won't post as frequently as the average blogger. People should be banned from posting data to the internet, unless it's interesting. And who would be the judge of that? Well, me of course.

Everybody's entitled to my opinion.