Now That’s What I Call A Turkey
The title is Kate Muir’s headline for her film review in The Times of Walking On Sunshine, which she thinks is worth just a single star and could be a strong contender for Worst British Film of 2014.
I shall not be going!
Crossrail Is Even Now Having A Big Effect On London
Two stories I found today, show the sort of effect Crossrail is going to have on London.
This article from Ealing Today describes how Hanwell is going to get four trains per hour during peak hours of the day. Currently, it would appear it’s less than that. The report says this.
Dr Onkar Sahota, Labour Assembly Member for Ealing & Hillingdon said: “Whether it has been the re-opening of the South entrance to the station or the step-free access to platform level, the good news for Hanwell keeps coming.”
“I am pleased that after so much pressure from across the community, Crossrail have relented and will attempt to deliver four trains during peak hours.”
“I will continue to press the Mayor and Crossrail to ensure that we have a minimum of four trains per hour at all times, and will be watching closely to ensure that Crossrail come good on their pledge to deliver the long awaited Sunday service.”
There is also this report from Easier Property, which discusses how if your near a Crossrail station properties are doing better. It says this.
According to Hamptons International , transactions for properties within a mile of a Crossrail station grew by 21% in 2013, compared with the London average of 13%, and New Festival Quarter from Bellway Homes certainly echoes this London-wide trend.
And it is still four or five years before the new railway opens.
A Stupid Burglar
This story is so funny, you’d think it was made up by someone like the Monty Python team.
A man who broke into a home in Minnesota last week was identified and arrested after he forgot to log out of his Facebook page on the victim’s computer.
I suppose it also highlights one of the dangers of Facebook.
On the other hand he might have wanted a nice bed in a cosy American prison.
I Doubt I’ll Go Back To Salisbury
My plan had been to find a restaurant that was highly recommended by TipAdvisoralled Greengages Cafe. But I had a problem in that I couldn’t find it, as Salisbury doesn’t have any maps.
When I did find a map, after I’d walked back to the station, I realised that I must have walked past Catherine Street, where the restaurant is located. I thought it had been that street at the time, but there were no road names. Do you have to be psychic to find anywhere in Salisbury.
If cities and towns want to attract visitors, they must put up proper maps and signage. Salisbury could also do with more pedestrianisation or at least the banning of cars and trucks fom the centre. As I walked back to the station some idiot driver went past me at about fifty, as I was struggling to stay on the narrow pavement as a lady with a double buggy passed the other way.
Salisbury won’t miss me, if I never go back to the city again.
So lunch was a bottle of water from the Pumpkin and an EatNakd bar.
UKIP Would Shrink Without The Internet
This was the title of an article in The Times yesterday by Hugo Rifkind, in which he comes to some interesting conclusions. I particularly liked this bit.
The decline of traditional media — of printed newspapers, limited radio stations, and everybody watching the same TV news — is best understood as the end of media deference. No longer must we gain our understanding of the world via information collected, curated and presented by others. Instead, we can go looking for whatever we like. Consciously or otherwise, we each build our own little online universe.
I think that Rifkind is right and the world will be a worse place because people will not hear any views opposed to their own.
Boys With Be Boys
There is a lot of speculation in the media, as why Muslim men are flocking to fight in Syria and Iraq.
Was it ever any different?
Go back to the Middle Ages and it was rape and pillage in the Crusades or with Henry the fifth, and later it was piracy with Drake and Grenville.
Nelson And Wellington were not short of volunteers and in Victorian times, it was all about Empire building, with a small personal fortune thrown in, if you were lucky!
Perhaps the nearest parallel to that of Syria and Iraq today, was the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Many of those who fought in the Brigades or openly supported them went on to be important figures in later life.
You could also argue that both the First and Second World War was an outlet for many men, who had an excess of testosterone.
I also remember a General, saying that the Falklands War did a lot of good for Army recruitment.
I am a pacifist or more likely a coward, but we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn those, who go to fight in Iraq and Syria.
The ones we should condemn are the countries and arms dealers, who are giving the likes of the odious President Assad, the weapons they are using to kill their own people.
The Police Workload Due To Social Media
According to this article on the BBC, social media crimes are at least half of all frontline Police work. Here’s the first two paragraphs.
Complaints originating from social media make up “at least half” of a front-line police officer’s work, a senior officer has told the BBC.
Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, said the number of crimes arising from social media represented “a real problem”.
I’m not against reporting these crimes to the Police in any way, but I do think that this is a rather large load on the Police.
As a programmer, who has worked in data analysis for many years and as I feel I understand the Internet very well, I do not feel it is beyond the wit of programmers and companies to create a robust and trusted Internet-based system to deal with all the annoyances of the modern age.
Obviously, you could still go to the Police directly, but if say forwarding an offensive message to a semi-automated system had a sensible outcome, you might find this less trouble.
There are very few things that because of my physical and mental make-up that can be said to me as abuse. Although, I do get fed-up with some spam messages that seem to come to me every day. But I can understand how some people get offended and need their tormentors stopped.
I believe that a well-programmed system could handle much of the abuse and unwanted messages we get. If it became trusted and the sanctions it had taken against persistent nuisances were respected, people would think twice before sending offensive messages.
It might even stop crime and disrupt terrorist networks. As I write this, it has been said on the BBC, that you can follow what is going on with ISIS in Iraq through Twitter.
But then politicians don’t understand the power of technology and especially don’t like being bypassed by it. So we are more likely to see draconian laws on social media.
Sheringham
I spent an hour or so in Sheringham, but sadly I didn’t find anywhere suitable for lunch.
I was too late for lunch and too early for supper, so I just had half a pint of Aspall’s cyder and walked back up the hill to get the train back. I could have got plenty of unhealthy food and judging by the size of many of the visitors, there was an answer to “Who ate all the pies?”
It was a lovely day as the pictures show, but quite a few cafes and restaurants were closed.
It is also a town, crying out for the main street to be pedestrianised, as the traffic and the pavements crowded with the obese made walking up and down to the beach a real obstacle course.
My Musical Taste
As a teenager growing up in North London in the 1960s, I saw a lot of the bands of the time. I saw the Stones, the Animals, Adam Faith and quite a few others at the Regal Cinema in Edmonton.
We also mounted a school outing in 1974 to see the Beatles, supported by the Yardbird, at Hammersmith Odeon.
At Liverpool in the 1960s, the University always had the best bands and I saw such as the Who, Manfred Mann, John Mayall and many others on Saturday nights at the Mountford Hall in the Student Guild.
At that time, I also went to various concerts in London and saw Eric Clapton with John Mayall at the Manor House, with to say he got paralytic would be a severe understatement. I was also at Cook’s Ferry Inn, when the Animals tried out the possible replacements for Alan Price.
My going to concerts stopped around the late 1960s, as I was married and as our children were born in 1969, 1970 and 1972, we went out less and less.
It was about that time, that I discovered Dory Previn, for whom I have had an admiration ever since. I actually saw her in concert at the Donmar Warehouse sometime in the 1980s.
It is true to say that Liverpool, the 1960s and Dory Previn defined by musical taste.
I have only ever been to the occasional classical concert over the years, although C and I did go concerts featuring such as Cleo Laine. But she wasn’t a great concert goer either. In her last years, she did listen to classical music in her car.
I have never listened to music, whilst I work, usually I’ll be watching sport on television, or listening to it on the radio. If it’s not sport, it’s either news or a documentary. I make it a point not to watch any drama series these days, although, I’ll go and watch a film or a play. But I never watch films on television or at home.
Now, I don’t even have a DVD player. And I’m not even sure where the DVDs are!
The only concert I’ve been to, since I moved to London, was to see Kate Dimbleby sing Dory Previn, although I did see the Glasgow Citizens Theatre production of Backbeat.
Where music is concerned, I’m probably a lost cause.
Worst Day For Films?
I thought it might be nice to see a film, but The Times has reviewed ten films and gives them an average of 2.4.
So not much joy there!
The Anonymous Widower 