McQueen on the Green
I took this picture as I passed the Screen on Islington Green.
McQueen on the Green
It’s nice to see humour and creativity in something as mundane as a cinema advert. I can’t imagine a major chain doing something like this.
It’s Driving Me Mad
Sometimes things get into your memory and even Google and/or Wikipedia can’t get the reference.
An example is a play, which might have been a Play for Today. It starred, someone like Leo McKern as Sir Harry, a barrister, who was defending someone who was being tried for rape. He doesn’t get on well with the judge and feels that his client is guilty. So Sir Harry mimics the alleged rapist’s modus operadi and clothes and attacks another young lady in her flat. She then gives evidence and Sir Harry’s client is found not guilty. The judge feels that Sir Harry has been up to his old tricks and accuses him of getting his client off by unfair means. Sir Harry then pulls a gun and shoots the judge dead in his courtroom. The last scene is Sir Harry being led away saying that this will be his greatest case. ‘Sir Harry defends Sir Harry’.
So what am I remembering?
Miners Have a Go at the Iron Lady
The BBC has reported that the Iron Lady film has had protests in Chesterfield, which lost their coal mines, when she was Prime Minister.
My view is straightforward. Coal is a dirty fuel, that causes lots of ill health and is a major cause of global warming. Even with the small number of pits we have now, the death of miners is not unknown.
Mrs. Thatcher may have been the Prime Minister, who actually shut the mines, but in my view it was done about twenty years at least too late.
North Sea oil and gas, gave us the opportunity to abandon coal production and it should have been done in a managed and gradual way. I’d love to know, whether Prime Ministers before Mrs. Thatcher had thought of shutting the mines. After all, when the railways abandoned steam engines, a lot of coal wasn’t needed any more. So do those who want more mining jobs, want steam trains as well? And domestic coal fires, which created the smog of the sixties? Many days, I had to walk home from school in thick pea soup.
I should also say, that I’ve met quite a few people, from mining families and all were advised to get an education and avoid going down the pits.
How have other countries weaned themselves off coal? I found this article about the rise and fall of the German coal industry. It seems that German industry has managed to survive the loss of its prime energy source.
I suspect they have managed the run down of their industry much better. I can remember a proposal in The Guardian to use redundant miners to insulate our rather poor housing stock. Nothing happened, as far as I know!
We don’t learn either! Most of our vehicles are powered by fossil fuel, which don’t help the stopping of global warming. So when we bring forward proposals to help like wind, wave and tidal power, new electricity networks and rail lines, the Nimbys come out in force.
We can’t have it both ways, even if the Americans and the Chinese think they can.
I think I’ll prefer to go to hell on my two legs, a bicycle or a New Bus for London, rather than a fossil-fuel powered handcart.
Cutting Debts
I was listening yesterday to the BBC’s morning phone-in and they were talking about debts and especially how people have got into trouble over Christmas.
If I look at my finances over the last year, they have improved somewhat and I felt that although I’m living on my savings until my house is sold, I’ve probably got almost a year more before my avings run out, than when I moved here in December 2010.
So what major savings have I made.
The first is the the television, phones and broadband. I like Sky Sports, and the big saving is that I can’t have an obvious dish here, as it’s a Conservation Area. Although, I could probably hide one on the roof! I did try Virgin by cable to get Sky Sports 1 and 2. Now I’ve switched to BT Vision with of course Freeview. I now pay about £50 a month to get phone calls, broadband and Sky Sports 1 and 2.
I don’t seem to miss out on watching anything I want to, but the saving is a thousand on Virgin Media and a couple of thousand compared to Sky.
Note that I only rarely watch films on television and generally stick to the four BBC channels, the two Sky Sports channels and radio.
The biggest saving is not having a car. I don’t miss it one bit, although perhaps it would have helped on Christmas Day to get to my son’s. But with the amount of money I save, I can afford the occasional black cab or mini-cab.
Getting rid of the car has other benefits too in addition to the obvious financial and logistical ones.
You walk a lot more, which is obviously good for you. I always walk with my eyes open too and I see things in shop windows that I might like to buy to improve my lifestyle or things that are just interesting in the street.
Walking is a real joy in a city and in no way inferior to walking in the country. In fact, I think it is more thought-provoking.
So how many people with serious debt problems have still got the expensive television, the full Sky and an expensive car?
Practical Risk Taking
David Spiegelhalter is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University. His personal home page doesn’t look like most you find for academics of his august reputation.
We will all have the chance to see him on television tonight.
Not in some economics program about what the various rating agencies think of the euro or a discussion on the risk of smoking, but in the first edition of the BBC’s new series called Winter Wipeout. In an article in The Times today, he said that he considered it an obligation under my terms of employment to apply.
What did the University’s Health and Safety Department say? He does not disclose this in The Times.
Let’s hope though, that after his performance, where I hope he does well, that the politicians, bankers, businessmen and the general public take statistics more seriously. And act on what they say they should do!
The Ladykillers
I went to see The Ladykillers last night.
Shaftesbury Avenue is very easy for me, as I just got on a 38 bus all the way. Although, I did think of walking the last kilometre or so, as the traffic was so bad, as all the world and his wife, seemed to be driving into the West End.
The play was really worth seeing, with one of the most spectacular and innovative sets, I’ve ever seen in the theatre. The story and script stuck very much to that of the film, although with a few modern changes. I hadn’t realised before but the original very English screenplay had been written by an American, William Rose, who dreamt the whole thing and then wrote it down with the help of his wife, when he awoke. He later went on to write Guess Who’s coming to Dinner?
Why Is The BBC Going To Salford?
I can’t see any good reason and now the Evening Standard is claiming the move is causing marital problems.
I have always thought it a silly move to move a lot of the BBC to Salford. This is especially silly with respect to programs like BBCBreakfast, which has always got quality guests to grace the sofa. Are they going to go to Manchester? Some will of course, but why would a film star in the UK for say a day to promote a film, waste half of that in travelling to a studio up north?
The only reason I can think for the move is that it is some Machiavellian plot dreamed up by NuLabor to reduce the effectiveness of the BBC. Did Tony Blair instigate this to please his friends in News International? Of course not, but you could make a case for it.
One thing it will do, is lower quality, as the best producers, directors, program makers and presenters have the power to say that they don’t want the hassle and they will be snapped up quickly by other networks. Many of this experienced group are probably at an age when they can retire too, which will make the decision to go a lot easier.
A Very Stupid Question
Richard Bacon on BBC Radio 5 Live, has just asked the comedian, Paul Foot , if after his degree in Mathemetics at Oxford, he was planning to be an accountant. Mathematicians would never lower themselves so much to do something as boring as accountancy.
Does this just show how narrow the average interviewer on the media is?
Were BBC Radio 5 and ITV Watching Different Rugby Matches?
At half time in the England-Romania match, I switched over to BBC Radio 5 to avoid the adverts.
Whereas the ITV commentators were gushing about England’s performance by leading comfortably, Ian Robertson on the BBC was more professional and clinical in his analysis.
Here is a typical comment from Robertson.
If I was a fanatical England supporter I wouldn’t be thrilled.
I know he’s a Scot and I know little about rugby, but England did seem to make too many mistakes for my liking against Romania’s second team.
But then ITV commentators are more interested in ratings to get more adverts, than good balanced commentary.
But could you expect any more from a channel that produces some of the rubbish it does?
An Old Cinema in Liverpool
Liverpool is a city, where I can walk about the city centre and find loads of memories from my time in the 1960s, there both post and after the time I met C.
An Old Cinema in Liverpool
This cinema in Lime Street, was a bit smaller than most of the others and generally showed less mainstream films. I’m trying to remember what I saw there with C, although I can remember seeing The Collector there with another girl.
One memory of the cinema was that in 1968 or so, a film called Sixteen or something like that was released. It was a feature length film made with sex education in mind. You had the strange site of nuns herding school-girls into the cinema to see it.
I wonder if it had any positive effects. No-one knew what the nuns thought of it.
The Anonymous Widower 