According to today's Daily Mail Ed Milliband, the brother of that man with the pencil case, has broken his silence on the ongoing row about man-made climate change by declaring war on the 'siren voices' who denied global warming was real or man-made.
Bovered?
This woman is suing Simon Cowell under the the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. She claims he and the other judges on Britain's Got Talent didn't give her a chance. This is everything that is utterly wrong about these type of programmes. They give people, with absolutely no talent whatsoever, a false impression of their chances of success. In this woman's case she has no chance of ever being a singer – she's clearly tone deaf. Embedding a youtube video has been denied, no doubt by her legal team. Just go HERE to hear absolute rubbish.
If ever I doubted there would be enough material for Management Bollocks 2 then bless the BBC. They are advertising for a 'Change Lead' position in their internal newspaper. They describe the position as. . .' 'responsible for shaping and managing the execution of the change ambition' for the Digital Media Initiative Programme.
In the meantime I'm just finishing Political Bollocks – the biggest challenge? Fitting it all into 124 pages!
I've just written the sleeve notes for a new 30 Del Shannon compilation. It's a fabulous musical journey through the career of one of the greats from the 60s. You can buy it HERE
Rubislaw Quarry in Aberdeen, Europe’s largest man-made hole, is on the market for £30,000. Perhaps the Donald will buy it and turn it into 'the world's greatest water feature'
It's been revealed that Scotland's main climate change champion, none other than our Glorious Leader Alex Salmond is to visit the Maldives en-route to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. It's not as some of you may assume because it's the Maldives Derby or Grand National, no it's so he can study the effects of climate on the Islands. The visit has been promoted because Mr Salmond signed an agreement with the government of the Maldives to help combat global warming at the recent climate change summit in Copenhagen.
Seriously, does his actions make any difference at all? With the problems that beset our economy, news that the NHS in Scotland does not perform as well as in England and all the other issues that we have – like the SNP's wilful desecraeation of Scotland through the gung-ho policy of approving wind farms – does he honestly think this is the best use of his time?
Rather than flying to the Maldives perhaps he should take a showboat
Well it seems that you may not be alone. So un-alone in fact that someone has created runpee.com. It's a site that tells you when you can go to the bathroom while you're at the cinema without missing anything vital in a movie.
According to the BBC Complaints web site they should have done better on the One Show in their piece of biased reporting.
Complaint
We received complaints that an item about politics and class in The One Show on 14 January was biased against the Conservative Party.
The BBC's response
A number of comments have been made about the report on class on The One Show on 14 January. It is one of several features that The One Show will air in the run up to the election, covering political parties and politicians. We accept that the piece was not as good as it should have been. The One Show production team are aware of their responsibilities to ensure fairness in their output.
They cannot quite bring themselves to admit that it was just plain wrong. By saying "We accept that the piece was not as good as it should have been," it demonstrates all that is wrong with a culture that emanates from by the overpaid and overpromoted DG
It's back. . .after a sabbatical of unprecedented length. It's the album of the week. I've written about Rupert Holmes before, his Widescreen album was the first of his that I ever bought. I had all of them on vinyl back in the 1970s and 80s but they got sold in either the great financial necessity purge or a later space saving purge. I've been in pursuit of them all ever since and today I finally got the last one, The Pursuit of Happiness.
It was released in 1978 and even then was somewhat at odds with the prevailing mood of pop. Rupert's songs are complex and witty but they are always catchy and just about every track on this album is super catchy. From the opening number, 'Less is more' you are invited into an intimate world of New York loft apartments and sophisticated people – today it might just sound a triffle dated to some (Ok, a lot dated in its feel and form) but I love it. I've always been a sucker for great pop songs and that's what this album and all of Rupert's albums are all about. Other standout tracks include, 'So Beautiful it Hurts', 'Speechless', 'Let's Get Crazy Tonight', 'Guitars' and 'The Long Way Home'.
If you only know Rupert Holmes from 'Escape (The Pina Colada Song) don't be put off. It's a song that has had a huge amount of airplay and perhaps has a tendency to grate for some in that the story wears thin after too many listenings. That's not a charge that you can level at the vast majority Rupert's output.
In recent years he's written a couple of very good books. I've read Swing, a good murder mystery and I have Where the Truth Lies to read. There's also a new book called The Musician's Daughter
I've just sent this complaint to the BBC....probably a lot of good it will do...
Is it really the BBC's job to make party political broadcasts for the Labour Party? The piece on yesterday’s One Show was incredibly one sided and its whole tone was anti-David Cameron – just because he went to public school and had a privileged background. The people that were interviewed were a lop-sided group, including Kevin McGuire of the Daily Mirror who is lock stock and barrel Labour. What would happen if it was a package asking the question, do we really want a Scot as our Prime Minister. That of course would be unthinkable for the BBC because it would be racist. Even the presenter's follow-up was biased.
Yet again we see the institutional bias of the BBC come to the fore. Perhaps your millionaire DG who went to public school has something to say about it?
"I used to be able to walk around my local supermarket but now someone else will do my shopping for security reasons."
No, not a member of the Royal Family, a senior politician or an X-Factor winner. It's 46-year-old Peter Vaughan, the new head of South Wales police (since New Year’s Day). He's paid £144,500 a year to come out with this kind of crap!
Harvey Broks is a bass player who has had the privilege to play with so many great musicians – Dylan, Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Steve Stills, Cass Elliot, the Doors and Miles davis. His composition, Harvey's Tune that is featured on the Super Session album has long been a favourite of mine. Harvey was also a member of the Electric Flag, a band put together by Mike Bloomfield & Barry Goldberg in 1967 that included Buddy Miles, who played some of the most inventive rock of the period.
You can catch Harvey talking about the Electric Flag HERE, it is fascinating. There are other vidlogs on Harvey's site about working with Dylan, Miles davis and a whole host of other musical legends.
Mandarin for all pupils, says Ed Balls, so goes the headline in the Daily Telegraph. No, not an update of the apple for teacher routine but a plan by the aptly named Balls to allow all children to learn the Chinese language. He also thinks that more children should be able to study Polish, Russian and Arabic up to GCSE level. It's all very laudable but like so much Nu-Labour policy it's all about the soundbite, grabbing the headlines with little or no attention paid to the reality of delivering on the ideas. How will schools cope with yet more subjects to schedule? Could we just get the basics right? In Scotland, and to be fair Balls has nothing to do with the situation north of the border, one in five children leave school without being fully literate. It may be better in England, but i suspect not by much. . .
