Bloody Daily Mail

I’ve just been scouring the Blogosphere, as usual and I came across a post by Martin Belam talking about a comment he posted on the Daily Mail website.

Basically his comment was cut by the Daily Mail so that his critisism wasn’t included, they removed the last line of his comment and in turn changed the meaning of the comment AND made his grammar look almost worse than mine.

He submitted this:
If you actually read the report ChildLine issued, it does not say that suicidal five year olds called ChildLine. It says that there were 42 phone calls by children between the ages of 5 AND 11. The other 96% of suicidal calls were by children 12 and over - which whilst it is still very sad is nowhere near the picture of suicidal 5 year olds portrayed in this article.

They published this:
If you actually read the report ChildLine issued, it does not say that suicidal five year olds called ChildLine. It says that there were 42 phone calls by children between the ages of 5 AND 11. The other 96% of suicidal calls were by children 12 and over - which whilst it is still very sad.

This is a bloody annoying thing - it’s better for a publisher to not publish/delete a comment than edit it to remove critisism/change it’s meaning. I’ve only ever commented on Daily Mail stories twice and neither of those times has my comment been included.

It comes to something when a ‘newspaper’ can’t take any form of constructive critisism. This is a real shame as, despite their bloody awful journalism, they do have one of the better British newspaper sites.

Reading Blogs

While on the subject of scouring the blogosphere I have a Creme Egg question for you “how do you read yours?”. I go around blogs in two ways.

First I go to my blogroll and read all the blogs I personally link to then I go to my own My Blog Log page and go through the blogs that I am friends with and then the blogs of people visiting the blogs I’m friends with down about two levels.

But how do you read yours?

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No signal in your car

Paul Newman has been campaigning for the last few years in Jersey to get people to stop using their mobile phones while driving, something you’d think wouldn’t be too difficult given Jersey was one of the first places in Europe to ban the use of mobiles while driving.

He launched a major campaign with Jersey Telecom and Jersey Evening Post last year called Hands Off but it doesn’t seem to be working as people are still being arrested or charged for using their phone in the car.

Now he wants to take things to a whole new level by making it impossible to use a mobile phone while in a car. Which is a bit odd if you take into account the fact that people are still legally allowed to use a phone on hands free.

Paul is launching a campaign to make it a legal requirement that mobile signals be banned inside cars. It’s illegal to block mobile signals in Europe at the moment but he wants to have that law changed on Health and Safety grounds.

He told Channel Television that one of his ideas was to “block the signal to the car itself so you can’t receive the signal.” Not possible at the moment though, it’s illegal to block a mobile signal in Europe - he’s thought of that though.

“But there’s a complication in that there’s a thing called the wireless telegraphy act which prohibits the blocking of a radio signal. So I’m looking at challenging that in the European courts or maybe get a clause in it for Health and Safety reasons because people have been killed and injured in cars because of mobile phones in cars.”

I understand that he’s had a personal tradegy relating to cars and mobile phones, I understand how he might want it stopped but this would make life difficult in the future for all sorts of potential future devices that might feature in a modern car.

What happens if somebody develops an automatic alert system that uses mobile technology to call the emergency services or AA in the case of breakdown or accident - if a law was introduced to block all mobile signals in cars then this wouldn’t work.

What about people that HAVE to use a mobile (hands free of course) as part of their job - that would be banned as well so their job would be harder/impossible.

read more | digg story

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New Toy for Me

I’ve got a new toy, ok so it’s a virtual toy but it’s geeky and something new for me to play with so it still counts.

After listening to Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann et al going on for the last few weeks about Tumblr logs I decided to see what it was all about and whether it was something I should bother with.

I mean I already have several blogs, several flickr accounts, twitter, My Space, podcasts, forums and a mass of other new media social tid bits to keep my short attention spanned head happy.

I even signed up for a newsvine account recently because I liked the idea of having my own column.

But this does seem to be something that might just keep me interested for more than a few minutes - it’s basically a mini blog that lets you dump whatever’s in your head or anything you find on the web.

When I write a blog post, for the most part it is usually a few hundred words, it’s a proper article that expresses some kind of opinion and shares an element of information.

What the Tumblr blogs let you do is dump anything from a single link to a conversation or even a video clip and nothing else straight up online.

Twitter gives me a chance to have a quick brain dump but Tumblr extends that and lets me throw anything I want out into the wilds of the world wide web.

So as well as my regular blog postings you can see what else I’m up to at howtobeageek.net.

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Lucas for Eurovision

Forget Morrissey, Matt Lucas should be performing our Eurovision song as Daffyd Thomas.

I’ve just finished watching the Comic Relief does Little Britain DVD and it finishes with a piece of satirical, musical magic.

It’s pure europop passion full of satirical gay scene brilliance with a firm foundation in Little Britain madness.

The only gay comes out. Here is the middle bit of the song - it starts with a musical style solo, a tale of prison, martydrom and bum boys.

Then it goes into a full blown Europop extravaganza with the following chorus:

I’m gay, get over it
I’m gay, get used to it

Yes wake up you old codgers
I like to hold mens todgers
I also love mens bottoms
And I’m not afraid to say that I’m a gay
A proper gay

I’m gay, so live with it
I’m gay, so deal with it
I’m a member of a flock who prefers a bit of cock
Yes whenever I feel glum I think of Nigel Harmers bum
Because I’m gay
A proper gay

Then ends in spectacle when members of the Little Britain cast, including Anthony Head come onto the stage in full leather gear.

This is what we should be entering for Eurovision - completely over the top, brilliantly camp, Europop heaven. At the very least they should put it out as a single.

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I’d pay for that…

With Google introducing a premium, pay version of their spreadsheet and word apps one of the latest buzz topics on the web is ‘what would you pay for‘, refering mainly to the wealth of web2.0 apps.

So I thought I’d wade in with my size 11s and have a go. But first we need to step back and have a look at what ‘I’d pay for that’ actually means.

To me there are two sides to this - the sites I’d pay for just to help out because I like it (but wouldn’t miss it that much if it dissapeared) and the sites I’d pay to keep because I couldn’t live without them.

There is some cross over, for a start every site in the second category will also be in the first but not every site in teh first will be in the second.

Ok that over here is my list - as well as sites I’ve also included applications and services.

Firefox
Flickr (already pay for this)
Wordpress
Google Search
Technorati
Wikipedia
VLC
uTorrent

I’d also pay to read my favourite columnists columns and archives on the various newspaper sites in the UK. I’d also pay for ad free versions of nwespaper sites.

There are also a number of podcasts I would happily pay for and do for some of them like Whack My Bush. In fact if TV and radio companies to put out their big shows as podcasts I’d pay for them.

What would be on your list? Can you think of anything I’ve not already included?

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Das Boot Cast

One of my favourite podcasts, in fact one of my favourite pieces of audio satire is the Whack My Bush podcast. It’s basically an over the top, 2DTV style caricature of the relationship between George Bush and Tony Blair.

WMB is written by Rikard Bell and Nick Hildred. They have been writing for BBC radio for 12 years; have written for Bremner Bird and Fortune and less impressively “various shows with Johnny Vaughan”.

They say they make Whack My Bush because the voices told them to and that “The voices must be obeyed!”

The show, in a series of 6 minute chuncks, tracks the ‘adventures’ of George, Tony, Fatty, Condi and The Governator. Although new shows are few and far between at the moment there is a MASSIVE archive that I’d suggest you go and check out.

You have to pay for Whack My Bush but the content is brilliant and original and well worth the very small subscription they charge. Subscription is just £6 for three months and gives you access to their massive archive of shows - when on track it used to include 3 shows a week as well but it’s still worth £6 for access to the archive.

The impressionists working on the show are VERY good and when you combine that with the fantastic writing, great production and split second timing - worth every penny.

The team have also put out other shows including a free one before the World Cup that followed the England football team.

Well now they have launched a new podcast called Das Boot. It doesn’t have a website that I can find yet but it is available through iTunes - I suggest subscribing and then listening over and over again - be near a toilet as you may well piss yourself.

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No Top Gear DVDs

One of the things I’ve wanted to be able to buy for a while is whole series of Top Gear on DVD - I have whole series of things like Yes, Minister, Fawlty Towers, Doctor Who and other favourite shows - so why not Top Gear.

Well I’ve always assumed the reason they haven’t been released was because of clearing the music the show uses during TV episodes - turns out I was right.

I sent an e-mail to the person at 2|Entertain responsible for commissioning BBC series on DVD including Top Gear and the Jeremy Clarkson DVDs and I just got a response.

Basically he said it was because of the music rights and that as a company they didn’t think fans of the show would appreciate alternative music being used on DVDs so didn’t think it was worth releasing them.

I think he’s wrong - I think fans of the show would live with/understand the need to change the music as long as it was done properly.

The email response I recieved from the 2|Entertain Managing Director DVD & Video, Stuart Snaith is below:

Thanks for your interest and enquiry - we are planning a variety of Top Gear and Clarkson release but not the whole series. Historically it’s proved impossible to clear the music for DVD release.

This means that we’d have to replace with ‘alternative’ clearable music. Our view has been that if this occured on all the episodes it would undermine peoples enjoyment of the brand. Perhaps we’re wrong!

So do you disagree as well? Are they wrong? I think so - if you agree then get in touch with 2|Entertain and tell them you WANT Top Gear in full series Box Sets on DVD regardless of the music used.

You can e-mail info@2entertain.co.uk or visit the video site at 2entertainvideo.co.uk.

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Download and support

I was recently reading through one of my favourite forums and there was a thread on download tv shows and whether you would pay for the same show if it was made available on iTunes. This response got me a bit hot under the collar:

why pay for it when i can download it for free

I know this is would have been written very much tounge in cheeck, I know I should resist a response to it, I know it isn’t meant seriously, but too many similar comments ARE meant seriously.

So I responded on the thread and thought I should respond here as well.

Why should I pay when I can download for free? How about because somebody has gone to the time, effort, trouble and expense of making it - surely the company making the investment should be due some return?

My personal policy RE downloading stuff is that - if I can BUY it I will, if not then it’s ok to download but if they start selling it then I’ll go and buy it as well.

If everyone took the attitude, why pay when I can get it for free, nothing would ever be made or what was made would be crap because the broadcaster wouldn’t get the budget to make it happen.

If everyone says - I won’t watch it live or I won’t pay to download it because I’ll be able to get it free then the money won’t be there to make it, it won’t get made and you won’t be able to download it.

Personally I think we should all be supporting broadcasters that take the leap and put content online to buy and that’s regardless of DRM - it’s an evil most broadcasters don’t have a choice over.

I don’t like DRM but I do understand why TV companies feel the need to put it on episodes - there are more rights than just the initial broadcast ones you see on the surface.

I don’t agree with DRM on music though.

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ITV er.. ‘Comedy’

There is a great post by Entertainment/Media blogger Anna Pickard on ITV Comedy and the lack there of on the Guardian Blogs site.

In the blog posting she ponders the current crop of um… lets call them, for want of a better word ‘attempts’ at humour from the second network.

In the post Anna ends by suggesting there has never been a good sitcom on ITV and wondering why we (she) get so worked up when they send another pile of poo in our direction.

In fact she actually said “if ITV have never produced a sitcom of any worth, if there’s nothing we can really compare these present diseased turkeys to, then why do I feel so bloody let down every single time the throw another clunker at us?”

First let me disagree. Going back a while, and taking a long hard look under the sofa we find The New Statesmen - a perfectly fine example of said genre - a laugh out loud piece of brilliance that captures the two S words - satire and surrealism.

However, to find other examples of sitcoms on ITV (not Comedy as examples of that are easier when you add in Spitting image, Harry Hill, Al Murray, 2DTV et al) you have to work a bit harder; you have to be prepared to crawl through a considerable amount of excrement.

Fortunately, as with all things in the 21st Century – Google is my friend. A quick search for ‘good ITV comedies’ came up with a couple of reasonably useful lists.

The first of which is the most useful, the British Sitcom Guide. This site has a page for pretty much every sitcom ever broadcast in the UK and it lets you filter by broadcaster.

Unfortunately the list didn’t help. The only ones worth bringing up are the current crop of comedy flops (add a flip to the flop for Benidorm), Dead Man Weds which I’m going to get to in a minute and The New Statesman which I’ve already mentioned.

So I switched to a similar but more comprehensive list on Wikipedia – still nothing more to add that I haven’t already mentioned in the last paragraph.

OK lets move on to Dead Man Weds. The reason I wanted to mention this small show that dropped to the middle of nowhere after a couple of episodes is that it explains all that is wrong with ITV Comedy.

This sitcom had the potential to be VERY funny; in fact it could have pulled a double S on us – being satirical and surreal.

Alas it wasn’t given the opportunity to develop. It didn’t have the chance to grow into the comedy it could and should have been – mainly because it didn’t get the ratings or response it needed to justify its cost.

If the show had been broadcast on BBC TWO or BBC THREE it would have slowly built and audience, found its feet after a couple of series and grown into a much loved piece of comedy gold.

That’s the same fate any good ideas ITV try seem to face – a lack of commitment to turn them from over produced pilots into a real, established show.

ITV also need to drop this reliance on a big name to make a show, whether drama or comedy a hit.

I’m not a big fan of ITV, I don’t think they produce anything nearly worth watching – or at least they haven’t in the last few years – just look at Primeval – it has the potential to be a really good piece of SciFi but like everything on ITV – it’s too glossy and mainstream – it’s missing a number of tricks.

However; I DO want ITV to be at the top of their game. I’m a big fan of what the BBC is doing and the BBC as a whole but for it to stay at the top of its game it needs strong commercial competition and that can really only come (outside imports) from ITV.

If you have a strong BBC and a strong ITV then you also have a very strong British television industry – which filters down to many other levels.

So ITV – get a decent comedy team on board, gives shows a chance to mature, even if it means a smaller budget, less well known stars and a start on ITV 3.

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