Seventh Radiohead Album

Radiohead have announced that they have started mixing their new album. This is very exciting news. The last album came in 2003 and was the last in a cycle of 3 post OK Computer albums that had a very similar sound and aura. There has been a lot of speculation about how LP7 will sound. Will it mark a radical new direction with large-scale orchestration, will it be more computer effects and beats or will it be three minute rock songs? The band have been tight lipped and so far there have been no leaks of unmixed tracks. Likely new songs can be found on fansites like atease and greenplastic and mp3's of live versions of works in progress can be found on finefinemusic. Plank, the bands very down to earth guitar/instrument tech and general fixer has a lovely little blog which is very tight lipped about the band but very informative and good fun.

The band have been cryptically keeping fans up to date via their Dead Air Space blog which contains a Hodiau Direkton section (Japanese; 'todays direction') where the new ideas for the artwork are previewed. All the stuff to date can be found collected on this fan blog. As for a release date? Who knows. The band have no record contract so that could delay things. And a title? No idea. Probably something seemingly random with a cute hidden meaning as usual. 'Down Is The New Up' is a possible but this is a song name so.. And touring? Earns the band loads of cash and breathes new life into the songs that are on record (the Kid A stuff sounds just as good live even though entirely different). But... Thom is a Friends Of The Earth frontman and has been heavily criticised for his carbon debt from the massively polluting tours the band do.

At the next election I will base my vote on these issues

The Iraq war
Trident
Effective privatisation of NHS dentistry
The price of petrol
Road pricing and commuter charges
Green taxes and their use/flight price hikes
Target/table culture in the police/NHS/Schools
Funding and policy for scientific research and education
Road safety/traffic police/drink driving policing
Bus lanes/transport and congestion policy
Council tax and refuse collection (local issues but local councils are failing on this and Whitehall needs to step in)

and I'm sure I'll think of more

Funny (with sound)

Slave Trade Reparations

There has been some call this week for reparations to be paid to those whose ancestors suffered during the slave trade. This is an admirable sentiment but it changes nothing. The most we can do is to freely admit to what our ancestors did in order to build the British Empire and make sure we never do anything like this again. Handing out cash will not help. And anyway, the slave trade existed before British involvement. African kings were involved in the capture and sale of their own people. Should poor African nations be forced to pay reparations also?

A woman on BBC news this morning seemed to suggest that all modern social ills and deprivations that the black community suffer can be directly traced back to the legacy of the status of black people as being slaves. That is cod socialism. This lady must be doing an A-Level in sociology at evening school. Kids in London are not shooting and stabbing each other because they still feel social pressure from the slave trade. The idea of reparations is just like the idea of official pardons for those shot at dawn for cowardice during the first world war. It doesn't change anything or make it better for anyone. Those shot at dawn should stay labelled as cowards to make us feel eternally guilty for the horrible things done in our name over the years, from the World Wars to the days of empire building and concentration camps and genocide in Africa and back further to the days of slavery and conquest.

Football: the powers that be

Three interesting stories have emerged recently about the organisations that govern football. Manchester United were fined £6300 because of violent and improper conduct by their fans in the Champions league game against Lille. Lille were fined £42000 for improper security and organisation. What really happened was that the section of the stadium alloted to United fans was only half opened. A fence was left closed so that the fans were squashed into an area half the safe size. Some fans climbed the fence to stop being squashed and were hit with batons by the police who thought a pitch invasion was occuring. UEFA don't seem to know what really happened that night and their information seems to have been provided by Lille football club, who felt bitter about the manner of their defeat that night. A fine for United seems bizarre.

My home team Rotherham got into financial difficulties last year and the FA punished them by deducting 10 points. The people who got the club into trouble have since left and the legacy is a struggling club doing its best to survive. The team have had a good season and were mid table at one point despite the ten point handicap. Things have since proved too much and the team has slowly sunk down the table. They now sit at the bottom of the table and look certain to be relegated. Why has the FA done this? With those 10 points Rotherham would survive the drop and would not suffer further hardship by being relegated. The fans and players are being punished for something the money men did in the backroom.

The other story was the plan by the FA to settle score draws in the league by a penalty shoot out. All commentators on the game have derided this ludicrous suggestion. A drawn game is often more exciting than a win. Small clubs would play negative against the big clubs to try and get to penalties. Silly FA.

The colour coded budget

I'm sure you noticed the way the PM and the chancellor were colour coded yesterday. For every colour Brown was wearing Blair was wearing the equivalent but more subdued and pastel coloured. Brown had a vibrant red tie, Blair had a gentle pink tie. Brown had a crisp navy blue jacket, Blair had a nice greyish blazer. All deliberately done of course to promote the image of Brown as the fresh vibrant replacement for our PM. Shame he won't be elected by the people like Blair. As for the budget, meh. It was just shuffling piles of money from A to B with no net gains. The £1.5 bn in green taxes was interesting. I would very much like to see how this will be spent. Will the money be put back into green initiatives like wind farms? Or will petrol duty be reduced to compensate? What do you think?

Uplifting Songs

Scott Walker - On Your Own Again
Sibelius - Karelia Suite (Intermezzo)
Talking Heads - Heaven (Stop Making Sense version)
The Velvet Underground - I'll be your mirror
Dave & Ansel Collins - Double Barrel (This one gets a special *)
The Smiths - There is a light that never goes out
Radiohead - Lucky
R.E.M. - Electrolite
The Beta Band - Dry The Rain
The Beatles - Every Little Thing
Blur - Tender
The Delgados - No Danger
Keane - Bedshaped
Strauss - The Blue Danube
Philip Glass - The Grid

I know there are many more. Let me know what you think!

PhD viva success

In my oral exam today I successfully defended my PhD thesis which means I will be able to start calling myself Dr. as soon as it is formally confirmed. I would like to thank my external examiner Prof. Woodruff and my internal examiner Prof. Godby. Even more so I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my supervisors Steve and Matt and the other members of our group who have helped me so much along the way. Also big thanks to my family and friends for keeping me sane. There is one person who has done the most. During this past year my fiancee Nicola has been my stable foundation and I hope to repay her support over many years of marriage. That sounds like a car loan or something doesn't it... Erm I mean I'm glad I had you around Nic to share my highs and lows.

The Beta Band and Arcade Fire

The Beta Band were a great little band these past few years. 'Dry The Rain' is one of the most uplifting songs ever and Hot Shots II was a superb album in places and could have gone through the stratosphere. But it didn't quite have that anthemic zeitgeist enveloping quality. Eventually, mental illness and poverty broke the band up. Shame. Now the band have partially reformed as The Aliens and a new album is out


I had a listen and sorry guys but, meh. It's nothing special. God bless you for trying but as a commercial venture you stand alongside Gomez and the Super Furry Animals. A decent band at times but there are surer ways for the record buying public to Get Their Ya Ya's off.

At the moment The Arcade Fire are electioneering trying to shift copies of their new album Neon Bible. They are a decent band who put music first. The lead singer is an American rich kid who is married to the main instrumentalist in the band. Alas, every time he opens his mouth in interviews he comes across as a complete t***er. He tries to be appeal to some mystical wistfull ideal of the musician. The article in the Observer Music Monthly is not very flattering in this respect. What is funny is that the article is trying to build up his mystique. But, being written by the worst music journalist ever, Pretentious Paul Morley, the article could never succeed. This guy really is a drivel merchant. In the past he has attached himself to Joy Division and New Order and the stuff he has written there makes me cringe. An example of his style, describing Lou Reed watching Arcade Fire live;

'For song after song the infinitely impassive Lou doesn't move a muscle. He doesn't even seem to blink. He never taps his feet or shakes his head, and when a song crashes to a glowing climax he doesn't applaud. Perhaps he's working out what the trick is, if it can save him from the grave.'

*Retches* And his paragraph description of the band

'The group came from nowhere, like they were born yesterday, sonic sweethearts, a scholarly post-punk gospel choir merrily identifying the menace of the world, and it was a surprise. How they sounded, how they looked, the throbbing innocence, the way they swapped roles and instruments, hugged each other, hit each other, broke for cover, jumped for joy and swore on the Bible, the way they sang their hearts out whether there was a microphone near them or not, the way that Win sang, like a soft-hearted iron man, with dashing, rustic serenity, as if he still believed rock music and songs had the power to change the world, to burn down to reality, as if they could obliterate darkness with light and fury'

*Dashes for the bathroom*

I can't believe I ate the whole thing

My PhD viva exam is approaching and I'm hard at work preparing. My hair is getting long and I need a shave. At the moment I most resemble Homer in his highschool yearbook. During the exam on Tuesday I get quizzed at length about my work over the last four years. I have to convince the examiners that I wrote the 200 page thesis and that I have a good enough overall knowledge of Physics and my field to merit the qualification. Eek. See you on the other side.

Bus lanes and traffic chaos

Many cities are now setting up bus lanes. These are a good idea if they encourage people to get on the bus and not drive into busy city centres. One problem is when they hit traffic lights. Buses are given priority here and the main traffic stream is stopped. This is a bit annoying but what makes it supremely frustrating is when taxi drivers use the bus lane and the priority at the lights. A taxi is a commercial vehicle just like a delivery truck. They should not choke the main traffic stream up by using the bus lanes and turning the lights red. And taxis aren't green either; they often contain just one driver and a passenger.

While I'm at it another thing that really burns my waffles is when people park illegally (in my city often on a dual carriageway on double yellow lines) with their hazard warning lights on. Like that makes it OK. There is nothing more annoying than queuing to get round someone who is pretending to be broken down while they pop into a takeaway.

As you can probably tell I'm fed up with traffic. It's bad enough the roads are busy without sneaky or lazy motorists playing the system. The city of Doncaster has just moved its bus station on top of the train station and under a busy shopping centre. This has created CHAOS. The main road that feeds the train station is now severely choked and to make matters worse it has five sets of traffic lights in the space of a quarter mile. The problem here is that the buses don't go down the bus lane into the bus station. They go into the town centre to drop people off then cut into the main road to get into the station. Result; traffic lights going red every twenty seconds and the main road through Doncaster choked.

Doncaster has horrendous traffic problems. There is really only one way in or out and to get from one side of town to the other involves a trip into the town centre. There are partial ring roads but they aren't enough. One such road is unfinished and it will link two major traffic hotspots (the football stadium is in this area) and bypass the town centre, providing major relief. The reason this hasn't been completed and opened up is that the Asda supermarket nearby have objected on the grounds that customers will have easy access to the nearby Tesco and they will lose trade. How dare a supermarket dictate traffic planning and road building.

British Telecom profit gouging and Trident

British Telecom owns much of the telephone and internet infrastructure of the UK. Once upon a time it had a monopoly but in recent years it has struggled to compete as first mobile phones and then the home internet phenomenon took off. In an effort to encourage customers to pay by direct debit the company has just announced that it will charge customers £4.50 to pay their bill in cash. I can see their point; it costs more to process cash transactions and automated payment will save them money. But come on. It is the right of everyone to restrict access to their bank details. A person should be allowed to use money if they wish. As long as bills are paid on time then BT should not add penalty costs. It amounts to profit gouging to save costs in every part of the business by a desperate company who are prepared to inconvenience their customers if it will save them money. But this is Britain today. No consumer protests will happen. There will be no boycott. People will not notice or care. Vivienne Westwood hit the nail on the head yesterday when she said that people were too busy with their lifestlye/consumer interests to care about the fact that the governement is about to spend £20 billion on a renewal of our cold war defence system. £20 billion to provide the armed forces with pointless busy work in the form of nuclear warheads to maintain.

Britain decides to renew Trident nuclear missile system

A quote from Yes Prime Minister Series 1

Sir Humphrey: "Don't you believe that Britain should have the best?"

Jim Hacker: "Yes, of course."

Sir Humphrey: "Very well, if you walked into a nuclear missile showroom you would buy Trident - it's lovely, it's elegant, it's beautiful. It is quite simply the best. And Britain should have the best. In the world of the nuclear missile it is the Saville Row suit, the Rolls Royce Corniche, the Château Lafitte 1945. It is the nuclear missile Harrods would sell you. What more can I say?"

Jim Hacker: "Only that it costs £15 billion and we don't need it."

Sir Humphrey: "Well, you can say that about anything at Harrods."

Global Warming

Last night the environment secretary David Miliband was on Newsnight to explain the future CO2 reduction targets set out by the government of the UK. Asked if emissions trading would go ahead he explained that it could happen that one country might buy spare emissions from another but that this was OK because it doesn't matter if a tonne of CO2 is emitted here or there. How does the minister know this for sure? Has he studied global airflow patterns and concluded that CO2 dispersal does not depend upon the release location? Is he certain that there are no special release locations which might lead to pockets or bands of high CO2 density in crucial areas of the upper atmosphere?

This is the sort of hand waving science that derails the global warming argument. The document published in February by the IGPCC showed that the climate is changing and it considered many factors that might be helping/causing this process, one of which was CO2 emissions caused by human activity. There could be many reasons why the climate is changing (such as changes in the sun) and they all need to be considered objectively. Politicians need to let the scientists check everything and gather as much data as is needed before they come down on either side. There are those who believe that there is a conspiracy to hold back the economies of developing nations such as China and India by restricting their emissions. Others believe evidence is suppressed or not considered. When scientific data becomes a political football for liberals/capitalists then objectivity is suppressed.

The Trap - Adam Curtis

A new three part documentary has just started its run on BBC 2. Called 'The Trap' it seeks to paint an individualist picture of modern western society and seeks to explain how we are all caught in the trap of private self interest. It is argued that this is ruining our lives and destroying community ties. This ideology was sprung out of the game theory based cold war lose-lose strategy and is diametrically opposed to the communist eradication of individualism and the belief in the collective. Modern target/league table driven culture has ruined education and the NHS. The first application of target driven management was in the Vietnam war when targets were set for kills of enemy soldiers. The US army duly met these targets by shooting innocent civilians.

I have only seen the first part of this meisterwerk but that was enough to stun me. This was, quite simply, the best hour that I have spent in front of a television in years and years. Writer and director Adam Curtis will no doubt be showered with yet more awards. I knew about the individual pieces of the puzzle but I have never seen before how they all slotted together. Being from South Yorkshire hatred of Thatcherism is in my blood but it has now reached new levels of concentration. Charlie Brooker has blogged about 'The Trap' from a TVphile/media perspective.

The Old Boys Network

Photos have emerged of the party leaders in their student days when they were members of Oxford dining (drinking) clubs. Blair is seen making either a hilarious rude gesture or an air guitar pose.


Cameron is seen as a new romantic. In case you can't spot him without his perma-smile he's at number 2. Number 8 is good old Boris Johnson. This club used to get drunk in their thousand pound tails and then trash hotel rooms, pubs and dining rooms and then pay for the damage. I'm so glad I don't live in Oxford with p****s like that around. Then again they now run the country so there is no real escape.

All that this serves to underline is the levels of cronyism in politics. The old school tie. Harriet Harman has suggested that a woman is needed at the top of government to fill the quotas. How about a quota of non-Oxbridge ministers? How about a quota of people who went to state school?

There are no photos of Ming Cambell. Maybe his wild days were before the camera was invented. I voted for your party you useless sod. Do something! Make the news, anything. The way that Charles Kennedy was treated was shocking. They shouldn't have sacked him.

Guest blogger - Sideshow Nic on media regulatory fun

The current furore over the great TV phone in rip off has no doubt fascinated many media watchers. I was watching TV coverage on this yesterday (there was the promise of more scandal to come btw) and I found myself reminded of the last scandal that happened under the nose of a media regulator, which saw many members of the public ripped off.

The Auction World.tv scandal happened back in 2004 and I would consider it a result of the failure of the regulator responsible, Ofcom, to react to a fast changing world of multichannel TV. Auction and shopping TV channels were a relatively new addition to British TV, but Ofcom didn't keep up, and before long Aution World.tv were the focus of an unprecedented amount of complaints from members of the public who had paid over the odds for substandard jewellery - if they even received the goods that they'd paid for at all. Ofcom eventually reacted to the complaints, fined Auction World.tv a record £450,000 and finally revoked their broadcasting license. This sent the rogue TV channel into bankruptcy and left hundreds out of pocket, and it could be argued that had Ofcom been quicker to act more people may have been able to get their money back. You can read the final Ofcom adjudication here while Wikipedia sums up the whole sorry affair here.

The TV phone in rip off could be seen as a repeat of Auction World - ICSTIS, the regulator, has failed to understand the growing interactive TV market, with the result that all kinds of dodgy practices have crept in. This won't be as bad as Auction World and people stand some chance of getting their money back this time. But surely regulators themselves now need to be placed under the spotlight and asked why they seem unable to keep up with progress in their supposed fields of expertise.

History Lesson

An American chap was causing a fuss on the train this morning because his seat reservation had gone wrong. He asked the steward if they could help him out and said 'come on, I'm an American, we saved you in World War II'. Whoa there! Hang on. The US did help us with food during the war and they sacrificed many lives in the Normandy landings and thereafter. But WWII was won by the Russians. 80% of the German troops were engaged fighting the Russians. The Russians sustained such heavy losses because a few years earlier, in a fit of paranoia, Stalin had shot all of his top generals leaving his army with no top level experience. The main reason the US helped out in Europe was to make sure that the Russians didn't seize all of Europe after the war.

The other main reason the US entered the war was because of Japan, a growing economic rival in the Pacific. This is why the Americans needlessly bombed the hell out of many non-strategic Japanese cities: they simply wanted to set the Japanese economy back by a few decades (the later Japanese recovery was rightly dubbed the 'Japanese economic miracle'). And of course we have the atomic bomb, dropped to ruin a few cities and show the Russians that the US had the bomb. The first Uranium bomb was dropped even though the American generals knew that there were US prisoners of war in the drop zone. The second Plutonium bomb was dropped even though the US knew the Japanese were to surrender and it was done purely to test the technology. So, yes, the US helped the UK during WWII but the motives were not so altruistic.

Cream rises to the top or s**t floats?

Harriet Harman has just announced her intention to stand as deputy leader under Gordon Brown. One of the reasons she cites is that she believes a woman is needed at the top of government. Really? Why? Is there something unique that only a woman could bring to the job or is it just to fill the quota and make sure the balance of the sexes at the top of government matches that in wider society? A person should not get a job based on positive discrimination. The best person for the job should always be chosen and no other factors should be considered.

Another thing about Harman is that she has been given a second chance in frontbench politics. Her first stint at the Social Security department was a disaster. We've seen this in politics before with Mandelson. We also get to see it in the world of football. A few years ago rat-faced England captain John Terry was involved in a spot of bother and I remember some commentators saying he should be booted out of football for good. Now, all is forgiven and he is the responsible face of the FA and all the merchandise and crap that goes with it.

I'm all for giving people a second chance but they better not screw up again. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Grampa Simpson gets an award for the cartoons Lisa and Bart wrote under his name 'It is a tribute to this great country that a man who once took a shot at Teddy Roosevelt could win back your trust'.

Science on TV

Science is in crisis. University Physics Departments are being closed down. Just today we have a talk in our University Department about how to attract more students to study Physics at University. There could be many reasons for the slump but one factor is the way Science is portrayed in the media.

Take the TV. When I first got interested in Science there were three flagship science programmes. Documentaries were shown regularly and on the schools programmes. On the commercial channels there is now no science. We are just left with Horizon on the BBC. This used to be a good show but it has steadily been dumbed down in recent years with more explosions and CG effects. This series, in an effort to chase ratings, the science has been watered down to the point of being pointless.

The nadir is the episode to go out tonight which will examine what the world would be like if the dinosaurs had survived.

WTF

Cue a pointless excuse to show dinosaur CG effects in a modern setting. I am going to watch this show just because I know I will spend an hour shouting at the TV for being pointless. At least it'll make me react.

Coffee

A new study suggests that a morning coffee will not make a person more alert. The buzz is in getting the hit as the withdrawal symptoms kick in after a nights sleep. Nothing we didn't know already then. I don't drink coffee as a stimulant. I like the rich multi-facetted taste. It's nice and refreshing to drink warm liquid in a morning. It wakes the senses. There is a downside to being a coffee drinker; headaches, 50 calories of sugar and milk at a time and the diuretic effects driving me to the mens room every hour. But I can manage these side effects of my addiction. I won't be mugging anyone to pay for my habit. And my mantra of coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon means I don't lose sleep. Unless coffee has long term mental effects like cannabis then I'll continue cleaning out my French press pot every morning.

Our era is one not of capitalism, but of rampant corporatism and consumerism, master and slave. The unavoidable end product is a company like Tesco. This faceless collective has grown by first offering the user the best alternative and then offering no alternative. The motto is 'everything, to everyone, everywhere'. How chilling. This cancerous market force has killed agriculture and millions of small and medium businesses. Poor quality, mass produced meat, fruit and vegetables have now replaced local produce and choice. Food shortages are common. Many times I have left without potatoes or bread or milk. There are often large queues at petrol pumps caused by the pulsing of shoppers and not by petrol supplies. Small town centres now contain just charity shops and building societies. My home village, once considered the 'queen of villages' now has a large polyp attached which has caused huge traffic problems, light pollution problems and has violated planning laws by expansion onto green land. This has happened everywhere, to everyone in every way. This is your prize for winning the cold war. Power over your life in fewer hands than ever before and with less accountability than at any stage. The Blue army has won.

Meet the Russian People

I know a lot about US culture and history, good and bad. TV, the cold war and American economic dominance have given me a sense of the good and history books like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and anti US policy protests by people like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore have corrected the idyllic propaganda.

On the other hand I know nothing of the positives in Russian culture. Cold War propaganda and George Orwell's 1984 have left an impression of a totalitarian hell in which millions were slaughtered in Communist purges and in the death camps in Siberia. In modern times Russia is portrayed as a mafia ridden corrupt mess headed by a former KGB madman in which state assets were stolen by the oligarchs and the resulting country is left in a poor and crumbling state with whole cities blighted by AIDS and drug addiction.

I need to learn more. I want to know about some of the positives in Russian life now and then. What do/did people enjoy watching on TV? What literature/music encapsulates the Russian spirit? What good things happened behind the Iron Curtain? I am not prepared to let international politics blight my opinion of the people within a nation that has suffered more than most.

Random anecdotes from The New Shostakovich by Ian MacDonald.

'... in the interval between speeches by Stalin at a conference in the Kremlin during the forties, delegates were offered buckets of salt water to bathe their hands, swollen by hours of clapping.'

'Wife-beating was so thoroughly institutionalised in pre-Revolutionary Russia that a husband who refrained from it was thought abnormal. An old manual of etiquette published in Moscow included instructions to husbands on how to whip their wives 'courteously, lovingly' so as not to blind or deafen them.'