Apr

6

Letter to Hendrick: Clause 43 Digital Economy Bill

Category: Culture, Photography, Politics | Comments Off | Trackback

I’ve just sent a letter to my esteemed local MP to encourage him to protect our photographs: Today sees the second reading of the Digital Economy Bill. I have today become aware of the potentially very damaging consequences of clause 43 of thus bill which: • removes the right of each individual creator and copyright [...]

Mar

19

Achilles (Carol Ann Duffy)

Category: Culture, Football | Comments Off | Trackback

Achilles (for David Beckham) from today’s Daily Mirror Myth’s river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised, they would not take Troy. Women hid him, concealed him in girls’ sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs… but when Odysseus came, [...]

Mar

3

save6music

Category: Culture, Music | Comments Off | Trackback

A few thoughts on the BBC’s strategic review: ‘Being efficient and offering better value for money’ is a very subjective principle. In comparison with Sky TV, the BBC offers ‘only’ 7 or 8 full-time equivalent TV channels and a similar number of radio stations. However, if Sky TV disappeared overnight its place in British culture [...]

Jan

26

Gaza

Category: Politics, Television, grrrr | Comments Off | Trackback

I’ve just sent the following to BBC Complaints and have written to my local MP to encourage him to sign Richard Burden MP’s EDM. I would encourage my reader to join me. I have been greatly impressed by the BBC’s impartiality over the years and applaud the Corporation’s continuing efforts to be impartial. However, I [...]

Jan

4

The Manners Manifesto

Category: Culture, grrrr | Comments Off | Trackback

Straight from Andrew Collins’ blog, this is The Manners Manifesto (edited here, in full on his blog). It’s time for a return to— or a formalisation of— good manners. Here’s how we do it:

Nov

4

More of the same… and a zebra crossing

Category: Music, Preston, iPod | Comments Off | Trackback

Download dads lead the iPod generation | Money | The Observer iTunes is an a la carte model: you see the track you like and pay your 79p. A big drawback with iTunes is that it has inbuilt digital rights management (DRM), which prevents you playing ‘your’ music on anything other than an iPod [my [...]

Oct

9

Save the World (no mention of cheerleaders)

Category: Music, iPod | 2 Comments | Trackback

In the continuing quest to rebuild the compilation tape that, as I recall, was the soundtrack to our 1985 summer holiday (along with ‘Brothers In Arms’), and while looking for this week’s free single of the week, I was surprised today to see on the iTunes Music Store that George Harrison’s catalogue has just been [...]

Oct

6

Further evidence emerges of Sony losing the plot

Category: Music | Comments Off | Trackback

Sony BMG’s chief anti-piracy lawyer: “Copying” music you own is “stealing”: Asked whether it is wrong for people to make copies of music which they have purchased, Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, replied, When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole [...]

Aug

21

Now I understand.

Category: Television | Comments Off | Trackback

A few months ago, Steve posted about a television series which, at the time, appeared unusually to be receiving its first airing on the Sci-Fi channel. By that time, the series was up to something like episode 6 and it didn’t seem like a good idea to start watching at that point. I now am [...]

May

14

Eurotrash

Category: Music | Comments Off | Trackback

BBC NEWS | ‘The worst show in living memory’ Author Tim Moore wrote a book, Nul Points, about acts which failed to score at the Eurovision Song Contest. He told the BBC News website what he thought of this year’s competition, won by Serbian singer Marija Serifovic, and particularly the performance of UK quartet Scooch, [...]

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