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 am horrified that the Corporation can consider the DEC’s Gaza appeal to have any partial political aims. People in that area, who have no means of leaving, are dying. This despicable decision of the BBC’s is perhaps the strongest argument in years for the abolition of a compulsory licence fee.
I am heartened that MPs are today acting by tabling the following EDM:

That this House is astonished by the refusal of the BBC and other broadcasters not to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza Crisis Appeal; notes the unconvincing and incoherent explanations given by BBC spokespeople for the decision; and draws attention to the fact that people wishing to contribute to the Gaza appeal can contact the DEC by calling 0370 60 60 900, writing to DEC Gaza Crisis, PO Box 999, London EC3A 3AA or visiting www.dec.org.uk.

I trust that the BBC will reconsider.
Yours sincerely, Luke Bosman

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 sure that I made the right decision. The first two episodes were broadcast by the Beeb just before we went on holiday. We watched some more last night, to my mother’s bemusement.

The series, by the way, is Heroes. Watching it on BBC HD last night I realised that I shall shortly have to ditch most of my DVDs in favour of their high definition equivalents where you can see the odd individual hair, the veins of a leaf and the individual blades of grass.

I’m not generally a huge fan of television and could probably count on the fingers of one hand the unmissable series of the last few years but I think Heroes may be about to join those ranks.

The show, which is currently being repeated on BBC HD, may not be about to rival The West Wing— the latter was incisive political drama of the highest order; the former is light entertainment.

However, if anyone knows Andy would they mind telling him that Jane Horrocks’s accent is not stupid? Many people in Lancashire do actually speak like that.

The installers created a few issues: they dug up part of the front garden without asking us and trampled over daffodils, dogwood and other plants. Fortunately, customer services were swift in sending the manager round (we would have accepted a phone call!) to offer us compensation for any damaged plants. One of the two installers informed me that I would need to run a CD in order to get broadband up and running: in fact I needed simply to connect the ethernet cable between the computer and cable modem.

The box is a V+ box, offering similar functionality to Sky+ but with three tuners and a lot of Video On Demand: I’m currently watching Never Mind the Full Stops (well, someone has to) which I forgot to record last night and, had I been foolish enough to miss the final episode of Life on Mars, I could watch that too.

Perhaps one of the real revelations has been BBC HD: HDMI cables aren’t cheap (although the one I bought from CPC yesterday was only a smidge over a tenner) and it’s remarkable to see how much better the picture quality is. We started watching Supervolcano and were, if you would excuse the pun, blown away by the levels of detail. Of course, on my return from CPC, I noticed that Virgin had helpfully supplied me with an HDMI cable which the cat had sat upon.

It looks, by the way, as though we get a lot of HBO content in HD. Nice.

[1] Note to pedants: I know that 625 line television may also be considered high definition but I’ve never watched 405 line…

In the wee small hours of Thursday night, just 30 hours after what is almost certainly the world�s fastest ever car crash, Richard Hammond suddenly sat up in bed, opened his eyes and asked what had happened.

�You�ve been in a car accident,� I said. �Was I driving like a tw*t?� he asked, before getting out of bed and walking, shakily, to the lavatory.

Of course, Hammond, Clarkson and May are three of the reasons why Fifth Gear is not the most talked-about motoring show in Britain.

… education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defence. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.

A Sam Seaborn quote that, really, ought to be government policy.

Why can I not just watch the bloody things I’ve paid for on whatever machine I want in whatever country I happen to be in at the time?

It’s my time, my DVD player and my DVD. I possess some DVDs where I can’t even fast forward through the junk and am expected to read copyright information in English (for the UK); Swedish; Bulgarian; English (for Australia); French (for France); English (for New Zealand); Estonian; French (for Switzerland)…

I can’t help wondering whether this sort of corporate disrespect for customers just encourages piracy. After all, if I were to make a copy of this DVD for someone then I would certainly not oblige them to watch anything. And if I knew anyone who could make copies of DVDs then I would be asking them to create user-friendly versions of some of mine.