Incompetent Television's doing it wrong

I'm a bit of a fan of The Bill. As you may be aware, ITV are moving the show to once weekly at 9pm.

Clearly, they want to stick on more football and other "ratings pullers". Then after those shows, you'll be able to watch cops topless, I'd say.

I am not impressed at all this. Partly, I don't like ITV's approach to things. Secondly, a strong ITV is needed to ensure a strong BBC.

Take ITV's fiction production. They can do one-off dramas like Unforgiven fairly. Their crime dramas are fairly good too (Taggart has now adapted to the hour slot effectively).

However, their comedy is awful (that Santa Contest thing, for example), they closed their childrens' department a couple of years back and their game shows aren't all that good.

Don't get me started on Demons, a show that Willow Rosenburg would have for breakfast in terms of quality.

Seriously, Grade gets an F.

What happens when you award the contract to the lowest bidder...

Certain words are coming back to haunt Gordon Brown.

What we need, basically, is a global minimum wage. This would mean that people would be judged based on their skills, not how much they're willing to work for.

Man, Man U winning again???

Can Sir Alex please retire and let someone else dominate the game for a change?

Holocaust Memorial Day

64 years ago today, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, the most infamous of the Nazi concentration camps. If you're ever in Poland and get the opportunity to go, pay a visit. You will not fully understand it until you have been there. In fact, you can't really fully understand it.

What makes someone take a person's clothes, shave all the hair from their body, force that person into a closed room while claiming it's a shower room and then gas him or her? Merely because of their ethnic background.

We are all children of God and racism is utterly wrong- regardless of who practices it.

The Second Great Depression?

Mr. Brown (why am I doing that? It sounds like I'm blogging in the 1950s- now there's an idea...) has announced another large injection of public money into the banking sector to try and get the banks lending again.

I don't know whether this is going to work. I'm worried it won't.

I think that we could end up with another depression- and a big one.

Good Morning Mr. President, my name's Reality. Now give me your wallet.

Tomorrow marks the end of the Presidency of George W. Bush. I'm not going to do a full review of his presidency and his legacy because firstly it's clichéd and secondly, I think it's too early to fully judge him. I will say that I believe he'll go down fairly badly in history, but not as badly as many think at the moment.

With Bush's leaving office, Barack Hussein Obama (now there's a name you wouldn't have thought would be elected President even a decade ago) will become the 44th President.

Now I've got some cold hard facts for the huge number of Obama cheerleaders and groupies out there:

Obama's election was nothing more than the rejection of an incumbent government for economic incompetence in favour of a charismatic young politician who preached change and makes good speeches. It does not mark the end of conservatism by any means, especially as John McCain got only a million or so votes less than George W. Bush. It was not a landslide victory- Reagan won a bigger one. All that happened was that a load of first-time voters arrived and a load of Republicans stayed at home. This will not the same come 2012.

Mr. Obama had better perform and perform well.

Heathrow Airport Expansion

The Government has decided to go ahead with the expansion of Heathrow to include a third runway and a sixth terminal, along with some new rail links and other stuff to try and balance out the environmental impact.

I'm not in favour of the airport expansion, at least not at Heathrow.

There is the obvious environmental aspect, although some of the green campaigners need to think of the long-term impact of their actions on the global economy and tackling poverty.

As for creation of jobs- you don't need an airport to do that.

I'd like to see where the aviation market is at in five years before a decision anyway- it might not keep growing.

I suspect this won't be built- the courts will throw it out or the government will change.

BTW, Boris Johnson's Thames Estuary idea is stupid.

Covert-81 is up!

The game has been created!

If you want join, go to AJJE Games (link on my link bar) go to Ride The Edge and then to the application form.

We start on Friday.

Yes!

London Lite fails geography...

It stated today that it's currently colder than parts of Antarctica.

Well, of course. It's summer in Antarctica. Aussies do celebrate Christmas on the beach after all...

Starting 2009- RP Plans

Ah, the joys of automated posting. I was out bell ringing in the new year when midnight came. Hope you don't mind.

I hope that Covert-81 will go up soon. I've got plans (more or less) for the entire "first season" of this RP and I really look forward to starting it. I will keep you informed.

I have plans to develop another couple of RPs for AJJE Games. I won't really be playing in these, just setting them and letting someone else have all the fun of GMing. I have my limits and more ideas than time to implement them...

If you've got any good, original RP ideas, please email me at silenthunta@hotmail.com. You'll get full credit.

Happy New Year!

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy 2009!

Message to Zola

Do not sell Bellamy.

A Weird Boxing Day In The Footy...

It was a weird Boxing Day in the weirdest Premiership season I can remember.

It's a season where three or four bad games can alter a club from title contenders to relegation fighters and managers from local heroes to people who need sacking badly (Personally, I think managers have it too hard- one should not get sacked for losing the final of the Champions League).

I caught a fair bit of the Villa-Arsenal game. It was a spectacular goal that levelled it for Villa and I, for some reason (I'd usually support Arsenal in this encounter, but I generally support Arsenal in their encounters, unless they're playing West Ham, of course).

Great one for the Hammers, wasn't it? 4-1 against Pompey at their ground is a brilliant result. They should have kept Redknapp...

Man City did a great job against Hull. I guess their manager is safe for the time being. Come the transfer window in January, they're going to be spending like a thing that spends a lot (thank you, Messrs. Whedon, Curtis, Elton, Atkinson et. al). Perhaps next season they'll be the richest side in the Championship. ;)

Man U certainly left it to beat Stoke- it should have been a walkover.

It's going to be an interesting title race- it could go to any one of five or six clubs. For the record, I will now make my preferences clear.

Come on you Reds!

Gaza airstrikes

The Gaza Strips has suffered its worst airstrikes since 1967, as you've probably read on the news sites.

It seems to me that this is the lead up to a full-scale invasion by Israel, who are probably getting sick of Hamas.

It's going to be nasty whatever happens. My thoughts and prayers are with all those affected.

Merry Christmas

I would like to wish everyone an enjoyable and safe Christmas season.

Praise the Lord for the birth of his Son, that our sins might be forgiven and that we might enter his Kingdom!

US Election Analysis

I was going to do one, but it's a bit late now.

If anyone still wants it, please let me know.

Punditry

A job that requires no qualifications and which you can't get sacked from for excessively poor performance.

So, I'll be here for a while yet... ;)

Misuse of the word "since"

I'm getting annoyed with people constantly using "since" in the same sense as "like".

For example, an advert for the Quantum of Solace video game has a reviewer describe it as "the best since GoldenEye". I suspect that's one of those ripped out of context quotes, but still it's the word since that bugs me.

Let's say that each year, the number of cider bottles drunk by Dave is counted. These are the results:
1997- 61
1998- 23
1999- 30
2000- 8
2001- 24
2002- 25
2003- 15
2004- 21
2005- 32

Now, you could say that in 2005, Dave drunk the most amount of port he's drunk since 1997 and express alarm over his alcohol consumption levels. However, he's only drunk half of his 1997 level.

The current recession has been described as the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression". However, it's nowhere near the Great Depression- financiers aren't jumping off skyscrapers, for example.

Please, to everyone in the media, put this in perspective.

Covert-81

I expect that this will go up at AJJE Games over the next couple of days, so I had better advertise it now.

Covert-81 combines three of the areas at I have a great interest in- RPing, espionage and the Cold War, in the form of a play-by-post RPG.

The year is 1981. Détente is in ruins after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. With the SS-20 missile deployment in the Western USSR and the planned NATO counter-deployments, a new, seemingly hard-line US president and a rapidly arming USSR, it seems that nuclear war is closer than ever.

Behind the summits and the rhetoric, shadowy operations are going on. Two black-ops organisations, one on each side of the East-West divide, battle to gain the advantage in this global struggle.

Choose your side: Section 91, dedicated to protecting Western freedom and democracy, or Chameleon, aiming to ensure the triumph of Marxism-Leninism.

Inspired by such works as Firefox, The A-Team, MacGyver and the Tom Clancy novels, but with the benefit of hindsight and better accents, Covert-81 is a tale of espionage, high-technology, betrayal, danger and really, really bad hairdos.

If you're interested, please email me at silenthunta@hotmail.com

(yes, that's a "Backfire"- from the DIA Military Art Collection)

Damian Green

Some general thoughts:

• I suspect that Green's releasing stuff in "the public interest" was also because it further served the Tory interest
• I believe that Brown and Smith weren't told about this beforehand- Diane Abbott said that there had to be political cover and I think not telling them was that
• If this was a Labour MP doing this, the Daily Mail et. al would not be so much in arms
• I hope there was a very good reason for this- I suspect there's something more than the Tory story.

(Edit 3.10pm - this is my 200th post)