HOME.
Refuse refusal.
Latest of the Isle of Wight Council’s tail-wagging-the-dog policies is to order all citizens to place their politically correct rubbish (no bottles, or plastics, or cardboard; and no garden waste unless contained in overpriced green bags bought from the Council) in black dustbin bags and, on the given day, take them to the kerbside - or an allocated spot - outside their houses for collection by refuse collectors, waste disposal operatives or whatever else dustmen are calling themselves nowadays.
If rubbish is put out earlier than six the night before collection is due, the miscreant is liable to be prosecuted. Taxpayers’ money will be used to bring the prosecution.
For years we have been placing our dustbin bag in our front garden the night before the lads who collect it come around. We site it less than a yard from the front gate. Our garden is no more than a large forecourt anyway. Neighbours have adopted the same routine, give or take a bag or two or a yard or two,
This week all those who have ignored, overlooked, forgotten or simply not absorbed the new rule have had their rubbish left where they put it. No warning. The bags have simply been labelled with a notice saying they have not been collected because they are in the wrong place.
Why, I find myself constantly asking, are we employing the arrogant sods who run things around here? And why have none of them reasoned that litter-filled thoroughfares attract litter-scavenging vermin?
At the end of the road running alongside this terrace is a large woodyard wherein reside - if local folklore be believed - some rather large rats.
How long before said rats (accompanied by various other forms of wildlife) realise that the kerbs are being routinely littered with goodie-filled plastic bags lacking so much as a garden gate to protect them?
Since the new rules are clearly not designed to benefit the customer, one can only presume their purpose is to reduce the number of dustmen (or whatever title) we are currently employing. What a mean, futile saving.
A cutback in the number of overpaid, bullshit blathering top officers would be more to the point.
A huge reduction in the number of inflated expenses claims submitted by avaricious councillors would be even more so.
And a return to the days (if they ever existed) when the lunatics did not run the asylum would not come amiss.
The election.
So we’re off to a flying start. They’re going to build Utopia for us - again. The Blues, the Reds, the Oranges, the Greens, the Plaids, the Tartans, the BNP, UKIP and whatever the OMRLP might now be. For the next few weeks every one of them will promise everything you ever hoped for.
Your vote for them will surely make you the equivalent of a National Lottery winner.
And now they’ve imported another American game show, Brickbats at Five Paces, which consists of party leaders indulging in televised verbal jousting. What anybody is supposed to learn from it (other than just how undignified politicians are at election time) I do not know. It comes complete with highly paid opportunist American advisers of course, and that should be warning enough. At first glance they need a more exciting opening.
As a starter, the contestants should have been seated in the audience.
A compere - someone like the late lamented Leslie Crowther - should then have come on stage, introduced the show, and shouted:
“So who’s going to play Brickbats at Five Paces tonight? (long pause) David! Gordon! Nick! Come on down!”
What?
Give it time…
The Easter Hols.
Grandson Ellis has been stricken with the irritating itch of chicken pox, stoically refrained from excessive scratching and is on his way to a clear skin again. (Always happens at holiday time, doesn’t it?)
The cat Shadow has been stricken with cystitis; bad bout. I had not realised cats suffered from it.. We wrapped him in a blanket to take him to the vet. He goes berserk in a cat box. Thank gawd my Leader is a firm but kind administer of medicines. She is dealing with the daily dosage. I’m hopeless: get more fraught than the cat does. He has been very tolerant about it.
“That cat has not got a mean bone in his body,” was Mo’s verdict.
He had a quick wash to cover his embarrassment
FILMS.
Prairie Fever (2008)
This western had drunken ex sheriff Kevin Sorbo (think James Woods without the menace) escorting a group of women from a small town where neither he nor they were any longer wanted. It didn’t get much of a write up but we enjoyed it.
Tuck Everlasting. (2002)
Nice little fantasy from the Disney people. Starring William Hurt and Cissy Spacek, it was clearly family viewing for holiday time.
Ben Kingsley played the villain and the supporting cast included some attractive young people we did not recognise; they were all very good.
TELEVISION.
Foyle’s War.
The three leading characters are back. Sam is out of uniform (pity); Milner is a newly-appointed Detective Inspector with a lot to learn; Foyle is still a reluctant Detective Chief Superintendent who would rather go fishing; and the acting hat is still effortlessly upstaging everybody except its owner, who obviously taught it everything it knows.
Another three weeks of Honesuckle Weeks (what a smashing name), Anthony Howell (whose acting limp may not have kept up with his promotion) and the master of underplay, Foyle himself, Michael Kitchen (complete with his acting hat).
Might have been better to have a complete end to war and give us Foyle’s Peace?
Who knows?
Perhaps Anthony Horowitz does not want Foyle to become a home counties George Gently.
Midsomer Murders.
In a two hour episode, Barnaby and Jones investigated the customary mixture of class distinction, sex, spite and Middle England mayhem.
Dear old John Nettles is still being made to run all over the place before delivering an out-of-breath caution to a detestable toff.
I think he is really looking forward to the arrival of Neil Dudgeon.
FOOTBALL.
Mad world.
So penniless Pompey beat Redknapp’s Spurs and now Redknapp’s Spurs have beaten Chelsea. Can’t help wondering whether the ol’ boy will find the right players to beat the Inland Revenue.
Mad world, football.
Surprisingly decent world too, sometimes. When four staff at Pompey’s Eastleigh training ground were axed recently, head coach Avram Grant, club captain Hermann Hreidarsson, goalkeeper David James and the rest of the team, chipped in enough money to pay their wages until the end of the season.
In adversity, eh?
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
144. At the onset of a month of balderdash.
HOME
That wretched hour.
Again the half yearly muck about with the clocks. Forward an hour this time. Why?
A theory is that it’s for Scottish farmers. But they’ve got electricity up there, haven’t they? And don’t they have machines to milk the cows nowadays?
So why are millions of non-rural folk currently losing an hour’s sleep in the mornings and bundling little kids off to bed in broad daylight?
Cannot the pillocks-in-power be persuaded on a compromise?
Why don’t we just knock half an hour off the time next autumn and never change the bloody clocks again?
That wretched election.
So, the election is to be on Thursday 6th May, eh? Can’t say the prospect excites me.
Well, we either vote for the bunch that has been too long in power now, or the crowd that was too long in power before them, don‘t we?.
You pays your taxes and you takes your choice.
One thing for sure, whoever gets in can be relied upon to put up taxes and forget their promises. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em with my grandson’s money box.
Johann Hari wrote an excellent article (As Britain ages, will generational conflict dominate our politics?) in The Independent on the day before the PM went to HM.
In a lively and sympathetic defence of old Boomers, the journalist deftly dismantled Tory front-bencher David Willetts who, it seems, has written a book blaming the old for taking too big a slice of the nation’s financial pie.
Mr. Hari slyly suggests that the £20bn more needed in support of the elderly by 2017 could be covered by simply recovering the £25bn in tax which the super-rich currently avoid or evade each year.
In the same paper, Andreas Whittam Smith, with an article entitled The triumph of political mendacity, did a fine demolition job on New Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling.
Mr. Darling, he concluded, lacks respect for the electorate and is not alone among politicians in so doing. Mr. Darling, it seems, is nobody’s darling.
He will give a little with one hand and take back a lot with the other.
Even more galling, he will be convinced that we won’t notice
My favourite start to the month of balderdash we shall now endure, however, was John Humphrys interview with Neil Kinnock (BBC Radio 4 Tuesday 6th April) in which the two Welshmen debated whether Gordon Brown would or would not be a liability to his party in the forthcoming election.
Lovely stuff.
They sounded like two old guys in a pub in Pontypridd.
A trill too far?
After commending Della Reese’s interpretation of The Story of a Starry Night I broke a personal house rule and bought The Classic Della CD.
My Leader looked unsure but did not demur. Her uncertainty was not without foundation. (Post 96 refers) I have a collection of CDs containing one or two tracks to which I actually listen: the rest, no matter how appealing they may be to devotees of the particular artiste concerned, are not to my taste and regularly suffer the skip button.
Della was primarily a jazz singer (hear Cleo Laine). It is my loss that I am not a jazz fan.
An excellent collection for anybody who is, though.
In later discussion with Maureen I said that her initial doubts about the CD, though unexpressed, had been apparent.
She conceded that she had wondered whether twenty four tracks would be a trill too far.
Ah.
TELEVISION.
Doctor Who (New series).
All hail the youngest Doctor to breeze onto the scene since William ‘Billy’ Hartnell first graced our screens in 1963.
On the evidence of episode 1 alone, Matt Smith is the ideal replacement for David Tennant, who was one helluva hard act to follow.
The young Doctor has also acquired lovely Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) as his travelling companion (presumably ‘assistant’ is no longer a PC description).
This first episode was really Amy’s story: writer Steven Moffat cleverly used the updating of the Tardis and its time traveller to show how a brave little girl, Amelia (Caitlin Blackwood), became a feisty young woman, Amy, in the twelve years that it took the Doctor to get back from his ‘I’ll only be gone five minutes’ first encounter with her.
Casting and production have got it right again: this team is nigh on perfect.
Jonathan Creek.
Writer David Renwick’s likeable character, played by likeable Alan Davies, re-emerged at last to tackle another bizarre mystery. This time a one-off.
It was the same old, fondly remembered, formula. But for me, once again, there was something missing.
It was not the unbelievable plot and it was not the entire reel of loose ends, both of which were much in evidence.
No, what was missing (and has been for far too long) was Carolyn Quentin.
All the other Jonathan baiters have been good, but Carolyn was the best.
If there is ever another series, she really should be in it.
A Touch of Frost.
Jack came back in a final two-parter, He fell in love with and married RSPCA Inspector Christine Moorhead, played by Phyllis Logan (who, I seem to remember, once played the love of DCI Matt Burke’s life in Taggart).
Of course it all had to end in high drama: how else, with Adrian Dunbar and George Costigan in the cast?
Pity the producers felt the need to make public their decision to film three endings and leave the choice of which would be screened to David Jason.
He chose well enough, but it savoured of another of those ghastly reality shows which would end with the three threatened characters standing in the spotlight while an off-screen voice intoned: “And the first character chosen not to die tonight is...“
Long - long - long - long pause…
“David!”
(Cut to a delighted Jason. Switch to show Bruce Alexander and John Lyons applauding and trying to look like good sports.)
It was otherwise a decent Frost yarn and a fitting farewell to the long running favourite.
Question Time.
The last time I saw this it came from Stevenage and the panel consisted of three members of parliament, a Daily Mail columnist, and (for the sake of sanity) Victoria Coren.
She came across as unbiased.
Say no more.
That wretched hour.
Again the half yearly muck about with the clocks. Forward an hour this time. Why?
A theory is that it’s for Scottish farmers. But they’ve got electricity up there, haven’t they? And don’t they have machines to milk the cows nowadays?
So why are millions of non-rural folk currently losing an hour’s sleep in the mornings and bundling little kids off to bed in broad daylight?
Cannot the pillocks-in-power be persuaded on a compromise?
Why don’t we just knock half an hour off the time next autumn and never change the bloody clocks again?
That wretched election.
So, the election is to be on Thursday 6th May, eh? Can’t say the prospect excites me.
Well, we either vote for the bunch that has been too long in power now, or the crowd that was too long in power before them, don‘t we?.
You pays your taxes and you takes your choice.
One thing for sure, whoever gets in can be relied upon to put up taxes and forget their promises. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em with my grandson’s money box.
Johann Hari wrote an excellent article (As Britain ages, will generational conflict dominate our politics?) in The Independent on the day before the PM went to HM.
In a lively and sympathetic defence of old Boomers, the journalist deftly dismantled Tory front-bencher David Willetts who, it seems, has written a book blaming the old for taking too big a slice of the nation’s financial pie.
Mr. Hari slyly suggests that the £20bn more needed in support of the elderly by 2017 could be covered by simply recovering the £25bn in tax which the super-rich currently avoid or evade each year.
In the same paper, Andreas Whittam Smith, with an article entitled The triumph of political mendacity, did a fine demolition job on New Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling.
Mr. Darling, he concluded, lacks respect for the electorate and is not alone among politicians in so doing. Mr. Darling, it seems, is nobody’s darling.
He will give a little with one hand and take back a lot with the other.
Even more galling, he will be convinced that we won’t notice
My favourite start to the month of balderdash we shall now endure, however, was John Humphrys interview with Neil Kinnock (BBC Radio 4 Tuesday 6th April) in which the two Welshmen debated whether Gordon Brown would or would not be a liability to his party in the forthcoming election.
Lovely stuff.
They sounded like two old guys in a pub in Pontypridd.
A trill too far?
After commending Della Reese’s interpretation of The Story of a Starry Night I broke a personal house rule and bought The Classic Della CD.
My Leader looked unsure but did not demur. Her uncertainty was not without foundation. (Post 96 refers) I have a collection of CDs containing one or two tracks to which I actually listen: the rest, no matter how appealing they may be to devotees of the particular artiste concerned, are not to my taste and regularly suffer the skip button.
Della was primarily a jazz singer (hear Cleo Laine). It is my loss that I am not a jazz fan.
An excellent collection for anybody who is, though.
In later discussion with Maureen I said that her initial doubts about the CD, though unexpressed, had been apparent.
She conceded that she had wondered whether twenty four tracks would be a trill too far.
Ah.
TELEVISION.
Doctor Who (New series).
All hail the youngest Doctor to breeze onto the scene since William ‘Billy’ Hartnell first graced our screens in 1963.
On the evidence of episode 1 alone, Matt Smith is the ideal replacement for David Tennant, who was one helluva hard act to follow.
The young Doctor has also acquired lovely Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) as his travelling companion (presumably ‘assistant’ is no longer a PC description).
This first episode was really Amy’s story: writer Steven Moffat cleverly used the updating of the Tardis and its time traveller to show how a brave little girl, Amelia (Caitlin Blackwood), became a feisty young woman, Amy, in the twelve years that it took the Doctor to get back from his ‘I’ll only be gone five minutes’ first encounter with her.
Casting and production have got it right again: this team is nigh on perfect.
Jonathan Creek.
Writer David Renwick’s likeable character, played by likeable Alan Davies, re-emerged at last to tackle another bizarre mystery. This time a one-off.
It was the same old, fondly remembered, formula. But for me, once again, there was something missing.
It was not the unbelievable plot and it was not the entire reel of loose ends, both of which were much in evidence.
No, what was missing (and has been for far too long) was Carolyn Quentin.
All the other Jonathan baiters have been good, but Carolyn was the best.
If there is ever another series, she really should be in it.
A Touch of Frost.
Jack came back in a final two-parter, He fell in love with and married RSPCA Inspector Christine Moorhead, played by Phyllis Logan (who, I seem to remember, once played the love of DCI Matt Burke’s life in Taggart).
Of course it all had to end in high drama: how else, with Adrian Dunbar and George Costigan in the cast?
Pity the producers felt the need to make public their decision to film three endings and leave the choice of which would be screened to David Jason.
He chose well enough, but it savoured of another of those ghastly reality shows which would end with the three threatened characters standing in the spotlight while an off-screen voice intoned: “And the first character chosen not to die tonight is...“
Long - long - long - long pause…
“David!”
(Cut to a delighted Jason. Switch to show Bruce Alexander and John Lyons applauding and trying to look like good sports.)
It was otherwise a decent Frost yarn and a fitting farewell to the long running favourite.
Question Time.
The last time I saw this it came from Stevenage and the panel consisted of three members of parliament, a Daily Mail columnist, and (for the sake of sanity) Victoria Coren.
She came across as unbiased.
Say no more.
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