Saturday, 27 January 2018

Some mornings are just strange ...

1) I found 10,000 Vietnamese dong in my pillow case while stripping the sheets off my bed. Admittedly this was not entirely unsuspected as I'd been using the note as a bookmark until it disappeared a while back.

2) Turns out my contactless card payments at the V-Shed, Bristol Wetherspoons last night have been credited to the Ivy Wall Spalding Wetherspoons in Spalding, Lincolnshire. Hopefully this is just a glitch in their systems and not some Machiavellian case of card fraud.

3) Has not happened yet. I suspect it will involve badgers.

Thursday, 25 January 2018

May vs Facebook

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42815600

So, a meeting of some of the world's richest and most influential people and all May can think of is to moan about terrorists and pedophiles on social media? Talk about myopic.

Fair play to McDonnell for suggesting that he might have talked about something that actually mattered - global inequality and the need for a greater focus on development.

Saturday, 20 January 2018

BBC Comedy Triumphs

So I've been watching the second series of Detectorists on Netflix with a view to catching the third series before it disappears from iPlayer. I'm very much enjoying it so far - seems like the sort of gentle and charitable comedy that has largely been replaced on mainstream TV by brasher and meaner shows.

I'm  up to episode three and I'm not entirely sold yet. It's shaping up nicely in terms of the main search for the WW2 bomber and the Mayor's ceremonial chain but the little details and dialogue are always going to be what makes it in the end. "Nostalgia conventions aren't what they used to be" was a gem however. I laughed for a long time.

My other recent foray into BBC comedy was the first series of Upstart Crow. It was definitely a mixed bag. Some of the jokes worked and I liked both David Mitchell as Shakespeare and Tim Downie as a foppish Marlowe. The nods to Blackadder were also funny especially in the finale. However, there are also some markedly dull bits, especially in any scenes involving Harry Enfield or Spencer Jones' Kemp. It also really needs some new material, a lot of the jokes saw much exposure with no variation.     

Wednesday, 3 January 2018

Trump continues to blunder through the Israeli-Palestinian china shop

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/03/trump-threatens-cut-aid-palestinians-peace-talks

Personally I wouldn't be doubling down on such an idiotic decision if I was Trump (god forbid). Unpredictability and threats to cut aid might seem like a quick fix to a failed businessman but a constructive intermediary has to maintain good relations with both sides.

His current policies simply mean that the US will become not only an irrelevance but an active obstacle to peace in Israel (and the surrounding countries with Palestinian refugees).