A London Moment.

We were at an excellent concert last night at the Barbican featuring the Kings of Convenience. 'Brilliant show. At one point band member Erlend Øye stated that he used to live in this town - meaning London. Obliviously thrown by the lack of the kind of enthusiastic reaction you might expect from other cities he then asked where we all were from then? Queue a myriad of cosmopolitan responses covering much of the UK,Europe and even Mexico.

That's London, about as far from parochial as you could possibly get. I think that's one of the reasons I love it!

Nobel Peace Prize

It appears Barack Obama has received the Nobel Prize for the achievement of not being George Bush.

‘Good thing too I believe. He may not have done much in his time in office but just his presence on the world stage signifies the lifting of a dark cloud.

Essentially this prize is recognition for the American people showing the good sense to elect Obama, an event that still heartens me and many others around the world.

Still, I expect the moronic, Fox News viewing American right will probably twist this into a negative. For them any approval from abroad is to be regarded with suspicion. These cranks can’t even accept that Obama is an American for goodness sake.

House Price Madness

Reports this week say the housing market is now back to peak 2008 levels. Of course it isn't really back to that level in real terms as the £ has taken one hell of a hit. The whole economy has effectively been run for the benefit of those homeowners/banks who over extended during the boom and the weak £ - driven down by low interest rates and quantitative easing - has been left to carry the burden.

Of course, outside of hols on the Costa', the poor saps who live in the UK don't see this. With the house price boom being the bubble literally to big to let burst what are the lessons we all have learnt? Pretty much all the wrong ones I'm afraid! We seem to be going back to our destructive debt addled ways, only this time even more recklessly with the false security that the government won't let it all go tits-up.

The economy is effectively held hostage by the an insane housing market and the resulting policy of ongoing low interest rates is the very prescription that to a large degree created the environment for the recent crash in the first place. Next time the bubble looks like bursting the government will be impotent to act - they've shot their bolt and not only not fixed the fault in the system but adopted an economic course that can only lead to a bigger financial meltdown in the future.

We really are screwed!

Murdoch's 'End of Free' and the future of newspapers.

There's currently much talk of Murdoch's move to place his English newspaper titles behind a "paywall". Simon Jenkins in his article Goodbye Guardian. Hello the Guardian Experience has an excellent take on what newspapers might do to improve revenues or even entice punters over such a paywall.

In his piece Jenkins writes......

Whatever the point of entry, somewhere behind a paywall was a beckoning club, privileged access not just to news and comment but to a galaxy of media brands, events, concerts, courses, seminars, conferences, tours and related discounts and dating agencies. To pay was not to read, it was to join.

It seems to me that newspapers first and foremost need to get over being "newspapers" and embrace and engage their core brand and audience. This will be easier for some more than others - the Guardian certainly represents a strong global liberal brand. They should be portals on their readers whole lifestyles, not just suggesting where to take a trip and what movie to watch but selling them the holiday and the DVD.

I would expect the differences between other media like TV and newspapers to erode also. Why shouldn't The Sun bring you a future series of Big Brother streaming live from it's website?

The dead trees that constitute a newspaper represent only a delivery system, and a rather outmoded, inefficient and environmentally damaging one at that. Newspapers future will be secured when we've long since stopped calling them such.

LOOKALIKES!

Cameron Diaz.actor(left) Josef Fritzl.killer,pervert etc(right)



A little dated this,I did think of it awhile back but only now thought it a laugh to put up on blog.

Ahmadinejad is Right!

It pains me to say this but I thought Ahmadinejads' controversial comment that Israel was a "cruel & repressive racist regime" over the Palestinians was a statement of FACT! His further comments that Israel was created by the US and Europe on the "pretext of Jewish suffering" from the Second War, is also nothing if not accurate.

WHY ALL THE FUSS?

It's a shame all the western governments up in arms over this weren't so worked up in anger around New Year when Israel was bombing the crap out of Gaza with phosphorus!

I've not heard or read the full transcript(assuming a translation could be relied on anyway?) of Ahmadinejads' speech but if the above quotes reported in the British press are the worst of it then it appears to have been a relatively reasoned and measured address.

This makes the mass walkout of western diplomats,not to mention the other nations who boycotted the event, look ridiculous quite frankly.I suspect they were all "primed" to walk even before they heard the words of the speech.Has Mossad got compromising polaroids of all western leaders or something?

I don't intend to be an Ahmadinejad apologist.I've little time for his odious regime.I'm also in no way against the state of Israel,it exists and I wish it a viable,peaceful future........alongside a viable Palestinian state.

That the debate has been so skewed towards the RIGHT WING position of Israels current government is tragic.This does no one any favours,least of all Israel which,without compromise and peace with it's neighbours, finds itself on a path towards it's likely eventual destruction.Surely true Zionists with a sense of self preservation should pursue a more moderate position.

And as for the West........no wonder the Muslim world hates us!

The "Porn" ultimatum.

Could there possibly be a more embarrassing way for your wife to find out you've been watching porn?

Beleaguered British Home Secretary's husband Richard Timney has 'fessed up to watching adult movies at the couples constituency home while his wife was away.Not a crime on it's own,but said porn was subsequently charged to Jacqui Smiths parliamentary expenses which were recently leaked to the British press.

Now where this story doesn't quite scan for me is why would an intelligent grown man, in an age of freely accessible hard core porn to suit even the most discerning or depraved connoisseur of skin flicks via the wonderful internet,choose to get his rocks off to a pay per view film on the Virgin cable package(with incriminating itemised billing)?

Here's my theory,based on nothing other than incredulity that Mr Smith could be so dumb, and the apparent solidarity Jacqui Smith appears to be showing with her husbands indiscretion.Suppose the adult films weren't watched by Mr Timney at all.The couples sons are aged 10 and 13,about the age I expect you'd be endeavouring to access those forbidden adult channels on the TV.In this scenario Mr Timney accepts responsibility for accessing said porn to save his own children the inevitable humiliation which,played out in the school yard rather than a ravenous national press,would probably cause much greater emotional damage to those concerned in the longer term.

So if this were to have been the case then Mr Timney's actions are transformed.He's no longer a husband,getting his auto-erotic kicks while the missus is away,but a dad committing a noble act to protect his children and family.

Then of course he might've just been having a w*nk on the state!