The medium of writing was most possibly invented six thousand years ago in what is now Iraq. Presumably "reading" was invented around about the same time.
The medium of singing was invented much earlier when a caveman dropped a big boulder on their foot and the rest of tribe had such great fun copying the noise he made.
This of course was the birth of Rock music.
Radio is a much more recent invention, being just a tad more than a century old. Unlike writing and music, it hasn't changed all that much since it was invented, mostly because it just works. Now some spanner (sorry, I meant to say "His Lordship, Lord Carter of Barnes") wants to force us to scrap our various radios and go buy some of these new fangled DAB digital sets.
Digital radio is rather excellent. Apart from the expense of the equipment. And the electrical power it needs. And the totally hopeless reception you get.
Actually, come to think of it, digital radio is completely hopeless. I could use a bent coathanger as an aerial on my analog set and pick up Radio 4 in perfect stereo. On my DAB set, if the wind blows or if someone in the room moves, the signal disappears.
You see, it's like forcing every cyclist in the country to scrap their bicycles and get motor bikes instead. Expensive, badly-tuned bulky motorbikes with terrible fuel economy at that. How do these people not understand that some of us don't want over-engineered solutions to problems we haven't got ?!
Don't read the whole report - you will lose the will to live and when you close your eyes you will dream in management jargon and pseudo-scientific technobabble. The chapter on the future of radio is here for those who want to see what the fuss is about.
A final piece of advice : the only people who talk about "platforms" that are worth listening to are railway announcers. Lord Carter mentions the word five times in the first page of that chapter. He doesn't work in a railway station.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Exposed
- "Merrily the feast I'll make.
- Today I'll brew, tomorrow bake;
- Merrily I'll dance and sing,
- For next day will a stranger bring.
- Little does my lady dream
- Rumpelstiltskin is my name!"
You see, whole days can pass when I don't give a thought to blogging or magistration. I listen to music, I do a job, my daughter beats me at Mario Kart (and most other things in fact).
When I do mention my JP activities, I'm very careful to disguise any distinguishing features. Genders are bended and time is warped so that the head of guy who was up for a public order offence last month is likely to end up on the body of a woman I saw on a speeding charge two weeks ago.
Not all bloggers are this careful, and it seems that the award winning (but indiscrete) police blogger NightJack was one of them.
Nevertheless, I'm spitting mad with the Times for outing him. How can they possibly justify doing something quite so at odds with Rule 1 of journalism : "Protect Your Sources"? All I can think is that they are pig sick of The Telegraph getting all the juicy MPs' Expenses stories and couldn't resist a rare exclusive of their own.
Like NightJack, I write anonymously. Well, as anonymously as you can be after writing several hundred thousand words about your life over three years. In actual fact, a good journalist or a mediocre Home Office spook could probably work who I am without breaking a sweat. But why would they ?
Totally changing the subject ... Something odd happened yesterday. According to my weblog someone in London with a PlusNet/Force9 internet connection downloaded 141 of my blog postings to their Windows Vista PC in 23 minutes, which rather skewed the statistics for the blog:-
I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I'll probably never know. This is a good thing, and the way things should be. People should be able to read what they want online.
However, in a more repressive regime, the combination of IP address, name of the Internet Service Provider and time of day would be enough for government to track down that person.
The point I'm making here is that there is a slippery slope. It starts with the likes of NightJack, who wrote some disreputable things and were exposed. The next step is for people who haven't written anything bad to be exposed, for fun or profit. The ultimate step is for people to be exposed just for reading something online.
There is nothing wrong with anonymity, we all rely on it in various ways every single day of our lives. I'm finding it very hard to comprehend that as of yesterday, the law does not protect this right.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Clueless No More
It's a stream of feeble puns, older even than the outdated format of the show. The chairman didn't really get into his stride and three quarters of the panel trotted out the same material they've been overusing for half a century.
To summarise - in my honest opinion, the first episode of the new series of "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" was by some margin the best programme on TV or radio this year. An absolute delight, and I'm still smirking like am imbecile as I type this.
If you're new to the programme then you've missed fifty series of the best semi-improvised verbal playfulness the world has ever seen. There are running gags, scattergun punning and the groaningest end-of-the-pier innuendo known to man. There are fictional games and invisible sexy assistants. And now there's even Victoria Wood.
For just about all of the fifty previous series the chairman had been the great Humphrey Lyttleton, who brought a jazzman's sense of comic timing to the role. Stephen Fry was the chairman tonight, and although he is a formidable intellect and a considerable comedian, I was disappointed that he didn't really put across any kind of "voice" like he does when he's chairing "QI". On that programme he's geeky, unworldly Fry of Queen's College, Cambridge and it works well there. But it took 6 years of that show to get that voice right, so it is expecting a lot for him to shine on his first day in this job. And by the way, we're talking about a job that the last guy did for thirty years and I swear he was still improving right up to the end.
So why was it my favourite programme of this year when I am so critical of it?
It's simply because I feared the show was dead and that there would be no more of it. For me, this new series was like seeing an old friend in the street - one that I believed was dead. They might not seem quite themselves at the moment, but that doesn't stop you wanting to rush up and give them a huge hug and thank your choice of deity or muppet that they still live.
So, thanks be to Kermit; "Clue" is back ! It's a great comfort to know that I'm guaranteed at least a smile, a groan and a chuckle on Monday evenings.
To summarise - in my honest opinion, the first episode of the new series of "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" was by some margin the best programme on TV or radio this year. An absolute delight, and I'm still smirking like am imbecile as I type this.
If you're new to the programme then you've missed fifty series of the best semi-improvised verbal playfulness the world has ever seen. There are running gags, scattergun punning and the groaningest end-of-the-pier innuendo known to man. There are fictional games and invisible sexy assistants. And now there's even Victoria Wood.
For just about all of the fifty previous series the chairman had been the great Humphrey Lyttleton, who brought a jazzman's sense of comic timing to the role. Stephen Fry was the chairman tonight, and although he is a formidable intellect and a considerable comedian, I was disappointed that he didn't really put across any kind of "voice" like he does when he's chairing "QI". On that programme he's geeky, unworldly Fry of Queen's College, Cambridge and it works well there. But it took 6 years of that show to get that voice right, so it is expecting a lot for him to shine on his first day in this job. And by the way, we're talking about a job that the last guy did for thirty years and I swear he was still improving right up to the end.
So why was it my favourite programme of this year when I am so critical of it?
It's simply because I feared the show was dead and that there would be no more of it. For me, this new series was like seeing an old friend in the street - one that I believed was dead. They might not seem quite themselves at the moment, but that doesn't stop you wanting to rush up and give them a huge hug and thank your choice of deity or muppet that they still live.
So, thanks be to Kermit; "Clue" is back ! It's a great comfort to know that I'm guaranteed at least a smile, a groan and a chuckle on Monday evenings.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Weekend Magistrate
I volunteered for a weekend session of magistration recently. There's not much different - except that the lawyers are noticeably dressed-down and you only get the Friday overnight custody cases. By far the biggest difference though is that you sit as a bench of two Magistrates rather than three. I'm sure this has the potential for extra stress when you disagree, but it wasn't an issue this particular weekend.
I've always identified remand decisions as being the hardest part of the job, and we had a very tricky one this particular Saturday. Well, it was tricky at the time, but the more I go over the details, the more obvious it appears that we made the right decision and I can't for the life of me think why we found it so difficult.
The prosecution case concerned a married couple. The Mrs was alleged to have decided, for no apparent good reason, to start a fight in the street. She then got Hubby to finish the job, which he did by leaving the victim half dead on the pavement. She then pretended to be a witness and told the police that two other people had done the deed. Those two were arrested and it was a while before she admitted the truth.
Even leaving aside one count of perverting the course of justice, this was never going to be one for the Magistrates' Court, so we swiftly kicked it upstairs to the Crown Court and looked at whether we were going to keep either of both of them in custody pending their day before the judge.
For a young man, Hubby had compiled quite a list of previous offences - three or four a year since he was 13. A goodly number of these were marked with the asterisks that indicate that they were committed while on bail or when he was legally supposed to be on his best behaviour.
The thing about bail is that the starting point is that you are going to bail the person without conditions unless you've got reasons not to. A person with a history of violence and witness intimidation who has ignored bail conditions in the past would be an example of someone unsuitable for bail. So Hubby was going nowhere.
The lady was more difficult to assess. She didn't have much in the way of previous (or "antecedents" as they insist on calling it in court) and the Prosecution suggested that since she had two small children at home then bail with some conditions would be suitable.
However, she had been heard to say that she was going to "sort out" the prosecution witness, which was believable given that she was already pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice.
Did we think that she was a threat to the public and was capable of interfering with witnesses ? Well, yes we did, so we remanded her in custody, and her kids are staying with their grandparents for a while. Not something you do lightly, but it needed doing.
There's a rather cruel piece of theatre that goes on when the bail decision is announced. As you say "bail is not granted", the handcuffs are put onto the Accused with an audible click and they are led away. When this happened to the lady, she burst into tears, as did some of her supporters in the public gallery. Seems a little unnecessary to my way of thinking - they are after all in a glass block surrounded by trained security guards.
I've always identified remand decisions as being the hardest part of the job, and we had a very tricky one this particular Saturday. Well, it was tricky at the time, but the more I go over the details, the more obvious it appears that we made the right decision and I can't for the life of me think why we found it so difficult.
The prosecution case concerned a married couple. The Mrs was alleged to have decided, for no apparent good reason, to start a fight in the street. She then got Hubby to finish the job, which he did by leaving the victim half dead on the pavement. She then pretended to be a witness and told the police that two other people had done the deed. Those two were arrested and it was a while before she admitted the truth.
Even leaving aside one count of perverting the course of justice, this was never going to be one for the Magistrates' Court, so we swiftly kicked it upstairs to the Crown Court and looked at whether we were going to keep either of both of them in custody pending their day before the judge.
For a young man, Hubby had compiled quite a list of previous offences - three or four a year since he was 13. A goodly number of these were marked with the asterisks that indicate that they were committed while on bail or when he was legally supposed to be on his best behaviour.
The thing about bail is that the starting point is that you are going to bail the person without conditions unless you've got reasons not to. A person with a history of violence and witness intimidation who has ignored bail conditions in the past would be an example of someone unsuitable for bail. So Hubby was going nowhere.
The lady was more difficult to assess. She didn't have much in the way of previous (or "antecedents" as they insist on calling it in court) and the Prosecution suggested that since she had two small children at home then bail with some conditions would be suitable.
However, she had been heard to say that she was going to "sort out" the prosecution witness, which was believable given that she was already pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice.
Did we think that she was a threat to the public and was capable of interfering with witnesses ? Well, yes we did, so we remanded her in custody, and her kids are staying with their grandparents for a while. Not something you do lightly, but it needed doing.
There's a rather cruel piece of theatre that goes on when the bail decision is announced. As you say "bail is not granted", the handcuffs are put onto the Accused with an audible click and they are led away. When this happened to the lady, she burst into tears, as did some of her supporters in the public gallery. Seems a little unnecessary to my way of thinking - they are after all in a glass block surrounded by trained security guards.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Safety Song
Seat belts, air bags and ABS are all useful safety gadgets, but if we're really serious about car safety then all cars should have Fairground Attraction's music installed as standard.
The M4 was jammed this morning and it was raining. There was a lot of traffic coming off at my junction, and nobody seemed to grasp the basic physics of using a roundabout. I sighed and put on some music.
CD1 failed,either because it's a scratchy charity shop CD or because my CD player is failing. Blood pressure up.
CD2 was Portishead's excellent but downbeat third album. Not now.
CD3 was a best of Fairground Attraction and Eddi Reader compilation.
Suddenly I felt I was a spectator, watching amused as drivers repeatedly cut me up, randomly swapping lanes without indication, permission or apology. Usually I'd be trying to keep a lid on the introverted road rage in my head, but instead I was singing along to "Perfect" and "Claire" as I watched the ballet of stressed 4x4s in the rain in front of me.
Such joyful music makes you well-disposed to your fellow man - you wave people in front you, you keep your distance, you forgive bad drivers. Oh, if only everyone listened to this in the car.
Although you'd have to watch when "Ay Fond Kiss" comes on - there would be queues of traffic waiting to pull into lay-bys for a good weep.
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