steep gradient

There's an old tradition in the UK Press known as juxtaposition, where a couple of apparently unrelated stories are co-located on purpose. Sometimes this when it is not possible to draw a direct link between them for various sometimes legal reasons.

So today's Sunday Times article about Michael Grade with what appears to be cloven feet seems particularly intriguing. Doesn't it seem strange that News Corporation (who own the Sunday Times, Sky television and have just taken a 17.9% shareholding in ITV) now print the page as my photo illustrates.

Grade was chairman of BBC until a few days ago and has now jumped to a great rewards package to a great challenge to re-invigorate the ITV.

In the ancient television days of a few years ago, when there were really still four receivable terrestrial channels and less than 200 satellite, there was still a reasonable, (some would say world leading) selection of television programes from the UK and it was moderately evenly balanced between the old ITV and BBC.

Then after reality and cheap television like Love Island, Viewer of the Year, I'm a celebrity (D-lister), get me out of here, Soapstar Superstar and so forth, it may take some effort to de-mush the ITV schedules. The new (still secret?) ITV show "Fortune" with ex convict Jeffrey Archer alongside sex-shop Ann Summer's founder Jacqueline Gold handing out money to make peoples' wishes come true seems to be from the same genre. ("Jim'll fix it" with a convict and a sex shop owner?)

In fairness, Corrie (not on my personal viewing list) does seem to have a sense of humour and a heart and there have been some strong dramas although a fair few are about flawed detectives. Of course, Grade knows the entire BBC plans for 2007 and beyond anyway, so this should help his turnaround of ITV's programming.

Tag: rashbre, ITV, Michael Grade, Sunday Times, BSkyB, News International

shopping

A couple of weeks ago I was in a well known retailer trying to buy something moderately expensive; lets just say it was somewhat more than fifty quid.

I could see the item behind a glass case but there were no shop assistants to be found. I walked around the largish store and the two or three visible assistants were busy.

I returned to the area and another woman had found the remaining assistant and was asking questions about a purchase and getting unknowledgeable and insouciant replies.

I waited patiently for about another five minutes and then politely asked if the assistant could pass me the boxed item, which I would then carry to the checkout. "Can't do that", he replied, "You have to have someone take the item to the checkout". I protested there was no one etc, then left the area, couldn't see anyone else free and so I left the shop. I later found the item on the internet, ordered it and it arrived a couple of days later.

Today, I see that UK High Street giants are slashing prices as they try to tempt shoppers to part with their cash amid fears that shops may suffer their worst Christmas for 25 years. Most of the big names are doing this, but I fear they may have missed the plot. Where we find uninformed, offhand assistants they are more akin to sales prevention officers.

Retailers need to find improved ways to inspire enthusiasm from the people running their counters or we will all find other channels.

Retail analyst Footfall is saying that next four weeks of shopping could be nervous for retailers and that thre is a 15% reduction in shoppers over last year. If the only response is price cutting then I suppose we all get what we deserve.

Well as diamond geezer reports, they closed Oxford Street to traffic today to make more space for shoppers. Adjacent was an art installation called Santa's Ghetto.

Tag: rashbre, Santa, london, oxford street, banksy, retail

gambling the night away

The party last night was themed around Monte Carlo and so we had a kind of jet-set James Bond Casino Royale vibe for the evening.

Everyone sparkled with a high tux and gown count and chattered at the Champagne Bar, before we moved into the dining area.

The girl dancers showed great flexibility during the early evening and then later as the bass kicked in and the dance floor opened there was a surge to be part of the action.

There were other activities reminiscent of Monte Carlo, such as the Monaco Grand Prix, although the highly manourvrable cars were somewhat smaller than the originals.

Suffice to say my gambling was ineffective and the house won.

1734

...was the last time we had such a warm November in England. Its strange to see pavement cafes in operation at a time when we would usually have frost. In Northumberland they are picking raspberries instead of clearing snowdrifts. Now is the time to read the Sir Nicholas Stern. Or here for a guide to climate change.

Tag: rashbre, england, global warming, winter, weather, climate change

Thursday Thirteen (V34)

The secular Christmas season is really approaching now:

1) The blue lights are up in Sloane Square
2) Woolworth's have television advertisements featuring snow
3) The Star Wars LP containing "Christmas in The Stars" and "R2D2 we wish you a merry Christmas" is getting blogged.
4) The car park at Marks and Spencer was completely full on Wednesday, mid afternoon.
5) I attend my first Christmas Party tomorrow.
6) Sky was showing Santa Claus films on four channels yesterday
7) I've eaten my first mince pie of the season
8) There were hot cross buns in Sainsbury's last weekend
9) There's a robin in the garden
11) Some blogs have already had a Christmas makeover
12) I should make a list for the chimney
13) I saw a car with a Christmas Tree in it tonight
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Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday, 82ask

NaNoKeepGoing

I just updated my wordcount on NaNoWriMo and discovered I'd gone over the 50,000 mark, which was the objective within November. The last two or three times I've run the updater, the little counter didn't go up, so I was surprised this time when it jumped several thousand words.

Last year, when I did this, I'd also pretty much finished the story as well, so I'd sort of guessed how to land at the desired point. This time, I'm still in mid plot, so I really have quite a lot more writing to just get to a finished rough draft. I shall continue for another few days, to try to get the ending resolved. I know what I want to happen but need several more stages before I can get there.

And this time, I've left some areas where I intended to go back and add further characterisations and contextualisations to the storyline. Hmm. Maybe I've been a little too ambitious. My best wishes and encouragement to anyone else battling to break through the 50,000 word mark before midnight on Thursday.

Check out my opening chapter here

OTA Wordless Wednesday

milan, too much time on the runway

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Tag: Wordless Wednesday

word flood

Landing this evening at Heathrow, I noticed the news about new flood warnings around London.

We've moved from a drought alert to flood warnings in a matter of days, yet there's still a hosepipe ban in quite a few areas. I suppose, in typical British tradition it will be 'the wrong type of rain'.

On the way back from Italy, we flew round in circles a few times before landing, which did give me some extended typing time so I've managed to catch up somewhat on my Nano musings, although it will still be rather squeaky about whether I managed to hit the full 50,000 by the end of Thursday. Compared with the last time, I seem to have developed a more divergent plot which I don't think really fits the 50,000 word format, so I suspect I will need to keep going for another couple of weeks if I expect to round it off.

mellow yellow

I've been sitting enjoying company with friends in a restaurant in central Milan this evening. Five of us bundled into an impossibly small taxi on the way to the restaurant and then met two more at the venue.

We talked about politics in Italy, and their wish to somehow increase the number of women in Italian political parties. I couldn't help thinking of Ilona Staller (Cicciolina), who made her name in another way before moving into politics.

Then at some point we moved onto James Bond, and like most people I feel as if I've seen the film, although its still on my 'to do' list.

The Saffron risotto and local red wine were both excellent.

Magician

I was in Babylon at the Kensington Roof Gardens today and suitably impressed by a table magician who converted one of my banknotes (A Scottish £20 note) into 100 Euros. Then he moved a ring from a pocket to a packet of cigarettes and then he mind-read correctly the card I was thinking. All great fun and delivered in an amusing way.

Always good to have a little magic.

polonium

So Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB agent is alleged to have been poisoned in a London sushi restaurant with ingested powdered radioactive Polonium 210. The former spy blamed Putin in his death-bed statement.

Litvinenko had two meetings in central London on 1 November, in Piccadilly at the sushi bar and also in Mayfair. Scotland Yard is now investigating.

There appear to be several possible trails. It is thought that Litvinenko made an enemy of the Russian security service (FSB), accusing it of many abuses, including the bombing of a block of Chechen flats in 1999, killing 300 people. He also said he was also told to kidnap a prominent Chechen businessman based in Moscow to trade for Russian intelligence officers taken hostage by Chechens.

In 1997, Litvinenko said his FSB department had become responsible for so-called 'extralegal executions' of unsuitable businessmen, politicians and other public figures and there were also blackmail suggestions linked with this.

In 1998, he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was living in exile in London. Litvinenko spent nine months in jail from 1999 on charges of abuse of office. He was later acquitted and moved to Britain, which granted him asylum in 2000.

The most recent connection of Litvinenko is with Anna Politkovskaya who was herself recently killed in the process of searching for murderers within the Russian bank system. There is speculation she had discovered ex KGB people involved in contract killings and told Livinenko what was happening.

This story is top news in Britain at the moment, although the above storylines suggest its a more commonplace situation within Moscow circles.

I wanted to know where one gets hold of the rare alpha particle emitting Polonium-210.

Easy, if you are an American It costs $69 from a store on the internet.

Need corroboration? check this out

Tag: rashbre, polonium, litvinenko, russian spy, KGB, London

Time sink

My remaining PC tower system is behaving erratically. I don't use it so much nowadays and do most of my 'non work' computing on a Mac. So I hevn't been making many (any) software changes to the PC for ages except for the automatic updates, yet it seems to be slowly deteriorating of its own accord. It has all the fancy firewalls, virus checkers and so forth, yet now it seems very slow to do anything, has long periods of disk access for no apparent reason and some of the dialogue boxes are popping up without any messages inside.

I think the technical term is broken.

I do also run Windows on a laptop and also on my iMac. The iMac actually runs Windows Vista, in a 'window' in the main Mac session, much like starting a browser when I want to use Windows. I do this with some software called Parallels, which I mentioned here some months ago.

Anyway I suspect it will take me a whole day if I want to re-install everything, which is, I suppose, the looming task.

UPDATE: Just after I posted this, I visited debra's site and she has posted the Blue Screen of Death Screensaver for Windows, which simulates a disasterous Windows failure of varying types. Its here