I saw Oliver Cromwell shake his head outside Parliament today

The statue right outside Parliament is that of Oliver Cromwell who made England into a temporary republic during the Civil Wars of the 1600s.

As Cambridge MP, he joined the Roundhead movement and ran Oliver's army leading to the execution of Charles I and the creation of the Barebones Parliament.

After his death he was buried in Westminster Abbey - which is where the statue looks today. His military exploits were brutal and when the Royalists returned, his corpse was dug up, hung in chains and beheaded.

But the controversial statue stands directly outside Parliament.

350 years ago Parliament had little power, pretty much an advisory body for taxes. Cromwell positioned it for the privileged control it now exercises as a parliamentary monarchy.

Cromwell's point was to end arbitrary dictation from people who considered themselves above the law. What would he make of how things have developed?

Low Anthem from sofa at the Slaughtered Lamb

Attending a gig at the Slaughtered Lamb in Farringdon is a little like being in a big room in someone's house with some favourite musicians playing within arms' reach. We sat on sofas and comfortable chairs to hear The Low Anthem and their excellent support act Ohbijou.

The pub above the venue is wide and spacious, with lively chatter spilling out onto the pavement and then down the stairway at the back is the small door to the performance area where around 100 of us watched the bands perform.

Delightful.

Kicking off with the multi-talented Ohbijou, who played and passed the instruments around almost at will. Canadian, from the other London, a seven piece mini orchestra of sounds, from violins, guitars, mandolins, ukuleles, banjos, synths and pretty much anything else they could lay their hands on. A worthy band in their own right, my only criticism would be that their CDs were not available at the end when I would have just bought one.

A short pause to recharge our glasses (Red Stripe seems to be the indie venue beer, same as at Union Chapel) and then The Low Anthem came to the floor, easing their way into "Cage the Songbird" whilst the sound system adjusted.

I've had their 'Oh My God, Charlie Darwin' album for a couple of months and its frequently on my play list, so it was a treat to hear several numbers from this and also from their older and more dusty cattle herding 'What the Crow Brings'. Mysteriously they referred to their more recent album as the one due to be released in June, but I gather they've got a different distribution deal now. They are, indeed, to hold a launch gig in Union Chapel around June 23rd for the CD which they described as gospel with science.

rashbre phonecam

The Providence, Rhode Island band is a three piece, with talented musicians who each are able to play multiple instruments. The highly animated bassist Jeff Prystowsky can also fire out great drum patterns and pedals a cool pump organ (pub chat suggests this was an eBay purchase?), the lead singer Ben Knox-Miller is a guitarist who has a superb voice and vocal range and the saxophonist Jocie Adams can also NASA blast a mean bass riff and counterpoint the rocky and bluesy numbers with real grit and gusto.

The little gang of us that attended sat in arms length of the band, enjoying every minute. As we left we briefly complemented the band in the bar, before hitting the interweb to ensure we have tix for the CD launch.

Recommended.

And here's something to the Ghosts who write History Books.
p.s. They are at Koko tonight, supporting Ben Kweller.
oh, and were at the London Eye

time to repaint the H on the helipad

I see there's a few more allegations about political mishaps involving inaccurate expense claim submissions.

I can't help wondering whether we've all got this wrong though.

The process seems to be that some modest claims up to around £32,000 can be made within a year for politicians as part of general upkeep. Kit Kats, bath plugs, a few hotel movies, moat plumbing renewal, the odd extra house mortgage or two and redecoration of the half timbered dwellings on the estate all seem to be within the permissible claims.

So why not extend the process to the rest of us?

We pay into the tax system, so a few gentle claims for day to day running couldn't be too much of a problem. There could be a limit like the one the MPs get. Why, I'd even settle for that same amount as long as it was tax free and available annually.

But please don't misunderstand me. Here at rashbre central we've been economising too.

Take the helipad. We added a tennis court to the top surface so that it could be used at other times for relaxation, and even invite the neighbours around for a game of doubles. But the difference between us and some of the MPs is that we've had to pay for this ourselves, instead of being able to claim it at as necessary expense of doing business. I ask you, how else could we get from the rather distant redesignated primary residence back to place of business if we didn't have this essential facility?

i like the feeling of being slightly lost

Another quick bish bosh commuter video, this one from a quick walk from the Temporary Apartment.

I wondered whether it would be possible to make the video in ten minutes (No), but plugging in the camera, dragging a few clips, speeding them up and adding some transitions and a bit of music took about half an hour.

Yes, I know its rough.

how does tuesday feel like it should already be the end of the week?

Brushing my teeth this morning, I wondered to myself how could it possibly only be Tuesday morning. It already felt like another whole week had passed. I guess its a function of a short weekend and playing with trains and cars and taxis and planes and some action-packed long working days.

So I headed for an early breakfast at the Nearby Fashionable Cafe, and ran into Okke. He independently commented that it already felt like a long week, although in his case he'd just arrived here at around midnight after miscellaneous plane hiccups. And Paul has just left town for Toronto, via Frankfurt and Mel was texting me from LHR on the way to Melbourne via Singapore.

So here I was at 6.55am getting ready to grab a cab across town when this old lounge track comes onto the cafe's speakers. 'One Night in Rio', by Louis Austen, which is only a slightly more exaggerated part of what we were feeling.

The rashbre central copy is here, and here's a few of the lyrics, sung in European:

"So we met at the Hilton Hotel at the lobby
We said we have to leave immediately to Germany
So we hired a cab,
When I saw the cab I thought I’ll faint! because this little cab
Was just a Mitsubishi, a shifted car,
I’m used to ridin’ limousines, luxury cars, with all my stuff,
a minimum one suitcase, two pairs of shoes and three backup singers
I’m used to this, I need this!

Anyway, this driver had no idea how to get to the airport,
‘cause at the 14th street he took a left turn, instead of a right turn,
and I was really mad at him which was:
Hey man we have to.. to be at the airport in a few moments!
So how hard can you do that!
‘cause the flight, leaves, to Berlin!
...
So finally we arrived in Berlin
It was raining, of course
So nobody’s picking us up
‘cause where the hell are these guys?
But anyway, so let’s go get the luggage
And we went down and, there was no luggage, there was no luggage!
So I waited half an hour for my luggage
So I went down to the counter and said: excuse me, where is my luggage?
We flew from New York to Berlin
So he looked into his computer, and he said:
Sir, it’s on the way to LA (LA, LA, LA…)

You get the picture.

Londoners - bring back Eros

I leave the city for a few days, return and they've changed the Evening Standard.

Some bright spark has decided to remove Eros from the logo, which is probably one of the recognisable parts of London for many 'out of towners', along with Big Ben, the Eye and the Gherkin.

They've also changed the paper's typeface, but the overwhelming impression now is of generic superbranding, where the word 'London' has been added so that the same format can be used in Moscow or Georgia.

The problem is that it just makes the image look bland and like any corporate house magazine. I expect someone paid a shedload of money for the makeover and the new use of "eyecatching orange" for the stripey bits is presumably to find something that isn't blue or red.

Bring back Eros. Show we love the Smoke.

who needs google streets when you can do this?

simulated commute ;-) Nr 1 in a Series....

more cammuter moments - trains 'n planes

After the cammuter walk video, I thought it would be fun to collect a few further moments from the commuter archives and so I've added them here into the next couple of posts below.

I quite like the idea of cammuting, although in my personal case there isn't really a 'normal' route, hence the variety of transport modes shown.

Maybe I'll have a look around or try to see whether other Londoners have also produced little videos of their regular travels.

I've received a backchannel email that someone is going out this sunny Sunday to have a crack at it.

cammuter Nr 2 - train into Waterloo


cammuter Nr 3 - plane into Heathrow

cammuter cam Number 4 : Jubilee Line

Cammuter Nr 4 : Jubilee Line - another oldie but goody

Cammuter cam Number 5 : Evening in Knightsbridge

Cammuter Nr 5: Shortcutting through from Sloane Square to Beauchamps Place at night

listening to radio 1 - big weekend is actually rather happy

Driving back from the supermarket, my car was still retuned to the radio station from when the garage repaired the springs a couple of weeks ago. I've hardly driven the car since, let alone flipped the receiver command system.

It was on Radio 1.
The Big Weekend.
Live music from Swindon.

It caught me unexpectedly, and is actually quite good. I may have to dig out one of those handwritten cool lists for revision.

Click here for streaming and webcamming (via Steve)

enjoyed State of Play before Chianti refuel

I enjoyed watching 'State of Play'. A good and mainly tightly scripted conspiracy thriller about newspapers, relationships, politics, police against morality questions around friendship, self serving ends and ways to derive 'truth'.

There's some structural conventions, like in a good blues song, to make it easy to absorb - a short opening scene during which someone is eliminated from the plot. Helicopters, aerial swoops around skylines, CIA Langley, clickety clackety noises and a special synthesizer sound reserved for the prowling man with the big gun.

A scruffy metropolitan Saab-driving reporter (Russell Crowe) whom all of the cops know, eye-candy cub-reporter accomplice (Rachel McAdams) who writes the 'Capitol Hill' blogs for the paper(chalk cheese etc). Tough Brit scene-stealer editor trying to sell copy to stop the newly acquired paper from toppling (Helen Mirren). An entourage of only semi-named cops who are mostly a step behind the wily reporter's investigation centred on his ex room-buddy senator (Ben Affleck with a cheesy Philadelphia accent).

Snappily paced, with a few longer scenes to give time to breathe a little. Some settings confused my sense of the 2009 period - I found myself checking a car date sticker in one scene to be sure. The cluttered newsrooms full of paper were for me more evocative of 70s movies than a 2009 paperless workplace, but hey, maybe the press still do it the old way.

With references to Watergate Building (been there!) whizzing around Washington (ditto) and Georgetown (yup), there was a combination of homage to other reporting stories and perhaps just things to make it easy to fix the location for a global audience.

By random co-incidence I'd also watched 'Body of Lies' a few days ago, with Crowe playing against Leonardo di Caprio (another good popcorn film) and it was interesting to see the way Crowe can change his whole appearance and demeanour for the different roles. Less so with Affleck, where I thought it more a good casting choice for him as the neat but flawed senator.

And back to the blues song formula, one hopes in a film like this that certain things will happen; the genre needs the underground car park scene, helicopters, convergence of the unconnected, the important twist when you think you know what has happened. Its all there.

BUT. I gather this was adapted from a BBC screenplay produced some years ago. I'm wondering in hindsight if there's still enough of the original plot arc there to have limited some of the choices from what a modern rebuild could do? I'm guessing it was a mini-series, which could explain why I thought there was an end in sight around 2/3 of the way through (end of episode?).

Also the blog/new media savvy gal with the faux 1940's columnist name Della Frye, could have driven more into the plot. Don't just give Crowe a Blackberry, do something more interesting with the social media. Instead, Crowe ends up instructing McAdams and Affleck on spin management. A modernist twist here could have been more fun.

That's me being a tad over critical though; was this a film to watch before drifting along to an Italian restaurant for some good conversation over a glass of wine?

Will I watch it again when its a DVD or on Sky?

For sure.