More Sorry Farewells

Once again I have to mourn the passing of another great title that was well written, critically well recieved and yet bought by no-one. I speak of She-Hulk, yes, nits not new news, but I was working myself up to a post.

I started on SHe-Hulk at the start of Dan Slotts run (Yes, I have been loving all things Dan Slott recently) where he put the focus on Jen Walters and her job as a lawyer for a firm specialising in superhuman law. It was a fun look at the Marvel Universe from an outside perspective with a good dollop of humour and heart. It was axed once but brought back, and eventually Slott left the title, although as a parting gift he threw in a sly explanation for any unusual behaviour and continuity variances. I woudl like to think that the recent episode of Heroes having Ando and Hiro visit a comic shop tofind out what to do next is at least ins ome way a nod to She-Hulk using her law offices supply of Marvel Comics to find legal precident and superhuman weaknesses.

After Slott there were some big shoes to fill, but tehre was also Peter David to fill them. Dropping us in at the deep end She-Hulk is now a bounty hunter and working with a skrull sidekick called Jazinda. Over the course of his run he's build Jaz into a character I care about, taken a different but still fun tack with She-Hulk and made the title one which really should have enjoyed more success.

Sadly it is not to be, so goodbye She-Hulk. You'll be missed.

Dark Reign, Speculation

Well, the solicits are finally declassified and we can now see the shape of the Marvel Universe in the upcoming Months. Osbourne is basically in charge of whatever replaces SHIELD as well as the Avengers and the Initiative. And he's assembled his Dark Illuminati and he appears to have a plan.

This looks interesting, I'm going to guess that we can expect to see the worst excesses of the SHRA, with everything getting more totalitarian. And we now have 4 Avengers books. From what we've seen in the solicits here's what I'm expecting

New Avengers: Well, they've always been the avengers on the run, so the heat will be turned up a notch, particularly as I reckon Osbourne is going to have a bit of a mad on for Spider-Man. Looks like Cap is joining their team though, wonder how well Bucky will play with the others and if he'll bring his support staff of Black Widow and Falcon to the team, possibly not since both are registered and could be insiders, but then again once caught aiding and abetting? who knows. A later cover shows Ms Marvel and Spider-Woman as well, could they be new additions? I'm guessing that the thrust of this series will be searching for where Skrull-Jarvis took Baby cage.

Mighty Avengers:Well, Dan Slott is writing so its got a lot going for it. He has been pretty vague about some aspects of the book and lineup, so far confirmed are Hank Pym, Jocasta and The Scarlet witch, Which is a shock. Possible other members include Hercules, Iron Man and US Agent. Slott has dropped hints that these avengers will be looking at worldwide threats, and may not be based in the US (I'm thinking the old Hydrobase perhaps) in order to stay clear of Norman Osbourne's reaches. Dan Slott says they will be the ray of light in Dark Reign.

Dark Avengers: The Wild card. My money is on this lot being Osbournes personal avengers, but the solicits don't seem to match what I say. Looking at some of the clearer shots we definitely Have Ares and Noh-Varr (marvel boy, possibly now Captain marvel) a woman in Ms Marvel's old outfit, Now I remember one of the Initiative taking to that suit (Power Woman or something, an old New Warrior regardless) The two mystery men, Someone in Spider-Man's black costume and Someone in Hawkeye's old suit. Shot in the dark but as the Thunderbolts lineup looks like all change and if my hunch on this lot ultimately being Norman Osbourne's avengers, could they be Venom and Bullseye? Finally we have the Iron patriot, or Iron man suit painted like Captain America, if so, WHo is in the suit, Normie himself? Abe Jenkins aka Beetle? The 1950s Cap?

Thunderbolts looks like a completely new, and mostly unrecognisable lineup but the writer impressed me last issue so I'll stick with it. The initiative is also on a new writer and will feature the return of Clor. One worry I have about this series, aside from can any writer live up to Dan Slott's run, is that from those cover solicits, it looks like Humberto Ramos on art. I really don't like his stuff and it may well be a deal breaker if the writing and stories aren't up to much. A shame as The Initiative has been a great title so far.

Overall, the future is dark, but looks damn interesting

Secret Invasion

Well its all wrapped up, and there will probably be a few more posts on Dark Reign and my hopes for it and various other musings.

Regardless, if you are waiting for the trades or something, this is spoilerific so look away now.

Reactions to issue #8, good issue, but it was more wrapping up than anything else. This looked more like it was setting things up for the future, with Hulkling saddened by the plight of the skrulls, baby Cage taken, and obviously Wasp dead. I also liked the reference to the minor trinity in Avengers of Thor, Cap and Iron Man, and how this is still very much broken. I hope Dark Reign does something to repair the bonds between those three. Finally, the twist at the end? Wow, didn't see that coming, and I've seen Norman bigging himself up in Thunderbolts. It is a bit shaky, because unless a side effect or Peter's ever popular deal with the devil was that people also forget that Osbourne had a nasty habit of dressing up like a Goblin and killing blonds. Of course the other possibility is that people know he has dressed up as a Goblin, but he's better now and has pills, hence why he was so worried that Songbird had footage of him merrily killing his way through Thunderbolts Mountain. Regardless, this is probably not a good time in the Marvel Universe to be called Spider-Man.

So, SI as a whole, wasn't bad. But it could have been better, I think what it all comes down to is the bit in the savage land, how basically it was pointless. Re-Reading and it was filler, or a distraction, like they intended if you believe Bendis. It is probably the thing that drags the series down a fair bit.

So, the future sees Norman Osbourne and a secret Cabal of Villains, well a She0Loki, The Hood, Namor, Dr Doom (yay) and White Queen (Who's presence will be explained) in charge of the Initiative, the Avengers and whatever replaces SHIELD. Iron Man is on the run and you can bet that whatever unofficial support Cap got will be similarly gone.

Bring Dark Reign

War Machine: Weapon of SHIELD

Well, War Machine was back for 3 issues of Iron Man: Director of SHIELD as part of the Secret invasion crossover, and he rocked.

The three part Story focused on War Machine and what he did during the invasion after he left Camp Hammond following a mysterious message from Tony in Avengers: The initiative.

Well, turns out Stark made the War Machine suit for Jim as part of a fail safe should Starktech be compromised, and also provided Jim with a big stealth satellite which could transform into a Giant robot. Tony, nice chap he is also called in Suzi Endo, who in an alternative future was Cybermancer, and has since then take up the Cybermancer name, sort of and presumably without the evil. Well, its confusing because its a Force Works reference and a link to the Very confusing Crossing storyline.

Anyway, War Machine blows up loads of Skrull ships, has a sort of Team up with Russia's Winter Guard (Who I may blog about later) and ultimately wins the day, and an ongoing series.

Yes. News has been out for some time but there will be a War Machine ongoing, frankly life doesn't get much better.

My mate, and sometimes only reader Reilly2040 blogged about it Here http://reilly2040.co.uk/blog/2008/11/12/greg-pak-talks-war-machine/
And some guy called Greg Pak has also made some comments about it here
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/110810-War-Machine-Pak.html

It looks good, taking the Worldwatch idea but with much more focus on it being a One man operation. To an extent Jim will be becoming a bogeyman to all evil dictators, best not commit that genocide or War Machine will get you. Oh yes.

Needless to say I am a bit excited.

Now, will Century turn up in War of Kings?

It's a Travesty

Well, the first proper trailer for next summer's Star Trek film is out, and ts terrible, the enterprise bridge doesn't have that plywood look I crave and I bet the computer won't make loud clicking noises when it tries to think. And look at the cast, I could be wrong but they haven't done what I suggested and cosmetically altered the entire cast to look 40 years younger, I mean come on, this is the 21st Century and just because some actors are dead shouldn't stop them starring. Come to think of it they didn't use my fan script and so any other must be unsuitable.

I trust like me you will all be boycotting this travesty.

I am of course kidding. Aside from one or two niggles, and considering its a trailer, some minor fanboyish continuity issues, this looks tops. It has some very nice touches, rumours of Kirk being disgraced due to his actions in the Kobiashi Maru, the Uniforms, gods the Uniforms, they are truly genius. Karl Urban and Zachary Quinto just look so much like young versions of McCoy and Spock its unbelievable. We seem to be getting huge dollops of fan service, Christopher Pike, Sarek and Amanda, the Enterprise Under Construction.

Can I take a Newborn to see it?

SO what are my niggles. Well, the bridge, looks more bridge like, but also like a wine bar in an apple store. But it is an understandable change. The other is The Enterprise herself, saucer to deflector dish she's fine, but the back is too squished and too truncated, and the big vents on the front of the nacelles look a bit duff. But really its more in the way of its not my favorite (A, Original, D, NX-01, C, B, New movie and the Enterprise J seen in an episode of Enterprise if you're interested)

So, with such minor niggles, how the hells can I not be excited.

The Name Game

As many who know me know, I have become a dad.

This naturally leads to many new, irrational fears about the universe which I will no doubt expound on at a later date. At the moment my main focus will be on names.

My wife and I spent nearly the full 9 months (Not counting hypothetical conversations in the years before) deciding on names, and I think we did well to deliberate on this for such a long time, longer than we spent making many other decisions, because this is the name our child will be stuck with until it is legally old enough to change its name. Now I made some less than serious suggestions (Optimus Prime, Minime) but in the end I am happy with what we chose, and I think our child has a name it can live with (or at least a very normal middle name should it need a fallback)

However, others are not nearly so sensible.

In the bed opposite us were a couple who, despite being give 9 months had yet to decide on a name. Come on, really, did you have something more important to do.

Worse are some of the really strange names that people come up with, most of which go to show that perhaps they may not be that suitable to be parents. There was a couple who were annoyed that they weren't allowed to call their child 4Real, and so settled for Superman.

Superman!

And of course the Man U fan who named his boy after all 11 players on their team (of course if you did that with all 10 Doctors it would be Sad, but as its football its a bit eccentric)

Of course it seems like if you are a celebrity then absurd names are mandatory, Michael Jackson still probably the worst with the absurd Prince Michael, and the absurd and unimaginative Prince Michael II.

What has bugged me is that in the 4Real case, some kid will have to grow up with that name because his parents were so stupid they couldn't even master Velcro shoes. In fact the only reason 4Real (which will give the kid some really odd initials) was refused was because our system will only allow names made up of letters, no numbers. That's the entire criteria for what some poor little tyke will be stuck with for life. What we need is something like the french system.

in France, your name has to pass official scrutiny. So no Superman here. In fact you'd also have to make a pretty good argument for Kal'El, however, Clarke would be fine. A child could grow up as a Clarke, or a Kyle, or Tony or even a Logan without too much hassle. See I'm not wanting to limit names, just take out the really stupid ones. My system has a couple of extra features.

On first stupid name, a simple No, go away and think again is presented. There will be reasons as to why the name is stupid provided for future instruction.

On second stupid name a list of suggested names will be provided as a guideline, alongside a list of unsuitable ones. Unsuitable ones will be on a red sheet of paper with UNSUITABLE written at the top to avoid confusion.

On third attempt the parents are denied the opportunity to name their child and the name is decided from a list. The parents are also earmarked for further scrutiny by child services.

To all potential parents, giving your child a dumb name is child abuse, yes Nicholas Cage or Angelina Jolie do it, but their kids will never really live in the real world, yours will have to go to a normal school with normal cruel kids in. Introducing yourself as 4real will not go down well.

Pie Man's Flaura and Fauna of the Roads #2

Look, continuation, how amazing.

#2 The Middle Lain drivers.

Pootling is a made up word, by me. It describes the motorist you often see on an empty motorway, tootling along the middle lane at 50mph or less. A close relative of the outer lane moral guardian.

I often use the term pootler because its more generous, it suggest a gentle incompetence, perhaps a little of the grumpy old "this isn't a race you know" mentality. However it only describes one of the two sub-species of the middle lane driver.

Pootlers are usually in the middle lane because they genuinely don't really understand motorways, they may still be believing the myth that the lanes have different speeds assigned, and that the middle is 50-60, they may just be completely clueless and so stick to the middle as it seems like a compromise. Pootlers are pretty hard to identify, they drive a variety of cars and are a variety of ages.

Hogs are the other breed, they know fine well they shouldn't be in the middle lane, but they somehow believe that the inside lane is for slow moving pensioners and girls, and not for them. Yes they can only cope doing 50, or sometimes they are doing 70, but there is still an vast stretch of unused tarmac to their left. Of course they won't admit pride as to their poor lane management, no, they'll make excuses, like they were preparing to overtake a slower car over the horizon, they know that in 30 miles the road becomes 2 lanes, and this is their correct one. Either way it isn't, its just because they can't quite stomach going to the inside unless its for slip road purposes. These hogs quite often become outside lane menaces on dual carriageways. usually identified as male, aged anywhere from 17-55 and will be driving a small hatchback with all the trimmings (Cooling tower exhaust, stereo, extra lights like a mobile disco, picnic table spoiler and mandatory fog lights regardless of visibility) older versions will be driving some sort of repmobiel, Vectra or Mondeo through to BMW and even some of the smaller Mercs.

So, why is this a problem, there's an outside lane, you cans till overtake. This is true, however, say there is someone doing 50 in the middle lane, no traffic to their left. Someone approaches at 60 and needs to overtake on the outside, causing someone travelling at 70 to slow down. Ideally with three lanes, and everyone playing by the rules, the outside lane should only be 70+ (not counting heavy traffic) instead this starts to give us the odd situation where the outside lane is full and the inside almost empty, as everyone tries to overtake the one person sitting in the middle.

So, how do you deal. Well, first thing, Never Undertake. Its dangerous, and you remove an opportunity for them to realise the error of their ways and pull in. Don't tailgate either, again dangerous and calling them a middle lane hog won't help the insurance claim. No, what I do, where possible, is overtake on the outside, then pull right back into the inside, maintaining the higher speed. This often works on the confused pootler, who realises that it is Ok to do 50 in the inside lane if someone is doing 70 in it. The hog, well shouldn't be on the road really, and no amount of instruction or guilt will move that bullish head.

The Majesty of Rock

I noticed recently that AC/DC's Back in Black is joint second best selling album in the world, joint with the Bodyguard soundtrack and beaten by Thriller. In the same band of over 40 million copies sold are Saturday Night Fever, The Best of the Eagles and The Dark side of the moon By Pink Floyd.

And you know what, while in the over 30million there are some of the newer pop acts, Shania Twain and Backstreet boys, we have to go pretty far down to get more of the big pop acts. I predict that more of the classic rock albums such as U2's The Joshua Tree, Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Guns'n'Roses appetite for destruction will continue to climb where their pop companions will stay. Why is this. Because of those albums (And aside from the Joshua Tree) I bought all of those years after release. You see while Backstreet boy's Millennium gained 30million sales in the years around its release, in nearly 30 years time will people still be buying it? Saturday Night Fever perhaps, the bodyguard soundtrack, a possibility, but if me and my contemporaries are anything to go by, and the kids I see around, people will be buying copies of Back in Black, Led Zeppelin's IV and The White album by the Beatles for decades to come.

This is of course the lasting power of really good Rock, and the interest of the fans, that they pass their enthusiasm on. Interestingly enough my wife was sorting through our Mutual CD collection and she commented on the Number of Iron maiden Albums I owned. I replied that I had them all, and that in around 3 decades of recording they have produced a large volume of material. My wife is a huge Take That fan, but aside from them producing fewer albums, she has never really liked an artist to try and get all their stuff. Rockers are a different breed though, and the music is of a quality that in years to come I hope my kids will buy their own copies, or download, or mentally plug in to AC/DC's Back in Black.

Long Live Rock and Roll.

Rolling Home

The pie man has, temporarily, become a road commuter.

Due to my impending child situation I am shunning my usual 1hr 30 mins each way train journey in favour of a 1hr (Give or take) car drive. This is largely to allow me a quick return home should my young be in danger of spawning.

So, here are my first impressions of car vs train on a regular commute.

I actually prefer the train. In sheer practicality, the car is the winner, it gets me home around 3o mins faster and allows me about 15 mins more sleep in the mornings. I am also technically travelling for the full hour not waiting at platforms. Overall I should really be bigging up the car. After all, its my own box, I don't need to cope with someone trying to take up more than their share of the seat next to me, I can listen to whatever i want on the stereo without headphones and control the temperature as much as an elderly Renault Clio will allow. Some may ask, why would I give this up to sit on crowded trains with all the irritating fellow members of the human race?

There are several reasons why I prefer the train. While the trip is longer the amount of effort I actually have to make is minimal, I can read the Metro, or a book while doing my hour and a half commute. In the car, I'm driving. In fact I'm driving even when I'm stuck in the inevitable queues that form when driving on the M8 through Glasgow to motherwell, surely one of the most poorly designed stretches of motorway in Britain. And this is the crux of the matter. On a train all the idiot fellow commuters are soft human lumps like me. We are all in the same can, and occasionally you see great acts of kindness and decency that almost give you hope as a species. On the road the same idiots (obviously not the exact same idiots) have been given a death box to practice their idiocy in, so instead of their selfishness and stupidity merely being an annoyance, it is now endangering my life. Ok I exaggerate a little but really, even with the bottlenecks speed changes and the like a Motorway should only grind to a halt if it is actually closed. The reason it stops is because of poor driving, such as the following examples.

1. Phantom Jam. This is a recorded phenomenon. It is caused by breaking, not any breaking, but tailgaters breaking. See if someone is not leaving a decent space, they ted to be a bit punchy on their breaks when the car in front starts to slow down (Sometimes wheather it breaks or not) This usually means they loose more speed than they should have trying to match the car in front, this causes a domino effect that can bring traffic behind to a standstill.

2. Lane Skipping. Often caused by phantom jams, but happens anywhere where all lanes are slow moving traffic queues. You always have captain impatient who is sure the other stream of traffic is moving faster, so he'll switch lanes. In slow traffic this means stopping his lane and the one he's trying to get into in order to change. With one car its an embuggerance, but there is never just one. This is why lanes seem to take turns in changing speed. If everyone stuck to their lane in a traffic queue it would flow, slowly but flow, but because we have idiots jumping for the greener grass on the other side of the fence that lane has more cars, and slows down, while the lane beside has fewer, and so appears to be going faster, so what do they do, change again. Next time you're stuck on the M8 look for a distinctive vehicle, a van or something. You'll pass it, it will pass you, you'll pass it again. Basically you both get to the end of the jam at roughly the same time.

3. Queue jumpers. The M8 is really bad for this, due to its poor design around charing Cross, incidentally its main black spot, it has ample opportunity form people to try and skip the queue as the motorway temporarily expands to three lanes. Now, for the first stretch it is technically a 3 lane motorway, however in reality it is just a slip road, Eastbound leading to cathedral, and westbound to charing cross, if you needed to overtake in normal traffic, fair enough, but when the traffic is one big queue all you're doing is jumping, and causing more holdups as you try and squeeze back in to the traffic further up. Westbound I've actually seen the cars in the slip road held up by some selfish moron who has waited until just before where the road splits to attempt to merge back in. He's stationary beeping at the understandably irritated drivers who don't want him to profit form queue jumping, and the drivers behind him wish he'd take it like a man and go through charing cross, admitting that he couldn't beat the traffic this time.

See, morons but with way more power.

Cost wise, at base its a tough calculation. My work pays for half my train fares, but assuming they didn't.

Travel from Home to Motherwell costs (Using Monthly passes) around £150 per month, calling a month 4 weeks that's £38 per week approx.

The tank on the smaller car costs around £40 to fill up and gives me around 350 miles. Round trip for work is 66 miles a day meaning I should technically have to fill up once a week. So this actually looks like it's only £2 more expensive per week to knock over an hour from my total round trip commute. Ok it adds up to £104 per year, but then that's over 52hrs of my time, or over 2 days not spent travelling. Only problem with this sort of calculation is that it doesn't take into account the true cost of the car.

If we go with one car, the Big one, costs more to fill but gets more from it, it also needs road tax, which with a 2 litre Diesel engine is only going to increase. It also need insured, and I cannot guarantee exclusive use because there will come a point where my wife gets sick of taking our soon to be born baby on the bus. Still disregarding those factors, adding in Road tax, Insurance and servicing, we're talking adding around £500 per year, now including that in my travel costs is arguable, as we'd be keeping the car anyway. But keeping the small car it is at least £300 per year assuming the elderly car doesn't break.

I'll stay on the train.

Bring the Fun

We're still early into the new US TV, so early that series like Lost and BSG are yet to start. However, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, there is a far greater variety of SF on offer. This post is about how some series are having more fun.

The Fun benchmark has recently been reset with ABC Family's superlative effort The Middleman. While I'm not sure of its actual success it has had some very positive critical reaction. For those not in the know this series barely avoided being buried completely, and has largely been promoted through word of mouth. It concerns the life of struggling artist Wendy "Dubby" Watson, who gets hired by a mysterious agency to train as an assistant to the Mysterious Middleman, with the help of grumpy robot Ida they fight all manner of bizarre evil, from alien boybands and gangs of lucho libre wrestlers to trout craving zombies and Gangster Gorillas. Its loaded with references to other series, comics, films etc and has a sharp bonkers sense of humour, from insisting on using TV's Stock scream at least once per episode (SO much so that I chuckle every time i hear it in other series) to the bizarre location and time references at the start of each scene. It is a Joy and while only 12 episodes long is well worth your bandwidth (Or your money if you happen to run a TV network).

Now, not Even Pushing Daises (Season 2 coming soon) is as daft and pure fun as middleman, but there are a few other series which at least have more of a sense of humour. We will be getting Both Chuck and Reaper back at some point along with Season 2 of Pushing Daises. (Ok I could be wrong about reaper) but it is nice to see they avoided the axe that looked certain after the writers strike.

Finally, and another new series, only 3 episodes in, is the new, re-vamped Knight Rider.

The pilot of this was promising, although did commit the cardinal sin of having the car being out of use for a fair chunk of its length. The series has made some tweaks, Most striking are KITT's transforming abilities, in the pilot he changed colour and had a near imperceptible high speed mode. Taking criticism for not being able to distinguish modes he has been given the ability to transform into a truck (Ford, Nacth) and a "Battle Mode" which I like the idea of a little more than some elements of the execution. Other additions are a larger supporting cast and a fixed base with repair and technicians, as well as the Hercules plane we saw in the pilot. So impressions. For the most part the series is good, episodic fun action TV. Essentially each week, much like the original series, Michael Knight (Changed from Mike Traceur in the pilot) and KITT are sent on missions by the Knight Foundation, or Knight Research as it is now. Missions inevitably involve Action, so fast driving, gunfights and spy type malarkey. In fact this series is higher on its Bond type antics than its predecessor, so they infiltrate buildings, use gadgets and do undercover work. There also is usually an excuse to look at women in Bikinis. There are underlying sub-plots, such as Mike's relationship with Sarah, KITT's ability to learn and act on his own, and his secret black ops past which even he can't remember. In truth it's been enjoyable so far, and will be fine in my book if it sticks to its fun action series, rather than getting bogged down with arc plots.

In fact Both Knight Rider and Middleman would not look out of place in the Saturday late afternoon/teatime slot that Hercules the Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess occupied in the late '90s, or indeed as Knight Rider and its contemporaries occupied in the 80s. And this is a good thing as the current SF crop isn't always that family friendly or indeed nice to new watchers, and so a couple of decent action fun series could be just what the doctor ordered, particular in the coming year when he won't be about as much.

CUT!

The world is unfair. So, War Machine is heading up Iron Man, and I miss the issue. But worse, doing my sums when his solo series returns, I'll have a kid to worry about. Why couldn't this have been done 5 years ago when I had fewer responsibilities.

Still, with any luck I may still track down the issue in question, and will hopefully catch the rest, and be able to continue collecting as my child grows up. However it has brought to me how willing i am to cut comics now.

5 Years ago it was different, I was buying loads of the damn things, with a larger disposable income I was able to pick up something on a whim or follow a big event through all its tie ins. Now, a monthly has to fight for its place, and when something new appears, everything I'm collecting is in danger of being shunted.

I actually consider this a good thing. If a comic isn't holding my interest what message am I sending still collecting it. while i am only one man it should at least drop hints to the powers that be that their output is substandard. In fact Brand new day could have been called a failure of fans had put their money where their mouth was and not bought it, or as was also suggested, bought Spider-Girl and Spider-Man loves Mary Jane instead. Indeed, I've dropped Punisher War Journal because, well frankly, It wasn't very good, I dropped the Transformers and Battlestar Galactica titles because of inconsistency in issues even making the stands let alone being on time.

So, as of now, I thought I'd list titles that are living on borrowed time. Obviously they don't include Limited series.

The Shoogly Nail list is as follows

Captain America - Probably not that shaky to be honest, but it is starting a new arc and so anything could happen
Iron Man: Director of SHIELD - Its never really found its feet. Now the War Machine Arc is good and It will definitely at least get its next story, but from then, we'll see. Shame as the Annual last year was excellent and in fact a good example of how that title should be done.
New Avengers - Always Mighty's poorer cousin but Bendis's baby. This will be hit hard by the fallout from SI so Ill give it a chance.
Mighty Avengers - This was actually the better one, shame it was beset by delays which mean its never really had a chance to bed in. The whole Avengers franchise should be fluid until SI is over, I just hope we still have The initiative.
Punisher - The new guy isn't bad, but Garth Ennis leaves big shoes. Will give him this story and perhaps the next.

So, be warned Marvel, your promise of another Avengers title and anything that looks good could hasten the demise of these, and there are some which could yet make this list.

An Appeal to the US Voter

Dear US voters,

I know none of you read this blog, since I know only one person reads this (Hi) but I'm making an appeal to you anyway.

To us in Britain, your election seems to have been going on for years. I know those were the candidate selections, and it still baffles me that you have a system where people in the same party sling muck at each other, only to then have to support whoever was the victor. But different strokes and all that, after all we don't technically elect any of our heads of state.

Still, should you care, please, for the love of gods don't vote republican. Its not that I have too many issues with John McCain, its the party in general (Lets face it, they've made a balls of things so far) and more specifically Sarah Palin. She scares me, a lot. Not because I have a problem with women in power, quite the opposite, in fact if the democrats had gone a different way I'd have thought a Clinton/Obama ticket could do great things (More on that a little later). No, a woman who makes GW Bush look like a progressive liberal being one heart attack away from running the most powerful country in the world, have you any idea how dangerous that is?

And what is wrong with Obama, Is it because his middle name is Hussein? Is it because for some reason you seem to have got it into your heads that he is a Muslim? Or is it, in the words of Ali G, because he is black? And if the answer to any of these questions is yes, What the hell is wrong with your people. If I got to pick a leader, I'd pick the person most suited to the job, regardless of race, colour, creed, faith or shoe size. Hey, Sarah Palin hunts. We share the same hobbies, and that's your reason to vote for someone, should I vote Tory because one time leadership challenger John Redwood was a Trekkie? In fact should I ignore all the parties views on different subjects and vote for someone purely on their taste in TV and if they play City of Heroes. I can see it now. Yes, I find David Cameron smug and annoying and could never bring myself to vote for his party, but we did a safeguard mission last night and he was a really good tank.

Now despite the fact that it probably means Tory rule, I'm happy that people in the UK probably won't vote Labour next election, in fact unless Boris does something spectacularly dumb the Tories have it in the bag. SO why would you still vote republican after the kicking they've given your country, because John McCain got shot down a lot, because Sarah Palin is a family obsessed nut redneck like yourself. For once vote with your damn head, you might grow as a person.

Love and Hugs

Pie Man

A mini rant on Fog Lights

It was a wet morning today on my drive in, and I have one message for motorists, and no it isn't slow down you maniacs, you'll kill us all.

It is Turn off your God Damn fog lights, note the name, they are not Rain Lights, not Night lights, they are there for fog and like your car insurance, you are not being conned if you don't even use it.

And for those who say the front fogs make the car look cool,

1. Get the hell off my road, a red scanner on the front makes any car look cool but its not allowed, if you want to look cool buy something better than a bloody Rover.

2. It doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look like an idiot who doesn't know what his foglights are for.

In fact, I propose front foglights only be given to people who can prove they can use them responsibly. Or the police pull over anyone driving with foglights on in an inappropriate situation, sure sign they'll be a dangerous driver.

Pie Man's Work Lexicon #1 - Short Range Accounting

A little idea, given an optimistic number so as, like flora and fauna of roads I may continue it beyond #1.

Short Range Accounting - Where huge costs and inconvenience are incurred for short term savings.

An example of this comes from when my work was more clerical based. Our department clearly had too few staff for the volume of work. Sometimes this was covered by Temps and sometimes by Overtime. However how this happened was absurd. So we'd be working a few OT shifts here and there and the call would come from on high "Your overtime bill is too High, all OT is banned" very well, says my boss, how does the work get done "Hire a Temp" replies boss. A few months down the line "Our temps costs are too high, dismiss all temps" comes from on high, once again my boss asks how work will be done, "Overtime" replies boss. A few months pass and once again "Your overtime bill is too high...."

There is an obvious solution to this problem that was mooted by my boss of the time, Hire more full time staff. This was dismissed on grounds of cost.

Short range accountancy is practiced by poor managers and over-zealous accountants who are too focused on the costs of their specific sphere of influence or costs over the short term to worry about such things as long term costs, other people's budgets or practicality. Its a practice that people should be stamping out, but in the world of performance statistics and "Goals" these figures mean more than actual useful work. In short by people who have no interest in the Big picture unless it means they can sack someone or not hire someone by referring to "The Big Picture"

This can also extend to equipment. Most companies will use the cheapest kit available, because it looks good. "Why yes, we are paying 80 pence less per widget using these new ones." Of course these new widgets are 3 times less effective and wear out 4 times as fast, meaning your yearly widget costs are higher and costs of widget installation and failure are increased as well, but it can't be the cheap widgets. I'd penalise the staff, they're doing something wrong.

A Load of Bankers

Well, financial meltdown is Here. And it looks like the honest taxpayer will have to foot the bill.

Question time last night was interesting (of what I saw at any rate) and had a good speech by Chuck "Lib Dems when they were popular" Kennedy where he basically said "Yes, it sucks that we have to bail out the banks. (Oh Lib-Dems, you fools, your lust for power robbed you of your chance at opposition. Compare him and Nick Clegg, pah, but that's a different rant) It really bugs me that, in order to keep money moving and everything else running we have to bail out millionaires who have cocked the whole thing up" and I agree with him mostly on this.

However, what I cannot forgive is how badly this has been handled by the current government. I've heard many reasons about how we got into this state but here's my unqualified and unfocused rant of the major factors.

All was going well, perhaps too well, sadly banks from the very top to the very bottom thought that the astronomical rise in house prices and mortgages combined with low interest rates couldn't end. Some may have known but largely the housing crash came from believing their own line of BS. Problems were showing when houses became so expensive that first time buyers dried up. See housing is like a chain, sort of. If you own a house, and want a better one, you have to also sell your house. Problem is that people start expecting more, as do estate agents etc. end of the day the first link, namely the first time buyer, couldn't get on, and so sales stall (I do realise its more complicated than this) sadly many of the banks, particularly the ex-building societies like Halifax, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, relied quite heavily on mortgages. This slowdown adversely affected their prices.

However this was not all, there were also these City Traders, bankers etc, who swore blind that if left free of regulation they wouldn't do legal, but underhand things that may ruin the economy for short term gain. They of course did, as the type of person who becomes a stock trader is usually a vicious killing machine in a suit with a very flimsy ethical code and as a result needs to be watched like a hawk as to them, ruining an economy is collateral damage.

However, the real damage, at least in the UK, which I believe could have lessened the effects over here, was to bail out Northern Rock. It sent the wrong message, it told every CEO of banks, and city trader that they could take the big punts on other peoples money, because the Government would cover their behinds. I'd have let Northern rock go bankrupt, made sure all savings were protected, but let it go and have its assets bought by whoever wants them. Then used its fall as a reason to regulate the financial sector more heavilly. The shock that there was no safety net may have been enough to save HBOS or Bradford and bingly.

Of course if we're bringing in new legislation, then I'd like a few other caveats in, because its is frankly disgusting that the CEO of HBOS, the captain of the sunk ship, will be claiming his £2 million bonus. In the grand dictatorship of Pie Man, the pot with his Bonus, salary etc, and those of senior board members, would be fair game should your bank go belly up. That would mean that the bill for protecting savings and paying off frontline staff would come from that, then the assets and finally the tax payer.

Finally, one more Culprit. Us, for forgetting that this happened before and can happen again, for believing that there is any sort of Risk free investment. Seriously, I'm an HBOS shareholder, if I'd really wanted the cash from those shares, I'd have sold them. High. Someone was saying that their shares had dropped from £14 a share to less than £2 and that this had impacted on their nesteg. Well yes, but that's what shares do. They go up and down, and can become worthless.

Similarly the thing people kept saying during the property boom was "You never loose money on property" which is plum bollocks. You can pay too much for a property. What you won't loose out on is if you buy a home. Because if you have a home you can live in it, and keep living in it until the market reaches a stage where you cans ell it on and hopefully have enough put by to buy a better one when required. Yes, its common sense, unless you can play the market or run a bank, there are no fast bucks. The less you look for them the more stable you'll be.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Arrrr, why is this not a national, nay International holiday

Slow Ride

Last night I had the unenviable task of driving a car with a very loose drivers door to a garage in largs.

Yes, our old Clio has just about lost its drivers side door. Its disconcerting to be able to see the road through the gap between door frame and car, and to be rained on through said gap.

Anyway, the point of this was, that despite the road to Largs being pretty good in places, and tricky in others, for the most part it is safe to run at 50-60mph (In fact if you were a bad person and speeding some stretches could take 70-75) however the door would show worrying amounts of daylight if it pushed the poor Clio much above 40 so I had to crawl up to Largs.

SO where am I going with this? Well, the road is single carriageway and quite bendy in places, which means if you have someone with a loose door creeping along at 40, there are scant few opportunities to overtake. Seeing the train of cars in my wake was quite mortifying, but level in thought not as mortifying as having to retrieve my door from the middle of a main road. However I have often been in a car with 2 functioning doors on this road and found myself tottering behind someone who also seems to have a fully functioning car at 40mph. Its infuriating, frustrating and I wonder how they do it without feeling thoroughly embarrassed. I can understand slowing down for the tight corners, but there are long clear straights.

It was infuriating.

In Game Advertising

City of Heroes has decided to start selling ad space in game, and I for one, don't mind.

There is almost always uproar when this sort of thing happens, but I'm finding it hard to get riled, particularly if it keeps subscription costs down, and in this case, can be switched off. The picture here shows one of the best uses of it, a movie ad, outside an in-game cinema, some of the other boards look added but overall, ads seem to be on in-game billboards not plastered on the sides of buildings or flashed up on every loading screen.

There was initial controversy when Battlefield 2142 announced there would be in game advertising, although this was in part due to a myth that your browsing habits would be analysed and advertising targeted to you. To be honest Battlefields ads aren't too bad either.

I really don't know where the opposition comes from. Yes, I've seen games where buildings are more or less replaced by blocks of advertising, and that is poor, but this is just replacing in game fake billboards, for Vanguard or Crey, with a poster plugging a Vin Diesel film. And as always, if this keeps subscription costs down, I'm all for it.

Naturally, not every game can take ads, I somehow don't think a bar in World Of Warcraft would look particularly good with a Babylon AD poster in it. But so far the whole thing seems sane and normal.

Now, Issue 13, Architect.

The mission designer sounds interesting, more on my part to see how they've managed to avoid making them XP farms. However the part that really appeals is the Day job, where you gain points depending on where you leave your character when you log off, so Logging off near a hospital means you're doing hospital work and will give health benefits which is tantalisingly close to being able to engineer a secret identity. I like it.

Spare a thought for Admin

My company has recently re-organised. Aside from my usual gripes about this one of the actions involved in this re-org was seemingly to chop a whole load of admin staff, including our admin person.

I seriously feel like an 18 year old on my first day away from home at uni and I think others feel the same. Suddenly there's a whole load of small, almost minor looking tasks that won't get done.

Now, my wife works in admin, and she does complain about how under-appreciated admin staff are and how little people know what they actually do. But basically, your admin staff keep things running, they file stuff so engineers can get on with engineering, they organise things, they process data and well, like their name suggests, they administer. However in the usual short sighted way managers with their own PAs think, they don't understand what admin do, so therefore it must be unimportant.

So, Admin staff out there, I salute you.

Bikes and Trains

This is a tough one for the commuter. See I have no real objection to people cycling to and from the station at each end, provided Lycra is only worn by attractive women cyclists. Thing is I really don't like bikes on my trains.

This is mostly because the majority of trains that run on my routes have no space for a bike and the cyclist ends up clogging up the vestibules. Not ideal. The obvious solution would be to put cycle spaces on to trains, but I kind of object to that too since a bike takes up the space that could allow 2 people to sit. Its a conundrum.

Of course Scotrail don't make life easy. I considered trying to cycle to the station from my flat but I neither wanted to lug my bike all the way to work on the train nor leave it chained to something as entertainment for local vandals so I decided to try and rent one of the cycle lockers at my local station. I picked up a leaflet and filled in the details, however as it transpires rental of the lockers is not dealt with at the station, no I would have to travel to head office in Glasgow to hand in my form, obviously only during office hours. This is about the worst way they could have organised this, surely it makes the most sense for me to apply through my local station since I'm there every day and that's where the locker is located. I have decided this means that Scotrail don't really want people using the lockers, this might mean they could be called successful and they may have to invest in more.

Back to bikes on trains, its really part of a larger problem, where a designer and a bean counter get together and commit hideous acts of short-sightedness. Trains now have less luggage space than ever before, with Virgin's pendolino's being the worst, the overhead storage isn't even big enough to take a small rucksack. In Short people have got together and made something that looks pretty and holds loads of people, but neglected to consider that the same people may want to carry things with them, particularly on a Glasgow-London trip. My solution, on local trains just a bit of thought for things like between seat storage for luggage, perhaps even take some dead space and make it a luggage rack. on longer distance, a guards van, yes, a car devoted entirely to luggage, I hear accountants shudder as I type but think of it. As you board you have to check in any larger bags (possibly at cost) where they are labeled with your destination and transfers, someone is then employed to load and offload this carriage at the specified points. Its not flawless but could solve most of the problems.

Ms Marvel Annual

I have been picking up the Ms. Marvel title since it started in the wake of House of M and has been consistently entertaining. However I was sorely disappointed by the Ms. Marvel annual in this weeks pull list.

The story wasn't bad, the art wasn't my cup of tea, but here's my gripe. It was distinctly short of Ms Marvel. Now I checked, It said Ms. Marvel on the cover, and only Ms. Marvel, ok it had a picture of her and Spider-Man on it, but I would expect a story with Ms. Marvel featuring Spider-Man. What I got was a Spider-Man story featuring Ms. Marvel. It wasn't a bad story, but if you look at what I buy you see I pick up Ms Marvel's solo titles while the only spidey a see is in New Avengers. If it had been called Spider-Man annual featuring Ms Marvel, I'd have left it on the shelf. Yes, I feel I was mis-sold, the issue had absolutely nothing for the Ms Marvel readers, Spidey got all the good lines and the bloody narrative of the story, Marvel turns up, tries to arrest him for being unregistered, then they fight a baddy. Looking at the issue spidey is on just about every page while Marvel barely features.

So, if you don't care about Spider-Man, and follow Ms. Marvel, avoid the Annual. I'm off to complain to Marvel for false advertising.

Oh Discordia

Woe, woe is me, for my computer suffered a fatal death, the hal.dll file more or less said "You know I can't do that Dave" and packed up. It coudl just be corrupted, or it coudl be that my hard drive is dead.

My test will be to get an Ubuntu cd running and boot into that, if I can see my hard drive, I can try copying a new hal.dll file into place, if not it will mean its dead, gone my large selection of fictional military logos.

Still, 2 things I can take from this.

1. Back up everything regularly
2. Have an Ubuntu CD on standby for this sort of thing.

Beery Goodness

Summer is officially over.

The Houston Brewing company's second festival of the year usually marks this and indeed it was its usual random self, with rides for children, a random band and, as usual lovely weather until around 5. Selection of beers wasn't great but they had a real cider on.

Which made me think about Beer, obviously. Now by Beer I mean Ale, or a lager, but none of your Tetleys, none of your Carling, or Tennents, in short if its chemically stabilised and accelerated, leave it out.

Now in Scotland Ale isn't always an easy find, although with the propagation of bottled ales it is becoming easier for pubs to make a shout on it, and the popularity of Good quality European biers is putting some pressure on the lager market (As can be seen by the way the usual big players are bringing out "Luxury" brands and trying to play up their own less chemical origins) however I won't believe them until they are forced by law to print an ingredients list on the side.

So, how do you tell a real ale from commercial swill. Well, its not 100% but a good way to tell if anything is good, is if its being sold, or marketed ice cold, be it Magners over ice or Ice cold Carling there is only one reason to serve anything below zero and that is to numb the taste buds to mask the taste. Not that ale should be served warm, despite what Americans will tell you, it should be cellar temperature, or a few degrees off normal room temperature, like it was in a room where you'd consider a jumper.

Still, it was good to be on the real ale again and with the rise of beer geekism and snobbery hopefully they should become more prevalent as places try to look more cosmopolitan.

Well I'll be damned

Looking at the CBR boards I've seen a preview of #5 of ultimate Iron Man II.

I thought this finished, was the series really so dull that I forgot it was still running.

Doesn't really bode well for it eh? I suppose its kind of obsolete now I can get my War Machine fix from Initiative, oh and Iron Man, and his own solo title coming soon.

I don't know what went wrong with Ultimate Iron Man. Well actually I do. The Idea was flawed to begin with. Seriously, and this goes for the Iron Man animated series too. I'll map it out.

I don't want to see a kid Tony Stark. I don't want to see him running around with Kid Jim Rhodes and having adventures against Kid Obidiah Stane. It interests me.... Not a jot.

Its a shame because the actual grown up incarnation of Ultimate Iron Man was great, his armour was more of a weapons platform with a 50 strong support team but the partying sarky drunkard was fun to read.

Shame actually because with this and the heap of offensive dung Ultimates has become, the Ultimate line is no longer something you can recommend off the bat to people.

Still, for my Iron Man fix all is not lost. The latest story in the Iron Man: Director of SHIELD title has ended, and was pretty good. Much more on form than the previous stories, although actually getting issues out has helped. And of course the next story is the War Machine arc. How to win over Pie Man in one easy move. In fact both main Iron man titles are good, and I'm hoping that with his current foe in Invincible being Ezekiel Stane we may get an appearance by The Order. Finally we actually got a second issue of Viva Las Vegas, the Faverau penned movie continuity story. Its slow because of the CG art but had some brilliant shameless flirting with Elsa bloodstone.

SO, and it may be a first, if you want to read Iron Man, don't read ultimate.

Cost of travelling

Well, despite widespread protests, huge petitions and generally the public screaming a big fat NO!, road pricing schemes. This is an expensive system that uses GPS and a satellite receiver in every car to track when, where and how long you are using your car. Now we already have a great system of pricing journeys per mile that even rewards fuel efficiency, its called fuel tax, but this won't use oodles of contractable technology (Should be worth a directorship in the company after you leave politics eh?) and of course doesn't allow charging depending on what road you use at what time, so if you use some farm track at 3am, it will be really cheap, on the other hand if you use the M8 at rush hour, boy will the cost rack up. This all goes with the strange opinion that those in power have that we all take to the main roads, and indeed swamp all forms of public transport between around 7-9am and 4-6pm because we like causing congestion.

Now we've also had an announcement from Scotrail that fares are going to rise 6%, the maximum they can. Do we get newer or longer trains, or a more frequent service, well no. But they are allowed to raise fares 6% and unsurprisingly that's what they've done. Some rail firms have also expressed an interest in making peak time fares more expensive in order to "Reduce overcrowding on trains" because when I'm off work I often decide to take the train in with the commuters for the company as opposed to waiting till 10 when its quiet.

No, all these systems are revenue raising in the oldest traditions of capitalism. More people want to use trains in the rush hours, and so as a result you can get more money from them. Indeed our trains are already monumentally overpriced and I would start enforcing fare reductions without service or rolling stock cuts, and if that means no one wants the franchise then you can re-nationalise without too much hassle. Of course if you were a shareholder in First you may complain but we need cheap and efficient public transport and at the moment nationalisation or not for profit companies similar to Network Rail seem to be the way forward.

As for cars, well the government has clearly realised that there is more money to be squeezed from the motorist of we can charge them more for using the roads at rush hour rather than just charging for the fuel they burn. Of course a side effect of this will be the migration of rush hour traffic from the expensive motorways and by-passes to back roads and villages, increasing road deaths, noise problems for residents and pollution from stop/start motoring. Yes its folly in the extreme but as Blair said when he received the petition "We know best"

Secret Invasion, things kick up a notch

And finally things pick up the pace a little, Huzzah.

A better issue, with some real plot movement happening, which is good as this event seemed stalled. There is some annoyance about the revelation that everyone on the ship was a Skrull, but tactically it makes sense, what better way to get the Avengers out of the way than send them on a wild goose chase to the savage land. Whats slightly more surprising is that Ares called it, in #2 he basically tells everyone its a decoy and to return to new york while he dealt with them, could this mean that as a god he was warned about the Skrull invasion or has a 6th sense, or it could simply be that, as he has previously stated, being a god of war doesn't limit him to being good at cleaving things in twain, it also includes tactical thinking. It actually kind of makes me wish we'd had more issues of Mighty Avengers between civil war and secret invasion to get to know some of the more fringe characters a little bit better. Still since Maria Hill is getting some T-Shirts made up, I'll add the first one to the pile, Areas was Right.

Second obviously is Maria Hill, who isn't a skrull and did listen to Nick Fury, yes she got the drop on Skrull Jarvis but it does mean SHIELD is down yet another helicarrier, hope it was insured. T shirt 2, is of course, Nick fury was right.

If rumours are true this may all be Reed Richards' fault, if so I'll tentatively propose a third T-Shirt, Doom was right, it was all the fault of that damnable Richards.

In other corners of the MU, Ms Marvel kills stack loads of skrulls and finds something nasty in the Vault. The runaways Xavin and Young Avengers hulkling argue over who's fault the invasion is and Captain Britain and MI13 has a strong finish where Pete Wisdom gets to do his Scarlet Witch thing and clear Britain of skrulls, sadly one of the selling points of the title is gone as it now no longer contains a Skrull who thinks he's John Lennon. Still, good setup and definitely a keeper as a title, at least while Cornell is writing

Not Secret Invasion

I may choose to comment on Secret Invasion #5 later, or perhaps not, either way once again blogging does change things as bendis has got on with it.

Nope instead I'm going to talk about a couple of good titles that aren't SI tie ins.

First up is Punisher, which comes to the end of Garth Ennis' superlative run. The origins of this story, Valley Forge, Valley Forge, go back to one of his early Max stories, and a permanent minor antagonist, a cadre of US military generals who used the punisher to try and get a Russian bio-weapon. They've been gunning for him ever since and most of the plots (Including the Barracuda arc) stemmed from their actions. Well this story they hire a group of special forces to capture the punisher, knowing he won't kill soldiers, and suffice to say by the end of the story the board is wiped clean and the punisher is left once again free from baggage for another writer to take over. I was impressed with this story using excerpts from a book written by the brother of one of the soldiers killed at firebase Valley Forge (Frank Castles posting in 'nam, as seen in Born) initially it looks like a book about Vietnam which will ultimately blame the punisher for being the only survivor of that base, instead as a twist it becomes a platform for Ennis to take a pop at the reasoning for starting the Vietnam war and causing so much death. Whoever the poor blighter is who will take over Punisher, they have some huge shoes to fill. Good luck.

Second is True Believers, released a couple of weeks ago. Why oh why oh why have marvel decided to launch this quirky little series during a huge event, when event fatigue is guaranteed to limit the number of people who will pick up a wee limited series containing a grand total of no-one well known. Its a shame because its a good idea, the True believers are a group of metahuman bloggers who expose wrongdoing at the highest levels. Issue 1 just introduced us to Payback, the de-facto leader and showed the True believers in action breaking up an illegal all girl fight ring run by some highly placed people. Next issue I believe they're pulling up Reed Richards on a DUI. Its a quirky interesting idea, has solid art and some neat writing, and I'm a sucker for these little nooks in the Marvel universe (Like my earlier enthusiasm for the Damage Control LS and Loners) sadly this one will probably get buried under Secret Invasion, a real shame.

The Jewelry Issue

As always the hypocrisy of the gutter press is only matched by the curious ways the memories of its readers work. Take the recent case of the Sikh schoolgirl now allowed to wear a religiously significant bangle despite her school's "No Jewelry" policy. This strangely caused outrage from some of the more gutter presses editorials harping on about how we "Bend the rules" for foreign religions and treading out the usual "Bet if it was a crucifix this wouldn't have been allowed" all part of the general intention to make the christian parts of the community, particularly the middle englanders, terrified that we are becoming a foreign country.

I am going to step away from the arguments of what constitutes items you have to wear as part of your religion and go straight to the hypocrisy bit.

In 2006 a case made the papers regarding a BA flight attendant Nadia Eweida, supposedly asked to remove her crucifix as it offended other religions. Strangely enough the tabloids were less focused on their "Rules are Rules" high horse then. Of course this flight attendant, plus tabloids and church members strove to make this sound like BA pandering to minority religions while dissing Christians, after all, they do a BA turban you know, I wring my hands in between typing.

Of course, as with many tabloid stories, the truth is far more revealing. The facts are thus. BA has a no visible jewelry policy, a policy that was in place when Eweida joined the company and which she had been happy to conform to for the years up to 2006 when suddenly, it became a problem. BA offered several compromises, initially that if it was that important to her she could wear it under her uniform and also offering a non uniformed, non customer facing position, however this wasn't good enough for her and even though she has lost her racial discrimination tribunal she is apparently continuing to fight. As it transpires she was a very difficult worker, constantly demanding concessions to her religion.

Several things annoyed me about the resolution to this case. First was that BA pandered far too much. I would have been out straight away with "She has been content with this policy for x years, why is this suddenly an issue, this is our uniform policy etc. Instead they relented and their uniform now allows for a lapel pin or cross on a chain. This was not helped because Pope Tony Blair weighed in seeing some outraged middle englanders who might like him if he was on side and suggested BA relent.

of course now the tabloids are going nuts in the opposite direction, demanding concessions are not made, despite the fact that, unlike a crucifix, the Sikh bangle is a necessity. Also the school hasn't ruled out crucifixes.

Now while the school issue in my mind is separate, school being something you have to attend, I now think that employers should be allowed to state the working hours and any terms relating in a contract (For example, shifts covering Sundays, Xmas etc) and dress codes in contracts. roughly as BA have done, but I would like to see these actually enforced in the above situation. The court case should go something like this "Did you sign a contract with a No Jewelry, work on Sundays policy" "Yes" "Case finds in favour of employer" no more of this jumping through religious hoops after the event in the name of tolerance, you accept the conditions or you don't accept the job.

Damn your black heart Peter David

Back when I was a younger man I would go all in to collecting a big summer event. Anything with that event's banner on it was mine, this obviously meant that I often picked up tie-ins with little or no bearing on the event itself (The disassembled tie ins were bad for this, and I still haven't really forgiven anyone for Civil War - X Men.)

Anyway I'm older now and with a baby on the way, is I decided that I would minimise the impact of this event by following these rules

1. Unless you'd have picked up any new titles, don't, aside from the SI main
2. Don't buy every tie in with a Secret invasion banner
3. Don't buy an X book, you know it will barely tie in
4. Double for Wolverine.

Now some would say I violated Rule 1 picking up Captain Britain and MI13, but I disagree, while I am reducing my comics load a Paul Cornell written series featuring British Super heroes is right up my street. However I have been undone, and it was the Jade Giantess She-Hulk that was my undoing, Its always the green chicks isn't it.

The latest run of She-hulk has been pretty good, and since her sidekick Jazinda is a skrull I was looking forward to her tie in (I pick up the title anyway so no harm done) but Peter David also writes X-Factor, and while I hear its pretty good I direct you to rule 3. Only I have had to break it because the SI tie in is spread across 2 issues of X factor and 1 of She-Hulk.

like I said, Damn.

SO, brief impressions based on Parts 1 & 2 of "He Loves you" Story wise, its not too bad, Shulkie and Jazinda are looking for a skrull that tends to precede invasion, X-Factor are looking for a mutant called Darwin, little do they know that the two are hanging out together, wires are crossed and super hero fights ensue. The X-Factor issues suffered in two ways, first, for a crossover it wasn't very noob friendly, I was left a bit confused as to who was who, this wasn't helped by some god awful art. The She-Hulk issue was better, but I will have to sit through more of the terrible art to get a conclusion. Plus I know I failed.

I have a dislike for that sort of tie in, you know, the one where a story is carried across several different and often unassociated titles. Mainly because it causes me to fork out more cash. I'm also suspicious that I am being used to prop up an ailing title (Although with my general taste in comics the title i read is usually the ailing one)

Get On with it Bendis

Well, after all that seriousness and ranting, lets take a moment to talk about really important issues.

It may surprise you to know that we are in fact being invaded by a shape changing race of aliens called Skrulls who believe by prophecy that the earth rightfully belongs to them. Freaky eh? And you know what, I say its a good thing, Skrulls are benevolent and nice and hardly ever kill hundreds of thousands. Lets not dwell on their past attempts at galactic domination and think instead of the good things, like how cool it would be to have a shape shifting girlfriend. Yes, think of that weak minded earthlings.

Ahem

I'm not a Skrull, honest.

I am of course talking about Secret Invasion, Marvels summer event that burst on to our shelves 4 months ago. At the time it was a high octane shocker of an issue, which sadly issues #2-#4 have failed to capitalise on. I am enjoying the event but the story has seriously decompressed where a little compression wouldn't go a miss. Basically these past 3 issues could have been condensed into 2 or 1 issues. All we've had is skrull fights in various locations, I want story progress. We've had scarce few revelations either. Hopefully #5 will pick up the pace a little and start things moving, or at least take us past what still feels like the first act.

However I will credit it with this, for a wide spanning event it has been contained. I read through #1-4 again recently and while they are referenced to varying degrees by the tie ins I'm buying, there is very little you need to know going into the main title. About the only complaint you could level is that the two Avengers titles are telling SI back story, so no adventures of your favorite teams until this event is over.

In some way I am enjoying the few tie-ins more at the moment, specifically Ms Marvel, which has admittedly been pretty much two issues of Ms. Marvel vs Skrulls, but ts been well done and serves as more of a character study and a look at a small battle in the big war. The other enjoyable tie-in has been Avengers: The initiative, with focuses on 3D man, and his Skrull detecting visor, and Crusader, a Skrull who has adopted Earth as his home.

Still hoping for a pickup in pace soon as the main is stalling quite badly at the moment.

Damned Dirty Scroungers

I know this isn't a new story but I have thought long and hard about it before posting, imagine the disaster if I posted without thinking.

A while back the government unveiled plans to make all those dirty dole scroungers work for their benefits. This would include community service and its like. They also want to get as many people off sick leave. This is intended to make them look tough on the generational unemployed, the ones we all know about (And who do indeed exist) who pretty much refuse to work and know how to play the system so they don't have to.

First you should know, I'm a big softy when it comes to unemployment benefit, probably why I'd never get voted in by middle England. I personally would love a foolproof system but since that's impossible I'd much prefer to have 5 false claimants of one genuine case can get benefits easily and without hassle.

I have several concerns with this system. Its goal is to get more people back in work, and also more people off "the Sick". This is obviously aimed at the scroungers who use hard to diagnose illnesses such as back problems and stress to get the increased incapacity benefit without the added requirement of needing to look for work. There are also plans to force unemployed people into work or risk suspension of benefits. Or to have them perform community service, such as litter picking or graffiti removal to "Earn" benefits. It makes the government look tough and panders to the Daily Mail brigade's "Make these slackers earn their dole" mantra

That second part really concerns me as it looks a lot like the US "Welfare to Work" scheme, where large companies were given tax breaks to employ people on benefits to make them earn their money. It didn't of course make concessions for such things as childcare, merely getting people on welfare out to work. It was widely criticised for creating a generation of latch key kids and providing big businesses with cheap labour. SO who will we force into jobs, regardless of suitability. Unemployment offices often roll their eyes at people who "Won't work mornings" but distinction should be made between someone who is too lazy to haul themselves out of bed at 8am and someone who can only afford or obtain care for their child in the afternoon.

However the part that really annoys me is that this will hit the wrong people. Your "Doley scrounger" will usually be claiming incapacity benefit, and know the ins and outs to keep themselves medically signed off as unfit for work. If someone is claiming pack pains as a reason not to work then I doubt they will be able to force these people out to pick up litter either. In short your actual scroungers who know the system inside out, will remain on benefits, as will their children. On the other hand, genuine claimants, who don't know the system as well, or are just honest, are more likely to have benefits stopped when they turn down a job because of injury or illness, or will be forced out to work for a pittance while fighting pain, or leaving their kids at home alone. As always, the first to suffer in any bureaucracy are the honest people.

By-Election and Leadership Kerfuffle

SO, labour lost one of its safest seats, but are trying not to take it personally. Frankly I expected better than this "Running the country, bother me not with your trivia" attitude of Gordon's, they must have known that they were doomed to get nothing good out of this. If they won by a small margin then it would be a serious blow, and if they lost, well we'd be where we are now. No wonder they had to use their 3rd string candidate, no-one normally after a safe seat wants to be the one to loose it.

However a drubbing of some sort was always expected, an unexpected result would be a small change to increase in majority, and indeed all this shows is that some parts of Glasgow have realised that the Labour Party they voted for is not going to snap back to its old socialist ways once it uses all this new labour guff to convince the posh guys in newton mearns. Or alternatively, the "Labour, like my father and his father before him" lot are now to lazy to come out and vote.

Anyway, what actually concerning me is that it may have caused a leadership challenge. That is bad news. See, a career politician doesn't want Gordon brown's job at the moment, all the signs are showing a Tory win next election unless Boris Does something really dumb in London like bans football or sex. so if you take Brown's job now, you get to be PM for two years (I will be mildly surprised if we get an early election rather than desperately clinging to power for as long as possible) then are booted for evermore to the back benches for loosing the election. Since no-one just wants a shot at being PM because it looks good on the CV it is no small leap to assume that those after the job are so criminally deluded that they actually think they can turn things around. Anyone that deluded is going to be one serious liability in the top job. Worse, your should will belong to those you convinced to support you, both in getting a leadership contest called and getting you in power, in short, you'll have to vote for next leader once you've been turfed from the job post election defeat. Worse still, if someone gets the job, Brown can make good mileage in how the party crashing and burning was their fault and perhaps stay in a responsible position in the party.

No, let brown bring the party down around him, then wait until the Tories have been so unspeakable that you look like the better option again, and then nab power, but don't accept any deals about being chancellor, its not a good path.

Yet more Transport

Saw Panorama's documentary regarding fuel costs today and I feel it missed the point, all though in fairness, it was pretty short of a point, it seemed to ask a lot of questions, such as is fuel taxation a bad thing, well yes if you talk to the crofters on Orkney who need to travel long distances to do anything, no if you talk to the LSE professor who lives, oh in London and sees no reason why people can't take public transport. For my money he has clearly been in London so long he doesn't realise that once you get out of London, yes there is an outside of London, Public transport veers wildly in quality and provision. The programme made a great deal about the GeeWizz electric car, a very small, pretty unsafe electric car that is all their age in London, and it is good there, you have car parks with recharging bays (It only has a 40 odd mile range) and it is exempt from the congestion charge and road tax. The show made the point that outside of London, while the government wants to promote these wee electric cars for cities, not many cities have the facility to charge them up, but hey, why provide any alternative when you can fleece us for tax. It is a catch 22. Councils won't provide charging points until more people have electric cars, but no one will buy one until they can charge it up. trust me I would get a gee whiz tomorrow if I didn't have to run an extension lead from my 3rd floor flat as it would be ideal for my short run to the station.

But of course, that's not the point at all. It is very easy for someone who can afford, say a big BMW, or a custom super charged mondeo with nitrous kit, to do such things as buy an electric car for small trips, or have an LPG conversion. Indeed both myself and my wife would definitely consider the latter as a local petrol station provides LPG at half the cost of petrol. However, like most people who have to drive a big family car (What with having a family) usually older and hence higher emissions (Because we can't afford to take the depreciation hit) and can't afford money staving measures like LPG or electric, we will have to continue to be punished for using fuel, despite the fact that we can not afford an alternative. Yes, the Rich can reap the tax breaks and be smug about being green, we take up the slack. Joy.

I did get a smile today though, I've already heard many negative things about Edinburgh's tram system from residents, largely the realisation of the small area it will cover and the disruption it will cause. As you know I find trams obsolete and wasteful compared to superior but rarely considered trolley buses, but also because of the mass whinge from interested party's (Not to mention councillors who had already taken kickbacks for contracts to dig up roads yet to be awarded) when the SNP tried to cancel the scheme on the grounds of it being a huge white elephant. Now traders in Edinburgh have complained about the drop in business due to the roads being closed during the fitting of their ails, and complaints about the traffic congestion in general. The shop owners admit that business may improve after the trams are running but feel they should be compensated for the disruption. Hmm, its like they have a cake, but also wish to eat it while still keeping the cake, or in a nutshell, they want to bleed as much as possible out of this. I sincerely hope the Government tells them that had they not whined so much to get the project un-cancelled they would not have had the drop in business and to stop wasting everyone's time and money.

Nextwave

On a wave of good reviews I decided to take the plunge and buy not one but both volumes of Warren Ellis's Nextwave, and I really don't regret it.

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. features some old, little used Marvel cahracters on the run from H.A.T.E., their own team after discovering it was in fact all a front for the Beyond Corpora ton to test WMDs on America. The team includes Monica Rambau (Photon) Aaron Stack (Machine Man), Tabitha smith (Boom Boom), Elsa Bloodstone and a new character called The Captain. From that synopsis it sounds serious and dark, it isn't.

Nextwave is bonkers, absolutely mental, ignore continuity, ignore common sense and enjoy the daft ride as this mismatched group of misfits fight ever more bizarre foes. What other series would have Fin Fang Foom threaten to put one of the team in his pants, and you have General Dirk Anger chasing them in more and more unhinged ways. It is glorious daftness, now go, buy it before I release the Drop Bears

Cost of Living (Tax it again)

I wrote a previous article that was critical about the governments general policy of Tax It as a solution to everything. I am still as critical but I will now prove how much better I am (Or how much easier it is to rant about this stuff at any rate) by showing how I would run the Tax it to death strategy so it annoyed fewer people.

First of all lets be clear on why my ideas are only good in theory. It is quite obvious that the current rash of taxes, supposedly to make us drink less and be more environmentally friendly, are really there to patch up budget shortfalls, created partly by financial mismanagement and partly because of the downturn in the housing market meaning that there is less stamp duty and other such taxes being paid. This is where the key problem in so many of these taxes comes in as it is obvious that this is a desperate attempt to make the books balance. Meanwhile cost of living increases due to rising fuel and food costs, the food costs being particularly suspicious since most farmers are barely scraping a living and food is getting more expensive, I wonder who is making all that money in between *CoughSupermarketscough*

Alcohol. Binge drinking is a problem, and while a level of personal responsibility must be taken it should be observed that alcoholism is most predominant in people from deprived backgrounds. However since people don't like airy-fairy sociological solutions the government is opting for tax and law. Currently the government wants to ban 2 for one offers and ramp up prices in both off licenses and pubs. This will actually have the most detrimental effects on fringe products enjoyed more sensibly such as high quality malt whiskey, wine and real ale. It seems a shame since the binge drinkers tend to err towards cheap cider and special offer low quality chemical lager. The current plan will basically leave this stuff relatively cheap. My idea is much better. We create a minimum charge for alcohol based on alcohol content. what do I mean? Take beer, at the moment in a Pub £2 a pint is pretty reasonable, lets call that £4 a Litre to keep things properly metric. In a Supermarket I can buy 3 500ml bottles of ale for £4 so that about £2.60 a litre. I can also buy a case of chemical gunk masquerading as beer which is 20 500ml cans for £5, so about 50p a litre. Guess which one is going to contribute to binge drinking the most. Now say we have a law, where after production costs are factored breweries are charged tax to top up the basic cost (Before super markets do their markups) to £2 per litre and make it an offence to sell cheaper than that cost. 20 cans of stella will now cost you at least £20 if the super market is making a loss on distribution costs, similarly 20 bottles of ale would cost £20. Now a super-market could do a buy 1 get one free offer on anything, but the basic cost would still have to be no less that £2 per litre. I wouldn't say this would stop the problem, but it would definitely price most people out of binge amounts while not affecting small vulnerable businesses like Ale producers.

Second one is driving in general. Cars are taxed to the absolute hilt, worse its all called green tax so it can be disguised as an environmental issue rather than a moneyspinner. An average driver, not counting costs of acquiring a licence, is charged VED on buying a new car, road tax and 50% of the cost of fuel is tax (Which the government jokingly refer to as a fixed figure) as the new road tax will be partly based on carbon emissions the people who will be wore affected are not rich people in 4x4s, who can afford £400 road tax, and indeed can afford more expensive hybrids that have very small road taxes and use less fuel, or LPG cars which is currently half the price of petrol, no it will hit poor people with families who can't afford a new car which will pump out less carbon let alone a hybrid. In all I do object to pricing people off the road, but at the moment people feel fleeced because the money seems to be falling int a big black hole. I have a couple of suggestions, first, with fuel I would adopt the SNPs suggestion that the wholesale cost of fuel is fixed. How would this be different. At the moment 50% of fuel cost is tax, mainly fuel tax, so the wholesale cost of fuel (these are simplified figures, I'm not an accountant) is 60p per litre of unleaded. Say the limit was set to £1 per lire, at this time tax received from petrol would be 40p, if the cost rose further, to say 70p we'd still pay £1 at the pump but tax would only be 30p, however, if prices fell, say to 30p per litre, we'd still pay £1 and the government would take 70p, yes there would be complaints when costs were low but planning how to run a car would be easier.

The second idea with motoring would be where the money goes. Most people's objections to "Green Tax" is that the money doesn't pay for alternatives. So all taxes received from cars, be it Road tax, VED or fuel tax, can only be spent on transport, be it road improvements, or public transport alternatives. Literally when the budget is set they take an estimate based on last years takings and say "This £x million plus whatever else we fancy adding to the pot is available for transport" at least then people would have a choice.

This was an unfocused rant but it has made me feel better. Next election I'm voting Saxon, yes he was a mad timelord but he had some very good policies on tax.

This Year's TV: UK

Or More specifically how good is Bernard Cribbins.

Well Cribbins aside, we have seen a resurgence in UK genre TV, but I wanted to wait until Dr Who was finished before doing a wee summary. Not as in depth as my previous ones as it will mainly be me taking a sneaky opportunity to talk about how good Dr Who was.

UK genre TV has had a bit of a renaissance since the return of Dr Who under Russel T Davies four years ago, the shows popularity has challenged the BBC to do more with the Saturday Teatime slot and even encouraged some competition from the other side. ITVs primeval is now in its third series and while I don't watch it reports have been encouragingly positive. The BBC's other main series (Although not strictly genre) is of course Robin Hood, which saw some improvement in its second series with some riveting episodes and a very good finale, although it has not yet reached the standard of Must watch TV.

Dr Who itself has become a franchise, while the K9 animated series remains hung up in development hell Who has established its 3 series, Torchwood for Grownups, Sarah Jane Adventures for kids and Dr Who for all the family.

Sarah Jane I didn't manage to catch, but what I saw was a revelation in children's entertainment, it was well written, non patronising and entertaining kids SF, like when I were a lad. Anyone who argues that all we can give kids are US imports should see this. Its got its second series as well.

Torchwood was a vastly improved series from the misfiring effort we had last year. Now it is actually becoming a more "Grown Up" companion to Dr Who, gone is the pointless "Because we can" sex'n'violence and even swearing was toned down. This is possibly because a pre-watershed cut was asked for, so monsters that shag their victims to death were a no-no. It also had Buffy's James Marsters as Captain John, a corrupt time agent and former partner of Jack, and an over-reaching story involving Jack's long lost brother. It had some better ideas this year, we saw some of Torchwood's past, had some creative use of jack's immortality, some backstory from the rest of the crew and had a heartbreaking finale that saw the death of Owen (Who had become quite likable) and Tosh. For the future Dr Who's finale hinted that the new cast may include Martha Jones and Mickey Smith, I sincerely hope so.

Dr Who, the jewel in the crown, really fired on all cylinders this year. There was much trepidation when Donna Noble, from "The Runaway Bride" was announced as companion. This proved to be unfounded as Cathrine Tate did a fantastic job, giving us a companion who was keen to travel, and refreshingly, not infatuated by the Doctor. Her and Tennant played off each other fantastically and, truth be told, she as been my favorite New Who companion. Which made her ultimate fate in the finale all the more tragic. The series itself, really didn't miss a beat, highlights were definitely the unrestrained joy that was the Agatha Christie themed "Unicorn and the Wasp", the lesson on how to do a bottle episode that was "Midnight" and again textbook what if style episode with "Turn Left". By pure accident (the death of the actor playing Donna's Father) we received a standout character this series, introduced in the Christmas Special Wilf Mott, Donna's grandfather played by Bernard Cribbins has been an absolute joy. For a finale Davis decided to go all out in his last effort, we had Rose return, Sarah-Jane, Torchwood's crew all come together to fight Davros and the Daleks, the finale was a rip-roaring roller coaster of a ride, and while it had some iffy plot points the excellent performance turned in by All concerned, particularly davros made it classic stuff that not even a false alarm regeneration can ruin. The ending was a tearjerker with Donna slowly being killed by Timelord knowledge in her head, the Doctor was forced to remove all her memories of him, and advise her family to make sure she never remembers. The episode has two of who's finest moments, the TARDIS being flown properly by Martha, Jack, Rose, Mickey, Sarah-Jane, and The Doctor, and Wilfs final speech "No, no - but every night, Doctor, when it gets dark, and the stars come out, I'll look up on her behalf. I'll look up at the sky, and think of you" still brings a tear to the eyes.

Anyway, enough of that, the future, well, I'll miss having a regular series next year, only 4 specials, on the other hand I'll have a baby to look after so probably for the best, it will be 1 by the time who starts properly and with any luck will either be quiet or be interested.

Guardian follow up

Well, who says blogging does nothing, while the look is the same the search function on the Guardian website now works and you can pull up an archive by columnist, basically now it looks less like "The Guide" and "Comment is Free" are fighting each other. Good work.