Pie Man's world of Stuff

The Pie Man Television awards 2011

2012-01-20T00:28:00.000Z

Hey you thought I’d forgotten, about the TV awards or the blog, or both, you decide. I sometimes wonder if I should keep doing this since it’s more than likely that In the Night Garden or Rastamouse will eventually feature, since they dominate what’s on my TV at home at the moment. Saying that there was a particularly good episode of Octonauts that…
Sorry, will carry on, as always, I will not shy away from spoilers so if you don’t want to know the results, look away….. Now.
Its not that the pickings have been sparse this year, although there is definitely less TV I like going around, I’m also scuppered by opportunity. I never managed to catch Fringe, Eureka or Warehouse 13 which is a shame as these seem pretty good and are propping up the schedules nicely. On the other scale Sky graveyarded the last series of Caprica and were damn late with SGU. Oh well, let’s see how I do.

Best TV show.
There were some obvious ones to go for here. In my view Stargate universe gave a good last season, Misfits Season 2 was worth watching as well we also had The Walking Dead and since I have decided to give everyone else a chance and give Game of Thrones the Best new Show. Still, Misfits made a good effort and Being Human was damned close, however the winner is.

Doctor Who

The latest season of Dr Who has divided fans, critics and commentators. Critics say it’s too complex and confusing. The split season lost momentum and they dislike the cast. I disagree
This season wrapped up the River Song arc, finally explaining her origin and relationship to the Doctor. While not straight forward I would dispute confusing. It’s a bit of a no-win scenario, you make things too simple and people criticise for being simplistic, add in an arc and some more complicated plot elements and it’s over complicated.
In this series, when episodes have been strong, they’ve been really strong. The opening 2 parter had mystery, excitement and a real epic scale (The filming in the US really paid off) Similarly Epic were “A Good Man goes to War” and “The Wedding of River Song” and it contained the knockabout fun and breakneck pace of stories like “Let’s kill Hitler” There were also some good character pieces like Neil Gaiman’s “The Doctor’s Wife” and “The Girl who Waited” overall quality was high and while some episodes didn’t quite make the grade, for example “The Curse of the Black spot” was disappointing and the “Rebel Flesh” 2 part story suffered from padding. (Although I suspect if it had been cut to one episode it would have seemed rushed)
The finale had a slight feel of Deus Ex Machina to it, and indeed was guessed by some fans but has left us with the rather nice idea that the whole Universe thinks the Doctor is dead. A good way of undoing the slightly tired plot device of the Doctor turning up and basically saying “I’m the doctor, Boo” to scare off his enemies.
Cast wise, Matt smith does well, although is occasionally written too close to Tennant for my liking. Amy has annoyed less now that they’ve finally dropped her lusting after the Doctor and Rory has been a real standout, definitely my favourite of the two companions. Alex Kingston put in a great turn as the many personalities of River Song, clearly enjoying playing the younger evil version of herself. She’s a bit of a divisive character but I liked her.
So, hopefully we’ll have something next year, Due to the Unique way the Tories are trying to shaft the BBC we’ll see what we get.

Best New Show.
Ok, I won’t pre-amble too much. While picking were thin I still caught some new stuff, and any other year the Walking Dead would have walked this, however in order to talk about more than one show, this got best new show.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a stunning example of what Commercial stations should be doing and the risks they should be taking. It adapts the first of George RR Martin’s dense and complex “Song of Ice and Fire” series of books and does a grand job. There are so many places they could have gone wrong, as it’s short on action but long on talk they could have cut the lavish production values, they didn’t. They might have thought to add in a bit more action and less talking, they didn’t, and they might have shied away from killing their biggest name actor and the guy on all the posters a few episodes from the end of the series. Again, they didn’t. Why other networks don’t take risks like this is beyond me.
Sean bean plays Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell, who is recruited by the King of the seven kingdoms to the job of Kings Hand after the previous hand dies in mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile the two remaining children of the deposed house Targaryan plot to return to Westeros and take back their kingdom.
I can’t praise this series enough. However extra credit has to go to the Actors. Sean bean gives his usual gruff performance but never drifts too far into Boromir or Richard Sharpe. However the real praise has to go to Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, also known as the Imp. He doesn’t just steal every scene he’s in; he takes it over, as if it was always his. It helps that Tyrion is one of the more interesting characters from the books but Dinklage really deserves every scrap of credit he gets for this role. Jack Gleeson also deserves credit for his portrayal of the heir Prince Joffrey Baratheon. He is either a hugely dislikeable person in real life or a fantastic actor. I would prefer it to be the latter.
I could go on, there are lovely touches, take the opening credits, an animated map shows you key locations of Westeros, adding some such as the Aerie and the Twins as they feature, shows a pictorial representation of the Rise and fall of house targaryan and the extra touch of having the sigil of their house next to the names of each cast member. The only downside it that it has set a very high bar for any other fantasy series to meet. Camelot has been the first to fall well short on just about every level.

Best Finale
This was a tough one, which season ended on an absolute high? Tempting to add Being Human again but there were other stronger contenders. Chuck was close on this as well, however the winner is

Being Human

Being Human was one of the absolute standouts this year, managing to outdo last year’s spectacular season. Due to the events of last season our spooky trio have moved to Wales and taken up residence in an old B&B. It was a nice touch that, quite realistically much of the season looked at the aftermath of Mitchell “Falling off the wagon” surprisingly enough the police tend to keep looking when a trainload of people are killed. This combined with the return of Herrick from S1, Werewolf fights and a zombie made for an interesting series.
The finale had the events of the Box Tunnel massacre finally catch up to Mitchell, all the pieces set up through the season fall into place. Herrick finally recovers his memory and naturally goes on a rampage, mysterious vampiric agents shut down the Box tunnel investigation and Mitchell is arrested and photographed. By the end the final scene with Mitchell choosing to have George kill him rather than be turned into an agent for said vampires was touching. Overall a great end to a good series.

Most Improved Show,
.Again, a tough call, more so because many shows didn’t so much improve as maintain the level of quality. However, I reckon the prize has to go to

Stargate Universe

Is this the second season? Was it just season 1A? Sky 1’s dubious scheduling has me all ahoo. Anyway, this season solved a lot of its normal problems. They had a greater sense of peril and more action, but thankfully without sacrificing character and plot. There was some neat use of Time travel, which lead to arguably one of the series most satisfying stories, finding the lost civilisation of their own ancestors, similar to an old DS9 story but taken to extremes.
The robot drones made a good enemy, really making the crew of the destiny seem trapped and outgunned.
Finally, the ending, yes it ended on a cliff-hanger, and arguably a small, low key affair, but again, I rather liked it.

Most Gratuitous T&A in a series
So many contenders this year. Camelot, from what I saw was trying for a Spartacus’s crown but forgot to add the decent plotting, instead just dubious use of T&A. Similarly Game of Thrones proved that to be an HBO TV series you have to allow nudity and sex. Indeed one of my only criticisms was that on occasions it was pretty unnecessary (Even, Gratuitous? Quiet inside voice) However, the winner managed to win without showing actual sex or nudity. The winner is

Chuck

Chuck may nab a second award, but, as in all seasons, chuck has several goals. Amongst entertainment, Genre references, fun and action it also requires to have Sarah either appear in underwear/bikini or dress up in a slinky outfit at least every other episode or more. It’s the best sort of gratuitous; it’s gratuitous with a self referential mocking nod. I expect the next season to have Sarah dress up as a Nurse, French Maid, Policewoman and air hostess all in one episode, with added sarcastic comments

Best Factual series
Sadly I’ve not been watching as much factual TV, unless you count Aunt Mabel telling me how we get Marmalade in “Come Outside” or Katie Ashworth explaining where cheese comes from in “I can Cook” (For those without kids, these are kids shows, I long for when they want to watch Horrible histories) and sadly I missed Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe, however there was a particularly good factual series I did catch.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Phew, clunky title, not exactly tripping off the tongue, but a fascinating look into the way machines have affected our lives and how we perceive and interpret the world around us. It looked at those who believed we could have leaderless utopias or self regulating ecosystems and indeed critiqued some of these ideas or showed where things went wrong. Deep, challenging and eye opening.

Best Entertainment Factual
This award almost has a usual suspects list, Mythbusters, Top Gear and something with James May, however the addition this year was Channel 4’s 10 O’clock Live, which I still intend to blog about. Sadly it didn’t win, nope it’s that James May again.

James May’s Man Lab

In this series James May explores “Manly Pursuits” From building bars to serenading women. It’s a bit like the sort of disposable “Man skills” or Dangerous book for buys” stuff you might get for Xmas made into a TV series. But it works.
The show covers a wide variety of subjects. The less than instructional DIY segments, combined with on once occasion cookery, are performed in the “Man Lab” which they actually build around themselves as the series progresses, installing a kitchen and bar. Outside bigger tasks are attempted such as bomb disposal, rescuing someone from a beach or serenading a woman. There was an extra feature (Sadly not carried to the second season) where a celebrity man had to perform a “Man task” against the clock, such as assembling IKEA furniture or changing a tyre. Overall fun, informative and very watchable.

Best UK Network/Channel
Have clearly been responding to criticism that they just buy the best shows by making more of their own output this year. However, so far it’s been fairly forgettable. Their placing of all of HBO’s output on Sky Atlantic could have qualified them for this award but you’ll see in the next award why not. In the definite running was Channel 4, who do seem to be trying new and better things since they axed Big Brother. I’ll mention Channel 5 as well for not being too proud to buy up second showings of walking dead (Other free view channels should follow this lead) however, looking at the awards so far is it any wonder the winner is

The BBC

Good gods they’re not perfect, budget shenanigans, the infamous wondering timeslot and good old fashioned graveyarding aside they have produced the Best TV this year outside of HBO (And much of their work stands well alongside that) Yes, we had misfires (Outcasts) But they are trailblazing in nearly every field, Documentary, Comedy, Drama, Kids, at the moment the beeb does it better.
Sadly how long it will last is questionable, the budget has been cut in real terms with the govt freezing the license fee and dumping the world service on to the BBC’s books. They are cutting down many cheap daytime programmes, but the problem with cutting something cheap is it inevitably only saves a little money. We already know Dr Who is taking a hit, and with Spooks and Hustle finishing its doubtful any replacement will have the same money behind it. Similarly there will be less money for expensive experiments like Outcasts. Overall, we could be in for some lean times from Auntie

The Pirate Bay Award for services to Bit-Torrent
I changed this award last year because so many networks were doing well. Sadly a network that was the trailblazer against using Bit-torrent has now fallen afoul. Yes the winner is

Sky

Sky made a number of slipups. Now it is fair that Anytime isn’t free to all, although if you can get sky channels (Say with Virgin) its not unreasonable to want to use their on demand service for what you pay for, but no matter (Virgin would do the same if they owned any channels) however Sky made a couple of big mistakes this year. First was Sky Atlantic, in principle a very good idea, buy all of HBO’s output and bung it on a new channel. New series even premiered near the US airdate. What’s the problem, it was Sky subscribers only. N matter how much you pay you can not get Sky Atlantic on Virgin. Some said this was a clever way to drive people to Sky but those people seem ignorant of the advent of the Internet. I wouldn’t expect Atlantic to be free to non sky subscribers like sky 1 and Living are, but to take it completely off? You might as well say “Just Torrent the damn thing”
Second problem, Sky have been jigging around the channels a bit. Part of it is to make more sense, Sky 1 will be mostly their own output, Living will be imported shows not from HBO like Chuck, and Atlantic covers US imports (mainly HBO) but sadly this has meant delays to the start of some series, such as Chuck. As anyone knows, delay too long from the US and once again people go to torrents.
Finally, their poor treatment of Stargate Universe and Caprica. Ok they knew both were axed, but universe returned with little fanfare and Caprica was Graveyarded. Both were shown significantly later than their US counterparts as well.
Overall these 3 mistakes have meant more bit-torrenting and lower ratings for Sky. Hopefully they’ll improve things by the next awards

Only the Good Die young award.
Not too much for the axe to fall on this year, but it claimed a few scalps. I was going to give this to Caprica, but I’m still debating the Good part of that. No the award has to go to

Stargate Universe

Ok, it was a massive diversion from the parent show, but it had found its feet and was growing well. Sadly as far as we know destiny is drifting between universes for all eternity, or until someone stumps up the money for a TV Movie.

Never given a proper chance award
Well, it wasn’t SGU, so it had to be

Caprica

Now, Caprica, for the most part hadn’t impressed me. But it had potential, and S2 was gaining momentum. However a graveyard slot by sky made watching difficult and its axing means we’ll only know where it was going by a quick summary at the end. A shame because done correctly we could have been into S3 Caprica now ready to segway into the proposed Cylon war series. Sadly it was just too different to Galactica

The Reilly 2040 worst padding award
Again, not been too bad this year, more sires are avoiding padding and getting to the point. However, there was one culprit.
Torchwood: Miracle Day

This US/UK co-production saw a world where nobody died. Interesting concept, shame they padded out the series so much. It left the view of a series that had would pick up pace. “Now we’re getting somewhere” you’d think then next thing you know we’re plodding again. Probably not as poor as Series 1 torchwood but this bloated beast was no match for S2 let alone the excellent “Children of Earth”

Pie Man Special Award
In an effort not to make this the Special award for Chuck, it has been disqualified from the special award this year leaving room for

Misfits

The second season of Channel 4’s anarchic Super-hero comedy/drama really went from strength to strength. While still remaining largely episodic there were some interesting stories carrying through, such as the Superhoodie reveal, in general though past episodes are referenced more than anything. It almost became a running joke that Nathan, now immortal, is killed once an episode but it was done with such a sense of fun you knew it was a running joke. An underrated addition was the new probation worker (No 3) who in contrast to the past two is simply uninterested, presumably why he has survived significantly longer than the other two. For a comedy Misfits manages some Pathos, Alisha’s relationship with Simon/Supherhoodie is well played and there is occasionally some real pathos (Kelly and the gorilla for example) The series finale has a suitably apocalyptic feel where the Asbo 5 reveal themselves to the public and face off against a guy who can telekinetically manipulate dairy products. Yes you knew Curtis’ time jump power would undo everything but seeing a previously unknown Lactose intolerance used as a Deus Ex Machina is something that only happens in Misfits.
Next series is interesting (I’ve seen it, it’s been on already) using the idea of Seth the power broker from the Xmas special to mix up the powers a bit. The series will also be surviving without Nathan, but I’m less worried since he was often used as a comedic crutch by the writers.

Worst Treatment of a series
Will keep this short because it’s the same complaint as last year,

The BBC

Ok, let’s nail this down. Dr Who is a flagship show, one of your biggest ratings hits. Is it really that hard to set aside the same slot every week for the run of the series? How hard can it actually be, make up a damn schedule.

Biggest Missed opportunity
Again, no pre-amble here, the culprit was obvious

Outcasts

I wanted to like Outcasts, Original British Hard SF drama, high production values; it’s what we’ve been asking for. I blogged about this a while ago and it still annoys me. Hackneyed old SF plots, unengaging characters and a feeling that the writers had no idea what they were doing. They could have done so much better. At least it wasn’t the Deep

Top Gear vs The Electric Car

2011-10-09T05:12:00.000+01:00

s always my blog, due to the bone-idleness of its author, is somewhat late to the
party. But I was honestly going to do a piece on Top Gears attitude to Electric/Hybrid
vehicles. Honest guv.
Anyway, Recently Top gear ran a segment on two commercially available electric
cars, the Nissan Leaf and the Peugeot ion. It has come under some criticism,
particularly from George Monbiot and others. Top Gear have also responded but I’d
thought I should put in my 2.5p (Exchange rate variable) worth.

First, declaration of interests. I am a petrol head. Love cars, Love the internal
combustion engine. Not only that but I do like cars that are bad for the environment,
the growl of an American V8 or the great looks and handling but 1960s fuel efficiency
of a classic british sports car. However, I do despair at my fellow petrol heads from
time to time.

Sadly, it seems most seem to think our love of cars and environmentalism can’t meet.
Indeed it quite often leads to a rather childish inclination towards climate change
denialism (Mr Clarkson, I’m looking at you) This need not be the case. My original
blog post was based around comments by Jay Leno, himself an avid car collector and
driver. His point was alternative fuels would free up the petrol car for the petrol head,
in the same way the car freed up the Horse for the enthusiast. This rings true for me,
as 90% of the car driving population care nothing for A V8 rumble or a supercharger
whine. They would prefer a car that goes from A-B, carrying all they wish to carry
(Cargo, children, sports equipment, cows) and costing as little as possible to buy
and run. My point is always we should nurture this and demand better electric, or
hydrogen cars and better public transport. The former to hopefully reduce the demand
for petrol, lowering prices and the latter to ease up congestion, not to mention the
environmental benefits. However to the piece.

One of the main complaints from Nissan and various articles and blogs, is the comedy
scene where they run out of power and have to push the cars around looking for a
charging point. Many state that they deliberately rand down the batteries to around
40% and selected a town with no charging infrastructure in order to make electric cars
look bad. On this point I disagree.

While charging infrastructure has improved, a good percentage of us live in cities
with little or no charging facilities. Hell, Glasgow has something in the realm of
2 locations and its Scotland’s biggest city, imagine the difficulties of running an
electric car out in the highlands. While Top gear may have laboured this point a bit
the possibility of running out of power miles from a charging point is a fear most of
us have. The Leaf has various clever systems in place to advise you if you have run
the battery too far down to reach a charging location, but like it or not at the moment
running an electric car will require planning and forethought that a petrol version will
not.

The second point which Top Gear made pretty well was the Electric Car’s biggest
fault, the time it takes to charge. Yes again they had some knock about fun waiting the
13 hrs for the leaf to charge, but still, for a complete charge from empty 13 hrs is a long
time.

I am not completely defending Top gear however. They took some liberties. First
there was some dodgy figures surrounding the cost to charge up a car, with many
wondering where they found their particularly high tariff. Second was a discussion
about the lifespan of the batteries and potential damage and replacement costs. The
main fault here is tha they failed to explain that if your battery does go wrong Nissan
will replace it for free, and worth noting that 90% of the battery is re-cycled in the
UK. This fact would have taken the force out of their ranting about some of the
running costs.

I don’t want Top gear to do puff pieces on Electric cars, but while not the hatchet
job some of the critics are making it out to be the Top gear piece was aiming to be
negative, as the bookend studio segment with its tiresome “Batteries are rubbish” line
from May and Clarkson “Humerously” suggesting we could use something called
Petrol. This has never sat well with me, Clarkson has a definite objection to the
Prius, and if he could get past rant mode and provide figures to his argument that they
are more environmentally damaging to build and dispose of, he would actually have a
pretty good scoop, since Toyota make a big deal of the Prius’s green credentials, but
instead of that we get general bluster and various omissions.

I don’t expect purely factual slots on Top gear and realise it is as much entertainment
as informative, but I do expect a little honesty, particularly since, like it or not, within
the next 20 years its more than likely we’re all going to be running an electric or
alternative fuelled car.
Here is the BBC's response, it covers some of the points above, but still fails to mention nissan will replace any battery not holding a charge for free.

Obligatory Phone Hacking Post

2011-07-26T07:33:00.000+01:00

Yes, of course I'm going to comment on this. I was going to talk about less important things but this has been very interesting indeed.

First, as always, this story has been covered better in the following blogs, Obsolete, Zelo Street, Angry Mob, Enemies of Reason, Bloggerheads and 5 Chinese Crackers, also worth reading is Flat Earth news by Nick Davies, who broke this story ages ago and has been doggedly persistent in trying to get this to the publics attention.

Ok, still here?

So, for those not paying attention, there was a Sunday tabloid called the News of the World owned by a big media baron called Rupert Murdoch. Rupert owned a lot of media and was feared by politicians. Reporters at the News of the world, in order to get celebrity stories, started hiring a private detective called Glen Mulchare to hack answerphones on the off-chance they contained juicy gossip. This was pretty normal as most papers were involved in similar and indeed worse breaches of the law on fishing expeditions for gossip. However it was discovered that said PI had hacked the phone of missing Teenager Milly Dowler, and had even deleted messages to listen to more messages of her desperate family begging her to come home. This then opened a floodgate, 7/7 victims phones had been hacked, families of dead soldiers. Terrible stuff, but for those who have read flat earth news, unsurprising. What it did was cause enough public outcry to start a boycott of News of the World's advertising causing News International to close the paper.

This sorry debacle finally brought into the open the true horror of our press. Politicians had been scared to act against NI for fears of being attacked by their sizable media interests. The Police were spiking stories and utterly failing to investigate illegal practices by newspapers in exchange for favourable coverage and a cosy relationship. While phone hacking was the final trigger to get a proper review it wasn't the only problem, the real issue was the influence of the press, of News international and the complicity of the police. It also embarrassed many a politician on both sides as they had all been spotted enjoying the hospitality of News International's summer garden party mere weeks previously. David Cameron took a particularly hefty amount of flak for his close relationship with Rebekah Brooks and his hiring of Andy Coulson, not to mention his response was to try and hold back and see if the whole thing blew over, said NI papers currently being on his side. It was not to be.

Those of us who have been fighting to get this in the open scored victories, the Arrest of Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, the calling of Brooks and the Murdochs to a select committee. Murdoch abandoning his bid to take over BSkyB, a move that was to be waived through by our compliant culture secretary Jeremy Hunt. The lib-dems have managed to make some minor gains and Labour's Tom Watson has shone. Its been entertaining to say the least. It seems that every sacrifice that Murdoch throws in teh hope of all this going away gets eaten up and teh hungry spectre of accountability merely asks for more. Send down Andy... More, Shut Down the News of teh world.... More, Send down Rebekah... More, Ditch the BSkyB bid.... MORE

The prize however, is going to be a bit more difficult. Already the Right Wing press are desperate to either paint this as a left vs right issue, with the Stalinist BBC trying to knock out the more efficient private NI. It doesn't help that Ed Milliband's main attack is around Coulson, rather than the cosy media relationship.
What I want to see is some hefty reform. The PCC has repeatedly shown itself as toothless. The remaining right-wing papers, led by the Daily "Hooray for the Blackshirts" Mail are desperately trying to play this as a problem with NI, when they're not playing it as a BBC plot, partly in the hope of occupying NI's position if it is suitably weakened, and partly in the hope that once this blows over they can carry on as normal with no accountability. Press reform is not in their interests.

The cry has been that Regulation will equal Censorship. I disagree. The regulation need not be state, but it also can't be Self regulation. That gave a system which favoured the press over the public and the "Fast Free and Fair" service the PCC claims only manages the "Free" part.

The goal of regulation is not Censorship. In effect its quality control. A newspaper is a business. At the moment it is more profitable for a paper to publish an inaccurate story and apologise later than it is to spend money fact checking. This must change. I would propose a variety of options on the new regulator, the ability to impose fines, and in severe cases, to publish retractions in the same prominence and amount for inaccurate stories. This would be a final sanction for a repeat offender (Say the smears relating to the first Jo Yates murder suspect, later found not guilty) Papers may complain that they can't run a weeks worth of headlines and blanket coverage merely saying they were wrong. I beg to differ, and the losses this will make, the missed headlines of current events will perhaps make a paper spend that little bit extra on research. This would be a top end sanction (Others could include suspension of staff and suspension of issues, but the impact must be devastatingly financial)

It should be sometimes accepted that illegal acts may be required to reveal wrongdoing. However fishing expeditions are not journalism. If you hacked the voicemails of every MP there would almost certainly be a couple of juicy stories, but Journalist should have evidence before they resort to lawbreaking. The definition of public interest should also be tightened up. Celeb shag'n'tell stories may interest the public, but they are not in the public interest. Knocking these out of the news may force the press to up their game.
We should also look at media ownership, no one owner or company should own so much of our media. This should limit the influence of any one company.

We should also be able to read reports of meetings between politicians and the owners of companies (Any company) in fact Lobbying as a whole should be much more transparent.

I think what would really help is a cultural change. The old rule in news, that Dog does not bite Dog meant that those who supposedly hold the powerful to account turned a blind eye at their own wrongdoing. Perhaps Dog should eat Dog in this case.

Fear Itself

2011-06-24T01:18:00.000+01:00

ok, so this was an event I was going to miss. Serious event fatigue has been going on in my comic buying for some time. How I long for a wee contained event restricted to a certain family of titles, preferable the X-men while say the Avengers are allowed to carry on regardless. Seriously, another world-changing event just over a year after the New Heroic age started? Can't these titles be given a chance at more than a couple of arcs before "Everything Changes?" So it's rather annoying that Fear Itself has turned out quite so well.
Just to clarify, I've not been picking up the Fear Itself book, but many of the books I do collect are now Fear Itself tie Ins, see unless you're willing to just drop a title for a couple of months there's no escaping the huge event.

The plot, from what I can ascertain, Sin, Daughter of the red Skull has found an old Asgaurdian fear god who was so bad he was banished and removed from all of history. This god has given her a hammer like Thor's and sent 7 others to earth where they have been picked up by several Heroes and Villains, turning them into evil gods. Sin has also led an attack on Washington using Giant Nazi robots. Odin is in fact so scared he has withdrawn Asgard from earth taking all his norse gods with him. Confused, well for someone not reading the main book it can be. This is wat I would classify as a "Bad" crossover. Namely you do feel you've missed something if you just stick to your main titles. So much so that it took several books for me to realise I hadn't missed an issue in between.

This criticism aside, the event itself is great. Obviously, some heavy hitters get their own big bad to fight, such as Iron Man fighting the Grey Gargoyle or the Avengers fighting a hammer possessed Thing. Others are involved in general fighting, such as the Secret Avengers being on the vanguard defending Washington DC from Sin's forces, The Thunderbolts trying to secure the raft after a hammer landed and was picked up by Juggernaut or the Avengers Academy pupils involved protecting civilians. Either way, there is a real apocalyptic feel to this event. Society is breaking down and the problems are as much rioting, looting and people being scared as they are nazi battlemechs or godlike super-villains.

Fear itself has even got me picking up some extra Limited series. First, Youth in Revolt.

Youth in Revolt Features Prodigy, plus many of the heroes that appeared in the Initiative, who are re-activated as a volunteer force to try to help. Sadly a situation in Atlanta develops when Thor Girl accidentally deflects some shots from a policeman with disastrous results. I liked this on two fronts. First, its more about stopping looters than fighting big bads, although there is a good moment with Crossbones nearly wiping out Gravity's team. It's also great if you were, like me, keen on teh whole Initiative idea. As well as featuring Prodigy, Thor Girl, Cloud 9 and Firestar, it is jam packed with guest appearances from Butterball, to some of The Order, and ist a good read.

Second is a bit odd but worth a look, Fearsome Four. because of the high levels of fear, man thing has been drawn to New York. Howard the Duck recruits She-Hulk, Nighthawk and Frankensteins monster to try to prevent his friend from killing too many people. Its quirky, Nighthawk appears to have gone a bit ga-ga since I last saw him, think more along the lines of the "God Damned Batman" but its worth it if nothing else for some serious Quack-Fu from Howard.

So, I'm still not picking up the main book, but the story is worth the disruption its caused to my regular reads. In fact, at this rate I'll probably pick up the trade.

Scottish Elections: Results and Fallout

2011-05-30T09:00:00.000+01:00

Well, the elections are over, over for quite some time, but I wanted to see the fallout of the campaigns before posting, honest.
So, for those who weren't watching, it was an unprecidented result, in a parliament with a voting system specifically designed to stop any party achieving a majority, with the express goal of keeping the SNP out and an independence vote off the table, the SNP have won the first majority government in Scotland. Yes, Scotland currently has a government that can be absolutely secure in the fact that it has a mandate from the majority of voters, that's PR for you.
While the collapse of the Lib-Dem vote helped, with most of their voters clearly turning to the Nats, they also made massive inroads into common Labour safe seats. The response from the Labour side has varied in the blogosphere. There was denial, particularly during the election, where Labour were convinced it was merely the Lib-Dem swing, despite loosing safe seats to the SNP, or as seen here, Denial mixed with a shrill terror that the Evil Nationalists are re-building Hadrian's wall as we speak. Or here, where they blame the Tories for their loss.
Fortunately, most of the other blogs have correctly started looking inward for the reasons of Labours Defeat.
Part of it had to be the woeful negative campaign. Put simply it appeared Labour were confident Scotland would sharpen up from its little dalliance with a party that wasn't them now the Tories were in and all they really needed to do was sit back, make some comments about how terrible the Tories were and the voters would flood back. It highlights a basic flaw in Labours general national plans so far. In effect labour are working on the principle that they will win the next election through the virtue of not being the Tories. That is so far the entirety of their case. Scotland should be a wake up call that this is not nearly enough.
The other interesting point was Labour's inability to fight on the Centre left, uncommon in westminster elections where they merely have to fight for the same few swing seats against the Tories, but more common in Scotland. Furthermore, it shows how Labour still take their working class vote for granted, and they shouldn't since they are seeking out alternatives as it sinks in that Labour no longer represent them. Hopefully this will be a kick up the behind for Labour, however so far the party has been pretty quiet.
So, independence, will it happen. I know a few nationalists (Hell, I'm married to one) and most of them think it won't happen. I have to agree, I don't think there is the appetite. However, the opposition parties should not think that a loss on an independence referendum will mean the end of the SNP. A lost referendum will actually show that people clearly liked the SNP's policys despite the independence issue rather than because of it, and Labour really should be looking at that side of the SNP and learning.
As for the SNP, the training wheels are off, no more excuses this time, no minority status to fall back on and the "It's Westminster's fault" argument will grow tired if its wheeled out repeatedly. Interesting times indeed.

The Scottish Election

2011-05-03T22:28:00.000+01:00

On Thursday Scotland will go to the Polls. Ok, technically all of the UK will, everyone's electing councils and selecting a new voting system and Wales is picking its assembly, but I live in Scotland so its my main source of comment.

I initially had a polemic post filled with personal insults to all candidates, but I'm trying to rise above petty name calling in politics for proper discussion (Read as I'm not actually that witty so best stick to discussion rather than insults)

Due to Scotland being civilised enough and clever enough to be able to understand PR we effectively have a 4 party system, The "Big 2" are the SNP and Labour while the Lib-Dems and Tories take 3rd and 4rth, the Greens even get seats, its lovely.

In its first two terms it was a Labour/Lib-Dem coalition. Yes, we got to see the Lib-Dems ditch their principles over student fees before they did it to the rest of the country. This last term has been an SNP minority government, and it's not been the disaster I suspected.

The SNP have had a hard transition from opposition to power, they were caught on the back foot many times at the start, however they have proven a minority government can work, it has meant dumping some key policies, taking some defeats and going through everyone elses manifestos with a fine toothed comb to find compromise and common ground. It seems to have worked, Labour have been making noises that, particularly with the Lib-Dems toxic reputation these days they may go for the Minority option should they win this time round.

To the parties themselves, the SNP have actually done pretty well this election. They clearly knew their weak points and studied responses to them, so they weren't caught out by questions regarding the Lockerbie Bomber release and on the policies they failed to deliver on, Salmond even admitting one of his student policies never appeared because they couldn't afford it. In general the SNP are always well served by the leader Alec Salmond. Salmond is a debater, he likes to argue, many modern politicians, including Labour's Ian Gray and the Lib-Dem's Tavish Scott are speech makers, I may blog about the distinction at a later date.
In government the SNP were a refreshing change at the tail end of the previous Westminster Labour Government, their combative stance was a refreshing change from the previous "Rubber Stamp" impression that having the same party in charge of Scotland and the UK gave. Their policies have definitely been more progressive, there have been some good attempts to put Scotland at the forefront of tidal power generation research, and in more social policy we've seen abolition of Student fees, free care for the elderly and free prescriptions for all. Its quite a buzz hearing envious noises from down south about these in particular. There have been controversies, the failure to get an independence referendum off the ground is arguably one of their biggest failings, and the M74 extension and proposed Second Forth Bridge lost them support, particularly from the greens. The continuing farce regarding the Edinburgh Trams hasn't helped, but in fairness that is almost the definition of an inherited problem, and indeed one they tried to shut down in their first year.

So, the challengers. First and foremost is Labour, who do still seem to believe they are entitled to rule Scotland by some divine right, they caught out the SNP in its early years in power, but has been fairly quiet of late, Ian Gray only appearing now and again to comment on any policy that seems slightly unpopular. In fact they really haven't impressed much at all lately, they have tried to make the focus of the election jobs after simply pointing out where the SNP failed often left them open to criticism on why they didn't support policy. This was particularly evident when they promised a council tax freeze and were promptly asked why they had voted against said policy each time it had come up. They have since been far more careful to avoid being accused of pettily trying to stop the SNP doing anything. They also have a flagship policy on Knife crime which shows the unattractive authoritarian streak Labour had in its Westminster years is still alive and well.

The Lib-Dems are nervous, very nervous. Their ditching of policy on student fees at the start of the Parliament was close to being forgotten, they even helped the SNP get the abolition of fees through parliament, so voted against a policy they allowed through earlier. They were initially quite annoyed, after all, for 8 years they'd been confident that regardless of who won the election, they always got seats. Needless to say the SNP opting for minority government caught them unawares. Particularly embarrassing was when the Westminster party decided to try and introduce minimum pricing, after they'd blocked it at Holyrood. Tavish had a fairly unconvincing scramble trying to convince people that the Westminster policy was not the same thing they'd blocked. Anyway, now they have bigger problems, Scotland does not forgive those who get into bed with the Tories, who don't get much support up here. The Lib-Dem campaign lurches drunkenly between trying to disavow the entire Westminster party and a strange sense of impending doom. They expect a wipeout, I won't put money on that just yet, I suspect they will be hit harder in the councils than in Holyrood, they seem to be aiming to take second votes from Labour as a strategy, and it may just work.

So we come to the Tories, they have one advantage, Annabel Goldie, a scrappy debater and match for Salmond, her ability vastly exceeds her parties popularity. The Tories have actually not performed badly under the minority government, understanding that getting the few areas of policy they have in common with the Nats is better than nothing they've been agreeable and co-operative, which should be quite an embarrassment to the Lib-Dems and Labour, Tories being more reasonable than you. Sadly their campaign has been lacklustre, mostly because rather than letting Goldie do her own thing Cameron decided that the guy who managed to only retain one seat in Scotland during the Westminster election was the one to run the campaign. Any gains the Tories make will be in spite of him rather than because of him.

So, these are our options, obviously we also have the Greens, where Patrick Harvie has become more front and centre, and has impressed in debates, we also have George "the Cat" Galloway standing, and presumably re-familiarising himself with Scotland having spent the last decade near London. This election the Part of tommy Sherridan, of the Tommy Sherridan party for more Tommy Sherridan in politics, will be played by his wife as tommy has found out that Barlinnie south is not actually a seat.

So, a motley crew, but ours, vote wisely.

Outcasts

2011-04-03T21:32:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know we have had the budget (I wasn’t keen) and one of the biggest marches of recent history, but I feel I have to comment on Outcasts

For those who didn’t know, outcasts was the BBC’s latest attempt at a big budget, grown up SF series. In itself this is a good thing, I love Dr Who but I always had fears that the old beeb would assume this was all that was required for its SF output, so it’s good to see them branching out a bit.

The BBC certainly didn’t skimp, it was filmed in South Africa, written by Spooks scribe Ben Richards and brought in some fairly big name actors such as Daniel Mays (Ashes to Ashes) and Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica) and it had an audience who were willing it to be good to show that grown up SF could work in a prime time slot.

Outcasts was set in and around the human settlement of Fort Haven on the planet Carpathia and followed the colonists as they struggled to survive on an alien world. They would face conflict from without, in the form of the genetically modified ACs and a mysterious alien force, and from within as the charismatic and manipulative Julius Berger tries to unseat Tate, the colony’s president.
First, I quite liked it, it was flawed and often slow, but the concept was intriguing and some of the characters grabbed me. Of course this may say more about me, I found joy in Bonekickers.
So, what went wrong? Why did it end up graveyarded on sunday nights? Why did it turn off both sci-fi fans and mundanes alike?

Sadly most of the blame has to fall at Ben Richards feet. The first episode had many mildly intrigued, but not blown away, and the slow pacing sent viewers switching to Gypsy weddings or whatever else was on in droves. This flaw would have been fine on its own and it could have earned a solid audience from genre fans alone, sadly Richards didn’t help himself there.

I can’t confirm this, but Ben Richards appears to be a bit snobbish about SF. His first error was to wax lyrical about how Outcasts wasn’t really SF, it was more a frontier western but on an alien planet, more about people that aliens, space ships and lasers. Yes, anyone who knows SF will roll their eyes at this, it shows a writer who dismisses SF as childish space ships and bug eyed monsters which is kind of insulting to the genre that gave us Brave New World and Blade Runner. This alone did not put people off.

The main problem in my eyes was that the writers, and richards as show runner has to take some responsibility here, hadn’t watched or read any SF before making an SF drama, the net result of that was they didn’t know a hoary old cliché when they dreamed one up. The warnings were there, in interviews the writers spoke of the “space western” as if it was a brand new idea. Old concepts themselves do not make a series bad, but some background knowledge of the genre would have highlighted where the ideas had been tried previously and where they had been better executed. This may have changed some directions and perhaps forced the writers to drop some dead ends and develop some ideas more completely. For example, they had a brief “gold rush” idea with diamonds, and it could have developed further, with people slugging it out for stones that were precious on earth but common as pebbles on carpathia, showing the odd things we value, but it was forgotten pretty quickly.

Finally, Outcasts biggest problem was a lack of internal consistency. People aquired abilities, gizmos that would easily solve problems disappeared entirely (brain reading machine, I’m looking at you) this just seemed like lazy writing and did affect my enjoyment, and I was massively sympathetic before it started.
So, what was good, Cass and Fleur, the two P&S operatives (police) were engaging and likeable and even Tate, who started off giving the impression that they really wanted Patrick Stewart for his role grew on me. The stories picked up as it went on as well, and the reveals of some mysteries were actually pretty good (Cass’ backstory in particular) but it sadly was too little, too late.

I may later post about an alternative way I would have run outcasts if I don’t decide it makes me too much of a monday morning coach

The AV Referendum

2011-03-03T00:49:00.000Z

If anything should show you that the lib-dems are being royally screwed in this coalition it is the AlternativeVote (AV) referendum. A Key Lib-Dem policy has always been the introduction of Proportional Representation (PR) to our electoral system. When the horse trading of the current coalition was going forward the two offers regarding vote reform on the table were a referendum on adopting the AV system from the Tories and an automatic adoption of AV with a referendum on a more proportional system from Labour. Obviously there was more on the table because based on the voting reform issue the labour offer was definitely better. Indeed one of the arguments used by many key Tories against AV is that it is not proportional, so they put AV and only AV on the table, then slam the only alternative they offer as not proportional, and indeed AV wasn’t a lib-Dem policy.
The problem is, AV isn’t a proportional system, its better than First past the post, not much but a bit, in the way that a candidate must have attracted over 50% of votes, albeit second and third preferences, to win their seat. This is an important step since at the last election nearly two thirds of MPs were elected with the endorsement of less than 50% of their voting constituents. Still, the problem remains, for all of us who wanted voting reform AV isn’t really what we wanted, indeed Nick Clegg himself had made some speeches about how poor a system AV is.
The problem here is that the vote isn’t for anything as simple as whether we want AV or not, both sides are reading more into it. Bearing in mind the referendum paper will have a simple Yes/No option on it what will be read into the votes is entirely different.
First, a “Yes” vote, on the basic level really means you would like AV implemented, but doe sit, it could also mean you dislike FPTP and would like further reform. This is definitely the view of many of the Yes campaign’s supporters, the fear obviously is that future governments will still argue that no-one wants a proportional system, and that they wanted AV. Similarly someone opposed to PR may prefer AV but will fear this as the thin end of a PR wedge. I believe most of those voting Yes would really prefer the referendum to be worded “Would you like to get rid of FPTP?” as opposed to “Would you like the AV system?”
This leads to the problem of what a “No” vote is read as. To some voters it may be simply they do not like AV as a system, preferring something like the Single Transferable Vote or some other system that is not on the table. However, “No” voters should be aware, your vote will be read by those in charge as a vote in support of FPTP and the status quo of safe seats and of big majorities hammering legislation through parliament with your only say being once every 5 years.
This is the biggest dilemma in the floating referendum voter; they don’t like FPTP, but don’t really like AV either, and don’t really like the idea of endorsing either system. However, this is the first time in my 31 years of life that voting reform has ever been on the table, if the No campaign succeeds I expect at least a further 30 years until another chance presents itself. This is our opportunity to show that there is an appetite for a change to our politics and indeed possibly for further change, so I will be Voting Yes in the Referendum.
My Yes vote does mainly originate from wanting rid of FPTP, however the quality of arguments from the “No” camp has been poor, be it lying about the cost of the voting system (Vote “No” or the baby gets it) or rather bizarrely combining criticisms that because it is sort of proportional more extremist parties like the BNP will get in (Yes, they trot out the BNP Bogeyman, read that as Vote No or you get the BNP) with criticisms that it isn’t really proportional at all. Effectively, see argument 1 if you are anti PR, argument 2 if you are Pro, please for our convenience don’t read them both. Finally they argue that AV will cause more coalitions and unaccountable back room dealing (Unlike what FPTP did in 2010) despite the fact that Australia uses AV and has had fewer coalitions that the UK. In fact an Australian Politician wrote an open letter to correct all the No campaigns inaccurate statements about AV because of the levels of inaccuracy in the campaigns website.
In the interests of balance, here is the website for the No Campaign, and here is the Yes where they pretty much destroy every argument in the No campaign. Guess that’s what they get putting the person in charge of the Tax Payers Alliance in charge of their campaign. Also you can check you are registered to vote here.

Snowmageddon

2011-01-05T19:50:00.001Z

We’re all doomed, the icy white stuff has trapped us, quick, stockpile bread, milk and petrol in case they run out.

Yes, it has snowed, a function of weather. Its snowed a lot, we also got trapped by a wave of idiot commentators and idiotic members of the public spouting uninformed opinions regarding the way our infrastructure stands up to the snow. I thought I’d take a look and try to explain why we appear to grind to a halt in the snow and hopefully bust a few of the myths in the process.

So, to begin, why do our roads, rails and runways seem to shut down entirely when the snow hits while no other country seems to have this problem.

This is actually part of our first mini myth; countries with a similar or warmer climate, such as Belgium, Germany and France do suffer in the snow, to roughly the same extent. In the previous snow fall there were massive tailbacks on the autobahn and deaths in France due to accidents. Their trains get slowed down as well. Their rail networks hold up slightly better, but this is due to their relatively recent construction (Around 1940s-50s) and the lower frequency of services. As to why we survived better when we got similar snowfalls in the 1960s, quite frankly fewer of us travelled smaller distances to work and did not expect shops to run 24/7. Back then it was also not unthinkable to call and say you were snowed in.
So, what about countries with snowy climates, Russia, Canada, North America, even Sweden, Norway etc. How do they keep things running during their far more severe winters? Well two reasons.
First, they Engineer for it, their infrastructure is built with snow in mind, such as better facilities for clearing points when they freeze and snow drift breaks. Similarly more of their vehicles can be equipped for snow. They also have a larger stand-by level of snow ploughs gritters etc, as anyone who had to deal with bitter cold and severe snow and ice every year will have. Why don’t we, because we won’t pay for the gritters or the stand by crews, and I assure you if we did then come the first mild winter some lump like Eric Pickles or the Tax Payers alliance would be out asking why we are wasting so much money on gritters that are not needed, using the usual faulty memory that plagues those who resent paying a penny of their vast fortunes in tax.
We haven’t engineered our infrastructure for this in the past because there has been little to no requirement. It make it pretty clear that this weather is unprecedented, or at any rate rare when it doesn’t qualify to be included in the engineering specs for the construction of new roads and railways or the abilities of council vehicles and trains.

Similarly, in places like the Northern US and Canada, a “snow day” is not an uncommon occurrence, where whole schools and workplaces will close for a day. This official closure allows the authorities to clear the roads without the rush hour traffic getting in the way and compacting the snow into ice.
Finally, as people they are better prepared, many in those parts own snow tyres or snow chains, and just about every municipal vehicle will have access to these as well. At least now our authorities are looking into buying such things for the next cold snap, hopefully allowing ambulances and police vehicles to avoid getting stuck.

The second question is “Why do we start running out of simple things like bread and milk?” This is easy. Particularly for perishable goods such as bread, milk and fresh fruit and veg, most stores now work on a principal of receiving supplies of these on a daily basis, this allows them to minimise losses through spoilage by only stocking around a days worth of such items. The down side is if the supply chain is interrupted supplies can run short. This is not helped by people panic buying the minute the snow hits, the stores can take a small run on bread but people filling their freezers quickly wipes out their supplies. Fuel is a similar case although will usually last slightly longer. The pres don’t help as the minute they say there are shortages it promotes even more panic buying. Again in cold countries, this just doesn’t happen because people are used to the weather and don’t get driven into a panic by the possibility of 24hrs without being able to drive to Tescos, something which seems to affect most brits judging by the rushes around the Xmas Day and new years closures.

People also do need to pitch in. In Edinburgh the Army were drafted in to clear the streets, conversely, in Aberdeen, where this weather is more common most know in heavy snow you dig yourself out, then start digging out the street. We have a certain complacency that it is the council’s job to clear the snow, which it is, however they will usually have more important routes to clear, so if you want your street cleared quickly, do it yourself.

Finally, and this will sound bad, its high expectations. In cold countries people understand that it’s best to wait out the snow, allow the authorities to clear the roads then carry on. We seem to insist that in the face of adverse weather everything must carry on regardless. People seem to think that with the passing of a snowplough and gritter that roads will magically return to black tarmac. Well sorry, a snow plough will be wrecked by hardened ice and grit ceases to melt anything below -10. Grit is tricky to do right, too soon and it will simply be washed away or destroyed by traffic, too late and the snow can dilute the effect. Finally, things can and still do go wrong. The M8 closure should not have cost a transport minister his job, no opposition MSP has been able to explain how they would have acted differently. The M8 was hit by heavy snow during the morning rush hour where, as anyone who has driven it during that time will tell you, it is full. You could not have got a gritter through that traffic, the traffic then compacted the fresh snow to ice and this causes accidents and in some cases made some hills completely impassable. I drove a more minor road that day and it was an experience I would not like to repeat. We need to learn the world will not end if we take one day off work, and the govt needs to stop kowtowing to businesses complaining of the cost and call a few snow days, for the long term good.

The Pie Man Televison Awards 2010

2010-12-05T18:38:00.000Z

Ok it’s a bit late, but since the US is slowly disbanding the traditional dates of seasons it has meant that I have had to wait a bit before really trying to pull together last years TV, so technically this covers late 2009 as well, basically think of it as covering any TV that was made after last years television awards. As always there is an SF bent to proceedings, and this year things are a bit sparse, not because of a lack of new shows, although there is a bit of that, but because with me now having a family I just can’t log the hours of TV I once managed. So, arbitrary awards ahoy. As always this will be littered with spoilers, spelling errors, bad grammar and generally poor quality writing, proceed if you dare.

Best TV show.

This one was tough, although truth be told the US isn’t nearly pulling its weight like it once was. So what did we have, well there are many shows I liked, but how many would I actually judge as “best?” Ashes to Ashes was definitely good in its final season, Stargate Universe has become must watch TV even if it took me a while to get into my head that it wasn’t like the last two Stargate series, Lost had a great final season, Being Human S2 was great and of course we had the two masterful newcomers in Misfits and Sherlock which nearly qualified for best show on their first years. Instead I’m going with…

It’s a bit of a hard one to judge, see if I have my timeframes right, and if I don’t tough, my 09/10 period catches 3 of the specials and the new series, so I’m spoiled for choice. I know the specials weren’t as well received by everyone, although there is very little hate for Waters of Mars the Xmas and New year end of time 2 parter has taken a lot of flack. It was a little flawed and very overindulgent in its last act, but it was a goodbye to the team that have brought our show back, and for that I can forgive anything, I cried manly tears. Then we have the new series with Steven Moffat at the helm and Matt Smith and Karen Gillen playing the Doctor and Amy Pond, and you know what, its different, but Matt Smith has definitely taken to the role like a duck to water meanwhile the feel of the show is different but also much fresher, perhaps a little more kiddie friendly as well which is no bad thing, it is a family show. The standout episode of the series was “Vincent and the Doctor” but credit where credit is due, the final 2 parter was great, with a mix of action, drama and comedy. In fact that could be said of the whole series. Downsides are the iDaleks and a slightly off 2 parter featuring sort of Silurians but in general I wait with baited breath for the Xmas special.

Best New Show.

Again, a little spoiled for choice, and again very much dominated by British TV, obviously Stargate Universe is an option, and I’d even consider Caprica, although I have to confess that I gave up half way through and came back at the end, none the less, while it took its sweet time to get going I was warming to it. Truth be told it was very nearly Misfits, Channel 4’s ASBO superhero show, and if I can’t come up with an award for it from the usual categories then expect a spurious award near the end because it deserves some love. However, best newcomer is non SF, it was short, but daring and once again it’s Steven Moffat.

Sherlock

This was a surprise, the BBC were running a set of new dramas, some one offs or week long events like The Deep, but then there was Sherlock, a modern take on Sherlock Holmes. Epically named Dominick Cumberbatch took on the role and gave a great young Holmes in his performance, managing to keep the character enjoyable even if you know in real life he’s pretty unlikeable. Martin Freeman took the role of Watson, now a veteran of Afghanistan drawn into holms’ world. The show had a real energy and pace, so much so you really didn’t notice its quite staggering 1hr30mins running time per episode, yes each episode was a mini movie, that in itself is bold enough and kudos to the Beeb for letting them try it. So far we only got 3 episodes but with a further 3 planned these could be short bursts of brilliance.

Best Finale

We had quite a few series end this year, or indeed be axed. In the end though there were two real contenders for this prize, and oddly enough both had similar finales. Lost didn’t win it, now I’m not a hater of this finale, yes it was a bit annoying that the island’s secret was basically “It’s a magic island” and I know that many found the “Alternate” flash sideways turning out to be the afterlife a cop out, and I would have perhaps preferred it to be a parallel world and the solution not to be turning the island off and on again, but regardless Lost’s finale was emotional and offered a sense of closure for me at least. But it’s not the winner, no that has to go to…

So, it was all a sort of limbo for coppers who died on duty and Gene Hunt was to usher them to the next world, it makes sense, fits in with the Life on Mars Finale, and in general works. It shouldn’t, it should be a cop out (pardon the pun) but it explains so much. And of course we had the villain of the piece, Jim Keats, the more modern DCI and very possibly an agent of Satan himself trying to lure genes cops away, he managed to really create a nemesis for Gene, initially subtle and menacing his final few scenes where he was all out evil mad were a joy. Taken as a 5 series story Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes is going to be one of my must own on DVD (Hell I’ve already got Life on Mars) I think re-watching now I know the secret will only reveal even more.

Most Improved Show,

This is a tough one this year, possibly because most of the series are either new or the returnees were pretty damn good already. So I reckon I may be pretty controversial when I say the winner is

You may think I’m just making sure chuck gets an award this year, and you may be right, however stay with me. Chuck was good already, but I really do think that it has been consistently improving over its run. S3 gives us chuck with a new intersect, one that gives him kung fu skills. Not just that but its one of the few series I know that can take getting a sudden series extension and not have the latter half turn out rubbish.

Most Gratuitous T&A in a series

I didn’t catch too much of Dollhouse this year, so I can’t say if it qualifies. In fact T&A is clearly something ion this age of austerity we can’t afford, or perhaps its just I’m watching fewer shows that lend themselves to it. I should probably watch the Hawaii Five O remake as it’s meant to be littered with it so I can have this award in next year. I could use Misfits but what T&A it had wasn’t particularly gratuitous, so instead I’m opting for a non genre show that I’ve watched a bit of, because I like this award.

I’ve seen a few episodes of this and wow, you thought Knight Rider was bad, women seem to wonder around topless just for the hell of it. The scene that I thought really exemplified this was during an episode where there had been a drought and at the end it rains once our titular hero has killed someone in a gladiatorial bout. Apparently in ancient Rome rain made women in crowds fall out of their tops. Similarly a fringe benefit to being rich was that you could have topless slaves hanging around your house and your wife wouldn’t bad an eyelid. I get the feeling at script meetings someone did ask ‘How can we get more boobs into this series?’

Best Factual series

I’ve realised I watch a lot of documentaries, due to the unique nature of various channels I often don’t know if I’m watching something new or something ages old. I have also decided to have two separate categories. Shows like the excellent Wonders of the Solar system are clearly factual, however entertaining they may be while something like Top Gear is technically factual but is first and foremost entertainment. I thought this was an important distinction.
This year I’ve been fairly spoilt for choice. A good start was the badly advertised and barely plugged “The Digital Revolution” presented by Dr Alex Krotski, this had a lot going for it, not only was it an interesting insight into the social impacts of our information age but it was presented by the presenter I liked the most from 1990s games review programme Bitz. Mythbusters is also a worthy candidate, straddling the boundary between factual and Entertainment factual with aplomb. The winner this year must be.

This is one of these things that the BBC has everyone else beaten by a country mile. Professor Brian Cox takes us through some of the wonders of the solar system. That’s kind of it. The content was factual but presented in such a way that it wasn’t stuffy or dry. Brian Cox is an excellent presenter and speaks with a genuine and infectious enthusiasm for the subject matter and the visuals that are presented are truly awe inspiring. Seriously try to watch this.

Best Entertainment Factual

And so from the less noble end, again we have Mythbusters as a possibility and the ever present Top Gear, in fact all we were short of were a few drama-documentaries which seem to have been in short supply. However my award goes to.

I’m a big fan of James May, I think he’s a good presenter, particularly when given a subject matter he is interested in, he can usually add a touch of humour to whatever he’s presenting. This series spun off from three one-off programmes he did, concerning toys. In this he takes a toy, tries to convince some kids its fun and works towards a giant challenge. This series had May building a life size Airfix model Spitfire, building a bridge over a river using only Meccano, re-creating the brooklands racing circuit full length but using Scaelextric, Living in a house made entirely of Lego and re-instating a branch line in Hornby double-0 gauge. His success sis often varied but in the process it was nice to see kids taking an interest in toys and the way James May and a TV crew could get families and communities out together.

Best UK Network/Channel

To be fair there’s only a little competition in this, Virgin/Channel one are improving but look set to be dismantled after a Sky Buyout, Living will probably qualify for a Pirate Bay award next year, Channel 4 made a good effort with Misfits and now that Big Brother is gone I expect wonders. Sky1 itself is on a bit of a decline, having far fewer shows that I’m interested in this year than last now that Lost is gone however their recent purchase of exclusive rights to all of HBO’s output is promising even if their proportional budget on home grown series is miniscule. Bravo is still Bravo with nothing particularly new or interesting and with SyFy running V, Eureka and Warehouse 13 its fast becoming the channel filled with series I should watch but don’t. No, the winner this year is,

Its not perfect, and there are criticisms, but this channel this year has given us, Dr Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Merlin, Sherlock, Ashes to Ashes, Top Gear, James May’s Toy Stories, The Digital Revolution, Survivors, Vexed, Miranda, Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe and many others. All thoroughly entertaining, all home made. It runs very few bought in series these days which is good as all the money from these series goes straight back into the BBC and into British pockets, surely worth supporting.

The RIAA award for harm caused to Bit-Torrent

Most networks are beginning to understand that getting stuff on screen as soon as is humanly possible after US screenings is the best way to stop people downloading stuff. So this year the award has been flipped to recognise those who do their best to keep you off the Bit Torrents. A credit here should go to ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC who have made their on demand service for catching repeats available to as many people as possible (Living only allow on demand on premium packages and sky only allow their Anytime service on sky) Sky have got anytime and have the best record for putting shows on usually in the same week they air. I’m torn though. See Sky’s protectionism is driving people like me to bit-torrents when we miss things (There were a few episodes of Lost I had to catch up on through “Alternate” means) it’s a small thing but it’s the only thing this year that pushed me to Bit Torrent. In the end it has to be

Both are as good as each other, most of the channel’s main output is available, most are on for a week at least and they have back catalogues available for free or very little. This could well be the future of TV.

Only the Good Die young award.

Not too many entries here. I could say Defying Gravity but I may sound like a broken record next award. Instead I’m going to go for,

I know it was 2 seasons old, but it was really getting moving. They had found a groove, were building a mythology, and now we’ll never know how it was to end. I miss my dose of supernatural fun.

Never given a proper chance award

This one should be obvious

It was shafted by Fox, let down by the Beeb, graveyarded and left to die. A shame because this was a series that really got under my skin. Space exploration where exploring space is the main source of peril, it was drifting near documentary territory at times. I just wish everyone involved had been a little more confident in the series to push it harder. I think this could have been a classic.

Most Promising 1^st Season.

Again, a crowded year, Sherlock, Caprica, Stargate Universe, Defying Gravity. But in the end of the day the series which had a season that made me sit up and take notice was.

It shouldn’t have worked, it was badly marketed, with the creators seemingly telling as few people as possible about the show, it epitomised the joke Channel 4 Mindset of any new series being something crossed with Skins and the cast seem pretty dislikeable from the get go, but it worked. A good combination of humour, drama and character this series drew you into its world. A mysterious storm gives a group of youngsters on community service Super Powers, but how will they use these abilities and how will they explain why they killed their hulked-out probation worker. See, the premise is even hokey, and it often had a “Storm powered person of the week” format that reminded me of Smallville’s early “Kryptonite powered baddy of the week” format, but it worked, and worked well. The characters grew into full fledged personalities and the final episode in particular, which involved an evangelical Christian able to turn anyone who could hear her to her way of thinking had a real night of the living dead vibe to it. Season 2 has shown no dip in quality either.

Most off the Boil series.

No pre-amble it has to be

So off the boil its been axed, Heroes, I would say its not you, its me, but it is you and I can’t do this anymore, I can’t sit through dross just to have the one or two great episodes, it just isn’t working for me. Yes, I gave up through Season 4. Can’t fault the networks decision here; however I have a concept for a sitcom starring Ando and Hiro if you’re interested?

The Reilly 2040 worst padding award

It’s a tough call, I could hit Heroes a bit more but that would be cruel, and if Padding was the only problem with “the Deep” it would be a mercy. It could be Caprica, I don’t know because I faded out mid season and came back nearer the end. No, it’s a tough call but I think it will be

I suppose it usually wasn’t a padding episode, but more some episodes were padded, So much of the Earth based body swap stuff is just tedious and most of the time you’re just waiting to see people in dark corridors whisper at each other to let you know that you’re seeing the interesting bit. If you extracted the padding and re-distributed destiny sub-plots I reckon you could have shaved a couple of episodes off this series. Overall though USTV, you are improving.

Pie Man Special Award

This is an award for something I think is good but has been sidelined by better, newer or just by accident. This year it is

It nearly warranted the “Worst Treatment” award, see last year Team Chuck only thought they were getting 12 episodes, wrote a tight 12 episode arc and once ratings were ok were then surprised with another 10 eps. I don’t give the award because wheat we got from this was something more akin to 2 seasons rolled in one. It may have actually removed some padding. Chuck is still a Joy, and a greater involvement of the extended cast meant we got more Buy More antics, a greater involvement for Morgan and best of all, an end to the will they/won’t they Chuck and Sarah question, they did and it stuck. Plus we got at least 2 new Jeffster Numbers. I can’t say this enough but a Jeffster Album?

Graceful Retirement Award

I think we only had one real contender, Heroes’ retirement being anything but graceful the award goes to

It was big finale time, and to be fair a cracking final season, obviously there is some disappointment from not having the Island’s secrets revealed in any way beyond “Magic” and the flash “Sideways” transpiring to be the afterlife was a slightly wasted opportunity, but it left me satisfied and gave a sense of closure which was welcome. The story is complete; we need not worry about Lost any more. And I for one cried like a baby at the finale, although the way Michael giacallo Scores episodes I’m sure he could make the Go-Compare adverts seem like stirring pathos laden masterpieces.

Worst Treatment of a series

Virgin/Channel One were a possibility, but chuck wasn’t as badly treated as last year. I reckon Living are already getting much of my Ire for next year over Chuck as well, so lets have a different perpetrator this year.

The BBC has had one major problem this year. Its Schedule or lack thereof. It seems that either the IPlayer has spoiled them or they it is in fact incredibly difficult to put a programme on at the same time every week. For its big hitters like Sherlock ad Dr who it’s often a matter of 30mins or so but I really shouldn’t be checking an EPG to see when Dr Who starts this week. For others like James May’s Toy stories, it roved quite freely, so much so that I watched every episode on IPlayer. But the worst has to be their treatment of Defying Gravity. It was graveyarded, that I don’t mind, but there were some weeks we got two episodes, some one, some none, never at the same time, sometimes on different days. Again IPlayer was my friend but how the hell can we be expected to support a show when it isn’t on the same time every week. The BBC really needs to sort this out even if On Demand is the future.

Biggest Missed opportunity

I was tempted to say Caprica, but it was improving towards the end of S1, instead I think I’ll shoot at a one off Drama the BBC produced initially as a 5 day TV event, but were so worried about its poor quality that we had to endure 5 weeks of torment. I speak, of course, of.

The Deep

James Nesbit, Minnie Driver and a crew of other “Him off of that things” take a submarine to the Antarctic undersea volcanoes to try and find out what happened to the previous mission (Containing Nesbit’s wife) and carry on their research. What followed was a horror of dodgy premises, poor acting, poorer scriptwriting and mind boggling stupidity. Note to writers, you should not see a twist and say “Was that meant to be a twist”

Various plot elements only made sense if you accepted that someone would pay to shove idiots underwater. Here are two examples, presented in time honoured “Choose your own adventure Style”

You are on an evil giant Russian sub that looks suspiciously like that factory they film Dr Who in a lot. To repair your sub and get everyone away from the soon to explode nuclear reactor you need to find the last sub and salvage a part from it. You are using two pods to double your search chances. One is your own, its controls labelled in English but it lacks the ability to dock with an airlock. The other is the Russian one; it can dock but has all its controls in Russian. You have two pilots, one, Clem speaks no Russian, does not know what part to look for and will have a long drawn out trauma about his wife who was killed on that sub, the other, Svetlana speaks Russian and knows what part to find.

If you put Svetlana in the Russian pod and Clem in your own, go to Paragraph C
If you Put Clem in the Russian pod and Svetlana in your own, go to Paragraph B

B Congratulations, you are churning out daft decisions suitable for a writer of The Deep, situation 2 is here.

You are a sonar operator and know your boss is on the take to corrupt Russian oil barons. You suspect your boss knows you are on to you when he comes in holding a pistol, but the slide is frozen.

If you rush your boss to try and wrestle the gun from him before he can free it up go to Paragraph C
If you stare at him with a gormless expression, akin to a cow looking at a slaughterhouse wondering what goes on in there, go to Paragraph D

Paragraph C Bad luck, your decisions are good but do not draw out enough “Drama” you will never make it as a scriptwriter of “The Deep”

Paragraph D Well done, you are probably dead, of your own stupidity, but if you have survived the terrors of using a spoon to eat breakfast you could have a future writing any sequel to “The Deep”

Think this sums up what I thought of the show, it could have been interesting, educational, tense and claustrophobic, but it failed to hit any of these. The money should have been given to the poor.

The Problem with Labour

2010-11-11T18:54:00.000Z

You may be asking why I'm having a pop at labour, surely with the cuts announced and whatnot I should be going at the Tories. Only its been done better by better folk. I recommend a look at Obsolete and Liberal Conspiracy for good arguments against the cuts.

Nope, I'm having a pop at Labour because, not counting the Lib-Dems (And I suspect we have many years of not counting the Lib-Dems consider the damage this coalition is doing to their reputation, ho-ho, political humour) is that like it or not (And I don't) they are the best credible opposition to the cuts, and the most likely alternative to play the "Big" party in a future coalition (Should we get a fairer voting system)

It looked promising when Ed Milliband beat his brother in the party leaders election, the Tabloid and Tory spin that he was a puppet for the unions and the "Red Ed" moniker seemed like tired old jibes and really weren't sticking. (In fact my Union backed Diane Abbott, guess more of its members who didn't tick the box to stop contributions to Labour disagreed.)

Ed made a good start, namely by saying the Iraq war was a mistake. That made me sit up I can tell you. I thought this was a turning point, they might now start admitting that not everything Blair did was fantastic and right. I think Blair did some things right, minimum wage for one, but it seems like the Blairites in the Labour party don't like to hear any word against anything he did, and he made some howlers. There was the Iraq war, draconian terror legislation, idiotic and costly Public Private Partnerships, I could go on. In fact one of the worst policys was removing student grants and introducing tuition fees. A bad policy in general, and hypocritical considering it was passed by those who had more of their education paid for by the state than any subsequent generation.

The problem with the introduction of fees was that it removed a taboo, Thatcher was too scared to go near free education but now the taboo has been removed the increases proposed by the coalition are merely bartering over how much. Worse, unless they admit that the policy, which may have seemed right for the time, was a mistake, then Labour look hypocritical for opposing increases, since critics can simply stump any labour minister by asking if they think fees are a bad idea.

Sadly, I see a lot in the Post Brown Labour Party that I saw in the Post Major Conservatives. back in 1992 many Tories were looking back at the Thatcher years with nostalgia. In those days the Tories were looking for a new Thatcher, or at least a thatcherite to regain the heydays of that era, not realising that Thatcherism had been rejected by the electorate as much as Major's government. The same now stands for Labour, the Blairites get snippy if anyone dares say that anything King Tony did was a bad idea. This is unhealthy, again they blame Gordon Brown for Labour's defeat, but people were as tired of Blair before Brown came in. Just as people didn't vote out the Tories because they weren't Thatcherite enough, they didn't vote out Labour because they weren't Blairite enough. Quite frankly this factioning has to end and sadly a leader can't end it, instead the party itself has to choose to put these things aside. They can't really effectively oppose Coalition policy when it so closely matches much of the Blairite policy of the past. The party needs to cleanse itself of the bad parts of Blair and brown.

Sadly at the moment it looks like they'll go down the path of the Tories, at the moment the Political party has decided to rebel against the expulsion of ex-immigration minister Phil Woolas. It is covered very well at Obsolete, Liberal Conspiracy and Enemies of Reason. Some of the party have decided to defend this man, the man who sang from the Daily Mail's hymsheet during his tenure as Immigration minister and who chose to use false information against his nearest rival combined with the worst form of dog whistle racism. He has been rightly punished by the law for his illegal conduct, but instead of doing what the party leaders have done and quite rightly rid themselves of this liability some have risen to defend him, why? Loyalty? more likely because he is one of "theirs" and they protect their own. If this is what the Parliamentary Labour party is rebelling over then we are surely doomed to a minimum of 10 years of tory governance.

The New Heroic Age - So Far - Part 1

2010-09-20T12:35:00.001+01:00

Quite a few of these titles have now completed their initial arc, and others are over 4 issues in, so time for a look at how we’re getting on.

First I’ll look at the four Avengers Titles, so much for saving myself money.

Avengers
Well, good news is we have a title that is just Avengers, not new, mighty secret, dark or minty. However, so far at any rate, this is my least favourite of the Avengers titles. To be fair, it has a few handicaps. First is the art. People seem to get excited when John Romita Jnr is drawing a book, and I feel like some sort of nutter because I really fail to see why. I have joked in the past that Romita Jnr and myself have something in common; neither of us can draw Iron Man. This is unfair of course; at least if we were both to draw shellhead you’d be able to work out who Romita Jnr was drawing. In general though I wouldn’t count him as one of my favourite artists. Add to that Bendis writing, which I don’t mind, but its never worked in an all out superhero book and for my money is better used in titles like Alias, or indeed New Avengers. The plot has some interest to it, the Avengers must travel into the future at the behest of Kang the Conqueror because, something has to be done about their kids. It also has its faults, yes it’s nice to see Noh-Varr used again after he was re-vamped in Dark Avengers, but overall so far this really isn’t doing it for me. Hope the plot picks p pace soon. Also hope we’ll see why Wonder Man is acting up, he’s really out of character at the moment and I think that jars too. As for the line-up, well at the end of Dark Reign, Steve Rogers basically said anyone who wanted to be and avenger was, but there was going to be a core team, and it’s a slightly odd hybrid between classic and Bendis, so we have Iron Man, Thor, Captain America (Bucky Barnes) and Hawkeye, with Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and Wolverine coming from the Bendis era. It actually works quite well although I still don’t think Spider-Man and Wolverine work in Avengers. A nice addition is Maria Hill, former Director of SHIELD as their liaison; in fact the three teams all have a liaison which is a nice touch.

New Avengers
The plot here is a little different. Luke cage was a little put off that cap was returning things to business as usual, so cap gave him his own Avengers team. Aside from the main squad he has his pick of members and he gets Avengers mansion to live in. Funny thing about New Avengers, most of the members have another super-team. Cage leads the Thunderbolts, Hawkeye, Spider-Man and Wolverine are all Avengers (actually lets not go into how many teams Wolverine is on, he does at least joke about it being his mutant power) and Thing is still on the Fantastic Four. In fact only Iron Fist, Ms Marvel, Mockingbird and Jewel have no other affiliation. They also have a Liaison in the form of Victoria Hand, Osborne’s second in command when HAMMER were running things, and probably one of the most interesting characters invented for Dark Reign. Despite my mockery, it is actually pretty enjoyable; the plot is leading on from Dr Strange loosing his role as Sorcerer supreme and has mystic foes possessing various team members and in the last issue all appears to be linked to the Ancient One. While Bendis’ writing seems out of place on Avengers it fits well with the team dynamic in New Avengers, hell half his team are usually in as wisecracking jokers in some form. Immomen’s art is bright Overall this is really promising which is a great turnaround as New Avengers titles have previously been the most forgettable for me.

Secret Avengers
This one had me a little excited, but then it had the advantage over every other comic bar Iron Man, War Machine was in it. While the world is more Heroic, Steve Rogers leads a more covert squad to deal with serious problems hopefully before they become serious. The Team isn’t exactly A-list, featuring Steve Rogers, War Machine, Black Widow, Valerie, Beast, Moon Knight, Nova and Ant Man (Eric O’Grady), plus Steve’s Girlfriend Sharon Carter as Liaison. Not A-List but then they are meant to be a more covert squad. So far it’s had a nice mix of espionage, mystery, in the secret society stalking the team apparently lead by nick Fury, and action, then I shouldn’t have doubted this from Ed Brubraker, who is definitely one of Marvel’s top writers. Mike Deodato does a star turn on art as well giving us both luxury penthouses and Martian dig sites with ease. I have a possible theory for this team, with Steve’s “Everyone Is an avenger now” idea I wonder if the roster for Secret Avengers might fluctuate a bit, with Steve doing Mission: Impossible style selections for each specific case. I’d quite like that although the end of the first arc doesn’t really support this. It did remove my misgivings regarding Nova being on the team as at the end he flies off and cap notes that he won’t be a reliable team member with his cosmic responsibilities. Still, I know the story needed Nova but does Cap carry so much weight that Nova would say “Sorry trainee corps, but your most powerful member has to go off and do something for cap, good luck with the evil universe breaking into ours and all.” Still, interesting stuff, and if it is Nick Fury in this secret society, does that link to the “Zodiac” society we’ve had glimpses of in Secret Warriors? Or is Nick Fury the Wolverine of secret societies. The story itself was a good setup involving the Serpent crown, secret societies and a huge throwdown on Mars. A very solid title indeed.

Avengers Academy
I got over my initial disappointment that this wasn’t a knockabout comedy where mismatched wise-cracking recruits try to defeat the evil machinations of an overbearing guy called Harris. Instead this replaces The Initiative and so for me has some big shoes to fill. Fortunately it doesn’t disappoint. We see a new batch of recruits, all near screw ups, most suffered some sort of abuse under HAMMER rule, all have one thing in common, as they find out they were the kids thought most likely to turn to villainy so the Avengers Academy faculty, as well as teaching them mastery of their powers also have to prevent them from turning. Christos Gauge has a very nice setup, with the character Veil being the voice for #1 and Finesse for #2, and so far seems to continue through the following isses. Once the twist is revealed near the end of #1, you can see quite clearly how close our young students are to villains. Nice to see familiar faces in the faculty as well, although it seems to have its share of screw ups. Wasp (Hank Pym) leads with Justice, Tigra, Quicksilver and Speedball as trainers. I’m sure many fans are glad to see the back of Speedball’s Penance phase, me included but it is nice to see Speedball isn’t entirely recovered and back to normal yet, so it doesn't have the stink of a retcon, just progress. Mike McKone had not been on my radar before, but I do like his work in this. More importantly, I liked The Initiative because it seemed like Marvel were trying to introduce some new characters and be a little creative, after all in Marvel and DC New Heroes are pretty rare. What I like about this is that I could believe we may loose a few recruits to villainy, and that would make things very interesting. This title is half way through its crossover with Thunderbolts called “Scared Straight” while it involves some of the T-Bolts it can be read in isolation (In fact the prison shutdown is handled in less than an issue over in Thunderbolts) but it is interesting to see the members who were directly harmed by osbourne teaming up to go after him.

Looking for cuts in all the wrong places

2010-09-12T12:24:00.004+01:00

Surprisingly, we didn’t see the real extent of the coalition’s plans for budget reduction during the budget. In fact it’s been an ongoing series of small announcements that has shown the full extent of the cuts that they propose.

Much has been written (And very well written) in other places regarding whether these cuts are even necessary, and at base many of them have a point. It is ideological from the Tory side to reduce the size of the state and favour the private sector. My problem is that this ideological crusade for “Small state” is blinkering them to better ways at promoting recovery and saving money.
I’m going to try and stay off the “Evil Tory” narrative and portray this purely as how I see it, bearing in mind that I’m an engineer not an economist.

During the election campaign Cameron talked about reducing council wastage, seemingly a war on glossy leaflets and expensive police cars. (The police car story in question was pretty well debunked) At the time I wondered if there were really enough savings in this area to hack chunks out of the deficit. Now, I understand every little helps, but, like the police car story I think much of this has been based on a perception of reality rather than reality, namely that councils are full of jobsworths who haemorrhage money in pointless projects. No where is this clearer than in Eric Pickles recent idiotic crusade against “Unnecessary” road signs. There he was, on BBC breakfast wondering around London pointing at signs asking “Why is that there” or declaring “That’s totally pointless”. As I said previously, I’m an engineer not an economist, and so as an engineer who has studied highway engineering I can tell Mr Pickles that the road signs are there for one of two reasons, first, and by far the most prominent will be because the signs presence is stated in the Design manual for Roads and Bridges, which states, amongst many other things, what signs must be placed where and at what intervals. As the representative of the council said on the same BBC breakfast news, if a sign warning of a speed limit or parking restriction isn’t where it is legally prescribed then enforcement of any charges there is impossible.

The second reason is that there has been a reported need for such signage, this could be questioned but is quite often borne out of accident black spots, say a one way street which is hard to identify, may well have increased signage. The only other signs are ones directing you to places. Now here’s a wee contrast. Drive through Glasgow, particularly the south side, not many road signs; now try to find the M8, The science centre or the Burrel collection. All are badly signposted with some roundabouts being completely unsigned. Compare this with Dundee, loads of sign posts but finding your way around is easy as signs are placed in advance of turnoffs allowing you to find lanes etc. I did laugh when the council official challenged Eric Pickles to take a trip around his borough with a camera crew and point out what signs he thought were surplus to requirements and the council official would explain why it was there. Sadly I fear that uninformed blowhards making opinionated judgements will be a sad hallmark of the coalition’s cuts.
The second place where “Wastage” will be cut from the public sector is in staff. This is based around the narrative that public services are filled to the gunnels with “non Jobs” and that this was a handy way for Labour to appear to reduce unemployment figures. This approach has two problems.
First, assuming that the staff cuts are these non-jobs, and I accept some of these do exist, although like the savings Cameron said he could get from glossy leaflets I suspect far fewer than are needed to make the numbers talked about, the government is going to be paying these people one way or another, they might as well be recouping some of the money as tax, be it income, NI, VAT or any other tax. Cutting their jobs means you pay less, but both government and the private sector get less out of them in the long run. Still at least this one I would concede is arguable and depends on your opinion.

When asked about cuts it is always stated to come from wasteful “Backroom” posts, to you or me this means, admin. I’ve previously posted on how underappreciated admin staff are, and this is the same thing writ large. The Coalition is sadly filled with managers, they’ve never done admin, and they don’t understand it or indeed see the point of it. Whenever admin is being cut anywhere what you have to remember is it needs to be done. An administrator will do it efficiently, sack the administrator and suddenly doctors, engineers, managers and everyone else has to cover that work. It means either record keeping becomes sloppy, and this can have serious consequences, or that the people covering admin have less time to do their actual job. Either work falls behind causing problems or more expensive professionals have to be hired to balance the workload of a relatively cheap administrator.

The third is the daily mail favourite, Benefit fraudsters. Yes the damnable scroungers who take from taxpayers like you and me to buy their big tellies and tasteless trainers. Now I’m not a fan of benefit fraudsters, ideally I would like to see them all stopped, but is it really as big a problem as something like Tax evasion. Well, financially speaking benefit fraud costs us around 1.6bn, quite a bit (I won’t go into the 5bn odd bandied about which actually lumped in errors) tax evasion, and this is evasion rather than all the people doing perfectly legal avoidance, is worth 15bn in unpaid taxes. So, if you were looking for some quick cash and wanted a group to pursue, which would you pick. I don’t buy the argument that tax evaders are harder to catch; the actual hardcore fraudsters are every bit as skilled as the accountants working for tax evaders. I would guess that going after “Scroungers” is a good headline grabber when in reality all that will happen is more difficulty and pressure on legitimate claimants, after all they provide details and so are the easy target. In fact they recently told the FT that they should be less black and white on tax evasion, could you imagine the uproar if someone said that about benefit fraud. It would definitely be a better use of scarce resources to go after tax evaders and closing tax avoidance loopholes. I did like some of the suggestions on the spending challenge website. These included anyone involved in UK politics or the running of the country must be a taxpayer, and anyone running any news media in the UK must also be a taxpayer. Can’t see why either of these would be unpopular with the public so I expect to see these go ahead soon, unless Mr Osborne can come up with a reason why not.

The final miss-step I will look at is the seemingly ever-present thought that farming things out to the private sector will always save money. This is one of the places where the Tory Private Sector good, public bad dogma rears its ugly head. They won’t consider, despite the evidence to the contrary, that privatisation is not always the answer. At a basic level it seems simple; you pay a company to undertake running a utility or service at an agreed cost. The up side is that the company may well already have staff on its payroll and an admin department to save the trouble of running one yourself. Also, private companies have to make a profit and so will run at maximum efficiency. This assumes that public run organisations can not run efficiently because of the lack of a profit motive. While I would agree that many don’t I reject this. There is no reason why a non profit public utility can’t run as efficiently as a profit chasing company. Particularly undertaking public services.

Second problem, regulation. If you take anything out of public ownership it requires independent regulators (Public run organisations are regulated by govt departments) which equals expensive Quangos. Sadly this is directly tied to the profit motive mentioned earlier. Regulators are required to ensure private firms provide the contracted services to the agreed standard. Without regulation the government would be faced with constantly pursuing companies for breach of contract, and anyone following the Edinburgh trams farce can see how easy that is. Or indeed, to take the example of the East Coast train provider Stagecoach, there came a point where the fines for reneging on their contract were less than the losses they were incurring on running the service. This was in a regulated industry and net result was government having to take back control, effectively paying for the running of East Coast trains twice. I suspect that the same thing will happen when Connaught finally fail.

I hope this hasn’t come across as Tory bashing; my problem is that the coalition is trying to solve a huge problem by only considering the world through their narrow ideology. It is blinding them to other solutions and that can only be a bad thing. It’s never good whey party dogma interferes with dealing with a problem. George Osborne has recently said that he wants to see £4 public sector cuts for every £1 tax rise and what occurred to me is that he wouldn’t even consider that the other way around.

Posting from a Blackberry

2010-09-05T09:49:00.001+01:00

Last year I opened up a WordPress mirror site to mirror the existing Blogger version of this blog in order to circumvent my work’s internet blocking software. It didn’t work. I did keep the WordPress account open and running in tandem because frankly I wasn’t sure which one I preferred.

Recently I got my phone upgrade and opted for one of these new fangled smart phones although many would argue a BlackBerry curve is neither new or smart, could be worse I could have an Iphone. Anyway I wondered how easy posting would be for each site.

Blogger
This was a disappointment. Google have a suite of applications in the Google mobile app but blogger is not one of those which is a little odd, this would be fine if the Blogger site was optimised for mobile browsing. It isn’t, in fact its unusable so basically posting on the move isn’t going to happen on blogger hence why this post is appearing on WordPress before blogger.

WordPress
And over at wordpress it couldn’t be more different. I get a dedicated app which gives me most of the features I’d get on the web version plus the option to save drafts to the phone, handy when I’m on night shift in a dead zone. Overall a very satisfactory experience.
So, will blogger be dumped for this? No, typing a short post like this is sore on the thumbs, so web will still be my primary option, but this is nice to have. Get it sorted google.

I love it when a Film comes together.

2010-08-22T11:16:00.000+01:00

I recently saw the new A-Team remake and I thought I'd do a post on it.

For those who don't know, the A-Team was originally a US action TV series about an on the run military unit who helped out people in need. It ran from 1982-1987 and when shown in the UK when I was about 4 or 5 it was a major part of my childhood.

Unlike some of the other integral parts of my childhood, such as Knight Rider, which is still fun as an adult, the A-Team still stands up. It's not high art, but it treads a very fine line with comedy plans, situations and solutions to problems, played largely straight by the characters. When I heard there was a remake in the mix I had misgivings. The balance of comedy and action without the characters ever slipping into playing it for comedy would be a hard nut to crack. My biggest fears for a big budget remake were basically split into 3 groups.

1. Dark and gritty, yes it worked for Galactica, but making the A-Team a dark action film about hard-bitten soldiers would have at best been a good film, but it wouldn't be the A-Team.

2. The Starskey and Hutch route, going into it with a knowing silliness and straight comedy. Again could have been good, wouldn't have been The A-team

3. A Gangsta rapper being cast as BA. They;d be lining up to play a larger than life character originally portrayed by wrestler Mr T, and the studios would love the extra draw a Rapper would give, but I bet it would become a "Vehicle" film, with every other cast member becoming a cipher for BA to riff off of.

Fortunately, none of this happened. Instead the studio brought in Stephen J Cannell, one of the original creators and as a result what we got was a film that can be listed as the best of any of the recent spate of remakes. This is the A-team of my youth, its a perfect reproduction.

Laim Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Sharlto Copeley star as Hannibal, Face, BA and Murdoch respectively, the film tells an origin story (Which If I recall we never saw on the small screen). We see the gang get together and perform the heist that had them incarcerated, although the action is obviously moved to the Iraq war rather than Vietnam. After a double cross by some Private military Contractors our team find themselves Locked up in a maximum security stockade, they promptly escape and go out for revenge. Dogged by soldiers trying to retrieve them and a corrupt CIA agent they must uncover the conspiracy that landed them in jail.

The cast make the film, they nail the characters, ok so we have a slight subplot of Face making a plan instead, and a mentor/student relationship between Face and Hannibal, and a similar plot regarding a significantly less angry BA, but it doesn't jar or seem out of place even to an old fan such as myself. The Murdoch/BA bickering is note perfect (In fact Copeley is probably the best in his depiction of Murdoch, a character which could have easily descended into pratfalls and silly voices) we have OTT action, convoluted plans and baddies getting their comeuppance.

This film is not High art, but it left me with a huge grin on my face, to be honest a picture of my huge grin would have been a better, less wordy review.

The Mantra

2010-08-15T09:13:00.002+01:00

No posts for a bit, been busy apologies to both my readers.

Our coalition government has now been running things for a few months now, and when I get round to it there will be a post about that, but it's not what I'm going to talk about today.

There are two untruths that are being repeated by the government, one is by both parties in the coalition and one is by the Tories principally. Untruths is perhaps a harsh word but it has the feeling of repeating an interpretation of events enough to make people believe it. So far at least question time audiences aren't convinced.

First, what I call The Mantra

Every time cuts, economic uncertainty and recession are mentioned, particularly when the con-dems are coming under fire for enacting the Tory dream of small state under the auspices of austerity measures they repeat the same thing. We're in this mess because Labour spent all the money on an unweildly large state. Keep an ear out, you'll hear it next time cuts are mentioned within earshot of one of the coalition.

I might be remembering wrong, but isn't our current economic state due to a global financial collapse caused by investment banks trading in toxic debt and making very risky investments for short-term gain, resulting in the treasury having to pay billions to bail out banks? Now, I grant if Labour had properly adhered to the Keynesian plan we should have had a surplus to deal with the inevitable recession and their state was getting pretty big, but the cause, no that was bad banking practice. In fact it was bad banking practice that has largely gone unchanged. The pain has not been felt in investment, due to that fun sub-myth that all our bankers will run off to more relaxed governments if we make things too hard for them. this is rubbish too, lets face it, they're not keen to leave London unless it's for somewhere like Switzerland or the nicer tax havens. And anyone who can go there was offered during the times of plenty, these places are not short on bankers.

Labour is getting it from the coalition for two reasons, the first is simple, The Tories and lib-dems stand to be really unpopular for some of the measures that need to be taken, trying to pass some of that buck to the previous administration is just politics. The other is far more Tory. Many Tories are bankers, or heavily linked to banks. Quite frankly it suits them to cover for their mates, after all favours and tips not to mention cushy jobs post government will be harder to come by if you pointed out your benefactors as the cause of all our woes. It also fits the Tory line that "Big State" caused all the problems not private enterprise. We'll see if this little bit of misinformation takes root.

Second, The Tories have a Mandate from the people.

We hear this a lot, the Tories are still trying to claim some sort of Victory from the Election (An Election that no-one one, let's make that clear) because their guy is in No 10. The only policies the Tories can claim a mandate from are the ones they shared in election manifestos with the Lib Dems, anything else over 60% of the population actually said they didn't want. So, massive cuts, nope,. Big society, no, repeal of fox-hunting, think not, Dismantling the BBC, was that in anyone's manifesto? Youd o hear Tories occasionally trying to claim victory, seemingly in the hope that we'll believe it and assume someone voted for this pap, or indeed that they're allowed to do this because they're in charge. Its worth reminding them this si not the case, more importantly, if your MP is an apologist, sorry Lib-Dem, make a noise, remind them that you and 60% of the population voted against this.

There are other little falsehoods being planted with the hope that they become accepted fact. I'm keeping an eye out for them and will try to blog about them when I can.

Elite Revisited

2010-07-01T19:49:00.001+01:00

Back in the mists of time, nearly 30 years ago, it was the 80s Some people regard this as a golden age of video gaming, where you couldn’t sell a game on looks alone and playability was everything. To be honest this is rose tinted glasses thinking most of the time, many games were simple, on occasion addictive but ultimately disposable, requiring far less commitment than the modern equivalent.

Elite wasn’t one of these, it was miles ahead of its time and did amazing things with the very limited resources of the BBC micro. Elite was one of the first “sandbox” games. The premise, you are someone with a spaceship; it has some weapons, a cargo hold and an engine, keep it flying and earn credits to buy add-ons and extras. How you earned money, up to you, you could mine asteroids, hunt pirates, raid other ships, trade legitimately or trade in contraband. Best of all you could switch as the mood took you, although another nice touch was that piracy and smuggling tended to get the attention of the space police which could make your life far more difficult.

After seeing a few documentaries about Elite, I decided to try and find an emulated version to play. The Easiest to find was Elite: The New kind, seemingly a port of the PC version, featuring solid 3D shapes as opposed to the wireframes. There is an old adage of never meeting your heroes, particularly when they’ve aged over 20 years. Elite, I’m proud to say is not this sort of game. Despite the lack of a premise, Goal or score beyond your credits it instantly draws you in. Controls are simple although the keymapping of this particular version isn’t particularly intuitive and you find your hand having to shift between setting speed and firing when a better layout it could have done both. Gameplay is repetitive, but no more than some modern MMOs, you jump to a system, fly to the planet, avoiding/fighting anyone who tries to rob you on the way, dock with the space station and take on fuel/cargo/upgrades as required. Once you get the fuel scoop buying fuel can be replaced with skimming the sun in the system. The look of the game, the lack of any in game music helps the atmosphere, silence as you fly towards a planet broken up by the noise of lasers if you get attacked.

I generally find I play as a trader/bounty hunter, since carrying cargo of any value attracts pirates and fighting them off can sometimes be more lucrative than the cargo run.

It is odd how you get drawn in to such a simple world, you feel genuine joy when you manage a steal on some cargo (Finding something dirt cheap somewhere and selling for huge profit) and similarly the relief when a hard fight ends and you’re left waiting for your power cells to recharge.

The funny thing is, it is truly sandbox, you can (Within the limits of what the game actually contains) do anything, where as modern sandbox games sometimes try to hold a narrative (GTA, I’m looking at you) for progress, in Elite the universe is there, you just have to spend the time exploring it.

I hear that if I like Elite I’d love EVE on line, essentially modern Elite as an MMO, and indeed I can see how well it would work as one, but I encourage any readers to give Elite a go.

I am the Faceless Blogger Woooooo

2010-06-22T19:48:00.000+01:00

I thought, since I’ve written a bit of political stuff, I’d explain why I blog from behind the very attractive but ultimately faceless façade of the Pie Man.

What it boils down to is my job, now I’m not going to tell you what that is beyond its in civil engineering; those who know me know what I do. The problem is twofold.

First, I do worry about my employers monitoring the net. Other companies have done it, and while I can’t update my blog from work it is out there for all to see. Even if I didn’t say what I did I doubt they’d be happy if their monitoring flagged up a critical article by their employees. I like blogging, more than my job, but until people will pay me equivalent salary for this random emptying of my mind anonymous will have to do. There are links between my real identity and my blog, but you’d have to find them (It’s not actually that hard but I’ll hardly tell you). There have been existing cases of employees sacked over the content of their blogs, so I’ll at least make linking me with my blog that much harder.

Second, Lazy Journalists. So, I write a piece critical of my company, or indeed my union near an upcoming strike. When one or the other comes under scrutiny journalist have often searched for key words and phrases in the hope of finding some internal bitching. This sort of thing got some MPs in trouble after their twitter feeds were followed last election. Now this may seem like me seeming overly self important, but I don’t want to read an article stating “Worker in company X blasts management/unions” and a reveal of my name may well lead to a discovery of my employer. This one is more pernicious. While my company not liking what I’ve written I can defend by pointing out my relative anonymity and how I do not say it is the opinions of an employee, something hitting the presses on the other hand is harder, as in public my name and status as an employee would be front and centre. To this end I do self censor a lot, both in blogs and forums, a shame because a couple of times saying I work where I work, or even quoting standards could have easily won arguments. This I think is wrong. I shouldn’t have to fear reprisals from what I post online, I would ask if ranting in the pub would receive the same scrutiny, but the only difference is I’m less likely to be near someone who can report it nationally while ranting in my local while on a blog it is there, and there for a good while.

I would like to see my right to express opinions about my work, employers and related gubbins protected, so that my boss can’t sack me for expressing opinion (Hell, I even have a comments section, that’s right to reply there you know) and I’d also like my blog posts to be protected by some form of copyright, namely that if anyone wants to use them they have to ask permission. Its new legal ground and I’ll be interested to see how many sackings we get before something is done.

Iron Man 2

2010-06-16T19:18:00.001+01:00

Well, I posted a bit showing my excitement for this film, and I have actually seen it, should I perhaps post a review. I will warn at the moment, I won’t shy away from spoilers.

First, a plot summary, picking up where Iron man left off, Tony Stark has gone public about being Iron Man, and has been using the armour for some time, both in a “Fighting Evil” role and for publicity stunts like we see in the opening. Only problem is that the Arc Reactor in his chest is slowly killing him and as he sees death coming Stark begins to act more and more recklessly. A situation not helped by senate hearings demanding Stark hand over Iron man to the military and a new threat in the form of Disgruntled Russian Vanko.

This film has taken a fair amount of criticism, mainly for being more of the same. For my money I think more of Iron Man is no bad thing, there were some nice echoes to Tony’s remarkably flaky character, and particularly the Demon in a bottle Story as Stark goes off the rails in quite a bad way. While Vanko is more grunts and gestures as a villain perhaps the real for is Justin Hammer, a rival arms manufacturer who works really well as a potential rival to carry through future films. It also sets up a bigger supporting cast, we saw Nick Fury at the end of Iron man and we’re also introduced to The Black Widow as well as more screen time for Faverau himself as Happy Hogan and Don Cheadle taking the role of Jim Rhodes/War Machine and making it his own.

On the Cheadle/Howard front. I had no objections to Cheadle, and actually think he captured the comic’s version of Jim Rhodes and particularly War Machine that may not have suited Howard’s depiction in the first film.

Criticisms, well, introducing such a big cast means some people get less screen time, Vanko isn’t particularly fleshed out as the main Villain, and we don’t see that much of Black Widow. If you’re wanting a non-stop action fest then you’ll probably be disappointed too as there is still more Tony than Iron Man.

Thing is, to me Iron Man has always been more about Tony than Iron Man. He’s often compared to Batman (Both rich orphans who dress up and fight crime) however, while with Batman there is a real ambiguity over whether Bruce Wayne dresses up as batman, or batman dresses up as Bruce Wayne, there was never such ambiguity with Iron Man. People criticise Tony’s wisecracking and the films humour, but this is part of his character. Indeed while I’m never sure about Tony/pepper pairings the chemistry between the characters and the witty rapport would be sorely missed if it was excised from the film, more so if it was excised for brooding.

I suppose you’ll like or dislike this film based on how much you like the central premise of Iron Man. I’ve heard people complain that it lacked Darkness or grit, yes it does, and to add that to Iron man would make it more generic and less unique. If you accept that this is a film about a guy who, to an extent masks his insecurities with a bombastic public persona, and a big metal suit you’ll definitely have more fun.

For Fans, the film has some really good references. Obviously we all love the Avengers stuff and the Thor cameo post credits, but there were other gems. During the race scene one car is sponsored by Roxxon, a fictional Marvel company, Cap’s Shield makes an appearance again and my personal favourite is the War Machine suit being called the Variable Threat Response suit, a nod to the comic’s designation. In fact, a nice touch is the lack of people calling themselves names. Rhodes never calls himself War Machine (Although Tony calls him this once) and similarly Vanko doesn’t turn up saying “Cower Iron Man, now you face the might of Whiplash” its good, fans and toy manufacturers know who these people are, but to add their names to dialogue would seem clunky. Not that it may not happen in the future, particularly if Titanium Man or Crimson Dynamo makes an appearance. (You could argue that Crimson Dynamo already has although he wasn’t crimson)

So, I really enjoyed this, and it has 100% more War Machine tan any other film released in 2010, in fact than any film released to date, so that must count in its favour.

Neeeeerds!

2010-06-10T19:12:00.000+01:00

I recently had the good fortune to attend a meet of some of the Scottish members of SFX Magazine’s forum in Glasgow. It was good fun, yes it was only an afternoon and there were only 8 of us, but as a geek, being in the company of other geeks is fun. In fact, this is true in general and regardless of the focus of your geeky tendencies.

In a recent Top gear the challenge was to buy a classic car and race it in a classics time trial event. At the car auction at the start Clarkson and Hammond were being slightly disparaging of the enthusiasts, the John major voice came out along with the classic phrase “I think you’ll find” which is now pretty much used inside most fandoms to represent the joy in geeky pedantry. However by the end they were ruminating on how nice it was not to have to hide the excesses of their hobby (In this case, cars) and this is what I get when I meet up with reilly2040 and other nerds, you can use references as humour, in jokes and talk about the subject of your geekery without fear that the other parties will be bored or about to mock you. In short this is presumably what fans of football and trendy music, plus probably eastenders and “in” TV shows get every day.

You see, just about all of us have something that enthuses us; I have a good few, must be a personality trait that I take laser like interest in various things. None of them particularly useful (My wife wished I’d do the same but with Plumbing, or gas fitting, or car mechanics) If you have a hobby or an interest, you are probably a geek. Yes its usually bundled on for Sci-Fi fans, but geeks take many forms, and indeed, within their specific geek/nerddom there are subdivisions going to a fractal level, You like Cars, well are you interested in mechanics, motor sport or cars themselves, Cars? Supercars, performance, classic, vintage or Modding? With subjects like cars, most music and gaming, plus the obvious SF and Fantasy, we know we’re nerds; the difference is in the ones who have massive fan bases, making interest near universal, Football, Sports in general and fashionable music. You meet people who have a great interest in these subjects, but would never call themselves a nerd. Sir Terry Pratchett has pointed this out on many occasions. There is sometimes a sneering “I’m not like you” from the football fan, or the guy on his way to a trendy indy gig. In truth the only difference is the football fans biggest fear is being the lone supporter in a workplace, while SF fans have to feel out others like us.

It’s why all the smaller fandoms meet, be it in Metal Bars or at the end of station platforms. We all know the score in those locations and we can bring down the screens that we put up to interact with everyone else, all of whom are similarly hiding their own secret Nerd tendencies, we’ll play up our interest in football, (Or indeed talk about that as it may be as big a love as our love of Motorways) but somewhere you want to talk about something else to a like minded person.

So, attend meets, talk on forums and engage with your fellow geeks. You won’t regret it.

Strange Bedfellows

2010-05-25T07:39:00.001+01:00

I was going to try and cut down my political blogging to make way form more SF/Comic/general nerdyness but the coalition government looks like it’s going to be churning out some interesting stuff for the next few years and so I will probably continue to comment on politics issues despite others doing it far better than myself. Don’t panic, there will also be more geeky goodness to come.

So, some interesting observations on our new government. First and foremost, as a sandal wearing muesli munching lefty it’s been quite funny to see the abject fury of many Tories that they don’t have a government all to themselves. For some reason they seem to believe that because they voted Conservative they are owed a conservative government, despite more people voting for someone else. Still, the party whose ideals clearly didn’t suit over 60% of the population are more or less in charge and surely that’s better than nothing for all the Tories out there? No? Well tough.

I’ve been drawing a parallel with 1997 regarding the Tories. In 1997 when New Labour was looking ever more distant to its socialist origins I often asked “old School” labour supporters how they could follow a party who had ditched much of what they stood for. “Ah” said the old labour supporter, adjusting his flat cap and sipping a half of mild (That bit probably isn’t true) “They’re just doing that to get in, you know, get it past the middle classes, once they’re elected Blair and his lot will be out and the old labourites will take over again” I wondered about the fairness of this, but since what you see on the manifesto is rarely what you get I let it lie. Of course, it came as no surprise to me that the party who won as New Labour indeed ruled as New labour, but the old trots must have been shocked when no one wanted to support a leadership coup on the guy who had won such a landslide. There is a difference in the Tory party, but it has similar echoes. Obviously for starters they didn’t have a landslide, or indeed a majority, although it seems many people think they still are owed their time in charge regardless of the election results, the opinions of Tory voters clearly, in their minds, outweighing everyone else. Second is the shock that the party hasn’t dumped all that compassionate stuff they mentioned while trying to be elected. What’s even more fun is that the wingnut hard right thatcherite contingent believe that Cameron lost the election (Open for discussion) and that if the party had been in full on Thatcherism mode then it would have been in the bag, where the percentage of votes and indeed seats really doesn’t reflect this. Do they believe that the many Labour and Lib-Dem voters didn’t vote Conservative because it wasn’t right wing enough? Or do they think that they could have won more votes off of UKIP and the BNP? Or perhaps are they more deluded than the old trots in ’97, not just believing that the party will do an about face but that people decided to vote the polar opposite to their way of thinking simply because it wasn’t available.

The Coalition itself is interesting as well. Both parties have risk and reward in equal measure. The Lib-Dems get a better chance than they would have in opposition to enact their policies, they can claim experience in government to quash the old argument hat they are “inexperienced” and finally, they can show a coalition works, important if you’re trying to sell PR to a public whoa re told by our dear press that coalitions are two steps away from anarchy. They risk loosing votes to Labour (Depending on how it reforms post defeat) through being seen to side with “The Enemy” I’ll be particularly interested to see how much ground Labour and the SNP take in the Scottish parliament elections. Second, this will be a bad few years with heavy cuts and a very good chance of increasing unemployment. This double whammy may kill the Lib-Dems next election, or should they have things turned round in 5 years (Assuming it lasts) will they gain ground. Meanwhile the Tories get to be in the driving seat of Government, Dave gets to be PM and they are definitely the controlling stakeholder. They also get to pass some of the blame for the coming painful years on to the Lib-Dems, effectively meaning only one big party can capitalise from these intervening years. It’s also been very useful for Cameron, he can blame the ditching of many of the more wingnut Tory policies on the necessity to get the lib-dems on board, where, from what the scuttlebutt has been saying, the negotiators were asking for the lib-dems to demand concessions. They risk a party split over this, with the “Wets” and Lib Dems on one side, and the Thatcherites on the other. This could be a very damaging split.

Cameron has played this incredibly well though, kudos to the man (Still don’t like him but I’m man enough to say when someone’s impressed me) the increased 55% for a no-confidence vote should keep the coalition stable, and in fact I’d suggest to Labour MPs to make sure it stays, you can rest easy in opposition while the coalition doles out cut after cut, and foster even more division and resentment in the Tory party. Second, the fixed term, with any luck they’ll get a couple of years of recovery, important to salve the wounds of the oncoming cuts, but they need time to blot the memory of the hard years, plus it makes both parties look like they want fixed terms.

Overall, interesting times for those of us who consider politics like sport.

A Discussion on Immirgation

2010-05-14T09:28:00.000+01:00

This article won't be a discussion on immigration per se.

One of the arguments you hear from the right/anti-immigration side is that parties like UKIP and the BNP (Yes, I mention them in the same breath because they are the same) are merely a symptom of not being allowed to discuss immigration without being called racist, or indeed as some papers say, in between headlines and front pages about immigration, "You can't talk about immigration".

So, I'm putting in a suggestion on how a discussion on immigration where the pro immigration side, will discuss immigration without calling you racist, bigoted or any other accusation of that ilk regardless of how racist you get.

This isn't a free ride, any anti-immigration types who participate have to agree to some terms of my own devising, gleaned from many a head/brick wall interface type conversation I've had with them in the past.

First, argument must be conducted online in a discussion forum type environment, this allows both sides to cite articles, studies and websites and have plenty of time to read and counterpoint them.

Second, Argument must be based on facts, statistics and reports, not anecdote, opinion or editorial. The number of times I've been in a discussion and quoted, for example that Legal migrants are entitled to all our benefits, as they have come over here with a job at some point and therefore paid tax, Asylum seekers get £30 odd a week and illegals get nothing, being illegal. Only to be told that "I see them every day and they get more than that" Back it up, with facts and figures, otherwise I might as well respond "No they don't, I see them not get benefits every day." Similarly, the oft stated claim that "They don't integrate" prove it, both sides, have studies been done. I recall one (Can't find a citation sadly) which actually said your average muslim migrant read the sun, watched X-Factor, supported the local football team and worried about immigrants (Seriously) how is that not integrating.

Third, the anti-immigration side have to specify at each point who "They" are. Again I've been in arguments where "Immigrant" flits between someone in from the EU, someone on a student Visa, economic migrant, illegal migrant and asylum seeker. (In truth this is because most anti-immigration types don't know the difference)

Fourth, leave your tin-foil hat at the door. There is no point pretending to have a discussion with someone only to respond to a set of facts with "Oh well they would say that" If you have a fault with the figures, by all means, lest see a factual backing up of these, or a scientific deconstruction of the methods. I've seen this done in just about all of migration watch's stuff and its a perfectly valid form of argument. Claiming the figures were "Made up" because they don't fit your view is not.

Finally, both sides must be willing to give ground. Again the pro-immigration lobby (Aside from their more lunatic fringes) are better at this, accept that people have concerns, that these can be in the form of their communities changing, and that sometimes an influx of migrants makes them feel like they're being squeezed out, and their voice may not be heard (A bit like being me in a seat where everyone else is happy with Douglas Alexander) the anti-immigration side will similarly have to be open to accept that the line fed to them by the daily mail is actually based on a slanted editorial agenda and that their life views may in fact be wrong. (Sorry, that in itself is slanted, but purely because the bulk of research I've read shows it to be the case)

The tabloid calls for open discussion mean on their terms, basically say what we like without accusations of racism. The structure I suggested would produce a real discussion, but not one I suspect the anti-immigration supporters would enjoy.

What Went Wrong?

2010-05-09T09:24:00.000+01:00

The results are in, and the good news is we have a Hung Parliament, bad news is the change didn't go as hoped. Tabloid fear mongering and the usual last ditch of the traditional parties in "Vote for anyone other than us, get them" worked once again to deliver the usual, bland old election result. We also lost a good MP in the form of Dr Evan Harris (LD) and kept some particularly poor ones in Nadine Dorres (Con) and David Tredinic. Overall very disappointing. Only good news was the Greens won a seat.

I was looking forward to a wide open election, no seat is safe, who knows who would win. A combination of the expenses and the lib dem surge should have given this, but instead voters decided that they fear the unknown, and got it anyway.

Worse, as we speak Nick Clegg may well be selling his granny for a taste of power.

That's unfair, but from experience in the Scottish parliament, the lib dems will drop any flagship policy for a go at being in charge. Basically, as I stand, if he gives up PR for forming a government, well, the Lib Dems won't be getting my vote for a very long time.

Nick has other options. My prefered one is to form the "Rainbow Coalition" Lib dem, Labour and lots of smaller parties, with a goal of electoral reform and fiscal stability. Problem is that this is about 100 times more likely to collapse than a simple 2 party coalition, and this would certainly mean that a future election campaign would be run with a "Don't want a hung parliament again do you" a shame because it is the more grown up, evolved form of democracy.

The other way I would be interested to see would be a minority Tory government, heinous as the concept of 5 years of conservatism is, the current party is already tearing itself apart over not winning, and the offer they tabled for the Lib Dems in public showed very little in the way of compromise, it could be a good excercise in growing up and not always getting your way to have to get each policy through on its merits and on bill by bill agreements, much as the SNP do in Scotland.

A mean part of me also sees how much the torys are tearing themselves apart over not winning, and so I can only see further division when they don't get their own way and can't do favours for their big donors. In that vein I also hope that should Cameron end up in Downing street and Mr Murdoch comes asking for his pound of flesh, Cameron response is "Where's my majority you feeble tuppence" closely followed by "And by the way, I'm going to legislate against you ruling so much of the news medial you useless bastard" Indeed I hope the "Sun wot won it" myth is finally gone, since tory support fell away once the sun got on board.

For a last bit of Tory bashing, I do find it funny that the torys are now doing the "Back room deals" that they said were a terrible undemocratic thing, guess that only applies in a Lib-Lab pact. Second, some top tories are calling for Cameron to be removed and replaced as leader, so, they'd have a PM who was not elected, much the same criticism that they used on Gordon Brown the past few years eh?

Bloody hypocrites.

The Obligatory Election Post

2010-05-04T00:36:00.000+01:00

As some who live in britain may be aware, there is an election going on. Now, I've been trying to shy away from political blogging mainly due to my inability to do it particularly well, but I'll once again have a crack at it.

Many blogs will start with the phrase "Now I won't tell you who to vote for" but I'm different, I will, sort of, not really. At least I'm honest in trying to influence your vote, of course the reach of this blog particularly in a blogsphere full of blogs about the election means the effect will be about as much as my actual seat (Ultra safe labour), but, like voting for someone who isn't Douglas Alexander, I'll still write it. So, who do you vote for.

First, turn up to vote. I can't stress this enough, whatever level of hell we end up in its twice your fault if you didn't even bother getting out to vote. Spoil your ballot paper, write a protest, it doesn't get officially counted but you never know. Either way get off your sofa and Vote.

Second, if you have a good constituency MP, vote for them, regardless of party (Unless you find their politics particularly odious). Good constituency MPs are worth their weight in gold and don't let simple tribalism or anti-labour/tory sentiment do you out of a good one. How do you know? Well ask around, have they ever helped anyone you know? Do they hold regular surgeries, and finally, bt by no means foolproof, how often do they break ranks in votes. In general safe seats are held by one of two types of MP, good constituency MPs who could get voted in as an independent if de-selected, or Yes men (Douglas, I'm looking at you) who are more concerned about being de-selected by the party than serving their constituents. The former can break the whip without fear of reprisal, the latter can not.

Third, obviously considering the last post, don't vote conservative. I don't like being so blatantly partisan, but Don't. Now, you may ask why. Well I personally dislike their policies but there si something greater than my whims. Teh Tories are tied in very deeply with Rupert Murdoch and its been fun watching his papers scramble with the fear that the election may not be the forgone conclusion that Labour was in 1997, but a Tory loss this year would finally dispel the myth that the Murdoch papers decide election results rather than, say merely back winners. This would hopefully mean that never again will our leaders do shady deals with this millionaire tyrant in order to curry his favour, and the hopeless optimist in me also hopes for the new government, whatever its configuration, to perhaps consider the implications of one man holding this much power in the delivery of news and finally do something about it.

Fourth, Break safe seats, you may not unseat a candidate, but try to unseat some safe labour or tory ministers, or at least make the election night that bit less comfortable. Preferably do this voting for a smaller party, such as the Greens or indeed the lib-dems. You may not shift the yes man, but hopefully it will be a reminder of who they work for.

Fifth, ignore the scaremongering of a hung parliament. Alex Salmond of the SNP is right, despite my post about compromise politics, Minority governments and coalitions are the ultimate destination of true democracy. It means those who didn't vote for the winners can still have their views mean something, yes all too often the politicians take the huff and stop playing, but if we keep returning balanced parliaments they'll get the message.

Finally, vote for who you believe in, ignore all the parties saying candidate X will never win, they only won't win if no-one votes for them. In '97 safe seats fell, and they hopefully will this year. IF you like the greens, Vote green, if you like the lib-dems, vote lib dem, if you like UKIP or the BNP, stay at home (Ok vote, but you're wrong in just about every way) with any luck by next election we will finally be rid of this antiquated voting system and we can then see real change.

My vote, is private, but I'll tell you where I'm leaning, as I have no green candidate, its between the Lib-Dems and the SNP. The Lib-Dems, because It would be a real kicker for them to actually win the same or better seats than the other two. contrary to what the papers report the surge started before Nick Cleggs appearance on the leaders debates (Which also, contrary to what they said, he won and Cameron lost, on all fronts) because somehow people decided that they might win, and therefore weren't a wasted vote. They definitely represent the most liberal views of the big three. My other choice, the SNP. I'm still in principle opposed to Scottish independence but they do have some other attractive policies and have signed up to the Power 2010 pledge. Plus in the Scottish Leaders Debate Alex Salmond said the most sensible things about immigration (Here's a hint, it was the very opposite of the Daily Mail's stance) anyone has said all campaign. That alone is worth support.

Lets hope this all turns out, there's a feeling that we're close to real change, Not the kind Cameron is pedaling, I mean ground breaking change, it's a dream, so close you can touch it, I almost don't dare speak about it lest it melts and vanishes for all time. Its hope.

So am I a Syfy fan now?

2010-04-20T17:31:00.000+01:00

The UK Sci-fI channel has followed its US companion and re-branded to SyFy. This is despite most people thinking the re-branding was stupid and pointless. Presumably it is in aid of something like "Brand Cohesion" or "Reflexive corporate image synergy" or some other meaningless marketing rubbish, probably dreamed up by the same person who said "Why are we just selling to geeks, if we call it the Syfy channel instead of Sci-Fi we'll remove that stigma that has stopped people watching it for ages. It even has a tagline "Imagine greater" and why when I am World dictator marketing people will have a hard time of things. I can't believe anyone looks at Syfy and thinks "hmm" then sees "Imagine greater" and says "I'm sold"

No, marketing dude, that was probably the period, which Sc-Fi is only just coming out of, where the channel seemed to be trying to show as little Sci-Fi as possible.

I remember the old days of the sci-fi channel, it was unashamedly geeky, Bionic Wednesdays, where a whole afternoon was filled with repeats of the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, MST3K, Quantum Leap. Sure, it lacked anything you hadn't seen before, even its films were usually old, and not the blockbusters either. But damn it I watched it, because sometimes I want to see old SF series. The channel evolved a little in the early 2000's, taking a slightly "Weird" approach it almost looked like the guy who is an enormous geek but tries to claim he's more "Alternative" Still, it hadn't lost too much of its geeky content, and even netted some of the better leftovers from Sky and BBC clearing the US Schedules. Without Sci-Fi then I wouldn't have seen Now and Again. They also introduced themed slots, like saturday morning carrying a couple of hours about Anime, with reports on japanese culture and usually a couple of Anime series (To my memory it was the excellent Neon Genesis Evangelion and the odd but fun Martian Successor Nadesco) along with themed horror nights on friday nights. These two periods represent in my opinion some of the best programming on the sci-fi channel.

It went a bit downhill from there, the channel seemed ashamed to keep showing its old repeats and similarly didn't buy anything particularly expensive, what resulted was a mass of duff "Direct to DVD" movies, usually involving Dean Cain fighting some giant reptile. It got worse, as they expanded (And I firmly believe the SyFy name change was part of this) into showing documentaries on dangerous wildlife and extreme weather. Now you may show Killer Shark vs Giant octopus IV, and I'd even allow some sort of super storm/volcano/asteroid drama as a kind of "What if Disaster movie" but the documentaries were pushing it. Similarly sometimes they'd show duff action films, no objection in principle but let bravo sho the non SF ones. I refuse to believe there is a shortage of duff SF themed action films.

Recently things have been improving. Sci-Fi got some fairly high profile series like Knight Rider, Warehouse 13, Sanctuary and Dollhouse. In fact the name changing away from Sci-Fi has preceded an increase in actual Sci-Fi on the channel, as if the marketing bod was distracted by his re-branding excercise and the geeks got to pick the programming.

My advice, Capitalise on this success, try and get some more original series, but remember, you need schedule padding, people will watch repeats of Quantum Leap and I know will definitely jump at anime series and MST3K if you can get those. New programming isn't the be all and end all. I have no objection to the crappy B Movies, I watched Warbirds (WWII female pilots and US soldiers vs dragons) and it was poor, but enjoyably so. Things like this need a home and Sci-Fi or even Syfy could be a place for them. Avoid turning into Bravo 3 and there could be a future in the old nerd yet.

Compromise Politics

2010-04-09T17:28:00.001+01:00

Well, the official election campaign is finally underway, as opposed to the unofficial one that we've had for the past year or so. Hopefully in 6 weeks time we'll have a little more policy and a little less posturing and soundbites.

Ha! Forgive my cynicism. At the moment we're looking at (According to polls) a potential hung parliament or a Tory Government with a small majority. This should be exciting, it should mean that politics will move away from the big majority, ram legislation through regardless mentality that has plagued our politics for more than 30 years. Sadly I fear this won't happen.

I suppose it all started with Thatcher, as most things inevitably do. Although brighter sparks than myself may be able to trace this back further. Thatcher took out the "Wets" those who didn't subscribe entirely to her ideals. It meant that her party would stand united behind any legislation, and with the majority get anything through parliament. This basic idea of working politics has prevailed since that time. Combined with the rise of the "Career Politician" this has made politic more like a debating society, where debates are won or lost rather than an agreement reached where legislation is honed and perfected through the means of open discussion.

Its a myth that is seemingly widespread that compromise is bad, a myth not helped by the media describing the smallest change of tack or compromise as a U-Turn, defeat or flip-flopping. Politicians should be free to say "I'd not seen it that way before, my mind has been changed by facts and good arguments" instead government and opposition alike are trapped in a bizarre Colonel Cathcart like existence where they weigh up "Feathers in Caps" and "Black Eyes" and hope the former outweighs the latter. Since the major players appear to care more about looking good than passing decent legislation it generates an MP that values the approval of party over the approval of constituents, particularly those in the 60% off Safe or Ultra safe seats. You'd have to be pretty confidant in your MP skills not to be de-selected for one of those, clearly most aren't. Barak Obama said recently that perhaps it should be a politicians job to make good policy rather than seek re-election. Judging by the behaviour of MPs Re-election is their goal.

This has a bad knock on effect on politics. Since avoiding "Black Eyes" is prioritized above good policy parties will go towards making the opposition (or government) look bad rather than contributing positive changes to policy.

This is very apparent in Scotland, where the SNP chose to form a Minority government, this initially had me interested, in a minority they would have to use argument, persuasion and compromise to get things done. This should have been very interesting indeed. Sadly Labour and The Lib-Dems aren't playing. Labour through badness and the Lib-Dems seemingly through a childish fit of pique after being snubbed to form a coalition as they expected. To this end they have adopted a stance of obstructing and blocking as much SNP policy as possible, seemingly with the singular view of saying at the next election "What have they done eh? Nothing"

Look at that closely, two major parties have actively decided to say "No" pretty much all the time, stalling and slowing any policy change in the hope of using it to gain power next time, that's 4 years of childish huff.

This is my fear with a hung parliament, rather than shake up the "big Majority" style of politics instead we'll see the big 3 vie for position until one thinks they have enough leverage to call another election and get the big majority they all crave.

Science and Politics

2010-04-02T16:09:00.000+01:00

This post has been running around in my head for a while. Doubt that will improve on its clarity, consistency or how well argued it is.

I’ve been reading the book Bogus Science by John Grant. In its introduction it covers an interesting case of politics vs. science. Post-war America, and there is a shortage of lead. This leads to a search for additives that could expand the life of lead acid batteries. There were many of these on the market and so the National bureau of Standards conducted testing. All the additives failed to improve the performance of batteries and most faded away, all except one, called AD-X2, the difference was not that AD-X2 actually worked, it was every bit as useless as its competitors, but the man in charge was good at lobbying politicians. The case for whether AD-X2 worked spanned administrations, cost hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and demanded re-tests and resignations. All because politicians thought for some reason that persuasive debate could alter the results of an empirical scientific test.

Oddly enough, although with somewhat less open and shut tests, this continues in present day UK.

The first is the recent Parliamentary Sci Tech Committee Evidence Check on Homeopathy. This was purely a committee established to check for evidence on the effectiveness of Homeopathy. Unsurprisingly for anyone with a smidgen of knowledge on the subject the evidence check revealed Homeopathy to be no better than a placebo and advised on removing NHS funding. This has been blogged by better men than me including Ben Goldacre, The Quackometer and David Colquhoun.

The Society of Homeopaths reacted badly, badly in the way that every world religion might if a parliamentary evidence check deemed the existence of God unlikely, or indeed badly as if someone had just seriously threatened a major stream of revenue. (Of course not, that would be cynical) They threw around accusations and smears about those involved and, well I’d advise you to read the blogs above for more on this.

Anyway, one of the things they managed was to convince an MP to put forward an Early Day motion expressing concerns. The MP, David Tredinnik, who claimed for astrology software on expenses and wanted to use distance healing as health policy. Obviously a sharp scientific mind. Now this doesn’t really matter, EDMs aren’t debated and rarely amount to anything, however it has attracted the signatures of over 60MPs. What this demonstrates is that regardless of evidence, and this was a check on evidence, not opinion or anecdote, it takes very little to get an MP to sign an EDM, yes that’s how desperate for votes they are. Worse was probably the Lib Dems, who had quiet a few signatories, and who came out with the final fallback for the person who knows deep down they’re not going to win on evidence “More Evidence is needed” Oh yes, the Oil Company favourite “More research is needed” is one of the most obvious stalling tactics, and would suit the SoH and its ilk fine. Apparently 200 years of research where the only trials showing Homeopathy better than a placebo are badly run small trials. Any well organised large trial shows no better than placebo, so are we back to AD-X2 with Homeopathy, keep testing until you get the result we want? Regardless what we do know is an MP will always take votes over evidence.

The second to come to mind is of course the humorously named Nut sack affair. For those who came in late, the government’s chief scientific advisor did a big round up on the evidence for harm caused by drugs. His report was based purely on scientific research but demonstrated that many currently illegal drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy were in fact safer than Alcohol. As this went against two very important things, the governments current drugs policy upgrading the classification on cannabis, and more importantly, disputing the mainstream media’s view that “Drugs are Bad, except for Alcohol and tobacco which have wealthy backing” the government decided not to follow the recommendations. Nutt was clearly tired of being ignored for what was basically political reasons and so revealed his findings publicly, for his trouble he was sacked and we had to put up with a cross party harrumph from MPs about how they were elected to lead and these scientists should bloody well keep their facts to themselves.

This demonstrated one of the unshakable truths of when science and government collide. No amount of evidence can beat a policy that will upset the views of the right wing press consensus and therefore middle England, (or as described by some ministers “We have to consider many other factors”). Sadly this is the major problem evidence based policy faces, from the mounting evidence that sending petty criminals to jail merely acts as a gateway for greater offences (And the lambasting that a Scottish Justice secretary got for suggesting not sending many minor offenders to jail is evidence of this) to drugs policy the evidence clearly shows that science can find out what it likes but should be prepared to be ignored if it doesn’t fit existing government policy.

Ms. Marvel

2010-03-26T15:48:00.000Z

Well, the last issue shipped a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d go in for a bit of an overview of the noble project that was Ms Marvel.

While Ms Marvel has been a fairly long established character, even through her identities as Binary and Warbird, this has been her first solo series in quite some time. It span out of the “House of M” event where, in the universe created by the insane Scarlet witch, Carol Danvers had been Captain Marvel and considered one of the best Super Heroes. Remembering this other life she strives to be the best, this was pretty much a metaphor for the whole series, where the writers wanted to try and set Ms Marvel up as Marvel’s Wonder Woman. Just as getting up from the B&C lists was difficult for Ms marvel so did selling a female fronted book prove difficult to Marvel.

Its actually been said that any female fronted book is a hard sell, I kind of hoped we’d be past that now but apparently not. Even Stalwart titles from DC such as Wonder Woman and Birds of Prey struggle at times despite what is often critical acclaim and Ms Marvel too was loved by critics but seemingly not loved by the comic buying public.

Still, over the years we got some very good stuff, yes the hero with low self esteem is now an old concept but the real power in Ms Marvel was that actually, as a hero Ms Marvel was really good at her job, but still pretty unsure of herself regardless. There were many nice touches, her Mentor relationship with Arana, for example really worked for me, and indeed her Civil War issues were some of the few that presented the pro-reg side in a positive light (Which writers on the main mostly failed to do).

One of the standout stories for me was the Secret Invasion tie-in, which largely involved Ms Marvel fighting Skrulls, a lot. It was mainly about her grit and determination to survive (Again, analogous with the comic) but also full of action and some pathos.

Finally we have Dark Reign where for a few issues we have Moonstone in as Ms Marvel, closely followed by war of the marvels, both top reads.

End of the day sadly the will to continue failed and so Ms Marvel joins She-Hulk on the pile of good comics, no support. However for people who like Female fronted comics Marvel appear to be doing more anthologies, one shots and Limited series. I’ll be interested to see how that develops

Iron Man: World's Most Wanted/Tony Stark Disassembled

2010-03-15T10:52:00.000Z

Wow, long title. I'd love to say that I decided to review these stories as one since one blends into the other making them one epic story. That is rubbish, it's because I fell too far behind and decided that Stark disassembled would be finished before I got a chance to blog on worlds most wanted and so I may as well bundle the two together.

Anyway, this has been an epic Iron Man story, and almost certainly the rehabilitation of Tony Stark from what people thought was irreparable damage during the Civil War Event. While they tail one into the other and are written and drawn by the same people (Matt Fraction on words and Salvador Larroca on pictures) the stories are really quite different.

A warning in advance, I'm not holding back on spoilers, so if you don't want to know the scores, look away now.

Worlds Most Wanted

The Secret Invasion is over, Norman Osbourne is in charge, SHIELD is no more and Tony Stark has been booted out. With his Extremis offline he can barely control his armour anyway. As a parting shot to Osbourne and more importantly to preserve the trust of those who registered, Stark deletes the entire Superhuman Registration database, leaving only one copy, the one written in his head. This leads to a relentless pursuit of Stark across the globe by Osbourne and his agents while Stark slowly erases his own mind to destroy the last copy of the database. Meanwhile Pepper Potts gets a suit of armour and a new identity as Rescue and Maria Hill goes on a harrowing mission to recover a mysterious hard drive for Stark.

This story was actually quite episodic, at least for Tony Stark, each issue usually focused on an encounter with friends or foes from his past as Tony battles across the world, having to use ever more obsolete suits as his ability to run them degrades. This includes Friends, like War Machine and Crimson Dynamo, and Enemies such as Namor and Madame Masque. When I say episodic you would probably be bloody confused if you jumped right in, particularly with the ongoing subplots featuring Maria Hill and Pepper Potts, but most of the encounters are self-contained. Fraction crafts a brilliant tale, capturing Stark's slow disintegration, Pepper's joy of being a super hero and Hill's near breakdown after an ordeal at the hands of the Controller. The final showdown with Stark in his Mk1 suit and Osbourne in the Iron Patriot has a brilliant twist, and indeed was the first time we saw someone hurt Osbourne through the media. At the end we have Stark left in a vegetative state, but A recorded message, and a gathering of old friends means this may not be the end.

Tony Stark Disassembled

The conclusion to this epic is a mere 5 parts, perhaps a little slow, it details how stark backed up his mind on the Hard drive Hill retrieved in Most wanted and, with Pepper's Repulsor generator, and a bolt of lightning courtesy of Thor, Stark may be restored.

This was slower, and perhaps a little long, it could have probably been done in 4 parts, but a very good ending for Worlds Most wanted. Nice to see everyone try to save Stark, and very good use of Ghost (Also an example of good crossovers again with how it linked in with Thunderbolts) and the surreal trip through Tony's subconscious was predictable but a nice touch. It was similar to the "Soul on Ice" backup story during Jim Rhodes' second Tenure as Iron Man (Run up to his first War Machine ongoing) which had a cryogenically frozen stark living his past and his influences. Only that was more recap, this was a wierd nightmare. Of course we get the twist at the end, turns out Stark isn't particularly good at keeping regular backups of his mind, and this copy is Pre Civil War, which has come of something as a shock to him (Although probably not as much as him sleeping with Pepper Potts and Maria Hill in teh same week will later)

Fraction must go down as one of the best Iron man writers for a good while, crafting two very different stories with ease. Larroca was faced with a fairly daunting challenge himself, to draw what amounted to an "Iron man through the ages" or basically a whole load of different armors. If I'm looking forward to one thing Post Siege, and I'm looking forward to a lot. But one over all others is Iron Man, which is testimony to this teams success.

Black Widow: Deadly Origin/And the Marvel Girls

2010-03-09T09:06:00.001Z

Marvel recently hit us with not one but two Black widow minis, initially I thought this foolhardy, surely they should save this stuff for the release of Iron man 2which will feature Black Widow, however I now think I know the reasoning. There will probably be more black widow minis in the pipeline (or in fact a ongoing i believe) so it will be handy to have a couple of 4 part stories in Trade form for IM2's release.

Anyway, the two stories were pretty different, and arguably varied in quality. I'll start with the better one first.

Black Widow: Deadly Origin

Paul Cornell writes this adventure where Natalia investigates the death of her old mentor and combats the mysterious Icepick protocols which seem to be killing off all the men in her life.

This met with mixed reviews but i really liked it. For the most part its primary job was to clean up Black Widow's sometimes contradictory continuity. They do this with a rather nice retcon, first Natalia has taken a similar serum to the Infinity formulae that has allowed SHIELD agents Nick Fury and Dum-Dum Duggan to live on long past their WWII origins without looking like men in their 80s. This has also set her past right back into WWII and expands upon her initial meetings with the Winter Soldier. Due to her long life, plus many deep cover missions and brainwashing she is now as confused about her pasta s the average reader of her entry in the official handbook of the marvel universe. The comic itself tells of Black Widow's past using flashbacks and the neat technique of using different artists for the flashbacks to differentiate them form the main story. Overall I thought it was pretty good, entertaining and useful for setting up her character for a more involved future in the MU. Cornell writes her as a super-agent, using stealth and skill to best opponents in a far superior power class. A nice touch was also building on her reputation, when facing an Imperial Dynamo (Probably a match for Iron Man) the dynamo already knows he is beaten before the fight starts and tells widow how honoured he is to be beaten by the legendary black widow. Similarly Cornell writes her with a sense of humour, always good as other authors occasionally play up the "Hard Bitten agent" grimness too much.

Yes it was a cleaning up excercise, but a very readable one.

Second we have Black Widow and the Marvel girls, this was a series of standalone stories where Black Widow teams up with another woman of the Marvel Universe. I could seethe idea, accessible adventures which allow you to see widow's place within the MU. My problem was that the accessibility made it pretty insubstantial stuff, not always a bad thing but it just lead to forgettable stories in my opinion. Its lack of continuity focus was also a niggling point to me, but presumably not so much an issue to the new readers it seems to be aimed at. That may be its point, basically a sales pitch to new readers, Hey you liked black widow in Iron Man 2? How about these other females, any of them interest you? Inthe end that didn't do to much for me.

Overall I think Deadly Origin is the better of the two, and what I'd recommend to anyone who had been interested from teh movie, as it gives background on her comic counterpart, effectively its a pilot for the ongoing, and in teh end getting someone on an ongoing is a worthy goal.

Speed Cameras

2010-03-08T08:21:00.000Z

I have, in the past on occasion drifted ever so slightly over the speed limit, never out of control or recklessly, but I have done it, so it may seem odd that I’m coming out in support of speed cameras, both normal and average.

There is always criticism of these things, “They’re a stealth tax” “they cause more accidents than they prevent” “speeding doesn’t cause as many accidents as bad driving” are just some of the arguments people use as to why an automatic system that fines lawbreakers is a bad idea. Let’s take a look at these arguments.

Bad Driving

Its true, careless driving does cause more accidents than speeding. However speed is a factor that can make the difference between a bump and a disaster, for every 10mph in speed there is an exponential rise in the severity of any accident. This is why I am more careful in particular to stick to the limit at the lower speeds, the 30 and 40 limits, because if the speed has been reduced it has been done for a reason. Yes, plodding through a 30 is dull, but as the ads say, its 30 for a reason, bad sighting, residential areas are just a few of the reasons why the speed can be reduced. When you look at survivability statistics and how they increase as speed reduces it is sobering reading.

Cause more accidents than they prevent.

This is a really tenuous one, for the fixed cameras, normally used outside schools, black spots etc the argument is that the sharp deceleration on approach causes accidents. Really? But there aren’t always at the start of a 30, usually a fair way in, if you’d been obeying the speed limit you’d have no need to sharply decelerate for a camera, and if you weren’t sitting so close to the car in front that you can see my speedometer you may have a chance of not rear ending it when it slows down. For average this argument was pitched by the ever so reasonable Jeremy Clarkson, that he would be so focused on his speedometer that he’s more likely to hit something because he won’t be watching the road. If that is your argument you are unsafe to drive. Yes, you should check your speedo, but not at the expense of watching the road, you might as well argue that you hit something because you were really worried about your fuel and were watching the gauge like a hawk.

Stealth Tax

Many people better than me have taken this on, for starters, I’ve never seen anything stealthy painted yellow, or have warning signs alerting you to its presence. And as a tax, how good is that, a tax which you can avoid by driving at the posted speed limit, in short a tax that only affects those breaking the law. If only we could automatically penalise other minor offences. Also that there were taxes to easy to avoid. Hey, I can avoid this “Stealth Tax” by driving at the posted speed limit, how easy is that.

There is a strange correlation I’ve noticed in those who complain about speed cameras also often are the ones who complain that sentencing is too lenient and that only with the threat of harsh punishments will people obey the law. This strangely doesn’t stretch to speeding however, where they seem to think that they should be able to choose the speed at which it is safe to drive, indeed you often see statements like “I know how fast I can safely drive, I’m not driving dangerously” which may be true (Although studies show people often overestimate their own abilities) but I’m sure that’s the same litany of many a person caught driving dangerously, and regardless of your own opinion of your driving, the law states that you obey the posted speed limit. I may as well try and claim that I know my car is safe to drive and have no need of an MOT, (Obviously a stealth tax and secret conspiracy by an all powerful cartel of motor mechanics, or a way to make sure every road vehicle complies with a basic state or road worthiness) In short you may not like the law, and I fully support anyone who campaigns for change based on evidence, but you don’t get to ignore it in the meantime.

I enjoy driving fast (Although I find more pleasure skilfully taking corners on a windy road at 30-40 than I do going for straight line velocity) and I’d love a shot at the Autobahn, indeed I’d love the autobahn to be evidence that we should have unlimited speed some of our motorways. However Germany is currently adding speed limits rather than removing them so the evidence doesn’t seem to support this as a safe course of action.

The New Heroic Age

2010-03-01T08:05:00.002Z

What, no Dark Reign sum up? No Siege speculation. Have you seen how out of date my blogging has got these days, my only chance is to blog about things before they happen.

In all seriousness I might comment on Siege post event, but I’m interested at the moment on how the universe is going to unfold post-Siege. Marvel have been releasing various things regarding the new shape of the MU and it looks brighter, sunnier and happier. Some have said this could be a response to the Disney takeover but I reckon that with a probable Avengers movie coming out marvel want the universe back on a more approachable tack.

So, what do we know about this new age, lets look at the team books that have been revealed so far.

Avengers

Marvel has released the line-up of this new team in the wake of Siege. Line-up Includes Iron Man, Captain America (Bucky Barnes Version), Spider Woman, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Thor and Hawkeye (Clint Barton). Its kind of a half and half, half Bendis’s new avengers, half traditional Avengers. I’m in two minds about this, on one hand it will be nice to see a more traditional Avengers Team, I’m very happy that we’re not loosing Bucky cap just yet and that Barton is back to being Hawkeye. On the other hand I’ve never been thrilled with Bendis writing Avengers, his work on Mighty wasn’t bad but I think there are better avengers writers out there. It does leave at least one question; Barton is taking back his “Hawkeye” identity, what will happen to the Young Avengers Hawkeye?

Secret Avengers

This has been secretive, unsurprisingly. We know its written by Ed Brubraker which is exciting enough, we know what the team members look like as silhouettes, we don’t know what the team is about, what their purpose is or indeed the identity of any members, although speculation includes Steve Rogers, War Machine, Moon Knight and Black panther. Either way this will be one to watch.

Atlas

Another go at agents of atlas, I really enjoyed the previous Agents of Atlas series and like the commitment to keep trying to get them ingrained into the Marvel Universe, and I’m also keen to see the New 3D man meet the team. Again another good sign.

Thunderbolts.

Another interesting looking title, going back to the concept of criminal rehabilitation that existed throughout Thunderbolts but in particular in “The Initiative” period. Luke Cage leads a team based on the Raft, Currently looks like the team will include Moonstone, Crossbones, Ghost, Juggernaut and Man Thing with the theme of criminals doing heroic acts as part of their rehabilitation.

There is also an interesting looking title called Heroic Age, not sure if it’s just a one shot or a series but it’s more of an anthology book and will see the return of Captain Britain and MI13 in a short story. Solo title wise Iron Man has new armour and solicits show that it will feature Jim Rhodes, possibly as War Machine. And Captain America, at least for the next story will continue to show the adventures of Bucky Barnes which is good as I can still see mileage in that concept.

What are we loosing; to my mind so far it looks like we’ll loose two significant titles. The first is confirmed axed, that is Ms Marvel. It’s a real shame because this title has been holding on and with a bit more promotion she could have been Marvel’s Wonder Woman. Marvel are doing a comic featuring female heroes, but I preferred a female solo book (and with She-Hulk gone as well I struggle to think of any Marvel female solo book).

Second is Avengers: The Initiative, and while I wasn’t enamoured by the “Disassembled” story it’s been consistently good. I like the concept (Hero boot camp) and I liked the often personal approach to stories they took. It was an interesting book, so far no announcements of what will become of the initiative but I hope it will survive in some shape or form as it’s really been too good an idea to drop.

Doom Revisited

2010-02-07T13:05:00.001Z

I recently found the shareware version of Doom as a flash app. This in itself is mind boggling as I’m old enough to remember when Doom was “it” and required a decent computer and all that jazz, hells I remember playing the SNES version and being slightly disgusted by how pared back it had to be. Now I can have it in a window while running something else, a fabulous modern age indeed.

Anyway, in its day Doom was groundbreaking which is odd, it wasn’t the first FPS, it had no look up or down and only managed a true 3D environment (compared to Wolfenstein’s flat rooms) in a graphics trick (It looked like there was an up and down but the effect was purely visual compared with later games such as Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D. What Doom had was atmosphere, first the setting, initially a rather standard “Abandoned base” SF setting slowly descends into a full on gothic hell. However this was only part of the atmosphere. Doom used darkness and light to great effect. Areas would be in near total darkness, or with flickering lights and often enemies would appear seemingly out of nowhere as the lights flicker on for a brief moment. This was helped by the extra trick of hiding enemies in secret rooms, often triggered by certain switches or passing over a specific area of floor, this meant that an area previously cleared may still be dangerous later on. Finally doom would also on occasion jump you with a small onslaught of enemies which gave a nice balance between a near survival horror experience of the one enemy in the dark and the full forces of the unread walking into your chain gun.

It’s odd to think, but Doom even had an effect on FPS weapons, it was one of the first to include the shotgun, groundbreaking at the time, hard to imagine these days not switching between machine gun and shotgun depending on the closeness of combat.

Doom was a massive success, which is odd. Not because it wasn’t that good, it was excellent, but because I never knew anyone who had bought a copy of Doom, Seriously pirate copies were swapped in every school playground but I never saw, heard of or even heard a rumour about anyone who actually purchased a copy. It must of happened, where did all the pirate versions come from, but I can’t fathom how it managed to be such a success with this level of illegal redistribution (Unless piracy isn’t as bad a thing as the companies selling games would have you believe eh?)

Now, this is the modern age, games are undoubtedly better looking, more cinematic and more complex, so how well does an old warhorse like doom fare in this age of motion captured 3D and near photo-realistic graphics. It fares very well, even in a small window you quickly get sucked in and soon forget that the foes on your screen are dumb (oh, very dumb, no intelligence at all) 2D sprites occupying a 3D world, no soon you are jumping as one of these sprites appears from the dark. Yes, you don’t need the spiffy graphics with a game as atmospheric as doom; in fact I think this is where many modern games are going wrong. Many games seem to lead with spiffy visuals and often gameplay suffers, developers may want to consider if the game would still be fun if it looked like Doom.

So, this has wetted my appetite for more old FPSs. Once I have my games out of boxes I may well look to playing Duke Nukem or Dark Forces under emulation, as well as hunting down Doom, hell I may even pay for it this time.

Rage Against Cowell

2010-01-27T07:56:00.001Z

Well, we did it, Xmas no1 of 1009 was “Killing in the Name of” by Rage against the machine and not “the Climb” by…. Come on, what’s his name, you know, hingmy off of that thing.

That is a little cruel, but hells, we’ve earned it. Year after year of dreary X-Factor winners, or pop idol etc, and finally, a good song. I’m tempted to get all choked up and start talking us all up, how we did the impossible and that makes us mighty, or indeed point out that governments should take heed, because there are more bright independent people out there, we just rarely move like a herd, but I’ll leave it for the moment.

Naturally, there have been naysayers, smart alecs talking about how its funny that a whole load of people bought a song with the chorus “I won’t do what you tell me” because they were told to, and of course that both songs are on labels owned by Sony, so whatever wins Sony makes a big heap of money (And some said by that reasoning Cowell)

To address the second first, yes, it may well have been a marketing stunt by Sony, possibly off the back of cowell’s clever move last year of releasing a weak and lifeless cover of “Hallelujah” prompting online campaigns to get one of several alternative versions to No1, the advantage, he has a stake in the rights to Hallelujah so probably got a fair chunk of money from that. However someone likened him getting money from RATM sales to JD sports getting money from M&S sales because they share the same shopping centre.

The First, well, I’d disagree, yes we all bought the song on a specific week for the purpose of getting it to No1, but I’m betting if you asked 50 people you’d get at least 20 different reasons. Me, I like the song and don’t own it, plus I really liked the idea of every pointless light pop TV and radio station having to play Killing in the name of, and indeed have enjoyed seeing the gritted teeth approach most of them have to playing a storming rebellious hit. In fact one criticism is that many pop stations have since carried on regardless, in a review of 2009 one station played an excerpt from Killing, only to play the whole of the climb. Great, so here’s a clip of the winner, and here’s the whole of No2.

My other reason is a stupid one. See, I have a small confession, up until my late teens, music didn’t really interest me. In fact most of my CD collection was film soundtracks. Thing is I blame a lot of that on opportunity. When I was younger most of the people I hung around liked “What was in the charts” basically through primary school I was around people who were content to be told what they liked. I just couldn’t bring myself to agree, so I generally accepted that, aside from the odd flash of something I liked that chart music wasn’t for me. As I grew up obviously my horizons expanded. This is the crux of the matter. While my rock taste was developing if I hadn’t been to rock clubs and talking to rock fans then many bands wouldn’t register. I often think that if a good rock song could get up the charts and get the radio play then more people would realise how awesome rock is. Its stupid but there we are. And that’s my final reason. If one person who has been content to listen to the manufactured drivel gets inspired to Rock from this, then it’s been a success.

XMas TV

2010-01-20T07:23:00.000Z

Yes, all these posts will be behind schedule, but I reckoned Xmas TV was worth mentioning this year, why? Because it was a mess.

Now Xmas TV isn’t what it once was. In previous years (read, when I were a lad) the Xmas schedule was mainly about big film premiers. This was the tent pole to every channel’s schedule and I’m sure many of us remember sitting around marking off films in the radio times arranging who got to see what. The prevalence of Sky Movies and cheap DVDs now means that people are more likely to have seen the big films at home before a normal channel gets them; this takes a lot of the power out of these films. The thing is Xmas TV is hard. For close to two weeks you have to act as if everyone now wants to watch TV all day, not just between 6pm-11. People are on holiday after all, you can’t get away with Diagnosis Murder here. A good few premiers fill up hours of schedule, but now a film premier is less of a ratings guarantee the main terrestrial stations have been a bit confused.

In the vacuum caused by this state of affairs, the BBC has definitely done the best. This is despite the tabloids normal BBC bashing announcement about the number of repeats on over Xmas; this is despite calling ITVs higher number of repeats “Classics”. The BBC has risen to the challenge with a variety of Xmas specials. In fact, on Xmas day it was BBC1 all evening. The mainstay is of course now the Dr Who Xmas special, which brought me out in fanboy delight this year, because such a big deal was made of it. David tenant was in everything and the Beebs Xmas idents were Dr Who themed. This year Dr who was Xmas. We also had specials from programmes for all tastes, a Catherine Tate special, more Gavin & Stacey, strictly come dancing, plus on other days we had Xmas specials of QI, Russell Howards good news, a 2 part mini-series of Day of the Triffids and the Top Gear South America special. In fact the BBC should be praised. They filled a hole normally occupied by films, new or repeats, with new, self made programming. So what did they do wrong? Well, on the run up quite a few shows got mucked about in the schedules, specifically for me Defying gravity and James May’s Toy Stories. Second, there were some very odd repeats, such as the Top gear special being on two consecutive days. Finally there was a missed opportunity, the big film this year was Pirates of the Caribbean 3, shown on Boxing Day. However, later that week they showed Pirates of the Caribbean 2, when they could have shown 1&2 on the run up to Boxing Day making 3 a bit more of an event.

Still, like I said, the BBC was odd, but overall good, if still messy. ITV, C5 and C4 were worse. ITV and C5 just outright failed to have anything worth watching at all neither did Sky 1 or Virgin 1, the former showing the two Discworld minis on a loop (not a bad thing but not great for anyone not wanting to watch Hogfather twice in one day) and the latter just not changing its schedule at all. In fact only C4 had anything, mainly the Big fat quiz of the year, along with all quizzes from yesteryears repeated. C4 however was rather confusing as they had 2 films that could have been big over Xmas, The Simpsons movie and Slumdog Millionaire, however bizarrely they chose to show these after the Xmas period.

Overall other stations could learn a lot from the BBC on this one.

Defying Gravity & Virtuality

2010-01-12T20:13:00.004Z

In my preview of this years TV I may have mentioned Defying Gravity as a show I was interested in seeing, well its been and gone and I’ve managed to catch it thanks to BBC’s IPlayer and no thanks to BBC’s bizarre roaming schedule.

Defying gravity was made as an international co-production, loosely based on a BBC Drama doc about a more realistically themed tour of the solar system. Defying gravity ditches some of the hyper realism of its documentary predecessor, a technobabble nanotech idea explains gravity in most parts of the ship (Although they are very consistent in showing the “Gravity Suits” under clothing) and eventually uncovers a mystery surrounding what is in Pod 4, however for the most part the Antares is a realistic ship, its slow and low tech. This meant that the series would mainly focus on the crew interaction and the dangers inherent to space travel. This is added to with some focus on mission control and the politics there, and with flashbacks to the training and selection process.

I really warmed to the characters, both in their training and on the mission. This I think was the show’s strength or weakness; basically if you don’t click with the characters you won’t enjoy the show as a lot of it is people in a tin can naval gazing.

I will agree with the critics on one thing, the Final episode was fantastic, the show’s critics say this is how it should be. I say it showed what something like Defying gravity could do where other SF would have a space battle. They really highlighted the risk of landing on Venus, a very hostile place and still managed to advance several plot threads in the process.

Perhaps DG was a little slow, but then so is the Antares on her grand tour of the universe. Shame we won’t see the rest of the solar system, however for those who want to know where it’s going an interview with the creator exists here.

A quick aside, It may have been a couple of years ago, Ronald D Moore made his attempt at a similar idea. He even also lumbered it with a duff title, Virtuality. It never made it beyond pilot, and I won’t say how I saw that.

Virtuality follows the crew of the Phaeton, an international mission to find a habitable planet outside of the solar system. The reason, because Earth is dying. However, in order to keep funding the mission is also a giant Reality TV show, with cameras on the ship recording the crew’s conflicts. In fact two of the crew serve as director/producer and presenter. This leads to some nice asides, like some of the food supplies being donated by a ready meal company, the crew having to wear different clothes, depending on that day’s sponsor.

The virtual bit comes from the way the crew get to escape from their tin box. Each crewmember has access to a VR module, however, there is a ghost in the machine and he seems to be intent on doing cruel and nasty things to the crew while they’re in VR. However the twist at the end of the pilot could reveal something more.

Overall Virtuality is grittier and less sanitised than Defying Gravity, and many thought more interesting. I can’t judge, Defying gravity had many hours for me to bond with its crew while virtuality had a pilot, still it’s a shame it never got commissioned.

War machine, Final Arc

2009-12-30T22:21:00.003Z

This was initially going to be a post about the second arc of War Machine, but this arc has also been the final. Its been fun, and lasted just a little less than half the number of issues of the first ongoing, still, 12 issues is better than none, and at least calling it an ongoing showed confidence from Marvel.

First, the story itself, this concerned War Machine and his crew travelling to the US following the trail of the Ultimo Virus seen in the previous arc. This pits Jim directly against the US army, HAMMER and even Tony Stark's brother Morgan. During this he sets up Bethany Cabe and Jake Oh as armoured support and encounters his old buddies from the West Coast Avengers. The final two issues have Jim on trial for war crimes, mainly set up by Norman Osbourne as a distraction after Jim revealed inpropriatories by various Politicians.

Not to spoil for anyone trade waiting, but basically by the end Rhodey has beaten Osbourne (in a subtle way) is cleared of all charges and placed in his cloned body. In short he has been set to a basic point where he won't seem completely unfamiliar to movie audiences should he appear in Iron man after the release of Iron Man 2. But to the comic.

I've loved Greg Pak's writing, for starters it is very obvious that he has read a lot of War Machine, perhaps more than me. Yes he may have got hold of that "tales of the Marvel universe" where Rhodey looses the Eidolon warwear. It's not referenced but I believe he has read it. The art was a little inconsistent but again used various flashes which referred back through War Machine's history. The story itself really brought out Jim's humanity, despite his cyborg nature in this series, whether it was his past love and old friend in Glenda and Parnell respective, or his relationship with his mother as seen in the first issue of this arc.

Overall it was a worthy run, and I look forward to seeing much more of War Machine after his upcoming big screen appearance.

Finally, this is covered very well on my good mate Reilly 2040s Blog Here.

I Miss Late Night TV

2009-12-22T07:49:00.000Z

I will warn the intrepid reader (Hi) that this contains nostalgic ranting and may include rose tinted memories of the 90s. Warning over I miss late night TV.

Now, some observers may question me on this, after all, in our multi channel age there are many channels that broadcast 24hrs, and often with content the likes of which I’m nostalgic for. Indeed come the digital switchover this point will be technically moot, but this is a nostalgic rant so reality doesn’t need to apply.

It may surprise younger reader to know that as late as 1990, only ITV ran 24hrs (And skies were bluer, and chocolate tasted better and pints were bigger) now I first started being allowed to set my own bedtime at weekends around 1992/3 and at this point while on a Friday and Saturday BBC1 and Channel 4 might run programmes until as late as 2am sometimes after which on the BBC you got the national anthem and then dead air. BBC2 showed Ceefax until the morning and C4 was similar dead air. ITV however was a bizarre combination of eclectic programming.

ITV’s late night was where they aired shows that they reckoned were to grown up for a Saturday afternoon/evening, but too unpopular for anything resembling prime time. Indeed it is on ITV night time TV that Prisoner Cell Block H obtained its cult status amongst students. For me, initially it was the hope of some sex/nudity on TV (I was 12/13, these things were important and harder to come by then) but it opened the door to some great TV.

First and foremost, late night was where ITV would graveyard shows, so it was where you could see the War of the Worlds TV series, Old US shows like Magnum PI, The Equaliser and Hunter, and newer cop dramas like Hardball and Tropical Heat. Things which just have no home even in our current multi-channel world.

Similarly there was a odd selection of non-US programming, ranging from the good, like Video review show “The little picture show” to the average, like “The big E” (A cheap mans eurotrash) and the bad like “Whale On” (Find out why “Shock Jock” James whale is better on Radio) It had dross and some gems, but regardless it was better than the rolling quiz games we now get.

In the mid 90s ITV received competition as Channel 4 went late night, if memory serves it was only on Saturday nights, but it was a start. They also launched with an interesting array of programmes, most interesting was the showing of Anime series late at night. In fact Channel 4 went through bouts of brilliance in their Late night programming, it was all low budget, however this is the slot that gave us some great post pub TV (in the 90s Channel 4 were the masters) and we were treated to shows like Vids and Bits both gave a bit of an anarchic take on the film and video game review shows.

In short, yes we have much in the way of late night telly these days, but very little of it is purpose designed, and with late night gambling more profitable than low audience graveyard programming I can’t help but feel we’ve lost the choice to see some things that now don’t even get an airing.

Games That Stole My Life - X-Wing

2009-12-19T12:24:00.001Z

Back in the mists of time LucasArts was virtually a by-line for excellent game. They really couldn’t go wrong and obviously Star Wars Licences were a big draw. In 1994 they released every fan’s dream. X-Wing, a space combat simulator that put you in the cockpit of the mighty X-Wing Starfighter.

X-Wing

The basic concept of the game is simple; you play a rebel pilot flying various missions for the rebels. The core game contained 3 Campaigns, leading up to the Death Star mission as seen in Star Wars Episode IV, and was followed by two expansions, Imperial Pursuit, which focused on the evacuation of the Yavin Base (Just because they lost the death star doesn’t mean the empire is just going to leave it there) and B-Wing, which focused on the development of the B-Wing Starfighter and the relocation to Hoth. These expansions were later available in a collector’s edition.

It was great, addictive fun, on top of the campaigns there were training missions which simulated real missions, or flight training where you flew down an assault course. This meant that I spent a lot of time on X-Wing. In fact, I never finished the B-Wing expansion (one really tricky mission) but overall it was great fun clocking up medals and the like. These were then displayed on your Rebel uniform which could be viewed on the menu screen.

X-Wing allowed you to fly The X-Wing (All rounder), the A-Wing (Nippy interceptor) and the Y-Wing (Heavy Bomber) with the B-Wing being introduced in the B-Wing expansion. Sadly it lacked the option to select the craft for the mission (Not really a biggie) and the weapons loadout (A bit worse); your wingmen were pretty useless as well. Also, while there is a fanboy thrill flying the trench run, I would have actually preferred it as a training mission since it kind of made you Luke Skywalker for the mission. I generally try and justify it by saying I was the guy who missed first, see I used my targeting computer rather than the force. Still, a few annoying missions aside it was a great fun game. The sequel was even better

Tie Fighter

Tie Fighter was a sequel in terms of technological advancement and release date, but didn’t technically follow on from X-Wing (This could be argued it does, as X-Wing ends prior to the battle of Hoth and Tie Fighter picks up just after) Instead it put you in the post of an Imperial pilot. Tie Fighter was bigger, more campaigns, more ships (With expansions up to 7 compared to X-Wing’s 4) and in general a more involved story.

A notable point is that you spend very little time doing “evil”; instead you fill the empire’s general role of keeping order in the universe. In fact an early mission has you performing customs inspections at an imperial post. The interesting part comes from the side missions, issued by a mysterious cloaked figure which allow you to progress through the ranks of the secret order of the empire. These uncover the imperial coups that feature prominently in the campaigns. For fans of the expanded universe you also get to serve under Grand Admiral thrown and fly on the wing of Darth Vader.

A criticism of the game would definitely how the game develops. It starts off being a different game to X-Wing, with the Tie-Fighters being flimsy beasts you really rely on your piloting Skills as the Tie fighter can take about 2 hits (And that first will fry half the systems) and the hardiest is the bomber (4 IIRC) but aside from the odd missions in the Assault gunboat (Which sacrifices speed and manoeuvrability for shields) and the Tie-Advanced (Much rarely deployed), you graduate on to always using some craft or the other which possesses Shields, letting the game fall into a more X-Wing like mould. It also has a little too much love for the Missile boat but that’s a personal preference.

These don’t get in the way of what is an awesome game.

The success lead to two sequels, the first, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter was based more around Multi-Player gaming, and while it did feature a proper soundtrack (based on the CD) I really wanted (ideally and orchestral version) of Tie-Fighter’s specially created soundtrack included, sadly not to be. By this point it was beyond my machine and while it was popular, it sacrificed story for multi-player. However it is still played online.

Finally X-Wing Alliance, which went back to a single player focus and featured the opportunity to fly the Millennium Falcon, however it included some unpopular tweaks and failed to capture the imaginations like the predecessors did.

Still, like X-Com, if stable versions were released on Steam, I’d be very tempted to pick them up.

Dark Reign: Young Avengers

2009-12-13T12:22:00.001Z

This finished up a while ago and I thought a review was in order.

I’ve followed just about all of the Young Avengers stuff, but this one had me nervous. In true Dark Reign style, we were going to see an all new team of kids, who may not be as nice and wholesome as our first team. Indeed 4 of the 6 were named after villains (Melter, Enchantress, Egghead and executioner) while the other two Coat of Arms is a bit questionable and Big Zero is a neo Nazi.

It was quite a shift but be assured, the original Young Avengers turn up and a big fight, mentoring and rebellion ensue. It was a nice touch of Cornell to have the Young Avengers try and assess and recruit some of the new batch, and indeed the new set’s turn to Osborne was equally predictable when only one of them made the cut.

Cornell’s writing is good and I thing he made the most of having a big set of original characters to play with, although he wasn’t too shabby with the existing avengers or the dark avengers for that matter.

For me the stand out character was the new bacth’s leader, Melter. Cornell builds a great take on the old Marvel trope of powers being more of a curse, and Melter, we discover has killed many people, often by accident, in fact often by comedy accident, with his powers. This makes him not just reluctant but utterly terrified.

My main criticism would be the hint that Big Zero and Egghead are an alternate universe version of Stature and Vision which wasn’t followed up, but with rumours referring to this new team as the Young Masters, we may well see them appear in some shape or form in the future, and I’m interested enough t hope so.

Marvel Knights, Where are they now – Daredevil

2009-11-25T07:28:00.001Z

Daredevil was the jewel in the Crown of the Marvel Knights launch line-up, arguably the title they’d put the most behind. The had a celebrity writer, Kevin Smith, before his name was tainted with the three crimes, The last few issues of Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil Men Do, the never to be finished Daredevil: Bullseye, which kept Bullseye out of use for anyone else for years and finally Jersey Girl. But no, this was the late 90s and we all still liked Kevin Smith. Art was by Joe Quesada who was head of the Marvel Knights line. This was to re-launch the man without fear, this was guardian Devil. To an extent it worked, but not straight away. Issue 1 treaded an uncomfortable line with decompressed storytelling and action, not really committing to either. However the story developed with Daredevil acting erratically and his life falling to pieces, we had guest appearances from Black Widow and Dr Strange, in short it was a pretty big story. Ultimately Mysterio would prove to be the villain (Although there was a definite supernatural feel for a while) in a story that had a terminal end for both Mysterio and Karen Page.

Overall it was a good first arc, followed up by some pretty strong storylines such as the introduction of Echo. Later Matt was “outed” and this story ran through Matt’s breakdown and eventual arrest. The breakdown story, where he briefly tried becoming the Kingpin to keep crime out of Hells kitchen, was part of a storming run by Brian Michael Bendis, closely followed by the equally good work of Ed Burbaker. I had to drop the title for financial reasons at the end of Devil in Cell block 9 story but overall, while it may have had dips in quality Daredevil has been strong ever since its Marvel Knights re-launch, perhaps one of the only titles to manage this. It has weathered the big events like Secret Invasion, Civil War and Dark Reign by keeping as much as possible to its own stories. This is perhaps its strength.

It is worth noting for Marvel Knights fans, that the two greatest sources for imagery in the Daredevil movie were Frank Miller’s legendary run and Guardian Devil. Daredevil’s continuing success is undoubtedly due to the time it was knighted.

Games That Stole My Life - M.A.X.

2009-11-17T07:27:00.001Z

Reilly 2040 was probably wondering when I’d get to this, MAX, acronym for Mechanised Assault and Xploration, because MAE wouldn’t have been as good a title.

The Story, aliens come to earth and say “Hey, we bring technology etc, all we want is for you to colonise planets and mine stuff for us” and mankind says “Nah, no thanks” however some of the more unwanted groups, religious nuts, hard-line communists, Nazis, samurais, corporations and many more take the aliens up on this offer and go into space on giant ships. You play a MAX commander, a human brain in a robot body used to control ships in hyperspace where the human body can’t stand the stress. You then command the mechanical vehicles and units to colonise worlds for alien benefactors. Yes, it’s an RTS.

MAX came out in the mid to late 90s when Command and Conquer commanded and conquered all. There was a plethora of RTS games out at the time of varying quality; MAX had some interesting strategic levels. At the time being able to zoom from a worldview to very close up was pretty rare, also the fact that each faction used the same units meant that, upgrades aside, you could roughly judge how soon enemies would reach you. There was also the tactics of land, air and sea combat, with certain units being required to attack air units, and some sea units that could only be attacked by air or certain sea units (Such as submarines).

MAX seems to have been created initially as a turn based strategy game, which was then tweaked to work as a real time game, sort of. The game still requires turns to be taken, but in simultaneous mode everyone takes their turn at the same time, giving a real time feel. However this feature is what made MAX so addictive for me.

See, confession time, I’m not really that good at RTS games. I like them, but I’m not good at them. I loose track of things, get confused and have a habit of lumping all my units together in untidy charges. MAX offered me something more interesting, it had a multi-player mode called “Hot Seat Game” In this, each player took ether turn in sequence, but on one computer, so you could invite 3 friends round and spend hours playing MAX turn by turn. Better yet, if you weren’t good at RTS, you could play yourself. This is what sank time in for me. Huge 4 way battles with me running all players. Sounds dull but I enjoy it so much I still play it under emulation. Because it's not real time it allows me to drop the game at a seconds notice and react to my life’s responsibilities. MAX, you are great. You still steal my life though.

Good Crossovers

2009-11-12T07:22:00.000Z

I recently posted about war of kings, and I’d like to take a specific point form this. That point is how to run an event, specifically crossovers.

Marvel has been picking up some bad habits of late, namely the multi-title crossover, where the crossover runs through alternate issues of different titles. It can be done well, such as, in my opinion, The Hands of the mandarin crossover between Iron Man, War Machine and Force Works in the 90s. The titles were pretty closely linked and we had guest appearances quite often (And indeed at one point War Machine finished his story and put in a call to Force Works to take over), second Iron man was part of Force Works anyway and the issues were written so the Iron Man issues were Iron man Centred, War machine focused more on War Machine and so on, they all told the story and all featured the others, but it meant you weren’t picking up an issue of Force Works and wondering why War Machine was so prominent. Similarly, while I wasn’t keen the Peter David penned X-Factor/She Hulk crossover was annoying but at least the She-Hunk issues were mostly she-hulk.

Anyway, I digress. I generally hate this sort of crossover, it adds another title that I don’t want to buy, (Utopia X) or it pulls characters from their interesting ongoing plot to a pointless crossover (Magnum opus).

Marvel has managed to occasionally pull some really good crossovers. This is because to me, good crossovers are more like tie-ins. Take War of Kings (Although both Annihilation events showed the same restraint) so, on the face of it, you have what should be a tie in nightmare, 5 issue Limited series, with the Darkhawk/Ascension tie ins, the Kingbreaker prelude and tie ins from Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova. However, restraint was shown. Nova focused more on the Nova Corps battling the criminal imperial guard we saw assembled in Kingbreaker, however you didn’t need kingbreaker to let you know the status quo, Nova handled that. Similarly the Guardians of the Galaxy are involved with trying to stop the war, helping Liandra reach Shi-Ar space and stopping the spread of the tear, but this is contained perfectly in their own title. The best example is Ascension, where several things that tie in elsewhere happen, but none require the reading of ascension to understand. Why did Darkhawk assassinate Liandra? Read ascension for the why, but it has no real bearing on the War of Kings plot. Why is Blastaar suddenly in possession of the cosmic rod, again in Ascension, but it’s not a vital plot point.

This has not been contained to just the cosmic stuff though. The Initiative recently invaded the 42 prison facility which was taken over by Blastaar in GotG. All you needed to be told was the prison had fallen and needed to be taken back.

Finally we see this seep through to what is fast becoming one of the more bloated events this year Dark Reign. In thunderbolts we see Nick Fury gunned down, only at the end for fixer to reveal he was an LMD. There is an aside saying “For more see Secret Warriors” and sure enough we do, in secret warriors we find out that the escape was partially orchestrated by the secret warriors, and indeed that the LMD was piloted by Phobos, son of Ares. This leads to some resolution between Ares and Nick Fury which may have bearing on Ares actions in Dark Reign – The List: Secret Warriors, where he secures fury’s escape from avengers tower. This I like, you can follow extra plot threads if you like, but your reading experience isn’t ruined if you don’t follow up. Of course, marketing don’t like that because it doesn’t directly force someone to buy another comic, but I wonder, does this method generate more readers in the long run, will curiosity draw in readers where forcing turns them of?

Deadliest Warrior

2009-11-08T18:34:00.000Z

I was alerted to this show in an episode of “You Have been watching” and in Charlie brooker’s Accompanying Article. I was intrigued and despite the poor reviews thought I’d have a look.

The format is this, take two warriors from history, compare their skills and weapons and then put them into a simulation to see who would win in a fight. Bravo bought this and so I was spared trying to find “other” sources. In fact, the only episode bravo didn’t show was the final abandonment of good taste with the IRA and the Taliban in a 5 on 5 fight. No, I’m serious, that was the last episode.

Now, normally I like this sort of thing, historical warriors and study of tactics and weapons intrigues me and the vs. element was a nice hook. Shame this largely fails on the first part.

The problem stems from this being a Spike TV production, so it is designed to entertain first and if you learn anything on the way they unreservedly apologise. Each show has two experst from each warrior demonstrating up to 5 signature weapons in combat. Not a bad idea, my first gripe is that it is all about the weapons, armour is sometimes covered and tactics are hinted at, but you don’t get the impression that aspects like training and tactics are even considered (Something which we even got on Showdown: Air combat).

Next is the weapons tests themselves, each weapon is pared with an equivelant from the other warrior and compared, in this they are remarkably incosistant, surely to accurately compare weapons they should eb tested in similar circumstances, and sometimes they are, usually on ballistics gel torsos, but other times we have tests on wooden targets, or skulls, or pigs vs ballistics gel, in short, trials obviously designed to show each weapon in its best light, but it irks my inner scientist. Second on the weapon test is that this could have provided some interesting history in how these weapons were adopted, origins and some general historical info (Such as how various pieces of asian weaponary is adapted from farm equipment for example). This is glossed over with a preference to seing a weapon in action and shouting “AWESOME!” it gets particularly tedious in contest such as Mafia vs. Yakuza and Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz, seeing what a halbeard or a Maori shark toothed club can do is actually vaguely interesting, but a gun, we know what that does, puts a hole in a person.

Finally its the experts themselves, and this is a criticism of the show rather than the people, who I’m sure are perfectly nice. They’re encouraged to smack talk each other through the show and it just makes the whole enterprise childish and tedious, yes the whoel series is pub argument territory anyway, but the “Oh yeah, well we can totally beat that” element just makes all the experts look petulant. The best experts were the two ex-Spetsnaz, who tolerated the bravado of the green beret equivalent with what looked like tired boredom. The closest they actually got to smack talk was when one finally caved and quietly murmered that he felt that the Green Beret training was a little too soft. This playground jibing is tedious when its enthusiasts, such as in Pirate vs Knight, but it gets somewhat uncomfortable in contests like Gladiator vs Apache, where the Apache was represented by an actual apache, yes, they’re an existing culture of people, while the Gladiator was covered by enthusiasts, the whole “My hobby is better than yoru culture” thing just didn’t sit right at all.

I’ll try not to extend this rant too far when I mention that Shaka Zulu never stood a chance in the battle against William Wallace since the version of Wallace used was the fictional one from Braveheart.

I know I’m dumb, I was warned, repeatedly. But I still expected better. Don’t know why, but I did. And you know what else, I watched it all, all of it. Why? I don’t know. Self Loathing perhaps.

On the forums they put forward suggestions for season 2. Mine are as follows:

Glasgow Ned Vs. Manchester Scally

A 5 on 5 bout obviously, who is the most irritating and possibly harmful small time criminal? The ned weapons could include kitchen knife, empty glass Irn-bru bottle, half brick and a plank of wood. The smack talk would be worth the admission price alone.

Chartered Accountant Vs. Estate Agent

Who would win in a fight to the death. I’d just like to see it happen.

Or better yet, lets leave what vestiges of reality we have behind

Klingon Warrior Vs. Peacekeeper Commando

Can the wild warrior spirit of the Klingons beat the Cold military organisation of the peacekeepers?

Spartan from Halo Vs. Space Marine from warhammer 40k

Both are genetically engineered armoured super soldiers, but will Spartan discipline beat the rabid faith of the marines?

And finally

Starfleet “Redshirt” Security Vs Imperial Storm trooper

One is good at dying, one can’t kill a fricking ewok, will the redshirt not die or will the storm trooper hit something.

Joking aside, I think this would suit the absurdity of the series, get some people dressed up as ficional warriors, do tests on weapons (Assisted by special effects) and do a mock battle.

I think that might be a distinctly watchable show

War of Kings

2009-11-02T17:57:00.000Z

Marvel’s other cosmic event has finally wrapped up (Ok I finally got out to buy comics) anyway it’s been quite a surprise, namely because its two run up titles (X-Men kingbreaker and Darkhawk) were a little lacklustre.

The story is of course about a second Kree/Shi-Ar war, only this time the Kree are lead by the Inhumans and their king Black Bolt, while the Shi-Ar are lead by Cyclops’s other other other brother, Vulcan. Also involved are the newly formed Nova Corps, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Darkhawk (or should I say Razor)

This was actually quite different to the Annihilation events, in that the tie ins told other aspects of the story leaving the main effectively a self contained story regarding the progress of the war as seen by Crystal from the Kree side and Gladiator from the Shi-Ar. The tie ins were of the good sort where they added to the story if you read Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ascension, but didn’t detract from it if you didn’t, so Nova was really more about Rich’s battle with the out of control Worldmind/Ego and Guardians was half about their efforts to end the war diplomatically (With fun and disastrous results) and half about trying to avert the ultimate end to the war.

The end was spectacular, Black Bolt and Vulcan fight on a giant bomb, which eventually explodes tearing a huge hole in space, exactly as Adam warlock predicted. Warlock manages to stop its expansion but the cost is that he becomes his evil future self, The Magus, and at the cost of Phlya and Gamera, although I doubt they will stay dead.

We now have an interesting state of affairs to the cosmic marvel universe, namely there is an empire in chaos and a dirty great rip in space, Darkhawk is on the run as while under control of the Razor personality in his armour and the Nova Corps are back to severely reduced numbers (A nice touch is that all the new Novas are in trainee uniforms similar to rich’s old “Kid Nova” suit)

Overall it was good, well written with good art and really had the impression of a large scale galactic conflict. Tie ins were, as said before good but unintrusive and overall this was a good event, if lacking the “Galaxy is doomed” feel of the previous two, also a good example of how to run event tie-ins. Mainstream Marvel take note.

I had my fears about what spinoff we would get from this event; I feared it would be a Starjammers in the universal rule of no area of marvel must be without X-Men of some description, although Ch’od is brilliant. I’d have been happy with an Imperial Guard title or Inhumans, or a Darkhawk one. Instead we’re getting Realm of Kings.

Yes, from war of Kings comes Realm of kings, stuff is coming through the big space hole, and it looks like evil avengers. Fortunately we’re getting a couple of decent looking LS from it, Inhumans and Imperial guard. Not really happy about blundering into another event, but at least I don’t have another ongoing to pick up.

High Speed Rail

2009-10-30T08:59:00.000Z

Recently Network Rail proposed a plan to build a new High speed line from scratch; it would be 200+mph, travel from Edinburgh and Glasgow to London via Birmingham and have a Journey time of around 2hrs 30 mins. Now, I think this is a fantastic idea, think about it, that is faster than flying. Some will say that the flight to London is under an hour, however neither Glasgow, Prestwick or Edinburgh airports are in the city centres, and factoring in check in times and all the interminable waiting that airlines seem to want you to do, and your City Centre to City Centre time is closer to 3-4 Hours flying. This link would be on a train in Glasgow, and 2.5 hrs later you’re in the centre of London. It’s cleaner than flying or driving, ok so electric trains are only as clean as the power station available, but it’s better than burning aviation fuel or diesel and way more sustainable. In fact not much of this project doesn’t make sense.

However I’m sceptical if it will ever get built. Its price tag is around the £34 billion. It’s a shame that the government won’t commit to such a high spend, considering the millions it will quite readily spend for motorway enhancements and a 3^rd runway at Heathrow which seems to be wanted only by BAA and airlines. This is not all this project has stacking up against it. I can see the air travel lobby being pretty vocal in its objections to this project, after all, if it is faster than flying, and if the tickets aren’t extortionate, then it will take passengers from domestic flights, environmentally this is a good thing but airlines tend not to see loss of custom that way. It may also be scrapped by an incoming Tory government, which looks most likely. The Tories have generally shown a dislike for public transport (“This is the age of the Car”) and anything north of Birmingham. Until recently I would have said that the Scottish government would at least fund its side but after the scrapping of GARL I’m not so sure. Finally it is possible that the city of London may try to derail this project (Pardon my pun)

There was an article about a year or so ago, suggesting that regeneration doesn’t work and that we should all move to the south east. It was interpreted as a sign of fear from London that it may be loosing its importance to business. Back in the day you had to have a major office in London; it was how you did business. Problem is that London is expensive, and now many businesses are moving the bulk of their operations to regenerated areas like Manchester and Newcastle and leaving a shadow presence in London (Usually a few desks rented in a building) as modern transport and communications means that the city is only a few hours away. 2.5 hours from the central belt of Scotland to London would further erode any necessity to actually be based there. Hell, we could probably remove the second home allowance for many Scottish MPs because 2.5 hours is a commutable distance. Not an ideal one but definitely an option.

Of course, for everywhere else this is a great thing. And this is who should be getting behind the project, Local governments and big business should all welcome the chance to move away from the capitol, it means lower rents for business, and more interest for abandoned industrial towns. It means reduced overcrowding in the south and hopefully removing the need to build on flood plains. Basically, spend the 36bn, do it properly (No bloody PFI) have reasonable fares and this could be a massive boon to the whole UK.

Upcoming TV

2009-10-19T18:11:00.000+01:00

I’ve spent so long on last years TV, and Virgin have spent so long putting on Chuck, that we’re now into the new season. Here’s a rundown on shows I’m interested in. The twist? Despite the axing of many a good show (Middleman, Knight Rider, Reaper) the end of BSG etc, I still have a pretty full schedule, frankly more of a schedule than I can watch. So, expect one or more of these to be dropped before the end of season.

Definitely Watching

Lost – Aside from the fact that the past few seasons have been great, I’m committed; I want to know how this ends. And I’m looking forward to this season as well, not just that we’ll get answers, but just in general, Lost has been really good of late. If I drop everything else I need to see Lost.

Doctor Who – We have some specials coming up, and ultimately the regeneration of David Tennant to Matt Smith. Doctor Who usually appears on everything else’s off period as well which is a bonus.

Chuck – Again, probably advantaged by Virgin showing it late, so it’s likely to be on Virgin once other shows have finished. Hell we’re just finishing season 2 now, but it’s been so much fun I can’t see me abandoning this now.

Might be Watching

Stargate Universe – Reilly 2040 did a decent post on this so far and indeed I’m watching at the moment. The first 3 parter, Air was quite good, definitely a different direction. The series has made good use of the lack of a coherent command structure on board Destiny; I expect to see more conflicts from the large civilian population in the future. They’ve also added in the feature of the ancient communications device, allowing them to exchange bodies with people on Earth. I’m hoping this means we’ll see experts such as Rodney from Atlantis brought in on occasion. All that bound with a big ship that could house problems of its own and a viable “Planet of the week” premise if required (The hint that destiny will seek out planets that may help it run is intriguing). Downsides, I liked the lighter feel of the previous stargate incarnations, this series seems almost a little po-faced. Overall, hopefully I can keep with this

Flash Forward – Have caught the first 2 eps (Missed 3, putting child to bed) and it is so far rather intriguing. Yes it could well be the next lost, with its unfolding mystery etc. Only gripe so far is that none of the characters have really shone, they don’t interest me like the initial survivors of lost did. However I do like a good mystery and this series has set up the layers nicely. At its core is the constant question of “Is the future fixed” which leads into the mystery of why the event happened, who are the people who did not black out, all tracked through a board of random clues the main character was conveniently looking at during his flash forward. There were also some nice touches, we had consequences of everyone blacking out for 2 mins or so, plane crashes, car crashes and general disorder. On the other hand some people were doing mundane things like sitting on the toilet reading the paper. If I can keep the commitment, and if it doesn’t descent into X-Files/Season 2 Lost territory of never answering things properly, in short if it’s well planned, this could be very good. An extra gripe to Channel 5 doing ads every 15 mins. I realise this is probably the same number of ad breaks as you get when shown with US breaks, but it ruins the pacing of the show.

True Blood – this is technically last years TV, with Season 2 starting soon or already started. But being on Channel 4 means we all get to find out why we were so happy when Sky bought the rights to Lost. Still anyone with FX can catch it sooner so there’s a bonus. Series about vampires living among us has had nothing but good reviews from all who have seen it only caught some of the pilot and it could well be interesting. I’ve never been that enamoured by vampires mind you. Still, at time of writing all I can really tell you about is that we have a psychic girl who may start dating a vampire. True Blood lacks the instant hook of Flash Forward, but its later timeslot and rave reviews mean that it may be something I can keep an eye on easily.

Defying Gravity – Did you see the Docu-Drama Space Odyssey – Voyage to the planets? No, oh, shame, it was quite good. Defying Gravity takes this idea but dumps the Docu side, focusing instead on the Drama; it tells the story of a group of Astronauts on the star ship Antares on a mission to explore the solar system. Its blurb and episode summaries hint at a series focused more on realistic space travel and the dramas that come from it, such as relationships aboard ship and dangers from solar radiation and isolation. Reviews haven’t been positive but I like this sort of thing and so will most definitely give this more leeway than normal.

Heroes – What to say about Heroes, well the Beeb has lost confidence, that shows. To be fair they did it no favours scheduling it against Ashes to Ashes, not so much because one would trounce the other but way to knock a chunk off your own ratings. Anyway, apparently after the last good run of showing it near enough as soon as the US has (As Sky tend to do) they’ve now said they won’t be showing the next season until 2010. In some ways this is good, it means all my TV doesn’t hit at once and gives me a fighting chance to see something. Down side is, well frankly Heroes has never really found its feet after Season 1 and I’m not sure I want to go through another season. Yes it had highlights, but it has been a bit of a mess. Its like a relationship that’s petering out, You want to give Heroes one more chance, it promises to be like it was when you first met, but you fear you’ve heard that before, and we’ll instead have another year of going through the motions and being disappointed. Timing will see if I open myself up to this again.

Dollhouse - This really didn't grab me last year, until the last few eps, in particular Epitath One. Damn you Wheedon, this may well be worth a second look, particularly now Wheedon can judge the direction more clearly. Still, from the promo posters expect Dushku in a variety of outfits all the same.

Overall, considering the axings of last year, we still have a decent crop of shows to keep me entertained.

Last Years TV - The Latecomers

2009-10-18T17:50:00.000+01:00

In this post I’m going to examine the two late entries to last years TV, both too late to make the television awards. However their respective channels, in this case Channel 4 and Virgin 1 got a mention so in some sense they were there. I am of course going to talk about Reaper and Chuck.

Chuck has been an absolute delight this year, providing a good few twists and turns regarding the status quo, such as the Fulcrum Intersect, and has managed to hit home exactly how precarious Chuck’s situation is, and how this is ruining his life. Meanwhile the antics of his supporting cast, particularly the Buy More crew have been fun, in fact so much fun that I wouldn’t really miss the spy stuff if it was gone. Either way, you care about all these characters from the heartbreak where chuck has to emotionally crush Morgan to save his life, to the strange Joy to an episode which finishes with Jeff and Lester’s band Jeffster doing a number. It may only get one more season, so my advice to the makers of Chuck, the finale of the final season should involve chuck telling everyone about the intersect in order to mount a comedy rescue of Sarah inadvertently destroying fulcrum in the process. This series needs a mad happy ending.

Reaper has been cut down before its time. It’s a shame because it’s similarly a great fun show. This season Sam has been trying to take on the devil, in mostly unsuccessful ways, culminating in a high stakes game of Quarters. Sam, as always could be annoying if not played just right, as it stands he carries off the right combination of slacker and miserable in just the right doses. As with chuck, a large amount of the appeal comes from the supporting cast, who were boosted this season with Andi, sock and Ben being joined by Sam’s Zombie dad, Nina, a demonic assassin who is now dating Ben and possibly the most fun Morgan, the Devil’s other son and Sam’s half brother. As always the show wouldn’t be complete without Ray Wise as the Devil. I honestly believe that if there was a real devil and he saw Ray Wise in reaper, He’d be annoyed that he wasn’t having nearly as much fun. A great mix of comedy and underlying menace.

I’ll miss you reaper.

I Believe in the BBC

2009-10-14T08:54:00.000+01:00

Apologies for this long, rambling and ranty post

At the recent Edinburgh TV Festival the Mac Taggart lecture was delivered by James Murdoch, Son of Rupert Murdoch Billionaire Tyrant and owner of News international. His speech attacked the BBC calling in particular for the online news service to be scaled back or completely removed, and argued that the only true guarantor of independent journalism was profit. This of course has nothing whatsoever to do with News international wanting to charge for online versions of their paper, and this being hard because

1, a cardinal rule of the internet is that it is very hard to charge for something that you previously offered for free

2, it is even harder to charge for something when someone else is offering a superior product for free.

Fortunately in a room full of professionals and educated people, this didn’t really wash, and most saw this for what it was, the usual Murdoch dislike of anything they can’t buy or drive out of business. However there are fears that in order to gain press support some backroom deals may well be made by both parties next election to begin the dismantling of the BBC.

Murdoch’s argument sounds valid, who wouldn’t trust an independent company, who have to make a profit over something government run, except the BBC has many safeguards in place to stop it being the governments propaganda wing. In fact the BBC has been one of the biggest critics of the government, even in its current gun shy state after the brutal attack the government made on it over the Iraq dossier. In fact if anything it’s the profit driven news companies who deserve more scrutiny as they show what news gathering would be like under a purely commercial model.

In Nick Davis’ book “Flat Earth News” he describes what he calls the “news Factory” an environment which exists when companies run news organisations for the maximum amount of profit. In these news factories such as those run by news international, staff are overworked and short on time, and in general stories are run direct from the news wire or indeed more often than not reworded from corporate press releases or other papers articles (A process referred to as Churnalism) with minimal to no fact checking. This leaves the commercial news operators wide open to distortion by PR companies, and the like. It also creates a style of journalism that stays away from dangerous stories, namely watch what you say about big companies, or anything not form an “Official Source” The BBC has fallen into this trap as well, although not as badly as those run by companies like News International.

The second problem with profit driven news is what I call the Daily Mail syndrome. The Daily Mail is Britain’s best selling paper, it is also full of distortions presenting a view of the UK as a nation swamped with foreigners all raiding our lucrative benefits system, while white hard working taxpayers foot the bill, it shows a Britain swarming with feral youths and crime, which naturally only hanging and the birch would solve. It also, as has been said by better men than me, has engaged in a rather odd project to classify all inanimate objects into those that cause or cure cancer. When questioned, the Mail defends itself by stating that it reflects the views of its readers, and I don’t doubt that, it reflects the worrying state of mind of little Englanders and paranoid xenophobes everywhere. It also pedals racism and constantly misrepresents the facts to fit its agenda. And this sells by the bucket load. In short, it works on a principle of “hell with the facts, tell them what they want to hear and we make money” That is what profit driven news gives you.

A great example of the true faults with profit driven news occurred at the end of last year during Israel’s attacks on Palestine. The Sun, a News international paper, ran a story about Islamic extremists creating a hit list of prominent UK Jews. Sir Alan Sugar was on this list (And he successfully sued the Sun, more on that in a bit). The Story was sourced from a supposed independent Terror Expert named Glen Jevaney, who claimed he had been staking out internet forums for just this ort of thing. Jevaney was backed by Tory MP Patrick Mercer, A shadow cabinet minister, so official source. This story was published in the Sun with minimal fact checking. Several independent bloggers, most notably Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads (www.bloggerheads.com and I can only recommend you read his expose on this yourself) and that’s independent as in they do this for free, did what the profit driven media did not and looked into this. It transpired, and eventually broke recently on radio 5, that the person posting on an Islamic website about targeting high profile Jews was Glen Jevaney, he’d been trying to bait the residents into providing a story, and when none bit, he used his own posts as evidence of extremism. He was found out, not by professional journalists, but by enthusiastic amateurs who were not held to costs or deadlines.

So, to conclude, the BBC, if it has any problems at all in its news gathering, it is that it tries too often to emulate the commercial companies. James Murdoch is wrong; the profit motive provides shoddy journalism. The best comes from having time and the guts to follow a story in detail, do research and properly investigate. So far the profit medial provides none of this.

Timestorm 2009-2099

2009-10-07T08:49:00.000+01:00

Well, this has ended, a 4 Part mini series (With 2 one shots) where Bryan Reed takes a shot at resurrecting the 2099 universe.

Initially I had high hopes for this, it looked more true to the original 2099 universe than Robert Kirkman’s Marvel Knights 2099, which had nothing to do with any previous 2099 save the date, however this series was badly disappointing.

I should at this point say, I was a huge Punisher 2099 fan, and really liked Spider-man 2099 under Peter David, and this looked kind of faithful. The plot centres on Alchemax sending the Punisher (Jake gallows, as nutball 2099 Punisher) back in time to supposedly kill off heroes. In fact he’s sending them to 2099.

This wasn’t quite the 2099 we used to know, it has the same people, and its corporate run, but in this world heroes are corporate mascots, the police are punisher themed for example. This is explained near the end, and we do get a brief glimpse of the real Doom and Punisher 2099. However the rest of this series was a pretty big disappointment. It is basically Spider and Wolverine in the future, but with a rather confusing time travel plot. What actually kills this series is its closeness to the original 2099. It feels tantalisingly close, so how have they got it so wrong, who decided to remake Spidey 2099 as a kid, and as a near carbon copy of the present day spidey? And who came up with an intriguing notion of a slight change to the 2099 universe, only to more or less use it only for backgrounds.

This is the real problem, it feels like setup, when what I wanted was my old 2099 universe back, and the setup of a new spidey 2099 who is markedly less unique and interesting than the original 2099 spidey, and a group of near enough X-men led by wolverine of the future just doesn’t wet my appetite at all.

In short, Reed obviously wanted to put his own stamp on this, but sadly it is too unique to be what I wanted, and too like the old universe to be something new (Which at least Kirkman’s one shots had in their favour)

Marvel, next time you want to do 2099, let peter David do it, in fact, bring back the first 2099 team.

GARL or Who Makes up These Contracts?

2009-09-30T08:35:00.000+01:00

Well, I’ve not talked about politics and transport for a while, and here is a post which kind of combines both.

Just recently the SNP has announced its new budget; something that has caused much consternation was the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link.

Now on the political side, the SNP hasn’t exactly done itself any favours. They must have known that this would be unpopular. The Greens are already complaining that a public transport initiative was cut while road building continues and Labour are claiming that the SNP are anti-Glasgow. Now, I will come to the reasons that the project is claimed to have been cancelled in a minute or so. First I’ll go over how this could have been better handled.

The SNP should have known this would be an unpopular decision, and so I would have suggested a good offence with this one. I still expect to hear is that Westminster has cut the Scottish budget, and so this is their fault, but I think they already know that argument has incredibly limited mileage, regardless of how much the Westminster labour government does seem to want to show up the SNP. (Still sore about loosing the Scottish parliament as their own rubber stamp service I guess) A good direction would have been to blame the Edinburgh trams, as they tried to shut down that white elephant but were blocked, and the project has now spiralled out of control, they could have argued that there would have been plenty of money to pay for GARL if the Edinburgh tram project could have been canned.

The actual reason given, although the SNP haven’t really been playing it to its full, a pretty poor move politically, is that the costs were becoming significantly greater than initially stated. This is actually an intriguing angle. If they played it as stopping another Scottish Parliament or Edinburgh tram wild overspend before it started, they may get some more understanding and support on the decision, after all, they would be wildly slated if the project ran wild on their watch.

What actually confuses me is this, how do these projects run wild?

I’m an engineer, and while studying my HNC we covered contracts in a little detail, much has sadly vacated my empty head, but the basic Tendering process and contract rules have not. The basic gist is this. Someone wants a big project undertaken, say a building built. The client will usually provide a specification, plus surveys and all the information a contractor needs to make an estimate. The contractors will then make up a document explaining how they would conduct the project, what timescale it would be completed in and how much it would cost. The contract types generally hold bonuses for early completion, and also some bonuses for coming in under budget. Similarly there are penalties for running late, and generally any cost over-runs must be covered by the contractor. This works because it keeps both sides honest (It’s actually more complicated with clauses for various possibilities of delay but this simple explanation should fit)

However for some reason Government projects seem to work differently. For these if a contractor runs over time or over budget, the Government covers the shortfall, and I’ve no idea why. Why should costs spiral for a tender when a contract has been agreed. If we are farming big projects out to private companies, particularly high profile ones such as Trams or a Parliament building, then we should basically say “Well you said you could do it for amount X, that’s what we gave you, now we want our building to spec, if you’ve under bid, that’s your problem.”

Now back to the SNP, if they could commission some works, and have them come in on budget and on time, they could build a reputation for better practice on bug projects. No spiralling costs with this government. Sadly, from how it’s been played so far, this may be the breaking of them.

Savage She-Hulk

2009-09-26T10:11:00.000+01:00

Savage She-Hulk was always going to be a tough sell on me. See, I got into the character reading Dan Slott and then Peter David’s runs on the character, and was one of those who thought that David’s run was cut short. Then again I was also holding out for a Lady Liberators title. So when the announcement came of a new She-Hulk I was more than a little sceptical.

Savage She-Hulk concerns Lyra, daughter of the Hulk and Thundra, who has come from a possible alternate future to find Earth 616’s most powerful man.

So, first the good things, the art is good and it was nice to see the real She-Hulk turn up. Story wise, it was ok. We see some good Dark Reign style manoeuvring, Osborne wants to take in Lyra to show that he should be running ARMOUR (the group in charge of alternate universe incursions) the twist on Hulks powers is a neat touch, Lyra gets weaker the more angry she gets, and her tamagochi companion talking watch thing is quite funny in the first few panels but isn’t a laboured joke.

Downsides, well, she isn’t Jen. And that is more than a fanboy whine criticism, Jen was fun, Lyra is pretty serious, art wise they weren’t afraid to make Jen pretty muscular and near Amazonian, while Lyra is definitely aimed more towards the cheesecake market, a shame as Peter David really was aiming to make She-Hulk Marvel’s wonder woman (In fact what they were also trying to do with Ms Marvel). Mainly, I’m just not as interested in Lyra, even in the final panel setup where she is She-Hulk, agent of ARMOUR.

In isolation, the story is patchy, basically act 1, Lyra Vs generic agents, act 2, Lyra vs. She-Hulk, Acts 3&4 Lyra vs. Dark Avengers (Who get about a lot) and so it really is pretty much fights interspersed with flashbacks. There is some interest in the alternate, female led future however, where Osborne has become head of everything and started marketing super powered enhancements, earth females are all that’s left of civilisation while males are factioned into representatives of the male dark avengers.

In fact I think I’d have preferred a story with Lyra set in her alternate future, that way it would form more of a She-Hulk legacy as opposed to looking like trying to replace the existing character.

It doesn’t help that for the moment She-Hulk appears to be MIA, with rumours of a red She-hulk appearing means the future is uncertain for Jen, for once, let’s hope the reset button comes in and Lyra is consigned to a historical curiosity. Sorry Savage She-Hulk team, but you didn’t manage to turn me around.

Last Years TV - Pushing Daisies

2009-09-18T10:04:00.001+01:00

Don’t worry; some big comic stories are coming to an end. We won’t just have reviews of last years TV until next year.

Pushing Daisies showed its final season this year. I was quite surprised it even got a second season, not because of any low quality in the show; no it was because it was such a strange and quirky piece of TV that I am still amazed it ever got past a board of execs.

This series continued the adventures of Ned, A pie maker who can bring people back from the dead. It contained the usual, episodic quirky murder of the week combined with the ongoing sub-plots such as the Ned/Chuck/Olive love triangle and Emerson’s search for his missing daughter. As a nice addition the finale had a 5 minute sequence roughly establishing how things panned out for all of the characters, while leaving the door open for more possibilities such as the proposed comic.

I’m going to miss this, its high production costs always meant it wasn’t going to survive in today’s cutthroat world of TV. As SFX pointed out in their preview of US Fall TV the wild experimentation of 2 or 3 years ago has past, scheduled next year is a long line of safe options, some promising safe options but safe none the less. Pushing Daisies shows what you can get when networks are willing to give anything a punt; it’s a series that the word Delightful was invented for, a small corner of technocolour joy in the grim dark world of modern TV, a series that could have a character in it called Randy Mann without it becoming annoying.

At the moment though I’ll have to bid a sad farewell to Ned the pie maker, to Charlotte Charles and her synchronised swimmer aunts, to Olive Snook and her random bursts into song and to Emerson Cod and all the other wonderful characters this series created.

DVD boxed sets you say, on my Xmas list.

Avengers: The Initiative #27

2009-09-13T08:56:00.003+01:00

The Initiative was almost on my drop list, Until the Disassembled storyline finished and suddenly its proper Dark Reign story kicked in. However that's not what I want to talk about.

Issue #27 mainly features the new Shadow Initiative, now not the black ops squad but more of a suicide squad made up of expendables. The issue is split into two parts, part two concerns the Shadow Initiatives mission to take back the negative zone prison recently conquered by Blastaarr in Guardians of the Galaxy and their slow realisation that they are now cannon fodder. However the first part is a story that is up there with one of the Initiatives finest stories. Yes, Christos Gage has written his very own washout.

The story is written from diary entries by Johnny Guitar, chronicling his and his friend Doctor Sax's progress through the villainous underground to eventually join the Shadow Initiative. Who, well in their own words, they fought Dazzler once.

Yes, Johnny Guitar and Dr Sax are every bit as Z-List as their names suggest. Gague however makes us feel for them, two small town losers, wanting to play music for a living but who fall into a life of crime and eventual super-villainy to support their families. It actually gives you a look about how so many of these small time criminals might decide to make up a themed costume and get a kicking from Daredevil once a month. In fact, the "Big Time" villain who tells them both to try super villainy and indeed later join Osbourne's initiative is none other that Pete Petruski, aka the trpaster, or as most know him, Paste Pot Pete, arguably the biggest looser on Spider-Man's list of foes.

Overall its a touching character based story, and you know what, I think this type of thing, a story focused on one character and their time in the initiative, could be this titles real power. I'm not against its arc plots etc, but more stories like "Washout" and "Even the Losers" would be great.

Last Years TV - Battlestar Galactica

2009-09-05T13:20:00.000+01:00

And on to another series that aired its finale this year. The end to Galactica had been eagerly awaited and not without some trepidation, could they do the series justice? Will we like the ending?

Fortunately this latter half season delivered, it delivered a lot. We have the fleet slowly tearing itself apart after the revelation that earth is a nuclear wasteland, reveal of the fifth Cylon and the cracking Mutiny. One of the funny things was how many comments that had come in last season over how annoyed Gaeta should be, he looses a leg and Starbuck just keeps getting indulged. Finally he cracks and the story is compelling stuff.

On the subject of Galactica I sometimes think its importance is overlooked. It’s getting mainstream awards and is frequently mentioned alongside non-genre TV. I may have harped on about this before but Galactica is so much more than normal crossover genre TV. Lost, Heroes even the X-Files were all set in friendly present day, its familiar and if you screw up your eyes you can pretend that you’re not watching SF, because all that SF stuff is childish and unrealistic unlike say 24 (No offence to any fans of 24 but it does get more outlandish than a lot of SF)

Galactica didn’t give you that comfort; we have humans living on a fleet of space ships being chased by killer robots. Try and tell me that isn’t SF. Surprisingly people saw through it, and aside from the odd patronising article usually citing how SF is normally for weird geeks with no girlfriends, but this is really good, it showed that crossover appeal can be achieved with a full SF setting.

While the credit crunch has sapped budgets, and indeed the Caprica spinoff looks a lot more like normal “Friendly” crossover stuff (Set on Caprica, but I’m curious how many SF trappings we will actually have) It shows it can be done. I just hope a writer takes advantage.

Captain britain and MI13

2009-08-28T13:16:00.000+01:00

I mentioned this in my “Great titles you’re not reading Damnit” post a while back. Well it’s now gone. Final issue was out a while ago and I’m now blogging about this series as a whole.

Paul Cornell did a cracking job and produced 3 great stories but sadly the comic wasn’t creating enough momentum and lacked the wolverine factor that marvel requires these days (Bitter joke, sorry, try not to let it happen again)

Anyway, it was interesting to see Cornell’s take on captain Britain, really making him up to be our premier hero, and indeed how he expanded other characters, making pete wisdom a tactical genius, working wonders with Blade and spitfire and introducing a brand new character who really worked her way into my affections. All this in a comic based more around fighting magical foes than standard superheroics.

Ok, last issue was rushed, like he was desperately trying to tie up loose ends, indeed like the rug had been pulled out, but Cornell really did a fine job wrapping up plot threads and getting everyone to a satisfactory place. He also got in a good bunch of marvel UK cameos (Surprise Appearance, Yes)

I’ll Miss Captain Britain, for all it was an American comic for an American market, it felt British, it felt like one of ours, and in the current comics market, that’s a rare thing.

Price of a Dream - Classic British Sports Car

2009-08-20T07:58:00.001+01:00

I thought I’d muse on how much it would cost me to realise one of my dreams, to own and run a classic British sports car.

I love old British sports cars, yes they’re unreliable, badly put together and slow, but they have so much charm and character. For my 30^th my wife hired me an Austin Healey 3000 for a day, it wasn’t quick, had no power steering or servo brakes and a stiff gear change, and it leaked in the rain, but the roar of that straight 6 and the heads that turned never failed to put a smile on my face. I’m smiling now, just thinking about it.

So, I decided to find out how much it would cost, now compare the meercat was a little too searching when I just wanted a vague costing in insurance, so I’ll foolishly leave that out. I have however factored in a basic mechanics course, which run for around £200 as any sports car like this needs regular maintenance.

So, a quick search on the Austin Healey reveals that to buy one would cost £50,000, ouch. I could get an MGB, but they seem to vary between £3000 and £30,000, I’m guessing on quality and how late a model (the 1980s models aren’t nearly as nice as the older ones) Finally I looked at a Triumph TR6, surprisingly this came in with a more reasonable bracket of £12,000-20,000. That’s damned reasonable, and gods if I had 20,000 burning a hole in my pocket, you may just see me barrelling about in my own TR6

While this was mostly an exercise in pipe dreams, I’m actually surprised how affordable this is on the basic outlay, obviously repair costs are higher and all these cars are thirsty beasts. I would also need a secure place to keep them as a council estate near Johnston would see me loosing said car fairly quickly. Still, I am surprised at how cheap it is. What does surprise me is that people may have 50,000 or even 20,000 and will buy a BMW, or a big Chelsea tractor. Why? You want fun; you want what driving really is, ditch these big soft modern cars and drive a classic.

Last Years TV - Stargate Atlantis

2009-08-18T13:06:00.000+01:00

It will probably be next year by the time I’ve finished rounding up all of last years TV, probably why the Pie Man television awards is a better format. Still, I thought I’d make some comments on some series.

Incidentally, Reilly 2040 has done his own version on his blog, I heartily recommend you check it out (Obviously not you Reilly 2040, you being my main reader and all)

Anyway, one show which completely failed to register on either my awards or Reilly’s was Stargate Atlantis, which is odd considering it was its final season. To be honest, it was because for a large part this season was a little bit meh.

Atlantis always did suffer from padding, not network mandated; just it tended to run on the formula of

wrap up cliff-hanger from previous season
Padding episodes
Mid season arc
Padding
Final arc leading to season cliff-hanger

It worked, provided the previous, next and mid season arcs were good enough, it’s just that this season wasn’t particularly memorable. The wrap-up and conclusion to the season opener wasn’t bad, and the slowly developing arc with Todd the wraith was fun, but in general I struggle to remember any of it. One thing I will say is that Robert Picardo was a breath of fresh air to Atlantis, finally having a leader who could genuinely cause a little friction compared to Weir’s “No Col Sheppard, don’t do that or I’ll cry”

And that’s really it, in the end I’ll miss Ronin being hard, I’ll miss Sheppard and I’ll miss Rodney McCay and his rather charming romance with Dr Keller.

On the other hand we have Universe starting this year, which looked iffy, like Stargate Voyager, but then the announcement that it featured none other than Robert Carlyle has sparked some pretty serious interest. With an Atlantis TV movie as well I’ll still be following the Stargate crews for at least another year.

War Machine in Iron man 2 Teaser

2009-08-17T14:24:00.000+01:00

The CDCC footage of Iron Man 2 has been leaked, War Machine is confirmed. I have my reservations, but can't help being excited that I get to see War Machine on the big screen. It shows teh faith I have in Favereau to do the character justice.

I hope my faith is not misplaced, roll on Iron Man 2

Race to Mars

2009-08-15T06:55:00.001+01:00

I caught this series thanks to my daughter. Yes, it’s amazing how much discovery channel you can watch while feeding a 9 month old baby her breakfast.

Race to mars is a drama about an international joint manned mission to mars, while based on mostly existing technology, and so erring away from science fiction, it isn’t quite the drama/documentary that the BBC’s series regarding a tour of the solar system was (I forget its name but it was good too). This is definitely a drama.

While it was clearly not shot on the biggest budget, no household names in the cast, CG is a few generations old; it made for remarkably compelling viewing.

As a slight interlude, the film Sunshine disappointed me. Why? Because Sunshine was so close to being a really good film regarding people doing a perilous thing in space. It should have been about people getting narky living in cramped claustrophobic close quarters and of genuine danger inherent in low tech space travel. Instead they gave us a monster man half way through. Fortunately Race to mars gets just about all its drama from the dangers inherent in flying a tin can to a distant planet, and its all the better for it.

SPOILER WARNING

There is actually a nice fake out near the end regarding a Martian Virus, not sure if it’s actually a spoiler but it made me smile.

So, if you can find this on the discovery channel again, I can heartily recommend this. Danny boyl, take note.

Showdown: Air Combat

2009-08-03T13:17:00.001+01:00

This is a series I’ve been catching and felt the need to blog about.

The premise is simple. Major Paul “Max” Moga, an F22 pilot takes us through some of histories most thrilling dogfights, looking in depth at the planes, pilots and tactics used. The key hook is that the series uses replica or surviving fighters is a mock-up to illustrate the dogfight while Max commentates from a chase plane. Why he needs to do this is unclear but it seems to keep him happy.

Now, I’m a bit of an aviation geek. I’m one of those people who enjoys playing with Microsoft flight simulator, just to fly. Love aviation history and do take a standard male pleasure watching programmes about Arial combat. This series has its high and low points. High points are definitely in the detail in which it analyses the aircraft, doing the standard tech spec analysis but combining this with sitting in cockpits to give an idea about what the pilot would actually see. The look at tactics and pilots is also interesting and the re-enactments are great for at least enjoying the view of old warplanes haring about.

The problems spawn from a problem that affects quite a lot of the Discovery Channel’s output, particularly in military documentaries. That is a heavy bias towards the US. Now I know they were very important in WWII but on occasion as a brit you do feel like shouting “Oi, we were there too, and for longer” There is also often a stereotypical American “Gung-Ho” attitude in the US documentaries that seems a little tasteless when you think about the subject matter (War) and seems almost childish when compared to the sombre approach British documentaries take.

Anyway, I initially thought my fears would not be realised as the first episode had a few surprises. It focused on the conflict between the F86 Sabre and the Mug 15. The particular focus was on the Pilot James “Jabby” Jabara, the first Jet Ace. Again, it was American-centric but this is understandable for a pilot with such an accolade. It also had some remarkable sense from the commentators, who did point out that Jabara was dangerously reckless in that particular battle. Normally US documentaries make legends of men who show Balls over brains.

However the US-Centric approach really has made the majority of the series a bit of a mixed bag. They seem short on legendary dogfights with US pilots, so we get some odd picks, in particular the legendary rivalry between the P51 mustang and the ME-109, no Spitfire then? And in quite a few of these dogfights, The mustang, The P38 vs. Zero and the Corsair vs. Zero (We see a lot of the Zero) it really is a US pilot in a superior plane, with superior tactics blundering enough to make the fight exciting.

If we got a second season I’d hope for a few non US dogfights (Russian, British, we were all in WWII) and perhaps some WWI stuff, but until then this will live as another promising series damaged by US bluster

Pick on the Little Guy

2009-07-30T06:52:00.002+01:00

In recent news, the Brew Dog brewing company has come under fire once again. People with memories may recall they had previous trouble over the branding of their beer, namely that they claimed it tasted nice and was enjoyable to drink. Both claims are true I might add, but it was considered irresponsible and to encourage binge drinking, fortunately they won the appeal. Now they are being called irresponsible for marketing a stout called Tokyo Star, which at 14% is the strongest beer brewed in Scotland.

This ticks me off, because once again people go after the smaller brewers. The Orkney brewery’s “Skull Splitter” beer received flack over its strength and its aggressive Viking themed packaging, however both Skull Splitter and Tokyo Star are craft ales, now while ale drinkers aren’t angels, we do tend to be more interested in flavour than just getting blottoed. Hell, a 350ml bottle of Tokyo Star will set you back £6, that’s pretty pricy for a binge session, and it’s a Stout, try binging on stout, I dare you, you’ll be too full to even contemplate antisocial behaviour.

Why does this tick me off, well, quite frankly, because people always seem to be going for the small firms producing craft ales, rather than the bigger contributors to alcoholism and binge drinking, cheap lager and cheaper ciders like White lightning. In fact its odd, but no one has a go at Carlsberg, for saying their beer is drunk by cool popular guys, and all the major supermarkets still get away selling packs of cheap chemical lager at knockdown prices (often down below 50p a can) so, when £6 can get you 12 500ml cans of tennents or Stella, or 1 350ml bottle of Tokyo Star, what do you think your binge drinking lout will go for?

I honestly think regulating bodies and the press now stay away from the big guys, pull up a big brewer like Carlsberg or Stella on their marketing and you’ll have a swarm of expensive lawyers set upon you, similarly if you push too hard at a major supermarket, so instead, as always the little guys get picked on. It really cheeses me off.

Final Crisis

2009-07-27T13:24:00.002+01:00

Reilly 2040 recently lent me the HC trade of DCs most recent big event, and I thought I’d put down a few thoughts about it, as well as on occasion compare it with the competitions event of around that time, Secret Invasion.

Final crisis was billed as “the Day evil won” and indeed on this front it delivers. Evil has pretty much won by about the middle of the story, which sees most of the powerhouses of the DCU out of commission, with the GLs trapped off earth, Superman away engaged in a pretty hard to follow adventure, batman captured and wonder woman turned. It’s all due to Darkseid, who I am partially familiar with as one of those uber-powerful bad guys. He’s using the anti-life equation to drag the prime earth of the 52(ish) in existence down into some sort of hellish pit. The build-up to this is pretty good and the main story where B-List heroes have to fight turned A-listers to protect the unaffected population is pretty effective.

My main issue is that it’s all a bit impenetrable for those unfamiliar. The superman beyond tie in is almost impossible to follow and many other parts are obviously set for dramatic entrances or appearances, where really, as someone unfamiliar I’m left wondering “Who?” It still makes for pretty good reading, as Alan Moore was definitely trying to do something a cut above the standard summer blockbuster. Sadly it is pretty hard to follow, particularly the superman bits, which are pretty impenetrable. The ending is also a bit of a Deus Ex Machina.

I suppose it’s not really fair to Judge Final Crisis from a new(ish) reader perspective. I am clearly not the target audience. For DC fans this may have been a huge payoff, I hope it was. For me, it was definitely better written, with more wild ideas and imagination than the slugfest of Secret Invasion, and it definitely has better pacing (Which even reading in full Secret Invasion is a mess) and better art. In fact, in just about all aspects, save approachability, this is definitely a better book than SI. But it’s not for new readers.

Thunderbolts 137 Solicit

2009-07-20T13:35:00.000+01:00

Well, this image has me very excited. Very excited indeed. It is the solicit for Thunderbolts 137 and it looks like 3 of the original Thunderbolts are back.

I hope this is some sort of plot where Songbird recruits some old friends to help her in her current battle with the existing T-Bolts, and most improtantly, that it isn't some dark avengers malarky where Thunderbolts have dressed up as Mach IV and Fixer as part of a plot.

Still, count me very interested

The Pie Man Television Awards 2009

2009-07-13T21:54:00.010+01:00

Though I will do a more comprehensive review of this years TV, I thought I would first do my own mock awards ceremony for this years TV

For information, these awards are arbitrary, no prizes will be handed out and all the winners earn is Kudos or scorn.

Best New Series.

Actually quite hard this year, we’ve had a good wash of new stuff, much of which has been interesting, much of which has also been axed. This years award really has to go to

The Middleman, a fantastically fun, daft and always brought a smile to my face. A real highlight.

Best Series,

Again tough, Galactica was great stuff this year, Chuck has been first rate, the aforementioned Middleman was good and I really liked Knight Rider. But in the end one series has stood out as must watch unmissable TV, and that is…

Lost, a great example of what a series can do when it’s not required to attract new viewers or provide a set amount of standalone episodes; it’s been brilliant this year

Most Improved Series,

Tough one, we had quite a few already good series from last year, and very little wasn’t firing on all thrusters. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a contender; you could even make a case for the end of the final season of Galactica. But however for me it must be

Ashes to Ashes. This really has found its feet in its second season, to be honest because I thinkit stopped trying to fit what worked in Life on Mars into its different dynamics, elements such as the clown being a replacement test card girl never worked. It also helped that Alex is a lot more unsure and self knowing and that the Gene Genie is much more his old self. There were some nice twists on what we thought we knew at the end of LoM as well, particularly with the shock ending. Looking forward to series 3 in a way I wasn’t for series 2.

Most gratuitous T&A in a series.

A little award to show when a series uses rather too many opportunity to shamelessly include scantily clad women. Dollhouse was a contender, particularly the first few episodes being the televisual equivalent of one of those paper dress up dolls with Eliza Dushku pretty much being there to wear different outfits. Seriously I

was expecting her do to a Nurse and a French maid next. But Dollhouse wasn’t the worst offender, nope, the winner of this illustrious award must be

Knight Rider. We go to Vegas, well in Vegas we must have shots of women lounging in the sun wearing bikinis right? Right? And next week mike’s

mission take shim to a beach resort filled with insanely attractive people while later they infiltrate a millionaire’s bikini party. Seriously, did they get money form a bikini manufacturer as well as Ford?

The Andromeda WTF is this still running award.

Due to the credit crunch this award in on Hiatus. In truth, no series this year have really fallen into this criteria. Heroes is close but I’m not quite ready to kill it just yet.

Best UK Network/Channel.

By rights this should be the BBC, their in house product has been of a good standard and they’ve learned the lesson from Sky in showing their import (just the one mind) very soon after its US airdate. Sadly they produced a fail so epic that it disqualifies them from the best channel award, they scheduled Ashes to Ashes against Heroes, they effectively went into a ratings war with themselves. Call me harsh but I do think it was a massively dumb piece of scheduling, particularly as they made Ashes to ashes, hold it for a few weeks, its not like people can torrent it until you’ve shown it (Aside form knock offs and test tapes). I also stick by my rule with the BBC, they should never have the same sort of thing on BBC 1 and 2, normally this is a criticism levelled at sport, never

have both showing sport, but its equally valid for something I actually enjoy watching. A shame because the BBC really did do well this year and sadly with a heavy heart the award must go to

Sky 1. Asidefrom settling their Tiff with virgin Sky had a good selection of top shows, all shown usually within days of the US airdate. Granted Next year they’ve lost 2 of their genre heavy hitters in Stargate Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica, but I would bet on them nabbing Stargate universe and wait to see what they look into nabbing to replace Galactica. Still they shouldn’t rest on their laurels, the BBC would have taken them this year and Dr Who is back next year, plus if Virgin 1 ever gets their act together it could actually be a contender.

The Pirate Bay award for Services to bit-torrent,

the award given to a channel which has delayed showing a series for sol long that you might as well Bit Torrent it. There were two main contenders, and its been a tough call between them. One is Virgin 1. It’s trying its best to be a free Sky 1, but whether the problem is in the schedulers (Where did you get these guys, Channel 4?) or the contracts, they have a pretty poor record with showing TV after its US debut. Virgin have 2 flagship genre shows, terminator and Chuck. It took an age to get the new series of terminator on (Perhaps something to do with not showing it until bravo finished S1 repeats, dumb idea regardless) and they decided to opt for the particularly poor option of only showing one property at a time, so we’ve had to wait even longer for Chuck.

However, Virgin 1 are not the worst offenders, that must go to

Channel 4, ah yes, channel 4, do you wonder why we all groan whenever you get a genre series. Remember Babylon 5 and the incredible floating timeslot, it was like you wanted it to fail “Wednesday at 6, ok then Sunday at 7,still watching, Thursday at a time decided by the phase of the moon. And let’s not forget how you hacked Angel to pieces and buried SG1 and Enterprise on T4. So, what have you done to incur my wrath. Reaper. Remember it, entertaining show, bit monster of the week but great fun. Where is it, Series 2 long wrapped up in the US, but where is reaper, I know you have it. Oh, unannounced return on Friday nights. Thanks for that C4.

Only the Good Die young award,

An award of series that were great but axed early. Middleman was a serious contender for this but I reckon I’ll invent an award for what happened to it. Nope this one goes to

Pushing Daises, A great dollopof gentle whimsy, we never expected it to survive, and I worried that the quality would eventually dip. This one has Cult series written all over it.

Never given a proper chance award,

for good shows that should have had more done for them, and would have been higher rated with a little more commitment from the network. This Goes to

Middleman, it was almost doomed out of the gate, No one saw it coming because ABC Family seemed to keep the existence of the show secret. A damn shame as I reckon with even some marketing this could have been huge.

Most promising 1^st Season.

Hmm, tough one this, Was tempted to give it to Knight Rider or Middleman, but both have been axed and so it’s a bit of an empty award if they don’t get a chance to follow it up. Instead I’ll name

Being Human, for a series based on a premise that seems to be the start of a joke, they’ve built up a universe and a mythology around their Ghosts, vampires and werewolves.This is impressive since, being a UK series it was substantially shorter than its US counterparts. Season 2 will be on us in a few months and I really can’t wait to see the fallout

Most Off the Boil Series.

For a series that was once great, and isn’t rubbish, but just doesn’t seem to be hitting the target at the moment.

Heroes, to be honest, its been off since season 2, its actually quite odd to think that during Season 1 of heroes it was Lost that seemed to be floundering around, going nowhere and Heroes was just blowing it out of the water. How things have changed. They’ve tried improvements, and some made for good TV, problem is I get a real feeling that the show runners have no idea where they’re going, and the series is floundering because of it. I think the negative response to series 2 shook them, possibly they had a plan then, but now they’re just scrambling to try and keep people happy. Great TV this does not make.

The Reilly 2040 Worst padding award.

Named after a good friend and fellow blogger who is begging for the US to consider 13 episode seasons rather than give us 7 episodes of dull padding a year. There is only one choice for this year’s winner

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. When this series is advancing its plot, its top stuff. I mean really good. However when its padding it can be dire. This series suffered form too many padding single episode stories and not enough advancing of the plot. Shame because what we saw of the plot was brilliant. To paraphrase the person this award is named for, “I nearly fell asleep during an episode set in a sleep clinic”

Worst network interference,

for when networks damage perfectly good series through stupid interference. A contender for this was Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The call from Fox for more standalone episodes and fewer arc plot ones gave us the padding I lambasted in the last award. However possibly the worst example has to be

Dollhouse. It had an intriguing concept, and there is definite promise in some of the later episodes, but once again Fox intervened with a call for more stand alone and less arc plot. They probably asked for more changes which resulted in re-writing and in cases shooting the pilot and the first 5 episodes. From what the rumbles are, it was so Joss could take the series from where Fox wanted it to still work with his longer

plans. As a result, Dollhouse has been a bit of a mess frankly.

Pie Man special award.

An arbitrary award given to a show for reasons of my choosing. Winner is

Chuck. Chuck is great fun, and series 2 (What I’ve seen of it Virgin 1) has been good so

far. Chuck wins the special award because I’ve not seen enough of it to compete for another category, and also because it is the series that could stand alone on its supporting cast comedy sub-plots.

Graceful retirement award,

An award for a series that has retired before its gone woefully downhill. This could have been Pushing Daises, but I reckon it had another year at least in it. Nope, it has to be

Battlestar Galactica. Great ending, and it ended, wasn’t axed and left hanging (terminator) wasn’t run out until you were begging for no more. It ended, story told. Well done

The McMillan’s Pasties – now with over 20% real cow, a true lunch treat – award for shameless product placement

An award for a series that has a marketing man’s fingerprints all over it. Who else but

Knight Rider. So, KITT is a mustang, not bad, I likes my muscle cars, but he can turn into other vehicles in a massively unlikely way, fine, it’sa silly show, that’s why I love it. But for some reason, KITT can only turn into cars manufactured by ford. What next, the Autobots only transforming into cars manufactured by Chevrolet?

Guilty pleasure award,

for a series that wasn’t particularly good but which I found strangely enjoyable, but probably wouldn’t tell too many people.

Bonekickers. Ok, was it Genre TV, probably towards the not side of the grey area. It was dumb, its history was flawed and for a team of archaeologists they seemed to destroy every valuable find. They wrecked Excalibur for gods’ sakes. However it was daft fun and I have a wee soft spot for it. In no other series will you see a man attempt to fight an armed man by quoting significant dates from history at him.

Worst treatment of a series.

This is for a channel, network, or other body who I reckon has mistreated a series. Naturally Channel 4 and Virgin 1 were both contenders, 4 for Reaper, Virgin 1 for the late arrival of Chuck, ITV were even in the running for the graveyard slot for Pushing Daisies, and no publicity for season 2. But the award for Worst treatment of a series has to go to

Virgin 1 for their treatment of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. So, you have a big show from the US, what do you do? Well, let’s start it late. That’s fun. Make sure some people have given in and started bit-torrenting by the time we show the first episode. Next, oh this is better, you know, why have we been putting this high profile show, which we clearly have spent money on buying and publicising, on at a peak 9pm slot? People might watch it, nah, lets shunt worlds most violent neds on at that time and push it back to 10, that way it’s probably on too late for people who want to sleep, or have a job, or like to watch the news. And gods help you if you want to catch the +1. Good Job virgin, really nice.

So, its been long and rambling, but perhaps this will spur me on into actually writing up some stuff about what I’ve said on here in more detail. Review of the year, here we come.

Experimental Phase

2009-07-13T21:52:00.002+01:00

I am now experimenting with typing up my blog posts in a word procesor and copying and pasting. Next post is a biggie so should highlight any problems I may run into.

It will be mirrored on my wordpress site so let me know which you prefer

Interim Solution

2009-07-09T09:25:00.002+01:00

Ok, so here is my interim solution which should hopefully mean I still get posts up. I plan to type out posts in word or notepad at work, then send or memory stick them back to my PC here, then upload them to the blog. Not ideal, but best I can think of at the moment, am open to suggestions however about how to beat my work filters.

Meanwhile I plan to keep both blogs running in tandem at the moment until we can all decide which host we prefer. May still keep the other as a backup

Attack of the Clones

2009-06-27T23:29:00.002+01:00

I have cloned my blog, A mirror exists over in Wordpress at this address
http://pieman70.wordpress.com/

The move is by no means permenant, I have to test wordpress against work's filters. STill a backup is always nice. May play with wordpress and see if I prefer it to blogger.

As always will keep you posted

Apologies

2009-06-26T22:50:00.002+01:00

A quick apology, my posting may be even more sporadic of late. Work has finally twigged that people may be blogging during working hours, so they have blocked any blogger sites. Reilly 2040 will be glad to know his blog is still accessable. I may look into moving to wordpress or something. I will look through the blogs and follow and see what the work filters still allow. I may even write posts in word at work and upload in free time at home. Even so, apologies to anyone for the more sporadic than normal posting