Get On with it Bendis

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

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

Ahem

I'm not a Skrull, honest.

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

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

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

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

Damned Dirty Scroungers

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

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

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

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

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

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

By-Election and Leadership Kerfuffle

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

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

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

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

Yet more Transport

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

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

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

Nextwave

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

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

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

Cost of Living (Tax it again)

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Year's TV: UK

Or More specifically how good is Bernard Cribbins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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