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Month: May 2006
The Idiot’s Lantern, the seventh episode of Doctor Who, was creepy fantastic.
A wonderful episode that was really quite disturbing and if hundreds of thousands of kids across the country don’t have nightmares about ‘The lady from the TV coming to get them’ tonight I’ll be surprised. This one did have the fear factor.
Fabulous bit of writing by Mark Gatiss who also wrote the excellent episode from the first season The Unquiet Dead.
It was perfectly cast I thought. Maureen Lipman was outstanding as the villain of the piece and both Ron Cook and Jamie Foreman were great in their roles as Magpie and Eddie Connolly.
The shots of a faceless grandmother and that of a faceless Rose will stay with me for many days I feel.
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San Andreas
I’m very late with jumping on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas bandwagon but I don’t have a PS2 and it came out much much later on the XBox and I wasn’t prepared to pay full whack for it by then so I never bothered.
But thanks to ebay and the cheapness of the second hand market I’m now on board and boy is it a great fun game.
It’s dangerous though as I feel it is bleeding into my real life and I find myself supressing the urge to jack people’s cars when they stop at traffic lights when I’m walking by.
I’ve been enjoying pimping and doing drive-bys though and they are fun in the game too.
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Not fit for purpose
The new Home Secretary John Reid has vented fury at Home Office over the prisoners fiasco.
John Reid yesterday made a startling attack on the Home Office as he revealed that the department still did not know the whereabouts of hundreds of foreign prisoners who should have been considered for deportation.
The home secretary said the department was “not fit for the purpose: averse to a culture of personal responsibility, technologically ill-equipped for an era of mass migration and led by officials that are incapable of producing facts or figures that remain accurate for even a short period of time”.
Not fit for purpose and technologically ill-equipped!
And this is the department to be put in charge of one of the most technically complex IT projects in the history of the UK, the Identity Cards system.
It was bad enough when we believed that the Home Office was at least competent but now when even the Home Secretary is attacking his own department there is little hope that the ID Cards will not end up a complete and utter fucking shambles that will cause more harm than good to the citizens of the UK.
I’ve recently discovered an organisation called Kiva.
What is Kiva?
Kiva lets you loan as little as $25 to a qualified low income entrepreneur in the developing world.
How does it work?
Kiva partners with local organizations to screen businesses and administer your loan. Our partners average a historical repayment rate of +96%.
I think this is a brilliant alternative to outright charitable donations as a way of aiding those in the developing world. Now comes the hard part choosing which individual I should make a loan to.
Science Fiction writer Charlie Stross takes a look at the future of the British Identity Card and the National Identity Register in his Report on the state of the National Identity Register, May 2016
A piece of speculative fiction admittedly but one that I think will hit very close to the mark a decade down the line.
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They’re Made out of Meat
One of my favourite SF short stories They’re Made out of Meat by Terry Bisson has been made into a short film, which like most short films is available to be viewed at YouTube.
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Reshuffle farce
The notion of best man for the job was never really the case in cabinet reshuffles of the past but at least many times ministers were chosen from the brightest and the best of a party’s MPs.
The floundering Blair is I feel trying to shore up his premiership by shuffling in his most loyal supporters into key positions at the expense of the quality of the members of the cabinet. Back in November 2005 Tim Ireland wrote. [via]
The only people Blair can appoint to his cabinet or count on in the pursuit of his reforms have to have backed him over the war on Iraq then and continue to back him to this day. And anyone who can do that with a smile on their face is duplicitous, stupid or woefully misinformed. It’s no longer a case of the best man or woman for the job.
The removal of John Prescott’s portfolio whilst retaining his services as Deputy Prime Minister is the most bizarre result of this recent fiasco. Hopefully this farcical thing will doom Blair but I have a feeling that yet again for Teflon Tony the shit won’t stick to him.
Does give the chance to make an awful political joke though about Prescott losing his briefs yet again. Expect to see that one in the Daily Mail if it hasn’t already appeared there.
The Conservative leader David Cameron could be right when he says that the Cabinet reshuffle shows the government has lost its authority and is in terminal decline. There is still plenty of time and opportunity for the party to win back the electorate though and I hope they can see that ditching Blair would be an excellent step towards doing that.
If last week’s episode was like old school Doctor Who at it’s best then this was definitely new school Doctor Who at it’s best. You would never have had a story like this in the old days which was basically a love story involving the Doctor against a typical time travel background.
The robots would have scared me as a seven year old more than anything else so far this series. Like Sophia Myles said in Doctor Who Confidential they were like sinister clowns. Smiling but deadly, it can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
Madame Du Pompadour was great, she was intelligent, brave, commanding and very beautiful. I could totally fall for a woman like that. 
Godspeed my lonely angel
I thought it was heartbreakingly poignant stuff.
Bloody Cybermen next week. Cool.
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Local election results.
The Labour party were given a bit of a bloody nose in this election but it wasn’t enough for them to get rid of the liability that is Blair. Sad to see that the voters swung the way of the Tories instead of the other way towards the Liberals or Green.
That bullying venal fat fuck Charles Clarke is out of a job though which is great news.