with Martin Blank??

Since when did they start selling advertising for referee's uniforms?? WTF??

Is there some Premiership rule I don't know about that says that teams now have to have a yellow away strip? Liverpool, Charlton, Arsenal, Spurs, Southampton...?

John Terry. You make enough money: get a decent hair cut.

Image galleries updated with rather larger photos. Canada galleries updated next week, maybe.

Rail users 'denied cheap tickets'

Now, wouldn't this explain why we haven't been able to book tickets cheap rail tickets to Chester for the last year...?

British Gas puts up energy prices
And the BBC uncritically tells people that they can save £50 by switching to payment by direct debit. Which they could, if they all had bank accounts, and we already know many of the people most affected by this increase don't, and if they could also afford the risk of having the contents of their bank accounts seized if they aren't able to/don't pay their bills, which they can't, which is why many of the poorest people in the UK pay these types of bills by cash.

But hey, middle class news for the middle classes, because everyone worth knowing already has a bank account, n'est pas?

England got absolutely hammered. The audience loved it...

Image galleries updated with rather larger photos.

Penguin backs down on Katie.com

Huge pay rises for NHS bosses
So, the NHS can't get good management staff and think they need to pay more and so have hired the Hay Group to tell them how to recruit and retain and pay staff.

Now, in a similar vein Universities also have huge managment problems, with a tradition of promoting the incompetent, being unable to identify and or recruit good managers, with a bizarre HR system that seems to be designed to ensure that administrators/managers cannot build a case for internal promotion through expanding their remits, taking on new roles, supervising staff etc.. And who designed the HR/promotion system UK universities use?

Yes, it was Hay.

BBC NEWS | Weather gets 3D gaming makeover
Oh, great. Now we will get very pretty and atmospheric and pseudo-realistic pictures of the weather. What we really need are more accurate weather forecasts: the BBC/Met Office local weather forecasts are absolutely rubbish...

Have completely changed the gallery and image pages: I think they're cleaner/clearer and generally better.

Hooverphonic: Blue Wonder
Is ZERO if you can't get it when you want it. Not a single record store in Edinburgh has any Hooverphonic albums, not to mention the particular one I want. And the music industry wonders why sales are down?? Hopefully somewhere in Glasgow will have it...

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Newspaper CD giveaways attacked
I love the music industry, I really do. Where else can we get so many people who are obviously from a different planet than the rest of us?? Music "managers" are upset that newspapers are giving away CDs - apparently this "give[s] an impression that music is free". Well, this "music" is free, just like all that stuff on the RADIO...

It also sends a message that music is cheap and disposable

Well well. Since when hasn't popular music been cheap and disposable?? Are you proud of every CD/LP/tape you bought? Don't you wish the ones you want to get rid of had a resale value of more than 50p? In many cases the resale value of something determines its true worth, and in the case of most music that's bugger all.

Going by my error logs, I seem to have rather comprehensively buggered up the RSS/RDF/XML feeds... I think this is now fixed...

I know, you think no, that's just not possible, but it's true. Where do Atlantic hurricanes go to die?? Usually they go off somewhere to the north-east, away from the US and Canada and the Caribbean, and everyone forgets about them.

But not people in the UK. Increasingly it seems that Atlantic hurricanes decide to do the trans-ocean tour, and come across and give us a good soaking, as Hurricane Charlie has just done to the Scots, Hurricane Alex did to the Welsh at the beginning of the month, and the remnants of another are about to do to England.

Radio Scotland Live at the Spiegeltent
The success of this show often depends upon the mix of guests, and unlike yesterday today's lot were pretty indifferent, with the marked exception of Paul Tonkinson who was very interesting and swapped stories of touring Iraq with Fred.

♦♦♦♦♦

Bobbies, thugs and dynamism
To understand what this is all about you need a quick introduction to that wonderful thing known [in Edinburgh] as the Ned [i.e. Non-Educated-Delinquent]. This group goes by a wide variety of different names across the UK [also known as 'schemies' - people who live on local government owned housing schemes] but is an increasingly well known social group and the focus of growing social angst amongst the UK's chattering classes.

To caraciture/summarise, the pejorative analysis of neds is that of a social group [whose members are often, though not always, working class] whose members have absolutely no social skills whatsoever, who are regularly drunk in public [and not at the 'usual' times either...], willing to shout at and/or beat their kids in public [which I suspect is the basis of much of the push in the UK to ban smacking children], and who are utterly contemptuous of people outside their social/family group, and uncaring of their impact upon others around them. They are also often extremely skinny, extremely pale, often tattooed, the men often have earrings and short/very short haircuts/clipped hair, and characteristically dress in shell suits [a type of faux polyester sporting clothing, with matching jackets and pants] and often wear something closely resembling Burberry plaid, a fact which has (incidentally) all but destroyed large segments of the market for Burberry amongst the middle and upper classes in the UK. [Update: Pub-goers facing 'Burberry' ban].

I realise this may sound rather like an up-to-date description of 21st century punks, but I think that punk might have been a rather more of a middle class movement/rebellion. There is an increasingly visceral backlash against neds, e.g. City scheme cracks down on yobs.

BBC SPORT | Hearts reveal stadium buyer
If they'd been willing to sell a few years ago Hearts might have been able to sell the site to a supermarket: they've prevaricated too long and now that ASDA's redone their Chesser store [which admittedly is aimed towards the suburbs around Craiglochart] and Sainsbury's got a large site just 800 yards down the road, there was no other interest in the site: still, if they had any sense they'd re-develop it themselves...

Radio Scotland Live at the Spiegeltent
Bit of stand up from Fred to warm up the audience, the guests (Priorite a Gauche and The Consultants) were absolutely brilliant [aside from some wee bugger who claimed to have known Andrew Gilligan as a child and who was hence rather superfluous], what more could you want, particularly for free? Ok, the coffee was awful, but otherwise license payer's money well spent.

♦♦♦♦♦

BBC NEWS | X-list plan for 'vile' buildings
A good idea, which may be long overdue in some eyes but which may cause all sorts of disagreements... still, anything which gets people talking about space and place and buildings is probably a good thing. Surprisingly, and it is a surprise because it concerns Edinburgh City Council, there is a long-term discussion going on now which does aim to see large amounts of Princes Street knocked down to build something more appropriate...

Telegraph | Sport | Pie in the Sky as MotD manage to miss the boat[registration required]
With so much live football available to those who can and will pay, what is the point of Match of the Day? Recorded highlights, however well presented, are now of historical interest only.
You do have to love the Daily Telegraph, you really do - where else would you find anything half as facile (and I'm excluding Private Eye as they do it on purpose...)? Many (although admittedly no-one who reads the Telegraph) can't or won't pay to watch live football. As an aside, many of us in this latter group pay (through our license fee...) to watch MotD.

Humour me if you will. Assume that there are ten Premiership games on a weekend (which, for the point of this exercise, will be deemed to include Monday night). Three of them will be absolutely god-awful. Two will show some potential but turn out to be mostly dire. Three will highlight middling/decent/good teams who may or may not decide to put in a decent performance, depending upon the phase of the moon, the number of r's in the month and whether a dead chicken has recently been waved over the centre-circle. (The latter two groups invariably overlap.) There may be one game with a good team playing well, and then there's the Arsenal game.

Now, would you willingly sit through all that, hoping for the good bits?? Of course not. Would you even sit through four or five games, hoping for he good bits? Of course not. Would you watch four or five simultaneously, to make sure you know the instant anything happens? (Of course not, that's what Radio 5 Live is for...)

Which is why you watch MotD, because some poor sod has had to suffer through all this for you, and you get to see whichever watchable bits they can find, plus quite a few more un-watchable bits they sneak in to fill the time slot. The joys. Which is why we watch recorded highlights: most of the time they're the only interesting bits anyway.

Council Leaders defend a bigger Kinnaird
A massive expansion of the Fort Kinnaird shopping centre will be "in the best interests of the whole city"

Well, the expansion won't be massive, and it won't be in the best interests of the city as a whole, but it will certainly be in the best interests of the City of Edinburgh Council, who are desperate to get every penny in taxes out of retailers that they possibly can.

Another two fingers to the city centre retailers, but then the council doesn't seem to think much of them anyway, so that's no real surprise.

between Extra funding for capital police force and City police cash blow.

The former is ooh, extra £600,000 for Lothian and Borders Police, isn't that great, while the second points out this is rather less than what L&B Police actually asked for... and that the police have already spent the money anyway.

There are two real issues here. The first is that for a very long time the L&B Police have been woefully underfunded, stretched to their limits and increasingly unable to do all of their jobs.

The second is the increasing lack of nuance in the BBC's online news, which I think has become more and more noticeable over the last year. Increasingly the BBC seems to package "news" as a collection of facts, usually presented without context, and summed up with bland and sometimes arbitrary conclusions masquerading as analysis. Maybe this is because their online news articles are just so damn short...??

Frustrated in Florida...
Many of the people hit by Charley lived in mobile homes and lost almost everything

You know, there are very few things in life dumber than living in a mobile home in a part of the world that's popular with hurricanes: it's not a question of if you're going to lose everything, it's just a matter of when you're going to lose everything.

Not that I'm unsympathetic to these people, because I am, but methinks a slightly more thoughtful local/state government [I mean, they knew all about hurricanes, right???] might have saved them from ever being in this predicament in the first place.

25th Anniversary Edition
The best of the three NewsRevue shows I've seen, topical [unlike last year's version, which felt somewhat outdated] and occasionally savage. The George Bush caricatures are on the verge of becoming stale, although the Gordon Brown shows promise. The songs are brilliant, although several are repeats from last year.

♦♦♦♦♦

Still not sorry
Stream of consciousness patter on parents, relationships, the Atkins Diet and the close ideological relationship between the Nazis and the Smurfs. Frighteningly intelligent comedy.

♦♦♦♦♦

Planet Corduroy
Brilliant, scathing and occasionally savage work from the man who suffers for his art in a corduroy suit under the spotlights. Heartfelt political satire, from George Bush to France through the Butler Report to asylum seekers via the fascists [including his mum] who read the Daily Mail.

♦♦♦♦♦

The Keith Barret Show
Short and Welsh [surely not related, those...] this is essentially the same as the TV show of the same name, but much much better. Brydon was surprised to find the builder who did his loft conversion sitting in the front row, and things got better from then. Incredibly quick witted, the show seems completely unscripted yet is extremely polished. He was very good last year, and is even better this year.

♦♦♦♦♦

Men in Love
A two man sketch show, although sometimes it seemed to be more of a two man very-very-short play show instead. A lot of it was very good, some of it was strange, and bits of it were downright bizarre. Excellent performances, though the material did let them down at times.

Unfortunately held in one of the hottest venues in the Pleasance - be prepared to drip with sweat for an hour.

♦♦♦♦♦

Jacob's Bladder (and Other Libel Stories)
Interesting venue, and with a larger audience this blend of rather strange songs and poems would go down a storm. Shame there were only 12 of us there, including his mum and dad. Bless.

♦♦♦♦♦

Lady Luck
Despite starting an hour late, the show was perfectly amiable and generally interesting without ever really taking off - the role of 'luck' in life is an interesting premise but not much to structure a show around. The general incompetence of those running the Assembly rooms didn't help matters.

♦♦♦♦♦

The Lost and Lonely Rebels
Miles Jupp and two friends try the sketch show thing... started off very weakly, but improved markedly halfway through and ended strongly. Some of the sketches were quite surreal [which is good], but all in all last year's solo show was much better.
♦♦♦♦♦

Ruling raps "broadband" definition
Only in the UK do you have to stop companies claiming low speed [512k] broadband is "full speed"... although admittedly this is a market where companies are allowed to describe 192k connections as 'broadband'...

Despite all the governmental rhetoric about the importance of 'broadband Britain', it is very noticeable that we aren't seeing increases over 512k download speeds in standard home packages... announcements like Cox's recent increases in download speeds are unheard of in the UK.

While the UK broadband market may appear to be competitive, with some inexpensive basic connection packages, most of these accounts come with very low monthly transfer quotas: many broadband consumers are still [efffectively] paying per megabyte download fees.

£137,000 [i.e. $250,000] for this?

Owen going to Madrid
Now this may go down in history as one of the strangest transfer sagas LFC have been involved with. Player happy, definitely staying, his choice of manager hired, negotiations suddenly in trouble, player benched, possible player swaps both decline to move, player leaves for peanuts plus someone nobody in the UK has ever heard of [yes, Senor Nˆ†ˆ±ez, we mean you]. If Morientes had been included then it may have been worth it, I wonder if the clubs've tacked on a rider that Madrid won't bid for Alonso??

We knew this would be a year of changes, but didn't expect quite so many...

Friday the 13th. Not quite the Ides of March, but in truth a close bloody second.

Marginal Revolution: Further thoughts on declining architecture

Yes, it is true that Europeans and Asians may place a higher premium on design than Americans, and this may be because we live in denser cities and individual buildings have a greater impact, and the mistakes of the 60s and 70s still weigh upon our consciousness. There is a link between density and the automobile, but it is a nuanced relationship and there are issues like house and plot sizes, and architectural/social styles that also have considerable impacts.

On the other hand, we also have many preserved historic areas, and this may function directly or indirectly to raise architectural standards - i.e. 1) how will a building look in its pseudo-preserved surroundings, and more often 2) you need to provide a good enough design to get permission to knock old buildings down, which seems to be one of London's favourite ways of planning.

I do find the whole fetishization of European construction bizarre, to put it mildly. The very best buildings are beautiful works of art, the average ones often poor, if not rubbish. There is a distinct lack of qualified tradesmen [a problem which I dare say is not limited to Europe], and the economics of the industry are profoundly skewed - a friend who is a carpenter doesn't build cabinets, he makes forms for poured concrete, as the pay's markedly higher. The Scottish Parliament has been built partly by Romanian carpenters, as they couldn't get enough of the local variety.

And at the end of the day we have to realise that since the emergence of the post-war modernist movement, there has been bugger all relationship between architecture and most construction.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Recycling reaches all-time-high
But not, of course, in Scotland, where we appear not to believe in such things.
<sarcasm>Perhaps the native thrift make such things unnecessary...?</sarcasm>

BBC NEWS | Many graduates in unskilled jobs
And this surprises who, exactly, aside from the BBC? If your aim is to get 50% of the population into Universities, you will end up with the Ontario model, where most people who serve you in shopping malls have been to university.

University as a learning experience, yes, but perhaps not an educational one.

Ghost Bike Pittsburgh
This is a brilliant [but also very sad] idea. While many places are very anti-pedestrian, they are often even more anti-cyclist.

A cyclist's "right" to the road is a very fragile thing, very much more de jure rather than de facto. Which doesn't excuse the fact that many cyclists are jerks either.

The Death of the Diner in New York City
Saw this on megnut last month...

Different people have different indicators of the health of a neighbourhood: some look at vacancy rates, others look for hardware stores. When community icons like these close, neighbourhoods change, permanently, and rarely for the better.

PS: "The healthy city" and an article on cheeseburgers. Whoops...

City Comforts Blog: Not enough time this morning..
More on buildings and place, and the relationship between them, and how this relates to urban form. The difference between site and place [i.e. the role of a building's context and it's affect on its surroundings] should be a key practical [and theoretical] distinction between urban disciplines, particularly between architecture and geography. The fact that it is not is quite an indictment of the latter.

This article in Making Places is a pretty good summary of where I'm coming from.

Marginal Revolution: Has urban architecture declined?

Wandering around Edinburgh, Tyler ponders a perceived decline in semi/modern urban architecture. There are a couple of reasons for this he misses:

1. Postwar architecture developed free of the design constraints inherent within the pre-war planning system in the UK. The post-war need to rebuild meant that local authorities lost the ability to refuse planning permission for eyesores [etc.].

2. Postwar planners developed a love for eyesores, and a deep longing for the ability to redesign cities in a 'rational' way [particularly to suit the needs of the automobile...]. It will take at least another 50 years to fix these mistakes in the UK.

3. The regeneration of housing stock, particularly the very poor housing for much of the working class, was the impetus behind much post-war suburban design/development, rather than the continued development of upper/middle class suburbs.

Tyler is right to say that we do idealise times past - in urban terms not only do we idealise past times but we also often profoundly misunderstand them. The Royal Mile today is very much not a "historic" street, but a product [mainly] of the 1890s and the 1990s.

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/964722

well, a bright new beginning, perhaps... moved from blogger to MT - will see how long it takes us to get this installation up to speed [not very long, in hindsight...] and how long it takes to get it looking how we want [rather longer, in hindsight...]

BBC SPORT | Football | Charlton secure Murphy deal
Oh well... :-(

BBC SPORT | Premiership sack race
I think the odds against Santini going are rather generous, to put it mildly...