Archive for the 'in the news' Category

Drama on my doorstep…

Fyse December 13th, 2005

The sprawling behemoth of 21st century communication has brought footage of catastrophe across the world straight into our living rooms. Graphic images of cities ablaze are all too familiar, but through our televisions they seem thousands of miles away, and normally are. How strange it is, therefore, to step from my front door, look west, and see a huge pall of black smoke snaking high into the sky.

A small town I visit regularly making international headline news is pretty surreal, and there was something farcical and faintly comic about the caption ‘Live from Hemel Hempstead’. Dramatic footage, complete with breathless and over excited reporter, all from just down the road. The unfolding drama is brought even closer to home since anyone ringing the emergency information line tomorrow afternoon could well speak to my Mum. She works for the local council and volunteered to man the phones for a while, since many of the official ‘Emergencies Committee’ have been working round the clock since early Sunday morning.

I presume the events have made headlines the world over, so I wont bother with any details. The extent of the coverage was demonstrated earlier this evening when my parents received an email from a concerned friend in Mauritius. The last newsworthy event that I mentioned in my blog was probably the July 7th attacks in London, and thank goodness this one isn’t the same order of magnitude. Thus far there hasn’t been a single fatality, and it allows the pyromaniac in me to slightly appreciate the majesty of such a huge blaze. Reports are that the explosion measured 2.4 on the Richter scale, and was audible over a hundred miles away. At the time I was nearly 200 miles north, but knowing me would have slept straight through it anyway…

07-07-2005

Fyse July 10th, 2005

There’s not a whole lot I can say about the events of Thursday, and certainly nothing of value to add to the millions of words already written. I’m sure you’ve all read more than you can stomach, but Ian McEwan writing in the Guardian on Friday morning is worth reading, as is London blogger Diamond Geezer, who recalled his post in the aftermath of the Madrid bombs last year.

As for my own experience, I first heard of events at about 11 o’clock, and then spent the next seven or eight hours in front of the TV. I fielded a couple of calls from concerned relatives, checking that my Dad wasn’t in London (he often commutes through King’s Cross), but fortunately he was working from home on Thursday. At around 16.30 my brother rang from Greece, on holiday with friends, having come back from a boat trip to hear news of the attacks. He was fortunate in getting straight through, but a couple of his companions waited several hours before receiving reassurance. St Albans is only 20 minutes train ride north of King’s Cross and consequently has a huge number of commuters, including the parents of several of my brother’s friends.

I guess with events such as these everyone has a story to tell, and can count themselves fortunate if it is only of friends stranded or near misses. The only member of my family in the vicinity was a cousin, above ground on a bus at the time, who safely found her way to her office soon afterwards. As for my friends, I have a few working in central London this summer, one of whom I was speaking to earlier this evening. His usual route to work takes him on the Edgware Road line, but by amazing luck he decided on Thursday to test an alternative route. By the time they shut down the trains entirely he was above ground again, but the timing of his journey would have probably taken him on the very train that was attacked. Stories of such narrow escapes are not uncommon and it is sobering to think of the flip-side; those who ran onto the trains as the doors were shutting, or just happened to have a meeting in London that day.

I left a host of unanswered questions in my last post, and I will be sure to address them next time. I’ve managed to find some work for these few weeks, yielding tales of fridge wrestling and fork-lift riding. On Monday I travel to the exotic climes of Swindon. These tales and more in the next exciting dispatch from the Floating Face…

All over for another few years…

Fyse May 6th, 2005

That’s right, it’s another post about the British election! D’you get much coverage over the in the US? There’s practically as much coverage here of your elections as there are of ours, but I somehow doubt that’s reciprocated. Anyway, this will conclude my mercifully brief election commentary, I promise.

I was up until about 1 o’clock on Thursday night, long enough to see the first twenty or so seats declared. The press coverage during the campaign had me convinced (quite correctly) that Labour would win, so there wasn’t enough tension to keep me interested far into the small hours. I was also struck by how pointless such coverage is, with its slick graphics and even slicker pundits, and I dread to think how many hundreds of BBC employees were involved in producing it all. When it comes down to it, what purpose is served by innumerable experts debating the likelihood of a particular outcome when everyone will know for certain just a few hours later? I’m not saying it isn’t compelling viewing much of the time, but a whole load of hot air is produced with no apparent progress. It brought to mind the conversation between Broomfondle, Magic-Thighs and Deep-Thought, if you know what I mean! (Apologies if you don’t, and now think I am a few sandwiches short of a picnic…)

Anyway, Labour are back in with a vastly reduced majority, and at least that means we haven’t woken up to a country governed by the odious Michael Howard. Labour lost loads of seats, the Conservatives gained quite a few, the Liberal Democrats won a handful more, and one poor constituency has been lumbered with the lunatic George Galloway. Winning the seat for the newly founded Respect party, Mr Galloway used his victory speech to accuse all those in a five mile radius of gross corruption, before later reiterating the assertion that his opponent was coated in the blood of a thousand innocents. Quite what the people of Tower Hamlets have let themselves in for remains to be seen, but I can’t see him spending much time addressing the needs of his constituents.

It’s the election, stupid!

Fyse May 1st, 2005

Though I try to keep political commentary to a minimum, I could hardly ignore the forthcoming general election, and I’ve actually already voted, since I’m voting by post in my home constituency. There’s quite a scandal surrounding the new system of postal votes, and I certainly found it very easy to do. I’m not convinced this is a good thing, since I’d have been a lot happier being forced to go through a few identity checks. As it is, all I had to do was fill in a simple form, then fill in and return the voting forms once they arrived. Sure, I had to get someone to witness my vote, verifying that I am who I claim to be, but they’re hardly going to check them all. In fact, I’d be surprised if they checked any of them. There have been nervous predictions of Florida-style shenanigans, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the results in some wards are contested. (Particularly those where there have apparently been thousands of void forms distributed.)

Diamond Geezer is a blog I have recently begun to read, and he has an interesting graphic showing the voting of different newspaper readerships in the last election. I had no idea the percentage of Mirror readers voting Labour was so high, and that as many as 16% of Guardian readers voted Conservative. As for the proportion of Guardian readers voting Labour, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it drop below 50% this time round. I’ll leave you guessing which paper I read myself.

Modern politics certainly doesn’t fit on the simple political spectrum, and the folks at Political Compass have handily added an extra dimension to proceedings. As well as the simple economic labels of ‘left’ or ‘right’, a new ‘authoritarian’ or ‘libertarian’ axis has been added. There’s an online test to plot yourself in this landscape, as well as graphs showing the positions of famous polemical figures, historical and current. I took the test (all 61 questions) and found myself plotted squarely in the bottom left corner. My close neighbours include Nelson Mandela, The Dalai Lama and Ghandi. Whooo!!

‘Click’

Fyse April 1st, 2005

Just a short post to say watch this video. It was on pretty much all channels just before 8 o’clock last night, and has loads of ‘big name stars’ in it. Watch it, follow the links, and then start bullying some politicians.

The new blog is still ‘under development’. I might make the switch to WordPress sooner rather than later, and just use a standard template till I make my own. I’ve got a really cheesy / scary new banner to use at the top though. (Maybe I’ll decide to go for something slightly less tacky in the end….)

My only post on the subject, I swear…

Fyse November 3rd, 2004

So, who’s rather apprehensive about the next four years? *raises hand*

Utterly unbelievable…

Fyse October 20th, 2004

Guardian Unlimited - US elections 2004 - Hollow Victory

“US blogger Markos Moulitsas is wary of Republican attempts to ’steal’ another election.”

Sorry about another political post, but you must read this story. I just can’t believe people can get away with things like this.

Mercifully short political rant… (feel free to ignore)

Fyse October 20th, 2004

I’m quite a politcally minded person, or at least I take an active interest in it, but I don’t wish this blog to reflect that too much. I’ve read other ‘politcal commentary’ blogs from people as semi-informed and opinionated as I, and they’re really quite dull. That said, I simply can’t help but rant about some of the things I read today. A newspaper article in ‘The Guardian’ explains it all better than I can, but let me give you a couple of the highlights.

“…there was the attempt to undertake a new purge of alleged ex-felons from Florida’s voter lists - the same practice that left up to 22,000 people, mainly African-Americans, wrongly denied a vote in 2000.”

22,000?! Apparently around 80% of African-Americans vote Democrat, so if they made up only two thirds of those excluded, that would mean at least 10,000 potential votes for Gore lost. Bush was eventually judged to have ‘won’ Florida by 537 votes. (And that was with inaccurate figures. I mean, they stopped a recount! I can’t see any excuse for ever stopping a recount.) Now it appears they are trying the same trick again.

“In earlier primary elections in Florida in 2002, according to a recent Vanity Fair investigation, one precinct using the machines recorded no votes, several others had their voter records wiped, 24 polling places opened late, and dozens of poll workers resigned.”

How a developed and stable democracy tolerates things like this, I can’t imagine. I realise I am reading a left-leaning newspaper, and that it is extremely anti-Bush and looking for things to criticise, but assuming everything in the article is factually accurate, the actions described are indefensible. OK, brief and uninteresting rant over. I shall return to normal, (inane and inconsequential), blogging immediately. At least until Bush steals the election again…

And now for something pre-apocalyptic…

Fyse August 3rd, 2004

Pretty much everyone in Britain received wonderful blog-fodder through the letter box this morning. In response to the growing, all too tangible, terrorist threat, our ever-caring government has produced a booklet to save us all from the forthcoming apocalypse. In ‘Preparing For Emergencies‘ the authorities walk the fine line between keeping us all in the dark and scaring the hell out of the populus.

Flicking through it makes one wonder what their aim really is. Now, I may be cynical about politics in a lot of ways, but I’m sure the governments bottom line in this case really is the protection of its citizens. However, in what way does this achieve that?

“If a bomb goes off in your building, look for the safest way out.”

There no arguing with that, is there? Whatever way you look at it, they’ve clearly thought this thing through. But then, I ought to be careful in ridiculing even this apparently elementary information. It seems hard to believe in retrospect, but many people in the World Trade Center towers were told to return to their desks. However much the advice within seems obvious, the booklet does make you wonder. We’ve all seen films like ‘Independence Day’ that show cityscapes in the aftermath of massive destruction, and it’s sobering to imagine my own street and neighbourhood like that. It’s far from impossible, if we are to believe the latest intelligence reports. A clue, perhaps, to the booklet’s true purpose lies in the section entitled ‘How to fuel the atmosphere of fear and racial tension by spying on the suspicious looking foreign people living down the road’. Ok, so perhaps that’s not the exact wording.

Well, blogs are supposed to be a chronicle of the blogger’s thoughts, and the above is certainly playing on my mind quite considerably at the moment. However, it’s not my intention to inject too great a degree of morbidity and doom into this post. Onwards to lighter topics, but one more thing first. Take a look at this self-satisfied git. Liam DonaldsonThis man is Liam Donalson, Chief Medical Officer. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t have found a better photo of him, which leaves us with the disturbing thought that perhaps this is a good photo of him. Either way, I hope he prepares for international terrorism better than he smiles.

In the interests of well and truly changing the subject, hands up if you’ve heard of Rob Bryden? A few of you, I see, but not nearly enough. Everyone should have heard of him, or at least of his genius creation ‘Keith Barrett’. Keith is the main (in fact, only) character in the darkly comic ‘Marion and Geoff‘. I wonder if it has reached US television? If you’re American, and reading this, then let me know. There is a reason for me suddenly saying this, as I just watched him in action in his latest project, ‘The Keith Barrett Show’. Well worth seeing, if you get the chance.

While I’m (sort of) on the subject, how fantastic is the Internet Movie Database? It solves any number of niggling worries and disputes. Though I am a big fan, my friends feel it has a lot to answer for. I get rather obsessed with working out where exactly I know actors from as well as what other films of theirs I may, or may not, or perhaps should, have seen. I’ve developed the rather irritating habit of pausing movies whilst I cross reference different entries to find out exactly who played ‘man on bus’ in the opening credits, and whether character X’s mother is the same actor who worked behind the bar in that other film. You know, the one with that person from the advert with the annoying music.

For some reason, they just don’t seem to care. Inexplicable.

Pub bosses ordered to introduce smoking ban

Fyse July 25th, 2004

The Observer - Politics - Pub bosses ordered to introduce smoking ban:

“Health Secretary John Reid has ordered Britain’s publicans and restaurateurs to draw up plans to phase in smoking restrictions across all their premises as the first step towards a blanket national ban.”

Hooray! The sooner the better, I say. I didn’t have such a strong opinion about this issue until relatively recently, but I’ve become radicalised. Having a group of friends in which one person smokes like crazy every time we’re in a pub has really made me angry. It’s nothing personal, (at least, it wasn’t until I specifically asked him not to light up yet another cigarette and he did anyway) but I don’t see why people should have the right to poison other people as well as themselves.

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