Emma and I went to see IQ this evening. IQ are a band who’ve been around for nearly 25 years now – a Prog outfit who emerged at the same time as Marillion. They are an impressive band, both live and on album. I was introduced to them by my…
Amusing incident at home this morning. My oldest daughter, Murron, age 7, saw an item on the news about a child who had died (nothing funny there, obviously). She asked me if the little girl would have a funeral, to which I replied “yes”. We both made sad faces at…
The Society for Stating The Bleedin’ Obvious has been at it again. The headlines this morning mark the death of former Prime Minister Ted Heath, but also anounce the conclusion of a Royal Institute of International Affairs and Economic and Social Research Council report, concluding that participating in the Iraq…
It’s London! The IOC has chosen London as the venue for the 2012 Olympic Games, pipping the favourite Paris to the post by a mere 4 votes. On the one hand, I’m delighted that London won, because clearly the effort that has been put in by Sebastian Coe and the…
I read this morning that the BBC received 400 complaints about swearing during the Live 8 broadcast at the weekend. Apparently, to put this in context, they receive 500 complaints if Eastenders starts five minutes late, so I suppose that makes it okay. Maybe I’m a prudish 34 year old,…
Clearly I’m missing something. I saw approximately ten minutes of the Glastonbury festival last night – ten minutes of pain in the guise of Ian Brown (formerly of The Stone Roses). The guy can not sing. No arguments – he CAN NOT SING. I had pretty much concluded this when…
34 today, and it’s a Monday. I’m recovering from a cold which finally materialised on Saturday, and left me rehearsing with the band wearing sunglasses, with a tissue stuffed in each ear to ease the headache I had. There was no point in even trying to sing. A good day…
I am suffering from a nasty soar throat at the moment, which has been with me for three days. I usually go straight from soar throats to colds, but thus far the mucous-fest has failed to materialise. Went to see Fragile yesterday evening at the Robin 2 in Wolverhampton. Fragile…
I have written a letter to my MP in Nuneaton, Bill Olner (Labour). The letter reads as follows… Dear Bill Olner Regarding the concept of vehicle tracking devices and charge-per-journey raised by Alistair Darling, could you please advance the rather common-sense alternative of replacing vehicle licence duty with an extra…
The arguments usually advanced by opponents of DD are quite often valid, but also blatantly ignore the fact that things are not better (and often worse) under our so-called representative democracy. To me, the most interesting example of DD in action is Switzerland. The Swiss have layers of DD at…