King of the Mountains

A regular source of entertainment for pretty much the whole planet, would be an accurate summing up of local newspaper letters pages. Being unable to string a coherent argument together and having political views that Stalin would have considered authoritarian are no barriers to expression in this media. Let’s look at some of the regular formats:

Anti-EU rant. Usually the same people every week. Their arguments are never rebuffed because nobody else can be bothered to wade through the irrelevant gibberish they include and blow large smoking holes in them. Generally they keep coming back and become more virulent if anyone is bored enough to attempt to engage them in battle. Popular with editors for their habit of writing reams of rubbish that can more or less be guaranteed to be both clean and acceptable to large numbers of Wail or Ex-press reading noddies. Let’s face it, if they believe the Wail they’ll swallow anything the local press can manufacture report.

Religious fruitcake. Often from a completely different part of the country and ranting about the stage version of Jerry Springer or a show suggesting that it’s actually prefectly acceptable to be gay. They’ve probably sent the same letter to local papers in every area that the touring show is visiting, which shows admirable research skills if little else between the ears. Alternatively you may find the general evangelical gibberish (extra points if it includes bible quotes) or the screeching about how Jonathan Ross/the Internet/men with long hair will lead to the moral destruction of the universe. The fact that most people could now be classified as Atheist, Agnostic, or just not giving a damn clearly passes them by.

Political bitchfest. Usually related to town councils or groups. Can be amusing if you know one of the participants and therefore trust their opinions rather more than those of J. Random Jobsworth. Another editorial favourite, guaranteed to fill pages for weeks if not months. Some can last for years. 

Anti-war/hippy. One word of advice: Study International Politics to degree level, then you will actually be qualified to comment. The world is not an episode of "Care Bears" and there are some unpleasant people out there who would respond to your offer of a cup of herbal tea by pouring the hot water over you and then beheading you with the organic biscuits. Mind you, after a few weeks of reading these letters a fair number of normal people might be moved to similar sentiments. 

Council bashing. Usually by people with ulterior motives. Especially amusing when local answer to slum landlords berates council for allegedly resettling ex-cons in the area. Amusing as landlord has made most of his fortune and position from renting dodgy flats to the very people whose existence in the area he is moaning about. Other favourites include hysterical shrieking about how a new policy will have Ghenghis Khan setting up his camp outside the bandstand within a week. Popular with editors who wish to make equally hysterical claims in headlines.

Generalised rambling. Our best codebreakers have as yet failed to understand the point these people are attempting to make. Preliminary findings suggest that their ramblings could be condensed to "things were better in the old days". If these were the same old days when people regularly died of flu and hospital treatments generally involved hot pitch and screaming then it’s uncertain how they could be better. Often includes an allegedly amusing anecdote which could well have inspired a Last of the Summer Wine episode. Evidence that greater care of the elderly is needed to keep their minds active. I favour mandatory nitrous oxide installations for drivers over 65 and free motocross lessons for all pensioners. 

Unless you’ve been living in a tree for the past month or so you’ll probably have noticed the furore over two BBC Radio 2 presenters and an ill-judged prank phone call. The furore is almost entirely a media witch-hunt on the part of tabloid journalists who smelled blood and decided to whip their readership into a frenzy.

While is is disturbing that people can be so easily manipulated, there is also another point to be made. The vast majority of complaints came from people who did not hear the broadcast.

In other words, they physically could not have been directly offended by it. They’ve pursed their little lips and turned their narrow little minds against it because of what they read in a tabloid.

The lack of independent thought or indeed any other cerebral activity in this country is very worrying indeed. People complain loudly about swearing in a programme that was clearly flagged as containing such in TV listings and in a message before the broadcast. So I can only assume that either they are stupid, or they actually like being offended.

The latter seems quite likely, although the former has much to recommend it. There seems to be a worrying subset of people who are only happy if they can be pompous, self-righteous little nuisances. These would be the same people who informed on their neighbours in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. They want to control what you see, hear, and read. 

Well to be quite honest, I am offended by them. Nobody is forced to watch or listen, they can easily change channels. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. But don’t you dare try to tell me what I can and can’t watch or listen to. I’ll make that decision myself. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be anyone to complain to about tiny-minded idiots… 

I’ve been watching with interest the debate as to how video games should be classified. At present, there is a voluntary code that most games manufacturers follow. Calls have been made for the BBFC to be given the job of applying age ratings to games.

None of the commentators have mentioned the obvious problem, in their haste to wring their hands about "evil video games corrupting our youth". The problem, as with many things, is witless parents.

Games are already clearly marked. A game marked "18" contains content that is not suitable for those under 18. It’s the same as films. You wouldn’t, for example, buy an eight year old a copy of Reservoir Dogs. But when a parent caves in and buys Grand Theft Auto that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Just because it’s a game, doesn’t mean it’s aimed at or intended for children. It’s the same problem faced by writers of graphic novels. That may sound a pretentious term, but the only alternative is "comic" and they’re not writing comedy. We don’t have the terms bande dessine or manga to describe pictoral works that aren’t the Beano.

As for the claims that video games make people violent, I would suggest that anyone who cannot differentiate real life from pixels has bigger problems. I’ve played GTA, for example, and not once have I felt the urge to run real people over at random or steal cars.

I agree with the voluntary age ratings but feel that an education campaign would be a far better use of time and money than adding to the BBFC’s workload. Make it clear that not all games are for children, and that age ratings are for content, not difficulty. Have shop staff remind the purchaser of games with an age rating that it isn’t suitable for people under that age. 

I watched the news reports of the Quantas 747 with a hole in it as they were coming in. What’s amusing is the media reaction. We’ve had the usual stuff about "terror at 30000 feet" and "passengers feared for their lives".

Problem is, we also have video footage. It doesn’t really back those headlines up. 

We can see passengers wearing oxygen masks and remaining calm while the flight attendants keep smiling. Nobody is running around screaming, and there’s a noticable shortage of stuff flying around or huge holes. The only thing most apparently noticed was a bang, followed by an emergency descent and masks falling from the ceiling. 

Of course, once it had landed the media were able to find at least two people who spun a teary tale of how scared they were that they’d never see family again. It’s the same with all of these things. 

What they missed, however, is the fact that this is a case of everything else working as it should. The panel blew out. The pilot realised something was amiss and dived to an altitude at which the air was breathable. Thanks to the design of the aircraft the missing panel did not cause it to fall apart. But that wouldn’t make such a good story would it?

You get these people everywhere now. After a channel ferry has had to hang around off Dover for a few hours due to rough seas there’ll always be some shrieking idiot saying it was "like Titanic". Well, it was a ship. Not many icebergs off Dover and I think all the passengers got off this one alive.

The sooner we in the Western world relearn the robustness of our Grandparents in response to crises the better. Panic helps no-one. An awful lot of people hailed as heroes are those who did not panic, but just got on with it and sorted the problem out as best they could. Those Quantas passengers behaved in a perfectly normal manner, despite what our Hollywood-addled media would have you believe.

I’ve been watching with interest the truckers attempting to march on Parliament in protest against the outrageous fuel prices we now have to pay. Good on them I say. About time some people in this country did stand together and showed a little backbone.

What it has brought to light is how supposedly "counter-terror" legislation can be manipulated to suit whatever government wants to use it against. For example, the convoy from West Wales will not be allowed to visit the Welsh Assembly and hand their petition over. Likewise, any attempts at an effective protest will be illegal, as counter-terror legislation seems to have been written with a view to enabling government to stifle dissenters using the legal system. A bit odd in what is supposedly a liberal democracy.

The situation would seem to be that, as ever, a London-centric government and media hasn’t the faintest idea of what life is like for the rest of the country. They may be noticing the increased cost of food and iWidgets due to haulage companies having to charge retailers more to cover fuel bills, but in their cosy little world of buses and a reliable tube system it really doesn’t matter that diesel has hit £1.32 a litre.

Try putting yourself in this position: You live in the middle of nowhere. The only things you can buy locally are food, medicine, DIY supplies, stamps, and for some reason spectacles. If you want anything electronic then you have a forty mile plus drive to the nearest large retailer or you have to take the risk of buying online and unseen. Buses are either non-existent or on a twice daily basis, so you have to arrive at your destination at some unearthly hour and wait around all day to get home. Trains were mostly cancelled by a certain Dr back in the 1960s, those remaining seem to have been designed by a sadistic dwarf as revenge on tall people. Neither form of public transport would respond well to your turning up at the station with a large flatscreen TV.

This would probably be a good point at which to give a round of applause to our local post office. They’re brilliant, and without them mail order would be a non-starter. Unfortunately many even more remote villages have had their local post office close, which is not helpful to put it mildly.

City dwellers will also have trouble grasping the concept of needing a larger engine. It’s not macho posturing. It’s a simple case of a rubber band not being up to the job. An 1100cc Corsa will not carry four people and a bootload of shopping up steep hills in comfort at a steady 60mph. You need a medium sized to large car with ample power. Power needs fuel. While the advent of 150bhp two litre turbodiesel engines that return 50mpg has been welcomed, they are not a huge amount of use to those who need to haul outsize loads. For that, you need a 4x4.

They are not fashion accessories or compensation for anything, despite what oh-so-cool and oh-so-sheltered media types may try to tell you. They’re a response to a world where you might well come around a corner to find half an earth bank on the road, and where due to the lack of van hire firms you will have to bring that new shower cubicle forty miles home from B&Q yourself. That vast majority will be diesel, around ten years old, and returning around 30mpg. It costs over £100 to fill up with diesel now locally, which works out at close to £20 for a return shopping trip. Meanwhile Londoners balk at the fact that the Circle Line is running a few minutes late. You really don’t know you’re born.

We’re probably due another news story about this, so I’m getting in early. GPS confusion.

By this I mean those "special" people who manage to get themselves onto a railway line, or wedged halfway down a narrow back road after blindly following the directions of the little box on their dashboard. When they get stuck or their car is turned into an interesting metal sculpture by a train they will invariably say "the satnav told me to do it" as an excuse.

I think what particularly gets to me is the fact that media outlets, on the whole, nod sympathetically. With the exception of a few commentators nobody says the obvious response that we all had drummed into us at school: "If (insert person/gadget here) told you to put your hand in a fire, would you do that too?"

In the case of the nitwit on a railway line, you do have to wonder how on earth they ended up there. This wasn’t a case of stalling or breaking down on a level crossing, they had actually turned onto the line and driven up it a short distance. Did the fact that they were now bumping over sleepers on gravel not register? If they don’t notice something that obvious their ability to notice something like a phone-wielding idiot wandering aimlessly in front of them has to be questioned. Poor observation is the cause of a huge number of accidents, regardless of what the camera apologists will tell you.

It seems that a satnav reaches right into the hindbrain and flips a little switch. Armed forces the world over spend some time flipping this switch in their troops during basic training. In their case, unquestioning obedience is a safer bet than a division deciding to attack the enemy by whatever method they’ve just thought of. In the case of civilian satnav users, the unquestioning obedience switch can be lethal. Obeying these things sheep-like without using your own eyes and judgement will eventually lead to you becoming one of the plonkers who ended up bogged down in a field.

I think it says something depressing about the state of the world that people are now obeying the instructions of small plastic boxes without thought or question. Speaking as someone who is used to proper digital maps I find the average satnav annoying. It just doesn’t have the detail I want.

For that reason, I came up with a solution. It involves an old laptop living in the boot with a GPS receiver and a touch screen on the dashboard. It not only provides a 1:50k OS map display centred on my current location, it will also play music and browse the web if I find a WiFi hotspot. The best part? It cost less than a conventional satnav and I don’t have an irritating voice telling me to "turn right" while the lights are red… 

For some reason we seem to have lost summer within a week of it starting. Temperatures have dropped by ten degrees and it’s raining. At this rate I expect snow in July.

It would be good if it calmed the "Argh it’s global warming we’re all gonna die" crowd down a bit, but they just mutter about climate change rather than warming now which seems something of a handy escape clause. 

On reflection, apart from the rain it isn’t bad. Sun and I do not get on, and a bit of greyness will keep the annoying dawdling tourists and idiot bikers away for a little longer. My only complaint is that it’s lousy for photography.  

I recently came across a music channel on satellite TV, and being at something of a loose end settled down to watch. It was uniformly terrible.

I can only assume their target market was a male chav, judging by the number of permatanned plastic women in scanty outfits they seemed to feel the need to adorn it with. I realise that this is a common tactic for deflecting attention away from the lousy music, but it only works if the people you’re using are actually attractive. I’m reasonably certain "Bleurgh" was not the reaction they intended to get.

See, if you get it right you can do wonders with a music video. Treat it like a short film, make it funny, make it interesting. Bin the makeup, the hotpants, the gym bunnies, and follow the Stereophonics with their Italian Job-themed video for "Pick a Part That’s New" or the entertainingly lunatic Men at Work with "Land Down Under". I know there’s more money in appealing to chavs and cavemen but frankly, isn’t the challenge of making intelligent people laugh more fun? Posturing wannabe "gangstas" are comical, but we’re not exactly laughing with them…

On the plus side, we seem to have managed to get Men and Motors back along with large chunks of Channel 4, now this Freesat business has come on line. Whether we now get proper Channel 4 rather than S4C has yet to be investigated, but there was a great episode of The Saint on last night. 

I realise there are greater problems, such as zombies or somebody setting us up the bomb, but I feel one thing I’ve noticed of late does need to be mentioned: Ludicrous mark-ups.

I recently ordered, for £35, something that was originally priced at £105. Now, retailers do not make a loss. Neither do wholesalers, at least overall. So how much of a mark-up must there have been on these things to begin with? I can accept that there might have been some sort of thought process along the lines of "We’ve sold four thousand at full price, so we can afford to let these that won’t shift go for trade price" but still, what are they paying the people who put them together?

Which leads us to an interesting ethical conundrum. See, I think 98% of us feel at least a bit guilty about how some large companies have been seen to use sweatshop labour to make products, with the workers being paid a tiny fraction of the final price. The example I mentioned above won’t have been made like that, but this is one reason I won’t buy branded sportswear (apart from the fact that it makes you look an utter tit). 

The opposite end of the problem, that will be relevant in the case I mentioned, is that the cost of living in the countries where these things are made is much lower. If a Chinese plant were to start paying its workers the British minimum wage it would distort their economy, as suddenly everyone would be paid more and would cost more to employ. Outsourcing would end, and their economy would nosedive as production was shifted. We’re probably going to see that before too long anyway, as they seem intent on mixing brutal repression of political dissidents with a skewed free market economy. This is leading to some intriguing thoughts, such as the fact that the Chinese model railway market is now larger than that of the UK despite modelling being a very unusual hobby out there.  Clearly for those willing to knuckle down, cease thinking, and refrain from typing "Democracy" into Google there are rewards.

Whichever angle you look at it from, the fact remains that some people are making outrageous profits on things that must cost them pennies to have made. Outsourcing hasn’t led to lower prices in many cases. The only thing that seems to lead to savings being passed on to the consumer is competition, in another case it was most instructive to note the price difference between products that faced competition and those (from the same manufacturer) that did not.  

A bit of an odd title, I’ll agree. There are more action films hitting the screen now than for some time. One snag though, the heroes all appear to have had their brains surgically removed.

We’ve got a James Bond who is only marginally more intelligent than his shoes, and some witless American on TV who keeps letting the enemy catch him and do all sorts of nastiness. I’m beginning to wonder if he enjoys it in some perverse way. What on earth is going on?

I’ve commented before on the fact that idiots with muscles seem to be more popular than sophisticated intellectuals at the moment, and that this trend extends to films. Timothy Dalton, for example, might not have been as tough as the current Bond but, the point is, he didn’t need to be. Dalton’s Bond was a sly, cunning fellow who leant heavily on any advantages he had, rather than just wading in.  He certainly wouldn’t have rolled his car after seeing his female colleague in the middle of the road. Dalton would most likely have jumped his Aston clean over her using the rocket booster, shot up the villains with the concealed missiles, then returned to pick her up. Home in time for tea and medals.

I grew up watching classic war films, Sink the Bismarck was a favourite for a while but doesn’t really fit here other than its portrayal of land-based commanders as heroes too. Where Eagles Dare, on the other hand, does fit.

I maintain that this film has a lot to do with the popularity of the Wolfenstein series of computer games. The number of people who bounced around those corridors muttering "Broadsword calling Danny Boy" must be pretty high. 

There has yet to be an escape sequence on a par with their approach of stealing a post bus before running rings around large numbers of Wehrmacht troops. I think everyone who has seen that film secretly wants to have a go at knocking over the trigger posts with that gigantic snowplough and watching the telegraph poles fall over in the mirror.  As for the more heroic parts, can you see any of the current crop of numbskulls knowing how to operate a cable car, or clinging to the roof with only one fully-functional hand? Staying completely calm and convincing their captors that they’re a double agent, right up until the point when they were able to shoot their way out?

Moving on, The Avengers. A wonderfully surreal British spy series of the 1960s with the superb John Steed and rather lovely Emma Peel, in the versions I’ve seen repeats of anyway. Between them, they foiled assorted dastardly plots armed only with a sword umbrella, bowler hat, and some nifty fighting abilities on the part of Mrs Peel. I’m wondering if there would be a way to have Steed frozen in Austin Powers style and then inserted into 24. It would at least make it watchable, if only for the current lead character crying behind his desk about the old British guy who just bumped off all the terrorists without even losing his carnation. Civilisation returns to the counter-terror business. Come back Steed and Peel, you are both needed.