TV log-jam.

We’re usually hard-pushed to find anything worth watching on the telly, even resorting to watching Murdoch’s Mysteries and Law and Order UK when things are particularly desperate.

  For the last couple of weeks though we’ve been inundated with things to watch. Sky Italia is supplying us with Castle and the fourth series of Madmen on Tuesdays, and 24 every weekday. And we’re watching two episodes a night of The Killing on BBC iPlayer in an attempt to catch up, only having realised last week that it was on. And then there’s New Tricks, also on iPlayer. Thank God South Riding has just ended. Like paupers suddenly admitted to the rich man’s table, we’re in danger of making ourselves ill from gobbling down this televisual banquet.


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…and darkness was upon the face of the deep

In the small hours of Tuesday morning a torrential downpour began which lasted until early evening. We read subsequently that it was the heaviest downpour Le Marche had experienced in 40 years: 18 cm in 24 hours.  Not only did it produce a lake in the library, but it started coming down the kitchen chimney. When I took the dogs out last thing at night I found the rain had given way to deep snow. On Wednesday I woke up to find we were without electricity - judging from the Teasmade clock it had gone off  at 12.35. We were eventually reconnected today at 3.40 in the afternoon, some 39  hours later.

   As you can see from the picture (clicking it should take you to the paper’s website) we were not alone in our misery. And what misery  it was. For starters the central heating and the hot water don’t function without the electric pump . The cordless phone wouldn’t work. And not only did the contents of the freezer thaw out but we realised how utterly dependent on electricity we are for our entertainment. Because the power had gone off  at night when we charge up our iPhones they had very little juice left in them so they weren’t available to entertain us. There was no telly or radio and the candles didn’t really give enough light to read by. We’d eaten dinner early, for it needed to be prepared in daylight, and consequently had a vast expanse of evening with nothing to do. I did find a pack of cards and played patience for a bit but otherwise it was a dreary time. And we couldn’t just go to bed because I have to take the dogs out last thing at night. As a couple of Cambridge computer scientists have written, take down a country’s electricity supply and it ceases to function.

  I guess with the decline of the West yesterday probably represents the future. Thank God I won’t be around to experience it for very long.


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Quinn's fifth birthday.

Got back yesterday from a week in England. We went over on the 14th . On the Tuesday I went to Chatteris to pick up Quinn’s coat and gloves from Phil and in the afternoon we took Quinn to Wisbech to choose his birthday presents. The Wednesday was Quinn’s birthday. In the morning we went to Waitrose in Ely.  After school we took him to see Yogi Bear at the rather plush cinema in Wisbech. Phil came over when we got back to give Quinn his birthday present. 

Then Candy, Pat, Quinn and I went out for a birthday meal at the Crown Kitchen (see photo at head of page). 

   On Thursday morning I got a set of shelves for Candy’s garage from B & Q and Pat assembled them and tidied up the garage. In the afternoon I went to Lynn to visit Shen in hospital. He was in remarkably good form considering the seriousness of his illness. I then met Ed and Uschi in The Lattice House for a drink. Ed finally retires tomorrow. 

  On Friday I refixed the curtain rail in Candy’s office and put a second set of shelves in her garage.In the evening we went to John and Joy’s for supper.

  Sophy arrived on Saturday afternoon. Sunday was Quinn’s birthday party in the village hall. Candy had hired a bouncy castle and Matthew brought along his DJ equipment. Phil, Bob, Emma, Grace and Quinn’s paternal grandmother came.Debbie arrived in the afternoon, and after the party Matthew, Charlie, Sophy, Debbie, Candy, Pat, Quinn and I went to the Five Bells for a drink. 

  The week was rounded off by dinner at Richard and Jane’s in the evening.

Smoke and mirrors.

This morning, in the words of The Evening Standard, ‘George Osborne tightens squeeze on banks with £800m raid on profits’. In reality he’s doing no such thing. As Robert Peston explained on the Today programme, £800 million is dwarfed by the sum the banks are paying out this year in bonuses: around five thousand million.

  Unfortunately, Peston didn’t raise the issue of a very different  tax change revealed by George Monbiot in today’s Guardian. This abolishes taxation on earnings from a bank’s overseas branches whilst at the same time allowing  it to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK.  Far from causing the banks pain, the Posh-Boys’ squeeze resembles one given by an aged roué to his mistress’s thigh as he empties his wallet into her lap.

  But it will no doubt convince the readers of the Daily Mail that tough action is being taken. In Monbiot’s words: 

    ‘… this government … has learned the lesson that  

   Thatcher never grasped. If you want to turn this country 

   into another Mexico, where the ruling elite wallows in 

   unimaginable, state-facilitated wealth while the rest can go

   to hell, you don't declare war on society, you don't 

   lambast single mothers or refuse to apologise for Bloody 

  Sunday. You assuage, reassure, conciliate, emote. Then 

   you shaft us.’

Be very, very afraid.

Listening to Radio 4 this morning I gather that the posh-boys have set up a new web-site enabling the hoi-polloi to access the crime figures within any given postcode. Apparently it’s had 70,000 hits a minute, causing it to crash. 

  John Humphrys comprehensively demolished Policing Minister Nick Herbert’s rationale for the site - giving the public the information needed to hold the police to account. As Humphrys said, if your street’s being terrorised by yobs you don’t need a website to inform you of the fact. If you’ve been burgled, as Humphrys had, you report it to the police as does every other victim of a crime, so the Old Bill don’t need a website to tell them what their crime stats are. If you urge the police to prioritise your case they will reply, not unreasonably, that they have many calls on their time - some, murder and  rape for example, more urgent than yours. And, as Humphrys didn’t point out, thanks to the posh-boys’ cuts there are fewer policemen to investigate your burglary or arrest the yobs. 

   Unfortunately, Humphrys didn’t go on to  suggest the real reason the site has been created:  to increase paranoia among the general public. This will enable the government to add yet more authoritarian measures to those introduced by Blair and hasten the day when the ordinary citizen is treated with all the respect and dignity accorded a Ryan Air passenger.

The Bull in Montefalcone

I’ve commented before on the similarities between Montefalcone and Ambridge. Yesterday I learned that not only has Luisa closed her bar permanently but there’ll be no chance of anyone else taking it on as she is going to turn it into an apartment for her son to stay in when he visits. Unfortunately Matt Crawford’s vision for the Bull is taking flesh in Montefalcone. It would be sad if the Bull were to close - but this is happening in the real world, dammit , and it’s a tragedy.

Dark forces

The most interesting aspect of the Andy Gray affair is the revelation that he was suing News Corp for alleged phone-tapping by the News of the World. The man’s opinions are deplorable but they were only intended to be shared with a fellow neanderthal, not - as a consequence of being secretly recorded by someone within Sky News and leaked to the Daily Mail - made public property. 

  His fate is just another example of  the message we’ve seen delivered for years: don’t mess with Murdoch or something unpleasant will happen to you; co-operate, like the Metropolitan Police, and there’ll be a drink in it. Avoid promoting policies which you think  might upset the Dirty Digger, however close to your heart, and his media empire will swing in behind your party  whether you’re Labour under Blair or Tory under Cameron.

  The revelation, though, is the extent to which Murdoch has infiltrated his agents into rival news organisations. Because it’s no more in the Mail’s interests for Murdoch - posing as a champion of women’s rights -  to divert attention away from the threat posed by his taking complete control of  BSkyB than it was in the Telegraph’s to have Vince Cable neutered. To be replaced by a man whose take on Sky’s boss - ‘We … wouldn’t be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn’t been for him’ - is so patently absurd that I’m surprised the Tea Party haven’t offered him honorary membership. If Walter Shandy was right about their names determining people’s character one can only conclude that Naughtie and Marr succeeded in finding the name Hunt had ‘Before the World Was Made’.