Celebrity Big Brother may have needed the excitement of a flutter to make it interesting and it may have had celebrities so unknown they didn’t know each other – Jeremy Edwards was in partly for his affair with Rachel Stevens, but Bez hadn’t heard and called her Rebecca; when they played the Happy Mondays Kenzie hadn’t heard of them – but Bez is proving that an appearance really can add value to a celebrity career after all. And it’s rather fitting that he should be the one to prove it as his Happy Mondays role was ‘vibes’; random almost dance moves to get stuff going.

Reaching well beyond a predictable Happy Mondays revival, Bez has been tipped to star in an Osbournes style TV show (I’m not sure he’s rich enough to be eccentric enough to pull this off) and perhaps more bizarrely a fitness video. But only perhaps more bizarrely, because a quick look at who stars in fitness videos shows that physical fitness isn’t really the qualifying factor. Take Abi Titmuss’ Tone and Tease (also available from Amazon Jersey); sure she’s fit in a lad’s mag way, but she’s no fitness trainer. Fitness is about lifestyle, innit? The celebrity you choose to take you through it says something about the kind if person you are and aspire to be. And so having a party animal like Bez as your video trainer, well that’s says you… well… it says you wish you were recovering from a decade or two’s heavy partying and drug-taking rather than the ordinary stuff you’ve really been up to. I guess.

Betfair: Bet on Big Brother & make it interesting……Amazon Jersey: Tax Free Shopping

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Suffering less than most from Leigh’s tendency to err on the side of caricature, Vera Drake is a tender, often comic portrait of 1950s Britain; optimism’s emerging alongside consumerism; rationing’s created a burgeoning black market. And well-meaning, naïve Vera’s unthinking willingness to ‘help girls out’ opens her to exploitation and ultimately rips her world apart.
7.5 out of 10.
Director: Mike Leigh Staring: Imelda Staunton
Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, Notte)……Dead or Alive (Hanzaisha)
If you found my comments useful, let Amazon know by clicking Vera Drake and hitting the ‘yes’ button underneath their copy of this review. You may buy while you’re there.

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eBay! might have the profile and reputation, but if you’re really serious about online auctions, you can’t beat US Government Military Surplus, where you can avoid being labelled an unlawful combatant by bidding on military uniforms and suchlike. And that’s not all: today’s hot lot is a rather nice 65ft yacht.

While there’re plenty of guns, there’s not so much ammo. Similarly, there’re a quite few missile launchers available as well as the odd torpedo power pack, but no actual missiles or torpedoes in at time of writing. I guess the consumables get all used up. Lot category 4470-Nuclear Reactors is also empty for time being, but you can join a watch list to be notified just as soon as something comes in. And anyone who followed the shock-and-awe campaign in Iraq will be confident of finding some top-notch pyrotechnics (lot category 1370).

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Bush has pledged to spread freedom and it’s easy to be cynical about that: blogging institution Tim Ireland’s attempting a Google bomb on ‘empty rhetoric’, but a search on that term reveals he’s been beaten to it. I find all that rather tiresome and predictable. Sadly predictable, as it comes against a background of British troops torturing Iraqi looters and today’s release of four more Britons from Guantanamo Bay, held for years without trial and most likely tortured by freedom loving US troops.

But like David Aaronovitch in the Observer, I’m inclined to give Bush a qualified thumbs up. I supported the war, but have never been idealistic about it and I’ve not been impressed by the level of insight coming from those, of whatever persuasion, who provide blow-by-blow commentary. The bigger picture is that we invaded Iraq a fairly short time ago and it’s far too early to know how things will turn out. But Afghan elections have proved that something approaching democracy can be achieved in a country half governed by warlords and with no democratic traditions.

Unfortunately, the relatively godless leaders of the free world fail to recognise that the secular vision needs to be sold. They fail to demonstrate how great their vision of freedom is by abiding by what they rhetorically claim to be higher principles when removing despots. It’s as if they’ve fallen for the hysterical notion, that this is a war on an Islamic people so different from us we have to fight dirty. But I don’t believe that. It’s not the myth of cultural superiority, but the myth of moral superiority that leads to these mistakes.

And I’m optimistic. I’m prepared to believe Bush has the will to install democracy in Iraq and elsewhere, but I fear he’s failed to grasp how important Gordon Brown’s plan for the developing world is (no rich democracy has ever declared war on another rich democracy). Meanwhile, the courts – primary democratic institutions – are finally forcing leaders to live by the principles they seek to impose on others; the European Human Rights Convention applies to Iraqis under British occupation; not even foreigners can be detained without a trial; and stateside the Supreme Court ruled that the war on terror did not give the White House a blank cheque to detain people without legal rights. Yet none of these judgments are perfect.

As little Willy Hague says; ‘Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it at first seems’.
Not a war for idealists……US not godly enough for Iraqis……Myth of moral superiority……Exporting human rights to Iraq… even in war

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‘A Cardiff University academic has pinpointed this Monday – 24 January – as the most depressing day of the year: a dark cocktail of foul weather, failed resolutions and overdue Christmas bills’, warned Saturday’s Independent, before launching into a vast array of useless tips on how to survive it from people without ordinary jobs to go to; novelists, comedians and suchlike. The result being that today we should go slow, avoid making decisions or taking phone calls while staying in bed (or at least napping in the afternoon) and/or embarking on a ‘grooming frenzy’. All of which is very useful to those who don’t happen to have line-managers, clients, customers or other annoying overlords.

I blame this silly detox nonsense. You’ll find the ‘Boots Detox 28 Day Plan’ over here, which doesn’t seem as bad as most: all you have to do is chew some pills. Not that I need it. Where I’m sitting it’s a fresh (okay, maybe too fresh) and sunny day that began with a morning that was noticeably lighter. Yes we’ve had some of the usual end-of-January snow, but it’s been less disruptive than usual (having failed to follow tradition and close the country for a couple of days). So not miserable at all.

But I’m all too aware that for many January is a hellish time spent on some detox diet and exercise regime. Professionally fat Radio 1 DJ, Chris Moyles, is leading a detox challege and this morning they were wobbling. There’s little point in a 28 day detox plan or any other time limited detox or diet, if you’re going to return to normal afterwards. It doesn’t even compensate for festive bingeing. Just as your body returns to whatever state it was in pre-detox, it also returns to whatever state it was in pre-binge. Now if that’s a state you don’t like, the hard truth is you need to make permanent lifestyle changes. So no chewing Boots detox pills for 28 days, it’s got be 365 or nothing.
AD: RU-21: Hangover cure

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Having Elvis for the thousandth number one is wrong on so many levels. The kids have long since gotten over charts, fashions and themselves being manipulated and the record industry understands that they enjoy it, so that’s not so bad. It’s the idea of releasing eighteen singles consecutively to generate another eighteen number ones that smacks of a certain kind of old fogey, who really should know better, trying to make a point about the alleged superiority of their generation’s music. Thankfully, that’s falling on generally deaf ears as today’s so knowledgeable kids are above caring for chart positions. Then we had Top of the Pops only playing a clip of the number one because the Presley Estate refused permission for anything more substantive (this is code for saying the greedy sods asked for too much money and explains the real reason why we won’t be seeing it much, if at all, on music TV).

Nevertheless, it does mean we’re in for a tedious few months as the singles sales chart is finally killed off. Elvis may be the thousandth number one, but that’s with the lowest ever sales figures and, more interestingly, he failed to make it into the download chart, which looks a lot more with it. everyHit.com has launched its sheet music chart archive to coincide with Presley’s success, I wonder if the industry went through some similar angst ridden phase as sheet music sales fell and new fangled records took off.
UPDATE: The Presley Estate got their just deserts when, in the absence of film right, TOTP called in an Elvis impersonator and their third attempt to make number one ended in failure on 23 January. Hoorah!

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The eBay bubble has finally burst-ish with shares taking a seventeen per cent fall as the online auctioneer raises revenue by just 44 per cent year-on-year. That you can expand so quickly and be seen to have failed shows how unrealistic the expectations that drive markets can be. And how short-lived such expectations can be. And that markets never learn from experience… it’s as if internet and technology stocks haven’t crashed before.

I’ve never really got into eBay. But I’ve dabbled, raising £77 selling Gmail invites which were worthless within a week (because Google flooded the market, like everyone knew they would). Over Christmas my sister revealed she was into eBay, but then explained that she doesn’t actually bid, tending to click ‘Buy it now’ rather than go through the auction palaver, which sounds like missing the point to me. But then wasn’t internet auctioneering always going to turn out to be a fad and isn’t it worrying that those who invest our pension funds can’t spot a short term trend until actually burns?

Nerds fleeced by tooth fairy

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Apparently best known for being the villains in Dan Brown’s incredibly successful the Da Vinci Code, Opus Dei continues to cause problems for education secretary, Ruth Kelly, thanks to its conservative Catholicism. The story originally broke in the Times, back in December and while the Guardian was quick to point out the differences between fact and fiction, ultra-conservative is a fair description. And still the controversy drags on.

But, casting ultra-conservative Catholicism aside for a moment, what makes me most curious is the minister’s insistence that; ‘It is not relevant to my job. It is a private spiritual life and I don’t think it is relevant to my job’. Makes me wonder what the point of entering politics might be, if not to promote your own ideals and help transform the world into what you believe would be a better place.

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A short time ago I added a guy called Bill to my blogroll. Bill’s a libertarian Conservative (I think I’ve capitalised that right, although he left the party upon the leadership of the already forgotten IDS) who often finds himself in despair at the state of what was once the most effective election winning machine the democratic world had ever seen (but that’s enough of the complements). And today saw a typically despairing piece asking if the Tories want to win.

The thing is, I don’t think the Tories have to decide whether they want to win – of course they do – but why they want to win and I think the conflict Bill personally feels, mirrors that of the party as a whole.

The conflict is between the ‘New Conservatives’ (the party’s libertarian brain) and the ‘Old Conservatives’ (the party’s authoritarian heart). The first part of the Tory manifesto was launched to a ‘forgetful majority’ of elderly folk, who make up the heart of the party. (To be fair, there are some younger ones, who believe what they read in the Daily Mail.) The agenda is anti-EU, anti-immigration, pro-‘family values’, ID-cards etcetera. Theirs is ‘traditional’ right-wing conservatism, based on ‘common sense’. Suspicious of intellectuals and evidence they prefer to trust their instincts (what others call their prejudices) and they don’t like to be challenged. Pragmatists, they’re unlikely to know what libertarianism is, but since Thatcher (prior to which the Tories were as statist as anyone) have been happy to hand over the economic side of things to people they regard as mere technocrats.

It’s these technocrats that form the minority libertarian wing of the party. Shoehorned in under Thatcher they claim to have revolutionised Britain (although given the current fashion for golden-ageism within the Tory Party, it may be that the Old Conservatives don’t rate that much). They like to pretend Old Conservatism is a thing of the past, but whenever they try to take the initiative they get re-buffed. But they’re hanging in because everybody knows Old Conservatives really are old and they believe the demographics are on their side.

The funny thing is that there’s no debate between these two opposing wings of the party and no serious attempt to form a coherent ideology to bring them together.

Tories: not silent, but forgetful

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Katharine announced this weekend that we’re dumping all Dove product following their Campaign for Real Beauty, which you may have spotted on busses and elsewhere. I’m not talking about the ice cream, which remains kosher, but shampoo and conditioner (neither of which bother me), cleansers, body washes etcetera. Unfortunately, I’d recently stocked on this stuff and so had to put the case for phasing a new (yet to be announced) brand in rather than binning it all.

The Campaign for Real Beauty is a bit like Marks & Spencer’s legendary failure in which a fat girl ran around naked shouting ‘I’m normal!’. Perhaps she was. And this stuff goes down really well in research: ‘You’re not fat,’ said M&S. ‘You’re normal’; ‘You’re not oversized, your outstanding’, says Dove. ‘Thank you,’ said/says the fat girl. And just as M&S thought sales couldn’t get any lower, they bombed.

While ugly people (men as well as women, but mainly women) like the idea of being told they’re beautiful, they’re not that stupid. And nobody wants to be ugly. We all aspire to be attractive – even if we let ourselves go – and we want beauty products to offer beauty not lame excuses. The truly awful website invites you to vote on pictures of supposedly flawed women (mouseover the ugly vote and they try really hard for you). Of course, these are very well presented models and even supporters, like James Cherkoff, reckon the comments are seeded. ‘Be thankful for every wrinkle, roll, freckle and flaw,’ says ‘Lara’. Yeah, right, as if.

Katharine doesn’t want to be seen with Dove product in the gym, say, because if this campaign works people will see that brand and think ‘what’s wrong with her?’. Brand owners, Unilever, have bashed Dove around the head with the ugly stick and nobody will want the ugly to rub off on them.
Naïve Marketing Strategies#7: Chocolate HobNobs: luxury or standard issue?……Mazda RX-8 ideal sports car

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