It’s a tough time to be a whale. The world’s navies are upgrading their high-powered sonar to operate at lower frequencies than present; frequencies to which whales are particularly sensitive. Increased testing has seen the number of whale strandings and otherwise unexplained deaths increase substantially. And evidence that sonar kills whales goes way beyond coincidence. Beached whales’ symptoms include, amongst other things, haemorrhaging in the lungs, larynx and brain (with a path direct to the ear). Laboratory animals experience similar trauma when blasted at the right frequencies.

The Ministry of Defence complains of a lack of research pointing out that, ‘there is considerable uncertainty [as to where whales are to be found], particularly for the rarer species, as numbers are so low… The research is limited in content… as it is considered impractical and unethical to put marine mammals into cages or laboratories and subject them to potentially fatal, harmful or even stressful conditions. It is also unacceptable to kill and dissect mammals that have been exposed to such conditions’. So if the MOD is to have its way, we’ll only know for sure after the deed’s been done. If you’d rather they played safe, IFAW has an e-mail campaign going.

Meanwhile, Norway, Iceland and Japan’s plan to increase whaling has, thankfully, been condemned by Britain in run-up to next month’s gathering of the International Whaling Commission. But hosts, South Korea, will propose a resumption of commercial whaling at the same meeting. Greenpeace has an innovative campaign to project images of protestors onto the building in which the meeting is to be held. Yours truly has submitted the above pic for this virtual march. Why not do the same?
Hat tip to Lotus in the Mud re. IFAW campaign

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The 22.6 per cent rise in shoppers at Bluewater is not to be sniffed at and looks certain to cement the hoodie ban. Manchester’s led the way with a ban on hoodies at the Trafford Centre (only slightly smaller than Bluewater) for seven years. Putting up your hood in air-conditioned shopping centre doesn’t prove criminal intent, so I’m not at all comfortable with the ban, but I don’t think it’s entirely misplaced.

I had the misfortune to leave London for a village near Cardiff in my early teens and suddenly found myself out in a small provisional city with nothing much to do. From the mid-1980s and into the late ’90s Cardiff topped league tables for nighttime violence, but you were okay if you avoided groups of lads in shiny Burton suits. The thugs’ grannies thought their grandkids ever so smart and, ironically, were far more likely to cross the street on seeing my more grungy, but perfectly harmless, friends.

It’s silly to pretend that the fashion kids adopt isn’t a product of the subculture in which they find themselves. Some subcultures are more tolerant of anti-social behaviour, petty theft et cetera than others. While shiny Burton suits slipped under the older generation’s radar, hoodies have not. And this time they’re right.

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No great surprise that wrestling fans don’t seem too bothered by Celebrity Wrestling’s demise, replaced with Star Wars four weeks into a planned eight week run. While it may be a shame analogue-terrestrial viewers won’t get to see who won, it’s a good thing this flopped, not just because the idea was so obviously inept, but because failures like this send the right sort of message to bosses at the deservedly declining ITV.

Pseudo-boffins at the station have devised a system for predicting ratings success based entirely on the celebrity count. Sign up Robson Green and they’ll throw money at you. On this basis they presumably expected Celebrity Wrestling to overpower Doctor Who based on the sheer numbers of z-listers.

ITV needs to learn that there’s much more to TV success than the faces actually on screen and every celebrity based failure is a step forward on that learning curve.

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Post-election is so much more interesting than the run up with all its populism, needless stress (like the Tories ever had a chance) et cetera. And that’s how it should be. It’s not about three long campaign weeks, but the years in between them. Immediately post-election is when the parties can be most honest in their self-appraisal, safe in the knowledge that a gaff today will be well forgotten when next time comes.

Yet, I’m pleased to say, many Tories and supporters are as self-delusional as ever. An ex-Thatcher advisor pushes the one more heave school of thought, mourning Howard’s departure, despite his raising the vote just 0.6 per cent and whinging about winning in England (not that the last Tory governments ever won in Scotland or Wales) as if that means something and claiming the voters are moving rightward. That last point’s the most serious mistake, but also the easiest to make. We tend to surround ourselves with like-minded souls and that makes it too easy to assume our views to be in the majority.

Reactionary blogger Laban Tall, nearly voted UKIP and blames them for splitting the Tory vote. He’s the kind of voter the ‘one more heaves’ want to keep and build upon. But Laban’s not known for checking his facts, he always writes nonsense from the gut. Had he checked Labour seats won adding Conservative and UKIP votes together (and making the big assumption that every UKIP voter would otherwise have voted Conservative) Laban would have discovered that just thirteen results would change. Labour would be down to 343, Tories up to 210 and with 92 seats for the rest the Labour majority would be 41. That’s just three short of the 44 seat majority Thatcher won in 1979 and she wasn’t held back at all, was she?

UKIP had a terrible time. They fought 496 seats and lost their deposit in 451. The norm for UKIP was an electorally insignificant one or two per cent. The constituency they represent has been punching above its weight for a very long time and has led the Conservative Party up a very long garden path.

And there’s more. Not only did the Conservatives wipe the floor with the swivel eyed loons (as Google calls them) they took seats from the Liberal Democrats whose attack on the Conservatives failed abysmally. Centre right Lib Dems went blue.

So all the evidence shows that the British right is as united as can be and that if the Conservatives want to win they’ll need to forget the likes of Laban Tall and move leftward where a gap should soon emerge…

In contrast to the right, the British left is terribly divided. Conservatives won more seats with about the same vote thanks to the Liberal Democrats who took votes from Labour’s left. So, paradoxically, Labour is more likely to hurt the Conservatives by moving leftward. Repairing the split in the progressive vote will not just be the easiest way to take seats from the Tories, it will be a lot more rewarding for core Labour supporters and activists… who will have a new leader without the right-wing baggage just in time.

Yet it looks like the Tories will be stupid enough to elect a leader who’ll keep them standing still. Goody-goody.

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Is it me or are the BBC’s new weather graphics really rubbish? We go through this hullabaloo every few years and it’s always the biggest change since 1985 or whatever.

I like to think I’m not interested in weather forecasts, but have to own up to blogging about them a few times. They’re a pet hate. But this time I know I’m not the only one. Someone rang in to say you can’t make it out at all in black and white. Bad news because people with black and white sets tend to be from the older generation who actually watch the weather. And the typeface makes it look like Sky News… hardly a confidence builder.

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It was Mylo’s turn to wear the Emperor’s New Clothes this morning on Jo Wiley, choosing Guns n’ Roses Sweet Child O’ Mine for his cover. And what a wonderfully silly cover it was, with DJ Mylo plonking away on what sounded like a cheap Casio keyboard while a real live singer (a first for Mylo) sang along.

But what was interesting was the dissing of Sunset Strippers, who used the same sample from Boy Meets Girl’s ‘Waiting For a Star’ Mylo used in ‘In My Arms’. Interestingly, Sunset Strippers claim theirs to be the only version endorsed by Boy Meets Girl. The thing is they’re both using the same formula as Uniting Nations: catchy sample (if you’re clever, two) repeat to peak and then repeat to fade. Yet Mylo’s obviously been pressing the right flesh, because while he’s being treated as a serious musician with profiles in the Guardian et cetera everyone else is written off as minor one hit wonders.

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Blogging’s been very light for the last week or so as I’ve had a too lengthy fight with the PC, that’s had me hunching over the ‘emergency laptop’ to get proper work done while snarling at various progress bars that don’t really indicate anything. What’s the point when it jumps a third of the way… appears to freeze… gets a new life… looks like it’s there… but no… oh no… we’re there… maybe not.

Anyway. After much huffing, puffing, et cetera I concluded that my hard drive needed replacing. It seemed straight forward enough, but wasn’t quite… but a couple of trips to Maplin and a couple of minor and not-as-straight-forward-as-they-should-be minor upgrades later… a not-as-straight-forward-as-it-should-be reinstallation of Windows… not-as-straight-forward-as-it-should-be reinstallations of all the other junk… and I’ve got a re-built PC. And it’s running noticeably faster than before. I wonder how long that’ll last.

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It feels like coincidence, but it’s probably because of something in the air, but just as the new Star Wars film’s about to hit the multiplexes, I’ve re-watched the first two films (I mean episodes IV and V, of course). As a kid I was a real Star Wars fan and owned loads of toys which, despite my mother being something of a hoarder, have somehow disappeared. But then that’s what makes the surviving tat so valuable. From about ten years old to my teens, I was a real armchair astronomer who got ever so upset when his mother told her friends I was into astrology.

Looking back I was right to be offended at the association with mumbo jumbo, but I have to admit that Star Wars isn’t all it pretends to be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great fantasy adventure stuff, but there’s not science bit. I mean, landing inside an asteroid makes for a clever escape, but getting out wearing no more than a face mask to discover there’s gravity is silly. And that ice world can’t have been that cold given that Han Solo was able to take his face mask off to radio for help. And the Millennium Falcon makes all that fuss about going to light speed, when even the Death Star must travel at many multiples of the same to go from star system to star system.

Yes it’s all good fun and doesn’t really matter (though I’m surprised my younger self wasn’t more snooty), but telling the census you’re a Jedi?

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A little while ago, I was down in my parents’ part of the world. They live in a former Tory-Labour marginal that’s now increasingly safe for Labour. I was told I needn’t worry about the Tories winning because people wouldn’t have a Jew as Prime Minister. I dismissed that at the time, but it did come to mind when Howard unveiled his ‘it’s not racist [nudge, nudge]…’ posters on immigration. And I was reminded of it again when I read in the Telegraph that a rector with links to Prince Charles has had to apologise for an anti-Semitic remark about the Tory leader. And it’s always been fair game to make fun of his funny accent, which isn’t a real accent but something affected in a vain attempt not to offend the kind of people I’d never have as friends.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

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Amid all the election brouhaha over here, it’s easy to miss Jennifer Lopez’s bid for power stateside. I’m no fan, but I can see that she’s been working ever so hard. Not only does she re-release her record every five minutes, she’s constantly re-making her film, has a lingerie range, perfumes et cetera.

Now while some people say there’s nothing wrong with a little hard work, I think J-Lo’s pushing it. It’s important to take time out once in a while to enjoy the fruits of one’s labours, smell the roses and enjoy. For J-Lo that time has come.
Spare a thought for#3: Jamie Oliver

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