I was well into Celebrity Big Brother. Quietly cheering for Barrymore, uncomfortable with George Galloway but anxious to keep him confined and finally suckered into the Preston/Chantelle/Camille Aznar thing. So I’ll miss it, though it all seems rather distant.

Barrymore went through a proper character arc; from pathetic weepy has-been, to the most over the top bully to calming voice of reason. This change mirrored that of George, who came in as respected father of the house, before moving on to become Big Brother’s representative on Earth and finally – totally convinced of his righteousness and least able to see it was only a game – a bully who just had to cheat, lie and scheme. Pete Burns, the other most notable is summed up perfectly by Tony Parsons in the Mirror. Burns is no intellectual, though he sometimes faired comparatively well. Thanks to being a one-hit-wonder, he’s been spoilt and over indulged for the last twenty plus years to the point where he believes his own hype and has become a nasty little freak. Celebrity Big Brother would have been a much poorer show without him.

Maggot, Rula Lenska, Faria Alam, Traci Bingham and Dennis Rodman had the occasional moment were generally uninteresting.
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Armando Iannucci does a good job satirising Radio 4 listeners in the Observer, who have become dreadfully upset at the axing of the UK theme. You’d think it was the national anthem that was getting it in the neck. But no. It’s a ten minute medley by an Austrian-born composer that includes Danny Boy, What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?, Scotland the Brave, Rule Britannia, Men of Harlech, Greensleeves, Londonderry Air and Early One Morning. I’ve only heard brief snippets and it’s the bilge you’d expect from that description.

But not only is the ‘UK theme’ embarrassing nonsense, it’s only played at 5.30am when any sensible person needs a really good excuse not to be tucked up in bed. And reading the comments left on the Telegraph website it’s clear fans of the UK Theme could do with a nice lie down.

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Poor old Camille Aznar, girlfriend of Celebrity Big Brother contestant Preston, lead singer of Ordinary Boys.

We’ve only got to see her properly on his eviction tonight, but that’s not for want of trying. As he’s been flirting away with Chantelle, she’s been hounded by the press… here she is running away from Heat.

Now had she sold them a bit of a story — just some made up fun — she’d be quids in and up for taking Faria’s place in the house next year.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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uSwitch has become a trusted household name by enabling customers to find thing like the cheapest gas and electricity suppliers, the greenest electricity suppliers or the best buy broadband internet connection. uSwitch is successful because people trust it. They trust it because it agrees to be independently regulated by energywatch, the watchdog created by government to protect consumers. Crucially, it includes data from all energy suppliers, not just those who pay uSwitch a commission so users can sign up directly from the uSwitch website.

And now uSwitch enables you to compare credit cards or compare personal and secured loans from a similarly comprehensive dataset. Credit card and loan comparison is made using data supplied by an independent personal finance data publisher, which monitors all providers continually and updates uSwitch daily with changes to ensure results are comprehensive and accurate.

Credit card comparison is not easy and there is no credit card that’s best for everyone. The uSwitch compare credit cards calculator works out how much you’d save by transferring a balance from one card to another. It also works out the interest and charges over a chosen time period for a new credit card. You can also compare credit card benefits like cashback deals, annual fees, free travel insurance, Air Miles, medical and legal assistance and 24-hour customer service. And in around ten minutes find the best credit card for you.

Whether you’re looking for a personal loan or a secured loan, it’s just as easy to compare loans with uSwitch. Loans from all available lenders (High Street and internet) are compared taking into account factors like interest, payment protection insurance, early repayment charges and penalties. The cost of a loan can vary enormously from lender to lender, but with uSwitch you can compare them all and make an informed decision in just a few minutes.

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News of the accident that killed twelve West Virginian miners was beamed around the world in January thanks to the drama of the rescue attempt and the cruelty of families being told the miners were alive when all but one was dead. Just weeks later two more miners were killed as the Governor signed more safety legislation into law.

One of those miners, Don Bragg, will be laid to rest on Sunday. A radical anti-gay Christian church plans to picket his funeral because these mining accidents prove god hates West Virginia. God killed Don, not because he was gay, but because he lived in a country full of gays.

Yet for all this (and perhaps because of it) I suspect America’s radical Christians are on the way out. The whole thing’s gone as far as it can go. When the anti-gay Christians took on the might of the pink dollar in a battle over Ford, they lost.

Then there’s the battle for creationism to be taught in schools (albeit rebadged ‘intelligent design’). Leading televangelist Pat Robertson offered an apocalyptic warning that a vote against intelligent design is a vote against God after a school board was voted out for supporting it. Nevertheless, the creationists lost and keep losing.

When the Vatican says intelligent design isn’t science (and reconciles Christianity and evolution) it shows that this kind of radical Christianity can only exist in America. Beyond the borders of the USA, established Christian churches, mostly Catholic and Anglican, enjoy near monopoly status. Pat Robertson has no congregation outside of the USA. And they’ve got liberal America too.

As the radicals’ apocalyptic vision for America and the rest of the world becomes ever clearer, support for them will dwindle and sense will prevail.

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A long time ago I opined that giving National Lottery players a say on where the grants go might turn out to be a clever way of ripping them off. The point being that people might want it spent on stuff that would otherwise be funded by taxation; the minister mentioned cancer scanners.

Since I wrote that, the Lottery Commissioner’s published research that shows those on the lowest incomes are most likely to play the lottery. If they were to volunteer to relieve taxpayers of the burden of funding cancer scanners, say, the real beneficiaries would be the well off. Better to pay for such things through a fair and equitable system of taxation.

Anyway. Now’s your chance to have a say on how the money should be spent, within tightly defined boundaries. You won’t be able to say much about the lottery as tax issue. The consultation paper explains that half the money’s going to health, education, the environment and charities (could be anything) and the question that touches on the issue is very confused:

‘We believe that Lottery money should not be allowed to become a substitute for funding that would normally fall to mainstream Government spending. However, the Lottery can still support things with recognised strong public support and Lottery grants can enhance mainstream public services. Do you agree?’

My point is made before the ‘however,’ but I strongly disagree with what comes after that and if I tick that box they might think I support the idea of lottery money substituting government spending. I’ve some experience of writing consultation papers like this. It’s an easy thing to put right. You simply offer a selection of opposing statements. Done this way, I’m forced to accept the compromise. Lots of the questions are like this. Crafty.

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Brokeback Mountain is a film that’s hard to fault. Direction and acting are spot on, while the cinematography fully exploits the breathtaking landscape. It’s a well scripted, gentle movie that needs to be relaxed into. Yet while the story’s well told, it remains a conventional portrayal of forbidden love.
A solid 8 out of 10.
Director: Ang Lee……Starring: Heath Ledger……Jake Gyllenhaal
King Kong……Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Ball Story

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When I first saw this Star front page, I naively thought it was Camille Aznar, girlfriend to Ordinary Boys’ Preston, but it’s non-celebrity Chantelle who obviously prepared for her imminent fame in the Big Brother house, by posing for many saucy tabloid pics. I was ready to blog on how similar the two look and to speculate that Preston has a type (you’d think so, wouldn’t you?) but the best photo of poor old Camille Aznar has her with a coat over her head.

Yep I’m still hooked on Celebrity Big Brother but I’m no longer cheering for Barrymore. I didn’t really have a reason for supporting him, just an instinctive need to pick someone and he was the biggest celeb. Unfortunately, by the end of week one he had revealed himself to be a total knob. It was the bullying of Jodie Marsh that left me regretting that cheer. Not that Barrymore was the main culprit. He’s a weak man who simply followed on from Galloway calling her ‘wicked’. This is nonsense of course. She’s an ex-Page 3 girl with a sense of humour to match and a personality not a million miles away from Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard. But she’s harmless. At the same time the other bizarre alpha-male, Pete Burns, was fighting her for his ‘right to choose’ to wear the fur of the nearly extinct. So Barrymore felt justified in letting off some steam. Like the Times bloggers say: ‘He argues like a child. A bald, mad, slurring child.’

More importantly Marsh was right on the coat and so her claim to the moral high ground is secure. It’s colobus monkey, not gorilla fur as Burns claimed. While the coat will probably turn out to be antique enough for him to get off, Pete could still face five years. And that would be a good thing. There are only 600 mountain gorillas left in the world. If we followed Pete Burn’s only argument – his right to choose fur – then they’d soon be skinned alive (it’s the only way to ensure quality) and turned into coats for the very rich. And that’s why there’s no comparison with leather, say, as cows aren’t endangered.

Of course, nobody in the Big Brother house has a grip on any of this. When Jodie was evicted the men thought the outside world had vindicated them. Galloway continued to bully and scheme, imagining himself to be popular. He supported Burns over the coat to the extent of suggesting Big Brother pay him compensation for allowing the police to take it away. Neither of them recognised the seriousness of the situation.

It will be interesting to see how Galloway reacts when he’s probably evicted on Wednesday along with Dennis. He’s completely failed to humanise himself in front of a new audience (assuming that was his aim). Instead he’s revealed himself to be a scheming bully (twice punished by Big Brother for breaking the rules) and been seen to dump on Rula, whom he obviously fancied. What little credibility he had is now in tatters and to cap it all he faces bankruptcy. But I’ve voted to get Chantelle and Dennis out as the longer Galloway’s locked in the house the worse it will be for him when he gets out.
Update: Camille Aznar: sell your story!
Previous: George Galloway & Big Brother… wrong, but quietly amusing……Celebrity Big Brother

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Built by the Victorians over a slum, the Great Northern Railway Company’s Goods Warehouse is often held up as one of Manchester’s most interesting buildings, even though the Victorians themselves screened it off with a terrace facade. The key feature was that this enormous warehouse took goods by canal and road as well as rail. Yet it was only used for couple of decades before the business dried up and it lay empty for many more.

Anyway. Today it’s a centre for leisure with a few bars, restaurants and a sixteen screen AMC cinema rattling around. And it’s tended to struggle against competition from the Printworks et al. In some ways this was good as you got a screen to yourself, but today AMC was buzzing and that meant sharing the cinema with people in constant need of the bathroom and kids who can’t stop playing with their phones. Perhaps the ushers should stop people on their way in and suggest they use the facilities first.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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Spotted this clever little ad in the Guardian today: The Original Blue Pill.

It’s ‘AMAZING,’ says Mr MT, East London. Others are equally glowing. Yet the only hint at what the Blue Pill’s done for them is a web address: www.hornydevil.co.uk (hint, hint). The small print says they’re herbal tablets: a placebo that does whatever you what.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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