Let’s look at what happens to the clothes we give to charity, says BBC News Magazine. And off we go to a place where impoverished Zambians are embarrassingly grateful; the clothes must have been possessed or belonged to the dead. The British are so kind; sacrificing for Africa when they have families of their own.

But what worried me here was the way in which the long-term impact of our extraordinary generosity is cursorily dismissed. That Zambia has no rag trade of its own is acknowledged, but that this might be because they can’t compete with freebies is ‘hotly contested’.

Rather than marvel at the naivety of the recipients of our charity (poor superstitious souls), it would be nice to have a genuine ethical debate. People need clothes now, of course, but they also need jobs. The argument that flooding African countries with second hand clothes doesn’t destroy local jobs needs some considerable explanation.

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If the Fallowfield cellar pervert has a key ring at all it’s likely to be one of these Wi-fi hot spot sniffers. He’s been wandering around the inner-city suburb (big houses with soft-arsed students) looking for somewhere to download kiddie porn. The remarkable thing, Ian of Spinneyhead and I seem to agree, is that the residents of the house he squatted in for a week were more worried about his stealing bandwidth (albeit for very dodgy purposes) than murdering them in their beds.

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There are some people who have a great capacity to wind others up just by being. You don’t need to really know these people, just find yourself in close proximity.

And so it is with my anti-social neighbour.

I’ve watched him line wheelie bins up in others’ parking spaces days before collection day, park in others’ bays while closing his own and lots of other petty annoyances. But it’s the little things that get to you.

Anyway. This grotesqe has been used to protect his car windscreen from the frost for too long. This morning he placed it upon the fence to Chorlton Brook to dry in the rain. Needless to say it wasn’t there when he got back.
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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Good Night, and Good Luck isn’t a subtle picture. Making a story of past tyranny and witch hunts with parallels for today is not original. And the back stories are clumsy. Yet it is a well made, sometimes atmospheric piece with a message the mass audience almost certainly needs to hear.
A more than watchable 7 out of 10.
Director: George Clooney……Staring: David Strathairn…… Robert Downey Jr.……George Clooney
13 (Tzameti)……Capote

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I’m a big fan of Marmite. In fact I don’t see how anyone can eat toast without it and think Starbucks’ Cheese & Marmite Panini is heavenly. And I’m partisan. Vegemite, Marmite’s ozzy foe, is foul (too heavy on the malt extract).

But this squeezy Marmite is an aberration. I’m instantly reminded of the time I went to one of those warehouse shopping club places and bought a huge catering tub of Marmite. It came in similar packaging to margarine and just didn’t work. That solid round black jar has lasted more than a century for good reason. Worse they’re going to have to thin it for squeezy philistines.

As for preventing ‘butter and toast crumbs on the knife contaminating the spread’. That’s nonsense; these so-called contaminants add to the experience when you dip your finger in for that pure Marmite hit.

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Speaking of reality TV (as I kind of was) it was excruciating to see Journey South perform The Beatles Let It Be on CD:UK and hearing Lauren Laverne invoke the ‘better than the Beatles cliché’ was muesli choking. Perhaps I won’t be bothering with XFM after all.

I do have a soft spot for pop. It’s mostly harmless, fun, naïve and disposable. It’s the last aspect that means I don’t actually buy it save for All Saints’ Saints and Sinners, which is one of the finest albums ever made. The other thing about pop is that while you may hate its sickly-sweetness and lack of sophistication at the time, years later it’s pop that gets you all nostalgic.

So when a duo of no-marks who did okay on some reality show, because the guru of the day sees they brush up well and are easily manipulated, end up doing a bad karaoke version of an overrated Beatles track… well… well someone needs to speak out.

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I remain a late convert to reality TV, but I did enjoy getting sucked into this year’s Celebrity Big Brother. Now I find myself watching the Apprentice amazed at how totally inept all of the contestants are. It’s hard to imagine any of them commanding a six figure salary in the real world, whatever that may be.

Normally I work at home with just the cat for company, but I’m currently working onsite for the first time in a couple of years. That is I’m in an office with a wide mix of people. Psychologically, that’s a good thing I’m sure, but what’s struck me is how much of a bubble the office is. Everyone’s friendly and approachable and yet I feel far more isolated than I did at home where I had the radio and internet to distract me. Everyone stuck in the office, be they young or old, is clearly far less aware of goings on outside; be that hard news, trivia or cultural happenings. Not much news penetrates the bubble.

Bringing these ideas together is an excellent piece by Mark of K-punk. For Mark the Apprentice demonstrates, ‘that the supposed “Reality” of Business is inseparable from the most facile fantasy structures’. Mark’s writing cannot be described as accessible. Nevertheless, his wandering about a university campus discovering that all about him have absorbed the values that sustain their particular reality so completely that change is unimaginable is full of comedy and insight.

I’m with him on the Apprentice, but suspect most others see the Emperor’s new Clothes.

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XFM is coming to Manchester and I’m quietly optimistic. While I’m mostly a Radio 1 listener, I bore quickly of R&B, so I’ve been listening to XFM, London online for a little while. On the whole it’s a good mix of new British music (which still, even post John Peel, tends to be ghettoised into evening programming on Radio 1) together with some older stuff that they may play on Radio 2 (I wouldn’t know because I simply can’t bring myself to press that button). And they play lots of Manchester music our own local stations ignore.

Now I’m listening to the test transmissions in the car. It’s good to have some decent music played more or less without interruption and in full. Although from Wednesday 15 March, there will be DJs and ads (XFM don’t seem to break for ads as often as other commercial stations, but that may be a bad sign).

If any city deserves an alternative (or alternative-ish) music station, it’s Manchester. Yet the city is something of graveyard. Way back at the end of the 1980s (when I arrived as a student) there was Sunset then came a Kiss franchise in the early to mid 1990s. Dance music was where it was at and it was good to drive to, but in 1998 they became Galaxy 102 and (as industry insiders agree) turned into a poor copy of Key 103.

Despite that history, I reckon XFM, Manchester (97.7FM) has a good chance of making it. It will appeal to the 30-somethings, like myself, who like to keep on top of the new, rather than trying to get loads of elusive kids on board.

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Tebay Services is something of a cult service station and once again it’s topped a league of pit stops (the pic with this story seems quite unworthy of Don McPhee).

I made a point of stopping off there in October 2003 on the way back from Glasgow. Having heard much about the country’s only independent services, I’d been meaning to go for several years. And it’s a weird place. The décor is very 1970s, not the rich browns that are back in fashion, but the panelled walls. Much is made of the use of local produce, so there are photos on the walls from harvest time (sepia or black & white, I’m not sure) that look exactly like those on the walls on the local pub in the Wicker Man. Adjacent to all this is a farmers’ market. This is where the localism falls down as the produce comes from farms all over the UK, obviously by road. But I nitpick. It’s a little north of Cumbria and the Lake District’s most popular tourist destinations, but pay it a visit. It certainly makes a change from the usual.

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You’d think that toaster design and technology would have matured to the point where the toaster buyer could buy with confidence. Not so. This Tesco toaster looks the part and, at less than a tenner, you’d think it a bargain. Indeed it is a bargain, if you eat small slices.

I find that with many toasters the bread pops over the top and so is never fully cooked. Yet the toaster industry appears to be responding to the opposite issue with gadgets for rescuing small slices and crumpets. (I’ll concede the crumpet issue.)
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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