Arthur’s been making the most of the spring weather, coming home with feathers in his whiskers and staying in just long enough for a few Temptations (chicken & cheese) before hopping off to resume the hunt.

I don’t approve of his torturing and murdering small creatures for fun. But Arthur’s not capable of developing a moral code and is, therefore, incapable of immorality. He’s driven by an instinct to hunt and kill; satisfying that makes him happy.

He’s also an obligate carnivore, which makes a nonsense of this Vegetable Felix. There’s a tendency for posh cat foods to include vegetables. Critter once had some with peas; he spat them out in disgust.
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There’s something exciting about this modest row of shops. Somehow it sums up Manchester today. We’re in Whalley Range, inner city Manchester on the up thanks to its proximity to Chorlton.

At one end is Booze & Food, a fairly ordinary off licence cum cornershop, that could just as easily be called Booze & Fags. At the other is Palmiro, universally recognised as one of the country’s best Italian restaurants (no pizza/pasta buffets here).

When Palmiro opened this was pure urban wilderness, some of these shops were closed. But people travel from far and wide to eat here.

Then came the Hilary Step, Whalley Range’s first pub (this place’s vice is prostitution; The Whalley is in Brook’s Bar) arrived, then the Jam Street Cafe. Fast food, laundry and car parts somehow add to what makes it all special.
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The year may only be a third of the way through, but I reckon 13 (Tzameti), by first time Georgian director Géla Babluani, will be hard to beat as its best film. As I said at the time it’s a near perfect thriller.

What was also obvious at the time was that this was film destined to be remade by Hollywood. And so it has come to pass. Fortunately, Babluani will have a hand in it. At the time we joked that they’d put Tom Hanks in the leading role… buy it (don’t rent, you’ll want to keep) to see why that would be so funny.

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Guardian business editor Deborah Hargreaves has been apologising for big business a fair bit lately. On Monday she questioned the EU’s motivation in pursuing Microsoft and on Tuesday asked us to give Tesco a break.

‘It must be better to run one operating system that does everything rather than have to bolt on many extra additions from rivals,’ she says in defence of Microsoft.

It’s scary that a business editor can be so naïve. Conceding that Microsoft, ‘can be accused of stifling innovation,’ simply isn’t good enough. Microsoft hasn’t innovated in the PC market this decade. And there’s no reason why it should. Research and development is a costly business and with ninety per cent of the market in the bag, it’s hard to justify major investment. Instead, Microsoft merely fire fights with endless security patches and quick fixes. The next generation of Windows is two years late, with more delay probable, but it doesn’t really matter to shareholders as the bottom line is currently unaffected.

Tesco is a different matter; they’re not yet a monopolist. I’m lucky enough to live in suburb famed for its innovative local shops; but they’re special because they’re so unlike the corner shops we’re supposed to mourn. Operating in a highly competitive market, Tesco makes so much money because people choose them, not because they have no choice. Should they get big enough to start behaving like Microsoft, we’ll have to break them up.

But I’m with Marx on this one. The more petite bourgeois shopkeepers go to the wall the better.

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Chorlton Park School has long had a sign outside that reads, ‘The Children of Chorlton Park say: “Show you care park elsewhere”’. Sadly many of the parents of the seven to eleven year olds who attend the school don’t realise this means them (who else?) or that it extends to dropping off (which is particularly dangerous as hassled parents are prone to pull out without looking once the little darling has shut the door).

Consequently, I’m used to congestion as I drive past the school, which is on a corner with this dual carriageway. There are two flash points; parents stopping to dump offspring onto the grass verge that separates the two carriageways of Mauldeth Road West (i.e. in the middle of the road) and parents performing u-turns about the grass verge.

In defiance of reality, crossing patrols are positioned at points that assume children walk to school. So it’s not uncommon to see a plump, smartly dressed seven or eight year old, weighed down by their green ‘Chorlton Park School’ satchel and much else, fall out of the back of a car into the middle of the road, scramble to their feet and cross the road while ducking and diving between other cars in the process of just dropping off kids.

This morning things were different. Traffic was relatively free moving. There were police in bright florescent jackets (they don’t take the risks parents impose on their kids) on the grass verge. Each time a car door opened, they jogged up and closed it. Meanwhile, the school gates were covered off by at least three traffic wardens.

You’d think that the high profile of the police and traffic wardens would ensure than no parent was stupid enough to attempt an illegal manoeuvre. You’d be wrong. There was a queue for on the spot fines. (It would be nice to think these fines would pay for it all.)

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‘I’m just checking your team name,’ said the cheating patriarch from Pant Hamsters. (What kind of name is that? But at least this may become the definitive Pant Hamsters resource on the web.)

And later: ‘Can we trade an answer?’

I don’t think so. The Village Prostitute Who Threw Herself in the Pond never cheats… not even with mobile Google.
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Perhaps cinema’s most enduring metaphor, the road movie offers its protagonist the opportunity not just to see new places and meet new people, but to find another self. Transamerica gets that tick in the box. But its characters are unbelievable caricatures and the journey predictable, almost pointless.
A disappointing 3 out of 10.
Director: Duncan Tucker……Starring: Felicity Huffman
Capote……Mission Impossible 3

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Carphone Warehouse has caught the industry by surprise with its broadband offer; free, fast, with the usual modem and the rest bundled in. Sounds too good to be true, but we’ve been here before.

Ten years ago we early adopters accessed the internet over very slow dial-up connections (we’re talking 14.4kbs; 570 times slower or thereabouts than Talk Talk’s 8mbs). And we paid about £15 per month plus the cost of a local phone call (another five pence per minute peak rate). It was mad. But the web was exciting, even then.

Freeserve changed all that. Dixons did a deal with telecommunications company who agreed to share revenue from the local phone call. That meant the £15 a month fee could go and the internet was free. Well not really. You didn’t pay your internet service provider (ISP) anything, but you still had the phone call. Some said it wouldn’t work. My ISP wrote to everyone telling us it wasn’t viable. They’re not an ISP anymore.

Talk Talk from Carphone Warehouse will also change everything. Once the early adopters have paid for the research, development and infrastructure, the day-to-day cost of providing internet access is miniscule. Today’s consumers are used to change and adopt new technology incredibly quickly. And the regulator says BT must let companies like Carphone Warehouse install their own kit at BT exchanges and take ownership of phone lines. That means Talk Talk doesn’t have to rent a line from BT; they can offer free internet.

All you have to do is sign up for their telephone service. Soon all ISPs will work like Talk Talk from Carphone Warehouse. (And by the way, you get free phone calls to UK landlines and 28 other countries too.)

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While the Sun repeats the myth that immigrants are overwhelming us, it does speak more sense than many in face of soul searching on the much exaggerated rise of the BNP. It falls to the Telegraph to repeat the party’s most seductive line: ‘these people have not been consulted about the vast social experiment in which they have been forced to participate.’

It’s true that none of us voted for a multicultural society. But it’s also true that nobody voted for the industrial revolution. Indeed, had the peasants been consulted I doubt they’d have voted for hard, long hours in factories and slum housing.

This ‘nobody asked us’ response to social change is a nonsense that betrays an incredible naïvety about the power of the state. It’s akin to believing that a vote for full employment is enough to create a job for everyone and a vote against crime enough to stop it. That people will choose lifestyles and belief systems of which conservatives and fascists disapprove is equally tough: nobody is obliged to seek their permission. The BNP and Telegraph leader writers are guilty of foolish egotism.

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Rugby Fives (a ball game, a bit like Eton Fives, played on a squash like court with hands instead of racquets) is popular at our very inclusive gym.

Some people apparently suspect Rugby (and Eton) Fives might be an elitist sport. To counter this slur, reports the club newsletter, someone has travelled the country for Mercedes Magazine. I assume he drove a Merc. This has this has put him in the best position to debunk the elitist myth for all owners of new Mercedes.
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