Smoke free

Some people have suggested that more people might go to pubs now that people are no longer allowed to smoke in them. I’ve always thought that if this was the case many more non-smoking pubs would have opened years ago, but that’s besides the point for this post.

My local was has always been a well frequented establishment, getting quite full on certain nights. It has always been very smoky as well, since most of the people in it smoked (staff included). I’m curious to see what it’s like post-smoking ban, but I do think to get a proper result I need to wait a while for the change to have settled. I can’t imagine it without the smoke.

Repressive nonsense

Can you believe this crap? Two cars left in London with the intention of blowing up clubbers and a car driven into the front of Glasgow airport to blow up travellers. So in response to this unpredicted attacks, which were foiled by the attackers’ own incompetence more than any action by the state security services, they’re now once again talking about 90 days detention without charge.

It doesn’t seem to matter that these repressive, illiberal measures wouldn’t have helped in this or any other case. This would mean a completely innocent person could just be locked up for 3 months for no good reason while the police search through their stuff in order to find out that they are innocent. What is that person supposed to do when they are released?

My brother’s suggestion (which I certainly don’t endorse) is that a wall be built around Bradford and it then be used as an internment camp for all Muslims until they can be repatriated.

A Blow for Consumer Choice

My favourite music shop, Fopp, has been put into administration and all their shops closed. I like Fopp because they always had good albums for £5 each and sold those handy twin packs for £6. One can occasionally find a great bargain in HMV or Virgin, but usually their ’sales’ are full of albums priced at about £7 and more.

Having said that, I did pick up Bruce Springsteen’s 30th anniversery special edition of Born to Run for £13.50 from HMV when I was in town on Thursday. It was a similar price from Fopp’s website (plus postage) or £27 from HMV, so I was delighted when I saw it.

Comedy Gold

E4 showed an old Smack the Pony episode earlier tonight and so I decided to go look what clips people had stuck on youtube. They had many from the one that was on tonight, strangely enough. I think my all time favourite clip from the show is the one below.

“NoNoNo you naughty knife.” Gets me every time.

Best Served Chilled

The selections for this year’s inductees into the ice hockey Hall of Fame are out and they’re a fine bunch. They have picked four players this year (they usually pick 3; 4 is the maximum for a single year). The selections are Mark Messier, Ron Francis, Al MacInnis and Scott Stevens.

Obviously, as a Devils fan I’m most excited about Scott Stevens. He captained our team to 3 Stanley Cup victories as well as the loss in the final against Colorado in 2001. When it came to the playoffs there were no prizes for guessing whose job it would be to try and stop the best attacking players on the other team. As well as his determination and effort, one of the things I always liked about Stevens was that as a hard hitting defenceman, he was pretty clean. He hit people as hard as anybody in the league, but he kept his elbow in. They were clean hits. Compare this with what we’ve seen in this year’s Cup final where Pronger picked up a suspension for knocking a player out with a cynical elbow to the head.

Ron Francis knows all about Stevens’ talents. I remember a few seasons ago when we played Carolina, and a particularly hard hit left Francis wondering what month it was. It’s a fine line the physical defenceman walks - one has to hurt the opposing players enough to put them off their game and make them think twice about how much they want to be fighting for the puck in the corners, but not to seriously injure a guy or leave someone with brain damage. A big mid-ice hit can give a team a boost, but if the player has to be carried off in a stretcher all the momentum is lost and the other team wants to win for their fallen comrade.

Stevens Played 956 games for New Jersey, scoring 93 goals and 337 assists. It is not known how many goals he stopped their opponants scoring.

As for the other players, Mark Messier was always known for his leadership skills as well as his playing skills. He gained the 2nd most career points (goals + assists) and won 6 Stanley Cups, including one with the *spits* New York Rangers. He said that somebody should make a jersey that is half Edmonton and half New York. I remember when Bourque moved to Colorado to win a cup, there was someone who had a half Boston, half Colorado jersey.

Ron Francis was a top-notch playmaker and had a reputation for being a really nice bloke to boot. I’m not someone who memorises stats, so I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that he is 4th in career points and 2nd in career assists.

Al MacInnis was a solid defenceman known for his hard shots from the blueline. A regular in the All Star competition’s hardest shot contest, in games he demonstrated that an effective slapshot needs a quick release to go with the power. I remember him from his days in St Louis, when either him or Pronger would be on the ice at all times.

Focus on Ulley

What I didn’t mention about going to the cinema last Wednesday is that afterwards we went for a drink at the Royal Oak in Ulley. This is a regular drinking spot for my parents because they sell decent beer at low prices.

Ulley is a small village between southern Sheffield and Rotherham (it comes under Rotherham) that pretty much just consists of houses and the pub. The reservoir and country park is just down the hill and is a nice enough walk on a sunny day. Several years ago we nearly moved there, but decided to stay where we are.

The Flood

Some of you may have heard on the news about the terrible flooding in my home city of Sheffield. Sheffield is not generally prone to flooding, except for a few specific areas. Usually much of the country can be underwater while we carry on as normal. On this occasion the rivers Don and Sheaf seem to have burst their banks. If you’ve been following the news reports it is likely you’ll have heard about Brightside Lane becoming a river and people having to be rescued from roofs by RAF helicopters. My mother just happens to work on Brightside Lane. She spent 3 hours trying to get to work and trying to contact them but eventually gave up and came home.

There was also a report of an explosion and toxic fumes from one of the industrial plants. Nevertheless, we could not pass up this opportunity to witness major national news to bring that news to you our loyal reader(s), even if this meant risking life and limb. Well, actually we had no intention of risking life or limb, and when we set off we had not heard about the deaths in this flood. A boy of 13 has been washed away, believed dead (a body has been recovered) and a man of 68 was caught and was killed as he tried to abandon his car.

It was a little disappointing when we got down there as the police were everywhere and were blocking off the routes to all the best areas. I don’t know how they decided where we could or could not go as there were heavily flooded roads ‘open’ while seemingly passable roads were closed. I complained repeatedly about how we used to live in a free country and that as a citizen I should be permitted to walk down any public street I want to walk down. Only not to the police. Because of the police restrictions, most of the pictures were taken using my camera’s full 10x optical zoom. The problem with this is that the slightest movement makes the photo a complete blur. I did manage to get one fairly clear one on full zoom when I used a handy traffic cone as a camera stand. The photos can be found on flickr here.

On our way home we heard that they had started sticking people in the Sheffield Arena and were giving out hot drinks. Obviously had we still been down there we would have popped in to get a cuppa and some more pics.

The last photo is the one from on the cone. This is in a different part of the city, the Wicker, nearer the city centre.

The importance of debate

I hope that over the course of my blogging, especially it must be said on the old blogs, I have made it clear that I feel debate is important. I feel frustrated when I see the media narrowing and diverting debate on major isssues. This is why I sometimes greatly enjoy the television show Question Time.*

The upcoming “young person’s” edition of the show will feature a member of the public who is not a journalist or politician as most guests are. There are videos on the BBC website from prospective candidates trying to sell themselves as the right person for the position. I was keen to see these videos, but have been disappointed by their content.

I want a panelist who broadly agrees with me. I don’t know if any of these candidates do. None of the people adequately outlines their own views. The videos are only a minute long so there is a limit to what can be said, but they mostly just tell us how interested they are in a range of issues and how they’ll represent young people. Which young people? This suggests that all young people are the same and hold the same views, which certainly has not been my experience.

• Candidate Baker immediately made me think of David Cameron. He is comfortable in front of the camera and says what he thinks the audience want to hear - the obvious young person issues of higher education and property prices are his concerns.
• Candidate Bell seems to hold the environment as a priority, and mentions the often overlooked issue of forcing undeveloped economies to stay that way because of climate change. The problem is he seems to imply that forcing millions to live in abject poverty so we can feel that we’re making an effort is a good thing. He is not clear on this point, I merely infer it from his tone of voice.
• Candidate Kidson seems to think young people are unfairly criticised for their violent destructive behaviour, and that his role would be to defend the image of the youthful. I think young people are frightning and a threat to us all, so he won’t be getting my vote.
• Candidate Mahiaini lives in Harrow (the people there being very popular here at I.D.) and tells us she is against forced religious conformism, but is pro-morality. That could be taken many ways, e.g. does she support banning abortion as an immoral act? She claims that her views may well differ from many of her peers (that’s the way to win elections voted for by one’s peers!), but she aims to demonstrate that young people do care about what happens.
• Candidate Rasheed claims to represent 100,000 young people already. I wonder if the 100,000 in question know about this. I’m not sure I could back someone this loose with figures. She is clearly a natural politician and will probably by a govenment (or shadow) minister in about 15 years.
• Candidate Van Emden is ‘the annoying one’. He’s the one playing My Generation in the background. He is also the only to have an edited video (the others each being a single shot of their respective monologue). He said nothing memorable.
• Candidate Vikram claims to have “unique views” on a wide range of subjects. I find this very hard to believe. It is quite tough to hold a view not held by anyone else, (and how would one know anyway?) and if his views are unique he disagrees with me anyway!
• Candidate Wright acknowledges the importance of the non-party panelists to the Question Time format. He shares my animosity for those politicians who simply spout their party’s official policy statement on the topic in question and should have sent a collection of press releases instead of turning up in person. He believe the success of the show rest on the other panelists to engage in actual debate, to challange the adopted positions and to know what they are on about. On the downside, this still doesn’t tell me his views on the issues and he is ginger.

I have not mentioned the other two candidates because they are so bland, even compared to some of those I have mentioned, that they simply made no impression upon me at all. If forced to lend my considerable weight behind a candidate I would be torn between Candidates Mahiaini and Wright. I believe I have explained my reservations above.

*I’m not sure I have any readers outside the UK (well, Molly comes along occasionally I suppose) but if anyone isn’t familiar with the show Question Time I will attempt an explanation. A panel of 5 guests debate questions put to them by a studio audience. 3 of the guests usually represent the 3 largest political parties. At any time there will be a question being discussed (It’s not a quick-fire free for all) but other related questions will be asked and possibly answered. The panel do not know in advance what will be aksed, but the focus is current affairs so anyone who follows the news shouldn’t be too surprised by the topics covered.

Film Day

I went to see a couple of films at the cinema yesterday. I say cinema, but actually I didn’t see them at the same place.

In the small independent place I like to go to, I saw Goya’s Ghosts. I wasn’t especially clear what it was about, something involving the artist and heresy. I thought it was a good film, although the usually good Natalie Portman overacted a little in the early scenes. Generally the performances from the cast were solid. It is quite brutal in places, but then it does involve the Spanish Inquisition!

Later I went to see the third Pirates of the Caribbean film. It was an enjoyable enough escapist escapade. I thought it utterly preposterous, but at least it was funny. It is an improvement on the second but I still think the original was the best of the three.

For when you’ve too much time

As a result of Heather’s mention of ‘the impossible quiz’ I came across a site called addicting games (.com) which features a number af free flash games to play. I thought I’d mention the 50 states game. Obviously enough it is a game in which one places the states in the correct position on the map. As long a you get pretty close it slots it in for you and calls it perfect. It also keeps track of your average error on the non-perfect placements.

I scored: 82.35 (42/51, av. er. 42 miles, 446 seconds)

If you have a go yourself come back and let me know how you went on.

***Update***

Having just played the game again I am reminded of the role luck plays in the game. I had to place Colorado and D.C with nothing nearby for reference. In my first game it was Iowa that I got horribly wrong.