Day 3063: Why NOT Call a General Election?

Thursday:


Why shouldn't we hold a General Election?

Mr Frown says it would cause "CHAOS"! Well, that shouldn't stop us; as a naughty elephant on a sugar rush I might say CHAOS is GOOD!

Ms Harriet the Harminator appears on the The Today Programme and refuses to answer the question.

But why NOT?

Well, the answer that they are ducking is that IT WON'T SOLVE ANYTHING.

As with all of Mr Balloon's ideas it SOUNDS simple… but Mr Clogg said it to the Prime Monster's face:

"…all you get is a few new faces and the same old rotten rules."

Just swapping one load of numpties for ANOTHER load of numpties is action that only LOOKS like a solution: how typical of Mr Balloon!

Here's what we REALLY need to do:

We need to tell the VOTERS that they are in charge again.

So first, the new Mr (or Ms) Speaker needs to use their fresh authority to call a CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION where EVERYONE will be allowed to contribute to writing a NEW BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

We will want to have open Town Hall meetings and submissions over the Internet. We should get the BBC involved: Mr Graham Norton can host "How do you solve a Problem like DEMOCRACY?" in which members of the public can phone in to choose their own Royal Commission.

We should do everything we can to make this the BIGGEST exercise in participative democracy EVER.

I know what I want: STV or SINGLE TRUNK VOTING – and I think we have really GOT to go out and sell people on the idea, convince them that the BEST system is one where the Parties can put up a number of candidates, but the VOTERS choose amongst them. PEOPLE's choice, not PARTIES' choice. And it's just like Primaries, but without the fuss of having to vote twice! The Conservatories LIKE the idea of Open Primaries; but we know that people DON'T LIKE wasting their time with too many elections. So go STV which does the same job and is much more powerfully democratic!

I want Fixed Term Parliaments, with fewer MPs, maybe four-hundred from Multimember Seats elected by STV. I want a STRONGER Parliament with Committees that can hold the Government to account, a Parliament that can subpoena ministers (or ANYONE) and demand answers. I want MPs to have a better career path on the Committees: like US Senators, they should wield real power.

I want a SMALLER Government, fewer ministries means less wasted money; fewer ministers means less pointless patronage. I want an elected House of Lords, and if you want special seats for members of religious communities then they should be allowed to speak but not vote.

Politicians should get round the table and SORT IT OUT! And if they can't agree someone should tell them what to do… someone WISE… someone FLUFFY… no! hang on, I've come over all MANIKIN SKYWALKER! That's exactly what SHOULDN'T happen!

I know what I want… but what do YOU want? After all, it's YOUR Parliament too.

"The people" say that they want this cleaning up – well they have to understand that THEY are the ones who have to do the cleaning up.

And then in six or maybe nine months (that might be pushing people's patience) we will have a REFERENDUM to adopt the new Constitution.

And three weeks later we have a General Election under the NEW rules.

Mr Clogg says "Of course we need an election", and he's right.

We just need a REVOLUTION first!


.

Day 3061: Text Speak(R) - Cll LXion M8

Tuesday:


Mr Speaker of the Housemartin's resignation speech in full then:

"Yer [badwords]! Ah'm off!"

In a private remark to the Prime Monster, he added:

"An' ye can tak tha' look of ye' face, ye great grinning ninny! Ye did nae support me, we'll I'll nae support ye's either! Ye can hae a by'elecshun, an' t'hell wi ye!"

Well, ONE election will be a START.


Meanwhile, and speaking of people letting their leadership dribble away, Mr Balloon was on the The Today Programme earlier this morning, and you could hear him getting more WEASELLY with every word that came out.

Would he call on Mr Speaker Housemartin to go?

"Ohh, um, er, no, no, it's not my job as leader of the opposition to, um, try to clean up Parliament. Have to leave that to others. I've got to appear above that sort of thing. Can't be seen to be breaking with tradition. Especially not traditions that keep Parliament an unaccountable box of secrets and dark practices. Goodness, can't have me 'letting the sun shine in' there. That would never do!"

Translation: he hadn't got the bottle.

Next question: hasn't he made a whopping profit on his million-pound pad in Notting Hill? Would he be returning the profits to the taxpayer?

"Look, I'm not thinking of selling it at the moment. No, I'm not selling it. I've told you, it's not for sale! Look, I'm not an idiot; the housing market is rotten and you'd all notice that I've made a socking great profit at your expense and… er… No, we should wait for the Kelly Commission on this. By the time the Kelly commission says that I have to, then I'll have had time for my tax lawyers to work out a way to… Look, I just meant what I said: the behaviour of some MPs has been appalling. I'm appalled that they got caught. But you can't have that Mr Clogg spoiling ALL our little earners, now can you?"

Translation: he's keeping the cash.


Contrast that with Mr Clogg's IMPRESSIVE performance on the Newsnight Show.

"No, Mr Housemartin wasn't a scapegoat; he'd been a roadblock to reform and only with a new Speaker could we start afresh. No, this wasn't about making excuses for other MPs; reform has to follow this, and all those MPs who've been bad have to face the music."

Mr Paxo's face was a PICTURE; he clearly DID NOT like being bested by the Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Eager to get his own back, he came up with a SYNTHETIC question about whether the Lib Dems would support the Conservatories if they called a vote of no confidence in the Government.

Mr Clogg was quite clear that he WOULD vote against the Government in any confidence motion, so ALL of Mr Paxo's BLUSTER was ONLY over whether or not we would support the Conservatories… as though this made some kind of difference to the question? Perhaps they would support US?

But that DOES raise an interesting point: if Mr Balloon is SO KEEN on there being a General Election, why doesn't HE table a motion of no confidence in the Government?

Clearly we can't leave cleaning up Parliament in Mr Balloon's hands. Or should I say "sticky fingers"?


It is VERY IMPORTANT now that we make sure that this is a BEGINNING and not an end!

The new Mr Speaker… incidentally, could someone maybe SIT on Sir Mr the Merciless until the nonimations close. Or perhaps sit on a SCATTER CUSHION on Sir Mr the Merciless. No offence.

Anyhoo, the new Mr Speaker must work with the Kelly Commission and the House authorities to QUICKLY bring in a new set of rules BOTH for how the House is run AND for how our MPs get elected.

We have got to have SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE: picking MPs has got to be the PEOPLE'S CHOICE and not the PARTY'S choice. Get RID of the FIX that is in the electoral system, and you'll go a long way to cleaning up the House of Commons.

And then as soon as possible, we should have a General Election.

Edited to add:

Auntie Alix is quite right that we have to address our own not-quite-as-white-as-white-ness if we are to convince a very angry group of people (namely EVERYBODY) that we deserve to be part of the solution.

A day after the FE (Federal Executioners) met, Daddy Alex fears that we are already FALLING BEHIND, letting our PROCEDURES get in the way of our PRINCIPLES. He has some EXPLOSIVE suggestions of how to move forwards.

I said it was a REVOLUTION, didn't I!


.

Day 3060: Source of Annoying Drone Traced to Faulty Speaker…

Monday:


…and obscure Conservatory blogger recommends changing Cable.


It seems that Mr Speaker of the Housemartin is to go after all.

Presumably in his meeting with the Party Leaders Mr Clogg told him that the game was up, while Mr Frown and Mr Balloon looked at their feet and said "umm, probably."


Well, it's not a surprise. His performance yesterday was, more than anything else, DEEPLY EMBARRASSING. If his claim to stay was based on competence in his job, he did a very good demonstration of why he should go; if his determination to hang on was based on him being the man to clean up this mess, he gave every indication of being the man who's been trying to cover it all up.

I have no doubt that his apology to the House and for the House was heartfelt and painful for him to make. But it is not enough. And so it is going to be even more painful for him. He missed his opportunity to stand down with dignity. And so now he's having his fingers prised off the green leather one by one.

I am very sorry for him, because it's not good for anyone to get HUMILIATED like that. But it's the path that he chose for himself.

PS:

In other news, scientists claim to have discovered the source of "the Hum"; apparently that droning noise you can hear is the sound of goats being scaped…

.

Day 3059: So Now We've GOT the Political High Ground… what are we going to do with it?

Sunday:


Mr Clogg's direct call for the Speaker of the House of Commons to go has significantly changed the political landscape.

Hooray!

Last week, I was saying that people will only be satisfied with a SACRIFICIAL DEFENESTRATION. Sacking Mr Speaker of the Housemartin actually MIGHT DO THE JOB.

Or at least it will, so long as it happens quickly (no staying-on 'till the next election in a kind of Fred-the-Shred-esque pension arrangement) and so long as his replacement is someone VIGOROUSLY interested in REFORM.

I think there's only one obvious candidate, and that is our own Mr Stormin' Norman Baker.

He probably doesn't WANT the job, but TOUGH – the Speaker TRADITIONALLY has to be dragged to the chair anyway!

And giving the job to someone with an UNPARALLELED REPUTATION for probing into dark corners and badgering out the truth would be a sure and clear sign from Parliament that they WANT to put their own House in Order.

People used to say that Sir Mr The Merciless would be a good candidate, but I'm afraid he may have rather tossed the SCATTER CUSHION over that possibility. Even if he WASN'T looking like part of the problem for claiming ten grand's worth of interior design (no matter how defensible we might think that to be) one thing is true: Sir Mr the Merciless is very much the man of the ESTABLISHMENT. Which makes him the EXACT OPPOSITE of the sort of Speaker that we right now if Parliament is to stop looking like a gang of crooks.

What we want is someone who will be in a position to bash some heads together and implement WHOLESALE reform of our political system. Sorting out the MPs expenses scandal is merely swatting the mosquito – we need to be draining the whole rotten swamp.


Thanks to Mr Clogg's BOLDNESS, we may actually have a chance. Certainly Mr Balloon has boxed himself into a corner on this one – all his claims last week to be "leading" on the issue of reform will look HOLLOW and HYPOCRITICAL if his Conservatories now fail to act with us to get a new the Speaker.

Award-winning Auntie Alix has set out a seven-point plan for how we should USE our moment of advantage to really press home the REFORMS that are so desperately needed. This includes some rather painful self-examination as well. And quite right too. I hope that the FE will be FAIR but FIRM.

Mr Mark Reckons has done a very EXCELLENT piece of analysis that nonetheless produces the "no Sh-stuff Sherlock" response of: "the safer an MP's seat, the more likely he or she is to be on the FIDDLE."

Well paint me purple and call me stunned!

This is the VITAL EVIDENCE that we need to see in the headlines: the way we ELECT our MPs has got to change if we are to stop this kind of abuse.

A system of "recalls" won't be any use if there are "safe" seats: at best you'll just toss one time-server for another; at worst you'll just see them bounce straight back in. Meanwhile, you'll cause chaos in the marginals.

You need a system where people EVERYWHERE have power to choose not just between PARTIES but between party CANDIDATES – and that means multi-member seats and single transferable vote.

(Although GOODNESS it needs a better NAME – how about: the "Pick the Best" system instead of the "Pick One" system. Or the "People's Choice" system instead of the "Party's Choice" system that we've got.)

Sacking the Speaker would be a HUGE thing. It hasn't happened for three-hundred years! We need to draw a line under the expenses scandal, but we need to make it the STARTING LINE, not just the FINISH.

This needs to be the START of a REVOLUTION.



...and now, over to Daddy Alex with all the important questions that will help to FRAME the debate about what sort of Revolution we need!

.

Day 3050: Start Wreck

Saturday:


ooo EEEE ooo!

Open hailing frequencies and set phasers to POPCORN! We've been to see Star Trek, the latest big screen adaptation of the adventures of Captain Quirk and his crew. This movie is EASY to sneak into, so long as you have TRANSPORTER TECHNOLOGY to BEAM you into the FRONT ROW!

We even got me a STAR FLEET UNIFORM for the occasion!

Red Shirt! That's GOOD isn't it?

Anyway, this film had produced universal happiness and positive responses everywhere, so I shall let Daddy Richard write a review.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong…?

(spoilers follow)

Why did I come out of JJ Abrams' cartoon space romp with a sense of dissatisfaction? I tried talking it over with Alex.

Was it the direction? No.

Reviewers of Star Trek seem to have a penchant for referencing Abrams' previous big-screen adaptation of a cult Sixties series, namely Mission Impossible III. There's a tendency to describe MI-III as "underrated". It isn't underrated; it's just bad. It starts off like a rocket (and the opening gags, both in the German wind-farm and the Vatican, are good and original) but it rapidly runs out of fizz, as Tom Cruise jumps off yet another tall building and the ending trails away like an afterthought, or a task on The Apprentice where they've left no time to complete the final reel.

Thankfully, Star Trek is nothing like that. It was pacey, interesting if occasionally a touch ADD frenetic, but more importantly it started with a bang, before grounding us in the relationships of these people and building to a satisfying conclusion.

Was it the acting? Certainly not.

Karl Urban is uncanny in the role of DeForest Kelly, capturing his spirit perfectly: brilliant, irascible, capable of great acts of friendship and human enough to make mistakes. Zachary Quinto is always a delight to watch, even if his Spock couldn't quite escape the shadow of his Sylar (the Vulcan should never, ever have a "hint of a smile" expression, particularly not when it's a superhuman serial killer's trademark). Leonard Nimoy, however, is perfect, almost Zen-like in his portrayal of the old Spock, who has been though it all and achieved a balance and inner peace between his human and Vulcan heritages. Zoe Saldana, while completely different to the incomparable Nichelle Nichols (Alex says he saw something of a similarity in the eyes, occasionally), brought a beautiful fresh strength to the character, and was granted substantial sub-plots around her relationships with both Kirk and Spock. Like Mat, I was pleasantly surprised to come out without wanting to kill Simon Pegg, although it's irresistible to imagine David Tennant's Doctor saying to him: "No, no, don't do that!" (And just when did Scotty become the comic relief, anyway?) Anton Yelchin does not have the charm of Walter Koenig. He has his own charm, and should be allowed to play more of that, and not get lumbered with the "Wictor Wictor" jokes. Likewise, John Cho does not have the charm of George Takai. In the absence of character, they gave him a sword fight. (A clue: that is not fencing.) And Chris Pine did perfectly well in the role of Ethan Hunt.

Did the recasting itself matter? Alex said that he had long since come to terms with the idea that this was Star Fleet Muppet Babies. I can understand that people might find this tricky. For years Star Trek has prospered by finding new crews to fill its starships, finding new combinations to explore. But that in itself becomes formulaic: the emotional one, the logical one, the captain in the middle – they've rung different changes on these through The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and the rest. Another crew would just be Kirk, Spock and all in drag again.

And of course the idea of going back to the beginning is to reach out beyond the core audience. It's to tell a story for those with a vague memory that goes Star Trek/Kirk/Spock space stuff. That's what means that doing a Star Trek movie with another new crew, even one that had – say – George Takei as Captain of the Excelsior or Jonathan Franks commanding the Titan, wouldn't work. It wouldn't be in the sense of folk memory Star Trek.

Was it the visual effects, then? No, on the whole they were spiffy.

The shape of the Enterprise, allegedly more curvaceous than is seemly, didn't bother me in the slightest.

Having said that, all those different shaped starships, with wings and multiple nacelles and the rest, bugged me out enormously. There's no sense that this Star Fleet of ships have evolved with a history. The USS Kelvin, from 25 years earlier, looks right it looks like a less advanced design from which the Enterprise will later emerge. But the fleet that leaves for Vulcan with the Enterprise, they're just a mish-mash of designs as though someone took a look at the design board and said, "Let's do EVERYTHING!"

And it wasn't exactly a problem, but boy did the fleet going to warp look just like something out of Star Wars. With Ambassador Spock's flyer looking suspiciously like the Gungan Bongo Submarine from the Phantom Menace, of course.

The big spiky Romulan ship is a very nice big spiky Romulan ship, much nicer than the one in Nemesis and one that might vaguely have come from the same culture as the Romulan Warbirds of the Next Generation era. Vaguely. Its interior was rather "mysterious vast alien space", somewhat after V'ger, but it worked well enough for running and jumping around.

The transporter effect has a very nice feel to it, like little particles flying into place as they build you up from a giant jigsaw. Sulu's retractable sword was rather silly but the effect worked, in fact the whole diving onto the mining platform sequence was brilliantly done.

And Saturn was lovely. Even if ploughing into it (or possibly Titan) at warp speed ought to have made more of a "bang!"

Perhaps it was the plot? Hmmmm, that depends…

Back in the Twentieth Century, as radiation-powered super-turkey "Godzilla" (US abomination version) was hitting cinemas under the slogan "Size Matters", Lucasfilm, then putting the finishing touches to "Star Wars, Episode I, will this title never end, the Phantom Menace", briefly put up on their website the vainglorious response: "Plot Matters".

But look how well that turned out!

The Phantom Menace is, as any fule nose, the third movie from the Lucas' stable with the same plot as Return of the Jedi and Star Wars, just with first muppets and then CGI frogs standing in for the Rebel Alliance for the "blow up the spherical-spacecraft-in-orbit at the end" bit.

But to my mind "plot" just means the sequence of events that the characters have to pass through; story is the thing that you care about, it is, if you'll forgive the cliché, the journey that the characters go on, not just the places they visit (and, yes, I'm aware that E M Forster may have had it the other way around).

JJ Abrams has apparently never seen the immediately-preceding movie in the franchise, Star Trek: Nemesis. Which is a shame, or he'd have known that his plot – Romulan with big spiky ship plans to go Death Star on the Earth while riffing on The Wrath of Khan – was oddly familiar.

(It is, as I said, a very nice big spiky ship. But even so…)

But is that what is important? When, because they are telling different stories, the whole character of the two movies couldn't be more different.

Star Trek: Nemesis is all shades of grey – not the moral dilemmas, the colour palette. Grey uniforms and gloomy shadows are the order of the day. It's as if it's self-consciously trying to feel end-of-an-era; far from being a meditation on aging (as the similarly plotted Wrath of Khan) it sometimes seems like an attempt to just wrap everything up. With the cast all starting to get a little bit too old for this sort of thing and on television Enterprise bolding journeying to the bottom of the ratings, there was much talk of "too much Star Trek".

In contrast, Star Trek (2009) is full of primary colours and brightly lit, whether it's the stark whites of the bridge or sunlit Vulcan or also-sunlit San Francisco. Even the ice-planet Delta Vega is brilliant white with a dash of scarlet space-monster.

And it's all about beginnings, opening with Kirk's birth (in battle, no less) and his joining the Star Fleet Academy and Spock's decision to join Star Fleet, and then on to the "first mission". Everything is about the future opening up to these people, whether it's Spock's cautious, logical planning or Kirk's gung-ho barrelling into it.

Positivity suffuses this movie, and that's a good thing.

In fact, it's a bit of a laugh, even though the whole of the backstory is palpably dreadful: the galaxy being threatened by a supernova is pulp SF of the worst kind, shockingly misunderstanding the differences in scale between these two phenomena. If you are going to use real science terms, it is too much to ask the writer for a ten-second search on the Wikipedia?

And even Nimoy can't save exposition as dreadful as "suddenly, the worst happened… Romulus was destroyed!"

What? How? What? Was it Romulus' own star that was going supernova? You do know that a supernova is an exploding star, don't you, JJ? So this solution to save the galaxy by turning it into a black hole… not looking much good for Romulus anyway, was it? Also, you've forgotten Remus altogether, haven't you. (Which is ironic given that in part, Star Trek: Nemesis was about how pissed the Remans were that everyone kept forgetting about them.)

None of that really seems to matter, though, when were racing along with such glee.

Meanwhile, "Red Matter" scores huge marks on the "drive Lawrence Miles nuts" scale, being clearly drawn from the same well as the mysterious, all-powerful and probably imaginary "Red Uranium" macguffin from "This Town Will Never Let Us Go". "Nahhh," says Alex, "surely it's from Bugs' Red Mercury!"

And clearly someone has been using the Infinite Improbability Drive in this universe, because the chances of Spock marooning Kirk not merely on the same planet as but within walking distance of where Nero has marooned the time/dimension-warped Ambassador Spock has to measure in the "ooh, that's a bit unlikely" range.

(Also, we get a flashback of Spock looking up and seeing Vulcan implode in the sky above him which is clearly ripped off from staring up at the Death Star explosion at the end of Return of the Jedi. Now, I'm not much of an astronomer, but neither Mars nor Venus are that large in the Earth's sky… so we're basically saying that Delta Vega is Vulcan's moon. And therefore, very much likely to be heading into that same black hole any time now.)

(Of course, back in the "real" universe of classic Star Trek, in "The Man Trap", there's a lovely flirtatious scene between Spock and Uhura where she asks him if he's never gazed up at the moon. "Vulcan has no moon," states Spock unemotionally. I suppose now, instead of the classy "I'm not surprised, Mr Spock," Uhura will have to answer "No, you berk, because it got foomed with the rest of your stupid homeworld". Sigh.)

And there are some good sci-fi ideas, even "Star Trek" ideas, in the mix too. That the Romulan invader isn't an almighty warship from the future, merely a mining ship that came back in time by accident is really quite smart. Imagine a super-tanker from today finding itself confronting the Pirates of the Caribbean… yes, you're quite right, the pirates would have cannons and the super-tanker wouldn't. But the Romulans are a pretty piratical bunch themselves, maybe they're happy for their merchant fleet to carry torpedoes.

Similarly, when Spock starts behaving in a fashion that has Alex going, "er, er, I'm sure even Star Fleet wouldn't let him do that" (though remember, we've seen Star Fleet's "correctional planets") the film has an answer for him: he's quite right, and Kirk proving to Spock that the Vulcan is emotionally compromised is a key turning point.

Mind you, you would have thought that somebody could have mentioned to the director that time/space anomalies are not exactly the cutting-edge of "new" among the Star Trek stories of this world.

Add to that, they even "hang a lantern" on the whole cliché when young Kirk says to old Spock: "isn't going back in time to give yourself the answer cheating?"



Was it that it wasn't "Star Trek" enough?

Well, in the sense that Star Trek ought to be about exploration, new worlds, new civilisations rather than big space battles then that is true.

But it's also true of Star Trek's II and VI which are arguably the best of the breed.

Ironically, Star Trek, The Motionless Picture (new life form), Star Trek III, the Search for Plot (strange new world) and Star Trek V (where no one has gone before) are closer to what Star Trek ought to be about than the, er, good ones. I'll kind of let Star Trek IV get away with it because treating 1980s California as a "strange new world" is part of the joke.

What many people would say, though, is that Star Trek is about the human relationships of the crew. In that sense, The Wrath of Khan (Kirk deals with growing old, his own metaphorical Kobyashi Maru) and The Undiscovered County (Kirk faces his own prejudices) are very Star Trek.

Judged by that standard, this movie was a little hit-and-miss. The drawing together of the crew, Kirk's instant friendship with McCoy contrasted with Uhura's coolness and Spock's outright animosity, form a solid backbone, but it equally lacks a true emotional through-line. Kirk is a cocky bastard right from the start (especially in the Anakin Skywalker sulky-teenager scene – what exactly was that supposed to add?) and is still a cocky bastard at the end. He doesn't appear to learn anything, and the other crew members don't so much come to admire him as acquiesce to his Captaincy. No, that's unfair: the do come to admire him, just for no particularly obvious reason. Maybe they all have Stockholm Syndrome by the end.

Was it the pick'n'mix approach to continuity, then?

I have to admit that this may have left me irked. It's funny little things, things that are out of place, or rather in place for no reason other than to say "hey, I watched the DVD of The Wrath of Khan".

Young Spock gets to play Saavik to his (sort-of) older self when he complains "you lied" and Nimoy gets to find new ways of saying "moi?". Similarly, Spock gives the young Scotty the secret of his big discovery, just as Scotty gave the inventor of transparent aluminium the secret of his big discovery back in The Voyage Home. And when Sulu tries to put the Enterprise in gear for the first time he stalls her, just like the Excelsior did in The Search for Spock. And Romulan commander Nero (you're kidding, right? No, that is his name) tortures Captain Pike with those beetle/scorpion/bug things from Ceti Alpha Five that kept Khan amused.

Is this homage or just grinding lack of originality? Am I supposed to be impressed by these "kisses to the past" or just think that you're rummaging through the series' locker for the good bits to pilfer?

Returning to The Wrath of Khan, though, the recurring motif in the film is the Kobayashi Maru test, which Saavik takes at the start and Spock passes at the end. During the film it is revealed that Kirk took the test three times and on the third go, he beat it. He beat it by reprogramming the computer, by cheating, but nevertheless he beat the unbeatable test because – and this is the message of his life, but more importantly almost the whole point of Star Trek – he doesn't believe in the no-win scenario. Optimism wins.

As a key plot point in a movie about facing the inevitable and not giving up your optimism, about going through hell and feeling young at the end, that is a thing of legend.

It is crushingly banal to actually show us the test.

Worse than that, to show us a test where "cocky bastard" Kirk is completely cock-sure that he is going to win and doesn't bother to hide it and, worse, where his win is so blatantly a cheat. The simulator hiccoughs and the Klingon warbirds' shields are down. Excuse me? He might as well have just stood up and announced "Computer, execute Kirk Hack Code One!"

(And while we're on the subject, Klingon warships are called "battlecruisers"; it's Romulan warships that are called "Warbirds". Why does this bug me more than the similar error of calling the Klingon scout a "Bird of Prey" from Star Trek III onwards?)

Alex puts forward the idea that in the "real" Star Trek universe the "real" Kirk did beat the test with a solution that was worthy of a "commendation for original thinking". But this Kirk is different: he's had a different upbringing without the influence of his father. The George Kirk of this universe died on the USS Kelvin. So this Kirk is arrogant and cocky and responds aggressively and not necessarily wisely. And so, rather than beating the test, he's actually doing this so blatantly as a deliberate act of defiance, a massive "giving the finger" to the test he doesn’t believe in.

And this, I think, brings us to the answer we arrived at as to why this Star Trek, which I enjoyed, which amused me, entertained me, even moved me occasionally, left me with the feeling that it was hollow.

The problem for me is not the convoluted time travel / dimension jump to a parallel universe plotline. It's not that the approach to continuity is either slipshod or worse deliberately slipshod.

The answer that we settled on is slightly more subtle than that.

It's that the film makes a point of using its plot, in fact the entire point of its plot is to say: "hey folks, we're in a different Universe so the continuity doesn't apply to us!"

There is a point to watching The Wrath of Khan beyond seeing Enterprise and Reliant duke it out – brilliantly choreographed, and far better than anything here, though that space battle is.

There is no similar point to watching JJ Abrams' Star Trek.

Allow me to digress…

In the long twilight of Doctor Who, between the Paul McGann movie and the Russell Davies renaissance, there came a massive two-book story by Lawrence Miles called "Interference".

In the midst of an adventure where the eighth Doctor gets locked up interminably (again) and Faction Paradox kidnap his companions, where the better bits are in fact an extended adventure for K-9 and Company, seemingly incidentally the Doctor crosses his timeline with that of his third incarnation. And then at the end of the story, the third Doctor gets shot dead and regenerates. Without ever going near Metebelis III. With nary a whiff of a Giant Spider.

"Interference" is a story with… issues. Should it be mentioned in our flat, we will often immediately quote either Sutekh from "Pyramids of Mars" – "There is…[voice trembles with rage] …Interference!" – or Professor Bernice Summerfield from "The Shadow of the Scourge" – "Damn! Interference!"

Funny story: "Goddess, that Interference is awful" says I, loudly, at the Fitzroy Tavern surrounded by Who fans. "Oh yes, why?" says the terribly nice author standing immediately behind me who was, frankly, ever so good enough not to hit me for bad-mouthing his book…

My problem at the time with "Interference" centred on the fact that I was assuming that there was supposed to be a causal connection between the actions of the Doctor in his eighth self and the change to the fate of his third self. And there wasn't.

(Actually, apart from the Doctor appearing as a ghost to his earlier self, there is another connection, namely the eighth Doctor's companion Fitz who, by a route too ludicrously circuitous to describe, arrives a thousand years later in the third Doctor's adventure as the villain. But he doesn't cause the third Doctor to be there, nor does he materially affect the course of events nor make any use of foreknowledge to change things. So, as I say, the eighth Doctor's adventure doesn't cause the change in the third Doctor's story.)

But what Lawrence was trying to do, and what he patiently explained to me, was that he wanted to be able to write past Doctor stories where anything could happen because we were not constrained by "knowing how everyone died".

Well now, in part I would fault that because it slightly presupposes that the only merit in a book is in not knowing how it will end, which kind of negates the pleasure of re-reading something. And there's a great many tragedies written where you know what the ending is going to be. But really, I would say, if that's what you want to do, then just call it "Doctor Who Unbound" and do it! Don't lumber yourself, and all the rest of us, with a hundred and sixty thousand words of justification for why you are allowed to do it.

Furthermore, since nobody else was onboard with Larry's ideas, we were left with a great big lurching paradox (that wasn't an actual paradox, says Alex, because that nothing from the future caused it; it was merely a contradiction) that no one knew how to handle, eventually leading a year later to the range editor wiping all continuity and blowing up Gallifrey – a process known colloquially as "foom".

And that's pretty much what JJ Abrams has done in this movie. He has made it quite explicit that Ambassador Spock does not travel back in time; he travels to an alternative reality, one that is very similar to the Star Trek universe, but where everything is slightly different.

And, of course, he underlines his point by giving Vulcan the "foom" treatment. It is impossible for Ambassador Spock to come from the future of this universe because the black hole that brought him here was formed by Red Matter made at the Vulcan Science Academy. On Vulcan. Which no longer exists.

So basically, this isn't Star Trek… this is Star Trek: Interference.

To which again I say: that's nice, but did you really need a hundred and fifty million dollars to tell me that?

Day 3055: MPs! Get your House (of Commons) in Order!

Wednesday:


So… the Horse Manure has hit the Pool Cleaner. The Pergola has broken the Camel's back. The Housekeepers are coming home to roost. We are ALL up the MOAT without a PADDLE.

Hard Labour Ministers have been treating their expenses like MONOPOLY MONEY (speculating to accumulate) and Conservatory grandees have been having the state of their Stately Homes improved. On the other fluffy foot, Liberal Democrats have been, ooh, letting their daughters stay in their second homes and, gasp, overdoing the cushions and, shudders, slipping their Hob-Nobs into the Trouser Press (which is NOT as rude as it sounds!).

The behaviour of Liberal MPs appears to be defensible. But by the point we've got to "defensible", we've already failed.

The mood in the country has been dialled up to "baying mob" and BLOOD is being called for. It's almost IRONIC that if someone had done something ACTUALLY condemnable then Mr Nick could have FIRED their sorry bottoms, something that Mr Frown and Mr Balloon have obviously failed to do to the very real villains in their own (Shadow) Cabinets.

Without a RITUAL DEFENESTRATION, the wrath of the public is further compounded by a sense of "they've got away with it". Any amount of repayments only fuels the idea – real or imagined – that there is plenty more left to uncover, that MPs are SOOOOO loaded with ill-gotten expenses claims that they can easily cough up the refunds.

It is all very DEPRESSING.

You can understand the CROSSNESS of lovely Sarah Teather when she cries from the heart: "What planet were MPs living on?"

Mr Saint Stephen of Fry is both RIGHT and WRONG.

He's RIGHT that this witch-hunt is being led by hypocritical journalists who are paid far more than MPs, get far more generous expenses than MPs and are widely considered vastly more venal than MPs.

(And I for one would love to see how THEIR salaries and expenses stood up to public scrutiny. Her HONESTY does stand up, but do you believe that a News24 reader should be worth half as much again as an MP? Do you REALLY? If it's a question of public funding, then the BBC are just as responsible for handing out public cash as the House of Commons, and so at the very least the likes of Mr Paxo and Ms Waaaark on the Newsnight Show and Mr Humpy and Mr Naughty and Mr Evan on the Today Programme programme should be publishing their salaries and expenses alongside Mr Frown and Mr Balloon and Mr Clogg. But to be honest, all journalists, like the MPs, hold a public trust so why stop at the BBC? Everyone from Ms Pollyanna Toytown to Little Miss Jammy Clarkson to Bojo the Clown could do with a does of the "honesty"!)

And it's perfectly true that the Hellograph has an AGENDA. And promoting better democracy is not it. This isn't partisan – not entirely. They hosed the Horse Manure ALL AROUND – up to and including a LUDICROUS attempts to smear our own Stormin' Norman – in part because it hurts the Government MORE anyway, in part because it's easier for Mr Balloon to play the "let me clean it all up" card than the tired Hard Labour of Mr Frown, and in part to slap Mr Balloon around so he remembers who's boss too.

And remember, the Helograph have succeeded in smearing EVERY MP, even though their "full investigation" covers fewer than one hundred out of six-hundred and forty-six.

The powers of the MEEJA – in particular the deadwood press – are much reduced by openness like that created by the Wibbly Wobbly Web, and Freedom of Information and more people just being clued up. By spreading apathy, getting fewer people to vote, they WEAKEN our democracy, not strengthen it, and get a bit of their old power back.

But Saint Stephen is WRONG to say it is just fluff, that "everyone" fiddles their expenses and we shouldn't be so harsh on MPs.

People are deeply, deeply angry. It's being expressed in HOOTING OUTRAGE about some petty misdemeanours but it's rooted in REAL FEAR. Fear about the economy and jobs and losing houses: things that our MPs had kind of promised to protect.

This needs a SOLUTION and it needs one NOW.

It is NO USE to man nor fluffy beast that people keep tossing out ideas and no one will bring themselves to agree.

Mr Clogg puts forward proposals… and Mr Frown and Mr Balloon agree to ignore him.

Mr Frown goes on HootTube with a unilateral declaration – and he is UNANIMOUS in that! – and Mr Clogg and Mr Balloon agree that it's not good enough.

Let's just accept the Kelly Commission recommendations – better still, lets say we'll accept the Kelly Commission's recommendations as a BARE MINIMUM requirement. Mr Clogg and Mr Frown can agree to that… but now Mr Balloon is looking shifty and won’t sign up.

Mr Clogg puts forward NEW proposals… and Mr Frown and Mr Balloon agree to ignore him again.

And round and round it goes.

That's why people are looking for a PROTEST vote, and it doesn't help when the likes of Lord Norman Skinhead rise from the grave to urge people to vote BNP, cough, cough "not for the major parties".

The single most depressing thing EVER is to see the British Nasty Party conference getting coverage – any coverage at all – on the BBC, and thinking, well that's an extra point in the polls for them, right there.

THAT is the problem. To think, the Nasties, whose councillors when elected take your money and never, ever, ever do any work for you, might get away with a PANTOMIME involving three little pigs in red and blue and gold rosettes. And the BBC treats this as CREDIBLE.

THAT is how much of a FAIL this is.


.

Day 3033: Millennium Elephant discovers the Dark Secret inside the Office of Mr Chris Huhne MP

Tuesday:


It is the tub of chocolates that we left for his research staff. He is on a diet – do not tell him, anyone!

Slimming Team

Along with Mr Lord Bonkers and Auntie Helen and Special Agent George, I have been along to interview nearly-but-not-quite Liberal Leader Mr Chris Huhney-Monster in his office in Parliament.

Mr Chris was very generous with his time and we had a terrific and wide ranging interview, covering: the budget and being maybe only half-way into the recession; how the Conservatories are now neither Keynesians not Monetarists nor any other known form of economic theory-ists; electric cars and other toys-for-the-boys; and who is the best Doctor Woo (the Internet demands to know!).

More seriously, Mr Chris was APPALLED by the decision of Mayor of London Bojo the Clown to break his election promise and cancel the opening of three vital Rape Crisis Centres.

"Probably the most worrying aspect in the entire criminal justice system is the failure to prosecute and convict for rape."

JUST 16.9% of complaints lead to a prosecution, and the conviction rate is even worse at a MERE 6%, far lower than in other countries.

"This is an area of appalling violence against half the population," said Mr Chris. "And it is just completely unacceptable."


We talked extensively about policing, about the way that the G20 demonstrations were handled, why there HAS to be an independent judicial inquiry and what lessons need to be learned. How does a senior police officer's stated policy come to be at odds with practice on the ground? And do the Territorial Support Group share "DNA" with the Special Patrol Group disbanded in the 1980s?

We learned that it is NOT illegal to photograph a police officer… except when it is: possibly one at a railway station or an airport or a power station because the law, muddy and badly drafted, is about not assisting terrorist PLANNING.

And we talked more broadly about the need for MORE police but also BETTER police strategy, the need to police with CONSENT – and how travelling in pairs like Chinese diplomats might mean you talk to each other instead of members of the community.


We asked whether he had any regrets about the Geert Wilders business. He said that he had come to his decision honestly that the "Fitna" film DID incite violence and he stuck by that. But with hindsight, he thought that it might have been better to just ignore the man.

Though, in his defence, he added that by the time he was asked, the Home Secretary had already banned Mr Wilders from the country.

Speaking of the "Second Home" Secretary, I also asked about MPs expenses. A little while ago, Mr Clogg published his ideas on reforming the expenses system. Today a rather-less-consultative Mr Frown issued a Prime Monsterial dictat that MPs expenses WOULD be reformed. Spot the difference, I asked.

The difference, said Mr Chris, is that Mr Frown is setting up an attendance allowance with no need for receipts or bills to prove you've actually incurred an expense. It's basically free money. "It won't do at all."


And we also heaped PRAISE on Mr Chris's Freedom Bill and – by wireless digital laser satellite link-up – Award-winning Auntie Alix asked that Mr Chris update the site to incorporate all the good ideas that have been posted as comments. He said that that was definitely the plan, and that we want to develop the CONVERSATION through the website over the next year so we can use the Freedom Bill very much as our CALLING CARD in the General Election.


Anyway, then Lord Bonkers had to hurry off to the Sky Newswagon of EVIL to do an interview, and we hurried home in time to catch him use at least TWO of the things that Mr Chris had said to us. (And Auntie Helen do a walk-past behind the man who was pretending to be in another studio. Hehe!)

All in all, a terrific interview. Thank you, Mr Chris!

.

Day 3032: Hard Labour offer spending cuts; Conservatories offer spending cuts; Liberal Democrats offer Tax Cuts – spot the difference

Monday:


Can you afford to cut taxes in a recession?

The REAL question is, surely, can you afford NOT to?

Although the BANKING crisis has derailed a lot of businesses and caused a lot of job losses and repossessions, that's not the WHOLE story of this recession: don't forget that there was a BIG jump in a lot of everyday prices last year, in particular FOOD, and that inflation is still going on hurting more people at a time when their bosses may be telling them they can't have a pay rise or that they have to work fewer hours.

Amid increasing evidence that Mr Frown's VAT cut has not stimulated the economical booty – indeed has mostly gone back to big business (how many shops do YOU know where the price went down for a couple of weeks only to be back up to something pounds and ninety-nine pence again after Christmas?) – it's clear that we need to put money directly into PEOPLE'S POCKETS.

Or, more accurately, stop the nasty taxman dipping in and taking so much out!

That is why Mr Clogg and Mr Cable have today announced that Liberal Democrats will not start charging tax until people earn over TEN THOUSAND pounds!

Right, FAQ time:

How are you going to pay for this?

We're going to make BIG BUSINESS and HIGHER EARNERS pay their fair share by closing LOOPHOLES and getting rid of UNFAIR benefits. We're going to return Capital Gains tax to being charged at the same rate as Income Tax so that the well off can't get round tax by being paid in property. We're going to apply aviation tax to PLANES rather than PASSENGERS so that the airlines have to pay it (and get an incentive for not flying empty planes around) and we'll charge it on non-essential flights WITHIN the UK rather than just flight to ABROAD-LAND.

Will people believe this bit about "closing loopholes"?

We do have a list of specific, costed proposals for which loopholes we will close and how much we think we can realistically make. And the money IS there – even the Government say there are thirty to forty billion pounds of avoided tax to be had. So we COULD tell you. On the other fluffy foot, Chancellor Sooty is still scribbling his budget down on the back of a fag packet (probably sold to him by Conservatory Mr Ken Clarke), so why make things easier for him?

More seriously, there is at least ONE and probably TWO budgets between now and Mr Frown's summary sacking, er, the General Election not to mention the fast-changing events of the recession, so we will be keeping our options as open as possible.

There will be – as there always is – a FULL explanation of ALL the costs of the Liberal Democrat budget when we publish our manifesto for the Election.


Isn't this going to hit pensions… again?

Actually, no. It's true that we're going to make higher rate taxpayers have the SAME pension benefit as everyone else, but the way that the HIGHER rate benefit works is DIFFERENT to the way that the basic rate benefit works.

When you make contributions to your pension, the taxman pays over your BASIC RATE benefit DIRECT to your pension, in proportion to your contributions. (That is, for every seventy-eight pounds YOU pay, he'll give your pension back TWENTY-TWO pounds that you paid to him in tax.)

But the HIGHER RATE taxpayer gets a benefit that is simply a bit off their tax bill, so they get a bit more money in their salary. That's money given straight back to them that they do not have to spend on a pension, and most people don't.

So, unlike when Mr Frown abolished Advance Corporation Tax credits, this change WON'T reduce the money being paid into pension pots.


Why not set the tax-free allowance at the level that would mean NO ONE on the national minimum wage would pay tax?

Honestly? Because we worked out all the MATHS and it was just too expensive. It's another one-and-a-half thousand pounds in allowance, but not JUST for people on minimum wage, for everyone right up to people earning a hundred thousand pounds. That's three hundred pounds of tax back EACH, for the vast majority of taxpayers.

We want to make taxes FAIR, by closing loopholes and stopping tax avoidance, but we also want to be CAREFUL and REALISTIC about the amount of money that we can raise from top earners. We are not out to SQUEEZE the RICH; only to ask them to pay what is their SHARE.

Have you seen "In the Loop" yet?

Yes. The review is in yesterday's diary.


Weren't you going to cut income tax by 4p?

Yes! Now we are going to do this instead – it moves roughly the same amount of money, moving around seventeen BILLION pounds of tax burden OFF the lower to middle earners, but this is EVEN FAIRER and EVEN MORE redistributive, because it takes many people out of tax ALTOGETHER. Many people who are on the minimum wage will pay NO INCOME TAX; many people who are students will pay NO INCOME TAX.


Is everybody happy about this?

Daddy Alex is happy; Ms Mary Reid-my-day is happy; Mr Paul Burblings is happy; Mr Liberal Neil is happy; Wicked Uncle Costigan is almost sure he's happy; Auntie Alix is deliriously happy. Yup, that's everybody!

.

Day 3031: Loop the Loop

Sunday:


Censorship, eh. Apparently Mr Almondy Noochy's film "In the Loop" is TOO RUDE for a fluffy elephant to go and see it.

Did that stop me? What the CAPALDI do you think!

Everyone is RIGHT: it is a VERY FUNNY FILM, although as it gets into the last act, you tend to stop laughing because you realise that it is all too TRUE.

Everyone is RIGHT AGAIN: the funniest bit is the UNINTENTIONALLY PRESCIENT moment about expenses claims and the "adult" channel, although the scene where Mr Peter Capaldi and Mr Tony Soprano go toe-to-toe is AMAZING acting too.

So DO take your baby elephants along to see this movie even IF you have to disguise them as FACE-VELCRO and say: "look at my GREY BEARD, young person on the cinema door, I am CLEARLY old enough to see this movie!"

However, I do have to say something about WHO'S WHO.

It is bad enough that "The Thick of It" takes place in a PARALLEL UNIVERSE where Lord Blairimort's chief of spin, Mr Alistair Henchman, is played by Mr Peter Capaldi under the name of Mr Malcolm Rhyming-Slang (pronounced Bast… Bad-word). But THIS movie takes place in a PARALLEL parallel universe, where most of the same people exist doing mostly the same things but with different names.

So Mr Chris Addison who plays hapless junior policy-wonk Olly in "The Thick of It" plays hapless over-promoted policy-wonk Toby in "In the Loop"; Mr Alex MacQueen plays outclassed baldy special advisor to the Prime Monster Mr Julius Nicholson in "The Thick of It" but plays equally outclassed baldy UN Ambassador Sir Jonathan Tutt in "In the Loop"; and so on. They are virtually the same characters played in almost exactly the same way, but with different names. It is VERY confusing!

For reason of him being convicted of really bad things, Mr Chris Langham is NOT appearing as a parallel parallel universe version of useless Minister for Social Affairs and Citizenship Mr Hugh. Instead this story spins around Mr Tom Hollandaise as not-quite-useless Minister of International Development Mr Simon.

It IS interesting that Minister Simon is allowed to have (just a little bit) more GUMPTION than Minister Hugh. Certainly he is as VENAL and SELF-SERVING and PATHETICALLY NEEDY. But he is also able to stand up to Mr Malcolm, if only very slightly, from time to time. He does at least float the vague idea that he MIGHT consider thinking about resigning over the war, even though he ends up BEING RESIGNED by the Americans and then by Mr Malcolm. And he does, on occasion, dish out a deserved UBER-SARCASTIC ticking off. In short he has his moments.

And speaking of SHORT – he managed to look very TINY stood next to Mr Addison. Which makes me wonder if ALL of the Pirates of The Caribbean were TEENY-TINY too, 'cos he looked NORMAL SIZED in THAT! (Mind you, Daddy says that Mr Hollandaise DID have nicer LEGS. Ooh, what SAUCE!)


I am not certain if the sub-plot with Mr Steve Coogan and a wall was ANNOYING or an important part of the SATIRE, sending up the essential ridiculousness of having the Secretary of State for International Development simultaneously responsible for trying to keep the world from falling into war AND trying to keep his constituency office wall from falling into a granny's garden. And, obviously, failing at either. Or indeed both.

I think it might have been annoying BECAUSE of Mr Steve Coogan, who was doing silly voices acting and silly bobble-hat acting, where everyone else was playing it straight.

On the other fluffy foot, isn't it really a GOOD thing that even our toppity-most ministers still have to deal with real stuff for real people?

In fact, if there was a PROBLEM with the film, it was that it seemed – rather like the British political class (in the film and out of it) – rather too IN LOVE with the Americans and the way the Americans did stuff.

The Americans might LIE and CHEAT and be generally MEAN (even the "nice" ones), but they got stuff DONE. Horrible illegal stuff, but it was what they wanted and it got done. (Even if the "nice" ones didn't get stuff done, there was sense that they COULD HAVE or MIGHT NEXT TIME.) The British failed miserably at everything up to and especially keeping their dignity.

At the end, you wanted Mr Malcolm to SCUPPER the whole illegal war JUST because nasty American Mr Lynton* had been RUDE to him. THAT would have been true to the CHARACTER and to the nature of the STORY (i.e. nothing gets done except for personal reasons). It is like a GODZILLA movie – nobody wants GODZILLA to get beaten by the bigger, nastier American monster, do they?!

(*incidentally everyone else seems to be spelling this Linton, like Clinton with a silent "C"… erm… but I'm sure I spotted his name on the door of his glass office with a "Y" like Anthony Charles Lynton with a silent Blairimort.)

The American system hands vast power over to an ELITE, many of whom – the film acknowledges – are only the same age as ME! And yet, this is allowed to be shown as a MORE EFFECTIVE form of Government than our own. It is, as they say, easy to be CYNICAL. And "In the Loop" is just being a bit too EASY here.

Nevertheless, you have GOT to admire a film from BBC FILMS – from the BBC! – that has the Horlicks to say: "it WAS a dodgy dossier"; "it WAS sexed up by Mr Malcolm – cough cough NOT Mr Alistair Henchman, ooooh no not at all cough cough".

(The only gag that I was expecting but that they DIDN'T do was for American researcher Liza to admit that her nerves about the paper that she wrote – and which her boss was waving about with abandon – were because she had downloaded the whole thing off the Wackypaedia.)

So laugh like a hooting thing and admire it for that. Or failing that, just sit back and admire the EXPLOSIVE EFFLORESCENT EXPLETIVES.

.

Day 3029: Mr Oboe's Spending Pledge

Friday (again):


September 2007, just a week before that run on the Northern Rock-and-a-Hard-Place Bank (so "I didn't see it coming" NOT an excuse!), Conservatory Shadow Chancellor, Mr Gideon Oboe, plays his "this proves we've really changed card" with a promise to match Hard Labour's spending plans.

Today he plays his "ACTUALLY we haven't changed AT ALL" card and promises HUGE SPENDING CUTS that will completely implode the economy, just like they did the last two times the Conservatories tried to solve a recession by cutting spending.

So that pledge of eighteen months ago: a LIE or just TOTALLY STUPID?

.

Day 3029: Cassandra Cable?

Friday:


Mr Vince "the Power" Cable was on the The Today Programme this morning… just barely.

He was there with an important WARNING about the regulation (or LACK thereof) of Building Societies and they SQUEEZED him in in between Mr Humpy's report on "My Nice Holiday in South Africa" and the funny "Are archaeologists going to dig up Cleopatra's ASP?" story.

Look, I KNOW that the financial crisis is a bit wearisome by now, what with the unrelenting MISERY of it all being a bit, well, MISERABLE.

But really, you would think people would take Mr Vince's warnings a BIT seriously. It's not like his warning about too much DEBT hasn't been QUITE A LOT proved COMPLETELY RIGHT!

I am reminded of the TROJAN PRINCESS Cassandra whose prophetic warnings were ignored resulting in the fall of TROY.

Mr Vince says "Whoa!" to more debt – and they should have said "Whoa" to that WOODEN HORSE too!

(That joke copyright Doctor Woo and the Mythmakers)


.

Day 3025: DOCTOR WHO: Planet of the Dead HD

Monday:


OK, so my DEEPLY SAD Daddies actually sneaked out of a WEDDING (well, "renewal of vowels" actually) to go and watch Doctor Who. To be fair, they waited until after they toasted the happy couple before LEGGING IT…

But we didn't get to see this episode in SHINY new HIGH DEFINITION until Monday. So Daddy's review is today.

"The Dead Planet" sees Doctor Woo marooned in an alien landscape facing the perils of an implacable army of metal-skinned monsters, whose next stop will be Earth. Hang on, that was the SECOND story… how original can the two-hundredth have been?

If you put your brain in neutral then this is a rollicking ride, beautifully shot with charismatic stars, some standout special effects and an awful lot of sand… but does Doctor Who in 2009 really have no higher aspirations than to put your brain in neutral?

This starts off as "The Pink Panther" and then falls through a wormhole into "Escape from Desert Island". With the budget and effects technology available to them, there is the opportunity to do a truly outstanding version of either, but trying to do both leaves you with the wobbly feeling of a cut-and-shut: it might just fall apart at any moment.

Where to begin – why is this story even called "Planet of the Dead" at all? Beyond the Doctor Who stylings of the title – and let's admit that "City of Death" shows precedent for ridiculously hyperbolic titles disconnected from the story – the story does not dwell on the "dead" of the alien planet. In fact, they only get a look in so that slightly-psychic Carmen can do the running commentary on behalf of the kids-behind-the-sofa audience.

And you have to think that she's only slightly-psychic to make things seem dangerous. (And in order to do that spooky foreshadowing at the end.)

Because without her "great disturbance in the force" moment, there is no threat at all for the first thirty-five minutes. They come through the wormhole; the Doctor tells them how to get home. We need "Ground Force", rather than UNIT.

An actual Planet of the Dead, falling into a world where your dead friends and family talk to you… that would be an interesting Doctor Who story. Even if it turned out to be psychic vampires or the Gelth again or Blake's Seven's sentient sand. The Doctor doesn't believe in life after death, except in his own regenerative way, so it would be interesting to confront him with that, challenge him with that. And, of course, you get the chance to have his own dead selves, or at least Chris or Paul, turn up to haunt him, and accuse him over the Time War and Rose… Having the sand rise up and form into dead people would have been as memorable image as you could want from a Doctor Who story, and certainly within the abilities of The Mill to achieve. And doing horror in blazing sunshine would have been a good twist in and of itself.

But more than that, it would have been an exercise in exploring the characters of the people trapped on the bus. Instead we get a thirty-second whip round – memorise these names, there may be a test later – and a character detail each, as though this makes them "real" people. As though any sense of "real people" hasn't been chucked away once, out of eight aboard the bus, one is a psychic, one is a Time Lord and one is the Notorious Phantom™. The Doctor as good as says: "give me one thing about you that will let the audience at home remember which one you are rather than forget you straight away." But this emphasis on the ordinary just makes Lady Christina's character appear all the more ludicrous.

Lady Christina is pitched to us as a temporary companion, when she ought to be in the league of those morally questionable allies of the Doctor Who "caper" story – like Garon in "The Ribos Operation" or Glitz in "Dragonfire" (though not in "The Mysterious Planet"). She ought to have her own agenda, rather than merely her bag of tricks that just happens to contain the item you need every time the plot comes up against another Tomb-Raider-esque puzzle. Bus buried in sand? Here's my spade! Crystal at bottom of shaft? Here's my flying harness! Two totally incompatible technologies? Here's my golden chalice, that'll sort it!

As for: "There's a reason the aristocracy survives…" That'll be because you are thieves, then, will it?

It seems it isn't good enough that Michelle Ryan is an athletic art thief in a catsuit; she's got to be a nob as well, even though it serves no purpose in the story. It's a bizarre adulation of class that really has no place in Doctor Who. The Doctor himself seems to have taken to dropping in his Lordliness here and there, in a way that would have earlier incarnations nauseated. He rejected the company of "Lords" and went out to experience some real people, not to muckity-muck it over them.

And it unbalances the story, having unbelievable stuff happen to unbelievable people; it reduces the so-called ordinary people to trite ciphers.

Let's look at the fate of the Tritovores. Firstly, they're men in overalls with flies' heads. Right. We got away with the cat-people because, by the year six-billion, humans might just have engineered humanoid cats. We got away with the rhino-headed Judoon largely through the gusto of the performance. But this is getting silly. It is telling that when, in Russell's first series of Doctor Who, an alien that looked like a pig appeared… it was a joke perpetrated by the real aliens*.

It's a very nice fly's head, the prosthetics people have done them proud as usual. But sat on top of those overalls it looks rubbish.

And they're only introduced to get eaten. Worse, they are introduced because someone has got to get eaten and the Doctor has promised that he'll get everyone on the bus home. Very much "Voyage of the Damned" without the fatalities, then. In Confidential, Russell suggests that if they had survived it would make the story "too complicated", UNIT would have to find them a home or something. So "they had to die". This is verging on the Eric Saward level of script writing: kill off anyone as soon as they've fulfilled their plot function. It's a grizzly form of writing, and undignified from a series that has been trying to tell us that all forms of life are of equal importance.

Again like a computer game, the Tritovores are only their so that their ship can provide the McGuffin to unlock the escape route. Never mind that the Doctor can telephone UNIT headquarters but never asks them to, oh I don't know, slowly back one of their mobile command centre lorries into the wormhole so that everyone at the other end can just safely walk home through the metal structure. Or for that matter, just toss through a couple of (metal) barrels of diesel and a new air filter.

It's fair enough that the Doctor wants to have a gad about looking for what caused the wormhole, but the only reason that Angela, Nathan, Barclay, Lou and Carmen remain in danger is because the Doctor cannot be bothered to have UNIT rescue them before he wanders off.

The main threat, he discovers, comes from a swarm of inter-galactic locusts creating a wormhole from a planet they've devastated to their next feeding ground… yes, it's "The Horns of Nimon" without the glam-rock minotaurs.

The stingrays are, again, a lovely piece of computer design but never really live up to their potential. They are supposed to have eaten every single thing on the surface of planet San Helios, but we never see them devouring. They should be chewing up the Tritovores' ship, not just biting the unlucky bug-boys. The threat here should be that they are going to eat the bus… but we never truly feel that. The implicit threat to Earth never becomes visceral. It's a classic case of show don't tell.

Furthermore, here they are starving hungry and desperate to escape to new feeding grounds via their wormhole… and yet offered an all-you-can eat UNIT smorgasbord decline to snack on a single soldier. The "peril" at the conclusion is no more than enough to give UNIT a rousing victory, not enough to be really threatening. Why do just three stingrays get through? There's a long time between them emerging and Malcolm succeeding in closing the wormhole. It would have made more sense, and more drama, for more and more stingrays to be coming through, making the closing of the wormhole an imperative, not just punctuation.

Ultimately, you're left with the impression that the writers started with a blank page on which they wrote "flying bus" and then tried to work the story backwards so that that was where they ended up. The flying bus itself, while occasionally a bit cartoon-y, can also be rather brilliant, in particular the moment it bursts back out of the wormhole.

(Though I have to ask, given that it entered the wormhole at an altitude of several tens of meters, how come it emerges at near ground level? As though someone's forgotten that the hole is supposed to have grown to four miles in diameter?)

But that's "Planet of the Dead" all over. It looks spectacular, and it's certainly worth the upgrade to HD, to show off every gloriously-filmed grain of sand. But, like the Doctor's Easter Egg, it's shiny exterior conceals a thin sweet layer and a hollow inside. If "Voyage of the Damned" was rather linear, it still had a few bits to chew on; this is rather linear and doesn't.

No wonder those sand-sharks are hungry.

(*Yes, we watched "Aliens of London" this weekend too; for what is considered one of the weaker entries in the 2005 season, it's astonishing how fizzing over with ideas it was, and how thin "Planet of the Dead" looked in comparison.)


Next time… Now, that looks more like it. Outer space, watery graves and horrible death. Icy Lindsay Duncan gives us her Lady Thatcher in space. Let's hope it's a Halloween screening for Ghosts of **cough cough** Waters of Mars.

.

Day 3024: Conservatory Double Standards, part ten-million and six

Sunday:


Member of Hard Labour admits to spreading GOSSIP and INNUENDO about Conservatories (all very tacky and tasteless, but not CRIMINAL) - Mr Balloon says he is FURIOUS.

Member of the Conservatories found GUILTY in COURT of spreading campaign of terror and intimidation against Liberal Democrats - Mr Balloon silent on subject.


Certainly Mr Frown should apologise on behalf of Hard Labour for their BAD behaviour, smears are no way to conduct politics, it should be about the IDEAS not the people; but equally Mr Balloon should apologise on behalf of the Conservatories for THEIR behaviour.

And perhaps he can explain why he thinks that the rules should not apply to him!

.

Day 3021: Top Cop Dropped – Did he jump or was he, ahem, pushed?

Thursday:


Today I am practicing with the word: HYPOTHETICAL.

Here is a HYPOTHETICAL situation: the Prime Monster is VERY VERY cross that his massive photo-opportunity important world summit to rescue his job the planet's economy from the mess that he caused didn't cause, has been suddenly overshadowed by another DEATH linked to POLICE SPIN and COVER-UP.

Hypothetically… HYPOTHETICALLY… his spin doctors summon the crème de Scotland Yard in a hurry to brief them on "operation: LOOK! TERRORISTS!" And, all in a lather, PC Plod comes rushing round with the "who can we bang up" list without thinking to stick it in his briefcase…

No, no, no. You would have to be APPALLINGLY CYNICAL to suspect the police of rounding up a bunch of ALLEGED TERRORISTS just to bump from the headlines the story that another group of police were looking increasingly like LYING MURDEROUS THUGS. AGAIN.

But when someone dies and the police do their best to cover up their involvement it BREEDS cynicism.

When someone dies and it turns out that a policeperson gave the victim a thwack and a shove before he staggered off to have a heart-attack you can't help but have cynical thoughts

Three thoughts:

ONE – we must DEMAND that the law that says you cannot film or photograph the police must, MUST be binned immediately. Eye witness accounts of police behaviour apparently COUNT FOR NOTHING and only video footage can prove when the police lie. In which case, we must be able to gather that evidence.

TWO – while there are MANY good policepeople, it is clear that as a body our police have become POLITICISED. This is hardly surprising, the Labour Mayor Mr Ken Spivington spent years making the Met a branch of his office, and Second Home Secretary Ms Jacquie-boot Spliff has done her best to carry on that tradition.

"Kettling" has been described as a FAILURE. But it's only a failure if you assume that the AIM of the strategy is to maintain public safety and allow a calm demonstration that prevents damage to people or property. If your aim is to provoke people into acts of aggression in order to justify your own hyperbole, then wahey way to go. Instant attack on banks. Though for all we know, they were only breaking in to the Royal Bank of Scotland to get to the TOILETS! The police promised us a "Summer of Rage"; you might start to think that they are going out of their way to ENGINEER that!

The police have an AGENDA, and it is no longer certain that that is the same as serving the public.

THREE – Our news media are all completely COMPLICIT. The reporting of the G20 protests might as well have been dictated from the Scotland Yard press office.

And they seem to have no problem with blithely accepting the policepeople's version of YET ANOTHER "terrorism" story even at the same time as they are (SHAMELESSLY) reporting the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what the police were telling them only the day before. "Hero police tackle terrorist threat" jostles for front pages with "police-state thugs in death attack" with barely a blink.

And the resignation of a policeperson for a silly mistake seems to warrant MORE COVERAGE – the The Today Programme were like kids on tartrazine, so excited were they to have Bojo the Clown announcing live on air that he had accepted the resignation of a senior police man – than the need to address SERIOUS and DELIBERATE LYING about the LETHAL police strategy.


The resignation of Mr Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick CHANGES the STORY again – maybe not to the "successful anti-terrorist heroes" that the government wanted, but it's still not "POLICE-STATE KILLS INNOCENT MAN… AGAIN!"

That's classic SPIN.

So it was JOLLY HANDY that one policeperson was willing to "fall on his sword"…

…in case we started to take a SERIOUS look at all the others.

.

Day 3019: Put the Police on Notice

Tuesday:

I guess this means I'm on another database!

Thanks to Auntie Helen via Facespace, and you can have your own go here.

Day 3005: Voters of Brent - Which MP Costs YOU More?

Tuesday:


Lovely Sarah Teather or Ms Dawn Butler, Ms Dawn Butler or Lovely Sarah Teather.

Both MPs are in the HEADLINES this week:

In Bent East, Millennium-Elephant-sized Liberal Democrat Sarah is demanding that London MPs Second Home Allowance must be ABOLISHED.

Meanwhile Bent South electors find Ms Dawn Butler MP, under fire over her expense claims.

Like Minister McNumpty, SCOURGE of all BENEFIT CHEATS, she's been, er, BENEFITING from the Second Home Allowance, and costing her constituents an extra £37,245 over the last two years*!

So, who is BETTER? There's only one way to decide…

FIIIIIGH… Hold a GENERAL ELECTION!

When Mr Frown FINALLY screws his nerve up to the sticking point (or he just plain runs out of time) the next Election, following changes by the Boundary Commission, will see the London seats of Bent South and Bent East combined into ONE seat called Bent Double (with three wards from Bent East becoming part of Hampstead and Kilburn).

This means Lovely Sarah and Hard Labour whip Ms Dawn will be facing off in a difficult contest.

So if you ARE thinking of choosing between them, then you too can compare Hard Labour Dawn's travel times to see if she's worth it, and then remember that Lovely Liberal Sarah – like ALL the Lib Dem London MPs – saves you money by NOT ripping you off for a Second Home Allowance.



*A comparison of seven North London MPs shows that Ms Dawn's claim of £18,622 per year is second only to Mr Harry "Man of the People" Cohen who's been trousering £20,940 a year for the last five years.

(Interestingly, that means that the voters of Leyton and Wanstead could have saved themselves over a hundred thousand pounds if they had elected my Daddy Alex in 2001 instead of returning Mr Harry.)

Of course, the WHOLE question of MPs getting paid for an extra home raises a great deal of RESENTMENT, even more so now at a time when people are getting repossessed (and by the very banks that we all now own!).

Fragrant Mary Reidmyday has the very sensible suggestion that the allowance should be pegged to a much more REALISTIC figure, based on renting a typical flat in suburbia. In Surbiton, in fact, for full GOOD LIFE irony.

Alternatively, there is Ms Susan Gaszczak's ALSO very sensible idea that the Government should simply BUY some nice blocks of flats in Westminster and kit out six-hundred-and-fifty bijou home-from-homes on a one each basis. This would be nice and advantageous for security too – with all the MPs in one place it would be much easier for the police to stop them getting out. Er.


.

Day 3003: No, Minister McNumpty. It might not be ILLEGAL but it is WRONG

Sunday:


Don't you just get TIRED of hearing Hard Labour hacks and their APOLOGISTS trotting out the same old SPIN?

"Minister McNumpty has done nothing wrong. He followed the rules. He's done nothing wrong."

It must be a VERY strange state of affairs if things are only WRONG if they are ILLEGAL. After all, why have the Hard Labour Government been working like navvies to make more and more and more things illegal if they were not wrong BEFORE the Government MADE them illegal?

The reverse is ALSO true: just because it IS illegal, does not make it necessarily WRONG. For example, it USED to be illegal to be a gay daddy. Or a Catholic. Or take PROTESTING outside PARLIAMENT: some people – and at least one FLUFFY ELEPHANT! – would say that it is WRONG to make protesting illegal when these people are supposed to represent us and work for us and at the very least LISTEN to us.


RIGHT and WRONG are questions of MORAL balance. We have to make up our minds about them and if we are good fluffy elephants/monkey-people try to do RIGHT.

I think that most ORDINARY people would say that taking the SALARY OF A JUNIOR NURSE in return for NOTHING is on the WRONG side of the ethical equation.


.

Day 3001: Mr Balloon's Sorry Policy

Friday:


Even before the weekend's slightly public SPAT between Mr Ken "Fat Duck" Clarke and Mr Gideon "Tuck Shop" Oboe (over whether spending three billion quid on a bung for DEAD MILLIONAIRES was their most completely useful and important spending priority) it was dawning on people that Conservatory tax policy didn't make any sense.

If the GOOD times mean we get to "share the proceeds of growth", Mr Balloon and Mr Oboe seemed unusually RETICENT about admitting that the BAD times mean "sharing the PAIN of recession".

The Conservatories are caught in a CLEFT STICK. On the one fluffy foot, it is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS to everyone in the country how they FAILED to see the banking crisis and the recession bearing down on them like a cartload of manure labelled "DOOM!" But on the other fluffy foot they have absolutely no idea how you run an economy even when the wheels HAVEN'T fallen off.

Writing a typically BREEZY piece for the Windypendant, Mr Balloon put it like this:

"In the long term, we will control spending by reducing the demands that the broken society makes on the state… That's why far from retreating from our plans for school reform, welfare reform and strengthening families, we are as committed to them as we have ever been."

So, essentially, Mr Balloon's position reduces to "things have CHANGED MASSIVELY; that's why we're going to EXACTLY THE SAME as we said before."

This is not just economic illiteracy, this is MADNESS.

Patching together a couple of soundbites that are simple enough for Mr Oboe to remember them together with a figleaf of a Daily Hate Mail-pleasing tax cut is EMBARRASSING when the finances are SOUND; in the depths of a crisis it looks INSANELY DANGEROUS.

Mr Oboe himself slipped over the wall behind the bike-sheds again over the weekend, only to be caught on the The Today Programme by economic super-guru Mr Evan Davis.

"I get bombarded by paper planes from your desk with press releases scrawled on them," said Mr Evan, "and they're all pretty negative about the Government having done this wrong and made that mistake… do you actually HAVE any plans of your own?"

"Oh yes!" said Mr Oboe. "Everything's going to be lovely. That's MY plan!"

"But how are you going to pay back all of this debt? Won't you have to cut spending?"

"Don't ask me about THAT! I'm copying my answer from Fatty Clarke and he's not finished thinking it up yet!"

The Conservatories claim that they want some HONESTY about the economy. Well, they could START by being honest THEMSELVES. For example, less of this "we left Mr Frown a golden legacy" when in actual fact, they did EXACTLY the same as he is doing: borrowed a mountain of debt and came up with unbelievable made-up spending plans… which to everyone's HORROR, Mr Frown actually followed for five years until the debt was paid off. THAT was "fixing the roof while the sun shone"; and remember, it was the Conservatories who blew the roof off in the first place.

Mr Frown was saved by three pieces of luck: a windfall tax; a raid on the pensions (from which they've never recovered); and auctioning off the 3G telephone licences for so much money that is caused the dot-com crash. Where does Mr Oboe (Fatty Clarke!) say that THEIR luck is going to come from?

It is NO BALLY USE the Conservatories issuing self-serving mealy-mouthed APOLOGIES for "not warning enough about the dangers of light-touch regulation and borrowing"; they were not warning AT ALL about borrowing, and everyone knows they were positively pressing for MORE light-touch regulation (aka light-THE-BLUE-TOUCHPAPER regulation) not less!

An apology requires saying what you got WRONG and then saying what you are going to CHANGE to put it RIGHT.

Saying "we're going to do just the same" means the Conservatories may be a SORRY BUNCH but they aren't ANY kind of sorry for their part in this DISASTER.


And then Mr Balloon was back with a fresh bout of "THE SAME BUT MORE SO!" in the Spectacularlyrightwing , launching his new wheeze: "the post-bureaucratic age".


Because everyone knows that the BANKERS would have been FINE if they hadn't had all those BUREAUCRATS holding them back and trying to, you know, REGULATE them and stuff.

Anyway, it's REALLY important to him. You can tell because it's a short article and he mentions it nine times in seventeen parpagraphs.

He's not TERRIBLY big on detail, of course. I mean he spends the whole first page TELLING us he's had a brilliant idea. Again.

Then he spends the whole second page telling us why only Conservatories HAVE brilliant ideas. And by the way, isn't the Internet WHIZZY!

And his third page is how Hard Labour have failed to improve social mobility and failed to clean up the environment.

And his fourth page says "…so there you have it!"

Hmmm, I think the DOG may have eaten some of his HOMEWORK…

So, Mr Balloon's FAIRY-TALE vision is of a society where modern technology MAGICALLY means that everyone is WELL-INFORMED and EMPOWERED to make their own decisions. Quite how everyone GETS this information WITHOUT an army of bureaucrats to collect, sort, input and maintain it all seems to have been trimmed for space. Quite how "modern technology" does NOT mean yet another MASSIVE, EXPENSIVE, and ultimately FUTILE Government IT programme seems not to have made the cut either.

Mind you, he did find room to try and recapture the spirit of his old near-forgotten "Let the Sun Shine In" days:

"While those on the political Left are essentially pessimists, believing that people will do the wrong thing unless told what to do by government, we on the centre-Right are optimists: we have faith that most people are good and will do the right thing if only you trust them"

Oh, I SEE!

THAT is why the Conservatories want to lay out rigidly defined rules with which local government must comply if they are to receive CENTRALLY-DICTATED support for freezing their council tax – or else punitive local tax rises will soon see them kicked out or the ungrateful locals reduced to beggary.

THAT is why the Conservatories intend to BRIBE people to stay in loveless marriages – they TRUST that GREED and a few quid will work like a sticking plaster and they don't trust that people know whether staying married is right for them.

And THAT is why the Conservatories keep banging on and on and on about BROKEN BRITAIN, because only their NATURAL OPTIMISM enables them to see a knife-wielding hoodie lurking in every doorway or a binge-drinking benefit scrounger collapsed on every village green. If only they could liberate these people to behave the way MR BALLOON THINKS THEY OUGHT TO!

Mr Balloon is talking total bollards! Conservatism has always, always, ALWAYS been fearful of human nature! Was it not Mr Gladstone, the Prime Monster who invented the BAG, who once said:

"The principle of LIBERALISM is trust in the people, tempered by prudence;
"The principle of Conervatoryism is MISTRUST of the people, tempered by FEAR. "

Finally, Mr Balloon links his two thoughts in one sentence that GIVES HIMSELF AWAY:

"Just giving people more information, more power and more control over their lives makes them more responsible."

Responsible TO WHOM?

Responsible to THEMSELVES? Or to Mr Balloon and his ideas of right and wrong, of right and responsibility?

Because we KNOW that Mr Balloon believes you should take away the "rights" of people he says don’t behave "responsibly" – you know, those who are irresponsibly too sick to work, or irresponsibly too poor to live in the right catchment area.

Mr Balloon, you give power BACK to the people to make THE GOVERNMENT more responsible – and more responsive – to THEM. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

It's all too clear that Mr Balloon cannot get out of the old AUTHORITARIAN mindset. He JUST DOES NOT GET IT.

In his mind, Conservatory AUTHORITARIANISM is the opposite of Hard Labour AUTHORITARIANISM. In REALITY they are just two sides of the same BLUDGEON.

Because basically the Conservatories are JUST THE SAME as Hard Labour. And how can you trust people like THAT with the economy… again?


.

Day MMM: Rather Quiet

Day 2999: Nick versus Barclays

Wednesday:


Mr Clogg battles on behalf of all citizens who pay our taxes and (nowadays) own our banks.

Yesterday, the Grauniad published a secret document from Barclays Bank on how best to AVOID TAX. They then UNPUBLISHED it when Barclays obtained a GAGGING ORDER on the grounds that revealing how they AVOID TAX might be commercially prejudicial.

Mr Clogg went into a meeting with the Barclays boss, Mr John Vastley, and gave him what for!

"It didn't come to a stand-up row," Mr Clogg told the The Today Programme, "because I used my JEDI POWERS to subdue him first. Ahem."

Mr Vince "The Power" Cable, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor also weighed in.


"At a time when banks are receiving massive support from the Government, the public has a right to know if those same banks are also trying to avoid paying their tax bills," he said, pointing out that Barclays are looking for BIG BIG government guarantees at the same time as they are short-changing the Exchequer.

Personally, I think that any bank that has substantial support from the public purse, whether it is nationalised or just getting its loan book held afloat, should be subject to the same Freedom of Information laws as any other department that is spending public money. After all, WE OWN YOU NOW, Mr Bankers.

Of course, this news comes on the same day that Lord Airhead Turner, head of the banking regulator the FSA (Fully Subservient Authority), announced plans for tighter regulation.

Lord Airhead, and forgive me if this gets a bit technical, thinks that the rules should be: don't lend every last penny you've got to people who can never, ever pay it back.

But I'd like to make my own suggestion: DO NOT CHEAT THE TAXPAYING PUBLIC.

And that goes DOUBLE in the week you are asking them to pull your nuts out of the fire!


.

Day 2998: Gravity of the Situation

Tuesday:


The European Space Agency have launched a new GRAVITY-MAPPING satellite called Goce.

(Not to be confused with the PASTA-mapping satellite called Gnocchi!)

Allegedly sensitive enough to measure the impact of a snowflake on a super-tanker, Goce will be on the frontline in monitoring CLIMATE CHANGE, tracking every butterfly on Earth and predicting the HURRICANES that they are going to cause… er, maybe.



.

Day 2997: Credit Crunch – Russia do their bit

Monday:

Announcing their own SPECIAL kind of "fiscal stimulus", Russian President Dimity Mediocre said:

"We have learned lessons of history. Cure for Depression is MASSIVE REARMAMENT followed by WORLD WAR… Dos vedanya, Tovarisch!"



.