Brand and Ross - nothing a good birching couldn't fix

Back in 2000 or so, my old dad made a comment about the Weakest Link, along the lines of it’s a quiz show for bullies and does nothing other than reveal society for its wretched, Darwinian, screw-you-Jack nature. I didn’t get it. I liked the Link. I liked Ann Robinson (and having read her book, admire her all the more). However, his point stuck with me and like many others, I’ve noticed in the intervening years that society seems to revel more in humour that is not funny or worthwhile, just unkind.

Taking the mick out Ann Robinson’s evil mamma persona (or parodying it) has potential for laughs. Taking the mick of Ann Robinson’s alcoholism is NOT, in my opinion, remotely funny. To be amusing, a comedic victim needs to have made a fool out of themselves, or have displayed contradiction between practice and preach (this is why Spitting Image was such a success). Even relatively tame comedies like the Good Life kind of work because of the contradiction displayed by “people we know” or think we do.

Unkind humour can work. But for it to do so, the target must have also been careless in their bad luck. George Osborne springs to mind. Not just unlucky, but stupidly so.

So, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have been publicly exposed for leaving rude messages on Andrew Sach’s answerphone suggesting one of them was shagging his grand-daughter.

What smart cookies they are.

What heroes of comedy.

I bet they slapped themselves on the back for this piece of wit.

And what, pray tell, has Mr Sachs done to deserve such a “witty” verbal missive? Has he made some derogatory comments about either of these two losers in the past? Has he committed an act of paedophilia? I’m not aware of anything.

They are freaking bullies, plain and simple. And for anyone who did find it funny…would you feel the same if it was your granddad?

Andrew Sachs = a comic great and a nice, old guy.

Ross and Brand = over-paid celebri-twats with who really, really should know better but who have probably never been told to shut up. I hope they get given the birch. Then get given the boot.

And I hope that when they are sacked, that anyone thinking they are clever enough to pull a similar stunt get the message loud and clear.

Stockholm holiday: goodbye

Here is a picture of the rather funky Arlanda Express. Groovy and expensive. However, it does exactly what it says on the tin - it gets you to the airport quickly and runs very regularly, so a nice, invisible service. But at £12 each way - there are no returns available - for at 15 mile trip it is twice as expensive as the Stansted Express which I regard as complete rip-off mile for mile.

Carly's blog

Daughter Daggersdukc has her own blog.

To read the the angst-ridden ramblings of an early 20something check this out.

http://catchcarly.blogspot.com/

Makes me feel old.

Hellooooo, I AM old.

Polar bread: a sort-of epilogue to Stockholm

I found a shop just off Oxford Street where not only can you find a small cafe, but also a range of Scandi food to take away, including sweets, cans of pop and a slightly larger range than the average IKEA. I couldn't resist buying some Polar bread, which, I suppose can be described as a cross between Ryvita - the lumpy bumpy texture - and mexican tortilla bread, as it is soft and flexible.

Delicious stuffed full of ham, mustard and mayo.

I loved it.

Up the junction? Nope, down the basin

I had reason to visit Paddington Basin, or Paddington Central as it has been dubbed, just behind Paddington Station (which turns the name into a bit of an oxymoron). While everything was lush and sweet and ticked all the boxes for the ideal corporate location, eg, sushi bar - check; Starbucks - check; anono-corporate hotel - check; Italian restaurant (albeit a chain) - check, I couldn't help but think that I really wouldn't like to work here. I'd rather work here than some industrial estate hellhole or the arse end of Mumbai (I'm sure Mumbai has some areas which look uncannily like Paddington Central/Basin too).

Its just if there is an equivilant of a corporate location of a Stepford Wife, this place is it. Canary Wharf is so brash its beautiful. Where I work on Thames Road, Barking is so ugly, its (almost) beautiful. Whereas this place has the looks of a supermodel, and the personality to go with it. To paraphrase Simply Red, it was was beautiful...but oh so boring. By the way, Simply Red only made two decent records, Money's Too Tight and A New Flame. Just my opinion.

See what you think of the Basin.

Stockholm holiday: greenery

Stockholm is a city of greenery, regarding both the "save the planet" type and the actual amount of publicly available chlorophyl. There is a ridiculously large amount of green spaces, parks, forests and below, an city-centre island which is a national park. Some pictures of Stockholm's parks and green spaces, then.

Here's a shot of the island park.



And below, a wilder part of the same place. Almost no-one passed us by for the hour we were here, while Mrs DD tried to persuade her phone's GPS software that we weren't in Malmo. One month later, and despite getting the names of locations correct, it still occasionally insists she's in that Swedish city.



A rather ornate building by the river.



This would be destroyed in just about any other city I've been to, but within a rather residential area of town, we came across this gorgeous fountain. I can picture the beer cans shopping trollies here. Fortunately for Stockholmes, it doesn't seem to happen to their public fountains.



A shortage of household junk within the public greenery is pretty rare - in fact, littering as a whole doesn't seem to exist at all. Unfortunately, at least for the unsuspecting Londoner, fitness and jogging especially is a public pass-time, though I'm not sure how long this would go on into the winter. With those crazy Scandy types being so used to the cold, they probably just don a Neoprene-type jacket and do it anyway.

Future tube trains

I travelled to Euston station today, in order to see a mock-up of the new S stock trains being built for the Met, Hammersmith & City, Circle and District Lines.

They are Muvo type trains, as used, I do believe, in the Berlin S-bahn services as well as in Shanghai and Madrid. They've been customised for the specific needs of London to some extent.

My impressions:

Good: Room under seats for bags, cases, dogs etc. Nice lighting. Air con (at last), colour scheme is pleasant, though nondescript.

Bad: Not enough seats, especially on the Met. Seats are rather hard, but we seem to have lost the art of designing comfort into seats these days.

As for the ride, we'll see when they start running. Track is being upgraded all over the tube to the point where it can be rather hard to plan your weekend's travel. Thank goodness for the recession.

Some pictures of the mock-up taken on my phone are below.





I was told that acceleration on these S stock chuffers should be like that of the Central Line once the old A stock Met lines have been removed entirely from services. These old trains, though big, fusty and rather comfortable, take a bit of time to get moving. The District Line D stock refurbs are a bit like these, so it will be interesting to see the innovations which occur between now the last batch of these going online during 2015.