Archive for July 2005

Every so often I feel moved to send in comments on BBC programmes; sadly I have yet to have one selected for their site, and my comment on Monday’s The New Al-Qaeda was no exception (Update: my comment subsequently appeared on the site). The first part of Peter Taylor’s series was BBC documentary at its worst: shallow, sensationalist and deeply flawed. For the programme to have been any more tabloid, it would have had to have been presented by a Page 3 Stunna, offering the chance to win £10,000 in a bingo game at the end.

As the majority of comments chosen by the BBC could have come straight from the Daily Mail’s letters page, I might as well post the one I submitted (perhaps not the greatest critique ever written, but what the heck!):

Whereas The Power of Nightmares provided an informative, intelligent analysis of the current Islamist threat and its origins, this was nothing more than dumbed-down terror-porn masquerading as insightful documentary. No amount of “edgy” camera angles could disguise the fact that the majority of the programme was taken up with tabloid-style stating of the obvious (wow, who’d have thought that bad people sometimes use the internet too?). Taylor’s unquestioning interviews with US military officials and self-proclaimed security experts never challenged any of their assertions. A year to research? I could have come up with a more informative documentary in a week.

Elsewhere, John Lettice provides a pretty thorough (and amusing) debunking of much of the programme in his review for the Register, and Spy Blog discusses some of the serious legal implications of the documentary.

Incidentally, I recently started reading Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke, and highly recommend it to anyone looking for intelligent analysis of the subject.

Following the initiative to get everyone to store their next of kin’s phone number in their mobiles under ICE (In Case of Emergency), Bloggerheads has details of the ICIGSITBOTH initiative:

Eight out of ten people aren’t carrying information that would help if they were accidentally or mistakenly shot in the back of the head. Storing next-of-kin details in your mobile phone can assist the emergency services if you’re unable to tell them who to contact because your brains are spilled all over a railway platform.

…

ICIGSITBOTH stands for “In Case I Get Shot In The Back Of The Head”: it’s what the emergency services will look for if you’re somewhat dark in colour, happen to be wearing a heavy jacket on a sunny day and/or fail to stop when plain-clothed men holding automatic weapons chase you down the street.

And for an extra dose of dark humour in these dark days, try this Photoshopped LU notice.

I’ve just updated b2evolution, so please let me know if you encounter any problems.

When the server suffered a disc failure at the weekend it wiped out all the posts I’d made following the bombings in London. Rather than try to recreate what I’d written, I’ll just add the two main links I’d mentioned:

The London News Review published A Letter To The Terrorists, From London which summed up a lot of people’s feelings on the tragic events.

Talk Politics featured an excellent response to the dangerously moronic editiorial in The Scum following the attacks.

Unfortunately the database server fell over on Saturday afternoon, and had to be restored from an old backup from last week. Consequently the last few posts and comments have vanished into the ether. I’ll try to re-enter what was lost manually ASAP, if I can remember. Sorry.

The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I went out on Saturday evening and got horribly, horribly drunk celebrating Sophia’s birthday. Sunday was pretty much a write-off due to my hangover.

Oh well, normal service will resume shortly.

My Weekend With Keira, Gwyneth and Kate

OK, before I go any further, an apology: at the festival we had the opportunity to kill Vernon Kay and we failed to act. I am truly sorry. With that confession out of the way, on to my time at Glastonbury (this will probably be quite an unnecessarily lengthy account, more for my benefit – it was such an amazing time that I want to get everything down before I start forgetting stuff).
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