Be Excellent To Each Other

Mali - call the police and get it towed. They're breaking the law, innit.

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

Mrs K has acquired Series One of Glee.

I'm going to catch AndyBearMaliatitis.

It went 30 seconds after I took the photo. It amused me in the timing if it.

Oh wait. I had a go at having it redelivered anyway, because if I don't, it'll probably go back and I'll have to bloody fork out to have it sent again.

There is an option to have it shifted to the local post office after all, hidden away on one of the last pages of a different option. Muppets. You'd think they could just link to the service when you click on the name of the service, instead of saying you have to do it by phone.

Just saw V for Vendetta (the film) on BBC 3. It's a bit total crap, isn't it?

Oh, and lifelong graduate tax, anyone? Good old Uncle Vince has the best ideas!

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80bbca16-8f95 ... ab49a.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10631013

"Ex-students pay for students" is certainly better than "Everyone pays for students".

Do you feel the same way about everyone paying for schools and FE colleges?

Well, considering everyone went to school (and everyone has to do FE now, don't they? Or has that not happened yet?), that's how it currently works.

It's happening in a couple of years, I believe. It remains a terrible idea that will do little but render years 12 and 13 as pointless and dreadful for everyone as years 8-11. Arguably worse, in fact, as it'll be even clearer who doesn't want to be there, and even more frustrating for everyone.

But anyway. On the plus side, I recently heard talking of scrapping the idiotic target (even taking on board the fact that most targets for public services are inherently idiotic) of 50% of people going to university. I'd imagine that would have been impossible even if it weren't actively dropped anyway, seeing as fewer than 50% of people can afford it.

My girlfriend differs in opinion. She thinks it's plain mental that people can leave education completely at 16 in this country. When she's had her sisters and other relatives stay over, she's told them that most British people leave education at 16 and go out to work straight away without an apprenticeship. The response is always stunned shock, but they find that as an explanation why most of the population they encounter here are uneducated alcohol-abusing barbarians.

Still, I know what you mean, S.A. I found secondary school, latter secondary school, years 10 and 11 appalling, as it was impossible to learn properly a lot of the time. So many kids there didn't want to learn, so were disruptive and affected the outcomes for those of us who wanted to continue learning after 16. I enjoyed doing A-levels at an FE college so much as it was in an environment conductive to learning in a way that secondary school wasn't, as we were all voluntarily there. I'd hate A-levels to end up like GCSE Plus.

It's compulsory until 18 now isn't it?

Education, I mean.

Oh, look at this nice hat that some famous designer has just designed:




Nice, isn't it?

Where do these people get their inspiration I wonder?

Magic stats!

It says that 51% of girls went to uni in the article AnonX linked to, I think.

I agree.

I disagree.

It's not as good as the book granted, but I enjoyed it.

I thought it thought it was far cleverer than it actually was. Kinda like when six formers write about socialism. Brain candy for an hour or so, nothing more.

Yours is better - they've just got a boring straight line on the front of the ear flap, whereas you've got that curve.

Find out where they live, and we'll go around and make snide remakes about them in local shops and cafes.

I don't see why people don't make practical use of the physics of time dilation around black holes. It could e a really good way of preserving food, for example.

Far too complicated! It would be easier to merely accelerate your mile to 99.99% of the speed of light until it's needed.

Also free spaghetti.

I think it's indicative of the fact that I'd better get a job.

I have fond memories of V for Vendetta. I watched it for the first time while on a second date with a university student, we were back at her place and I unwittingly moved in for the killss just as the paedo-priest starts going for Natalie Portman.

She looked well hot in that get up.

*presses CEOP button*

Wait, we don't have one! HELP!

Brrrrrrrr tut tut, ZOLTAR!

There's only one really good thing about the new V film and that's the Detective Finch and his assistant stuff, who are not only acted really well but get a thoughtful chunk of script. The backplot that they uncover is really thoughtful in a Fatherland way, and almost seems from a different and rather better film. Because, unfortunatley, the script and acting for the evil government in this comes across as entirely cloddish and ham-fisted. After coming up with a genius new back-story we get third rate comic book villains who aren't a tenth as interesting and shaded as the ones in the comic. And after trying to lay plausible foundations for the entire story we're asked to believe that the public would continue to blithely support obvious villains sneering and being villainous right up until a sudden turn-around ending. I had been hoping for a more sinister and elegant form of a repressive regime, but no - we get John Hurt shouting and pounding his fists a lot.

I had hoped by scrapping the comic's 'limited nuclear war'angle they'd have a more plausible and sinister ruling party that controlled the media in an elegant way and 'disappeared' people less obviously. Instead the Voice of Fate is reduced to a chundering arse whom even Nick Griffin would tire of hearing five minutes into breakfast. Stephen Fry's character was a worthy addition and well played, but tragically cumulates in the most offensively brain-wrong thing ever when a closet gay man under a violent virulently homophobic government decides it'd be a great idea to lampoon the great leader whom everyone knows is off his trolly. And where was the kill-switch on the sub-Benny-Hill routine in the media office, eh? Where was the cunning 'technical difficulties' move? Quite possibly the most incompetent facist dictatorship ever.

The ending's not bad as such, though annoyingly V has to go up against the hammiest panto villain ever. And I don't mind what they've left out. It's just that its infuriating that such a well produced film has such a childish and thoughtless script. It really turns it into a quite-bad film. And where V comes across as enigmatic, frightening and almost child-like in the comic, he doesn't work quite so well here with the ADR guys failing to ground his voice-over, which sounds completely off-screen.

Agh.

The Valerie bit is good though. But I was so depressed it wasn't until Children of Men came along that I had any confidence in the future of Brit dystopia sci-fi.

(Edited as I accidently deleted some of the post quoting MaliA - curses!)

No more sleeps, Pete!

WOOT!

Nice review Pete.... So what did you actually think of Children of Men?

I liked it... liked it a lot!

Oops, botched that post! Edited to make sense, now.

Not watched that yet, I bet it's really cheap now too.

It's both great and really, really stupid.

AND ANOTHER THING!!!!!!!!!!!

Why, for the love of god, why, after making a reasonable fist of it all being 'England' and 'English' did they go and undo all the hard work at the end when the policeman says "Get your hands off that lever" but doesn't pronounce it "lee-ver".

And the ending was also shit "Actually, you're one of the terrorists I've been hunting for a while and I've watched you set this train full of explosives off to have a viking funeral underneath parliament, but i'm happy to stroll up to a roof with you, as there's no fucking way you'll kill me, dear, dear sworn enemy"

Certainly the best Brit sci-fi since 2001: A Space Odyssey, to my mind. Chilling yet oddly beautiful. And the bits with the car-door and the ambush are stunning.

I still need to repurchase Children Of Men after giving my brother my Xbox 360's HD-DVD drive and all the discs last year. It's such a great film, really depressing and stunningly beautiful all at the same time. It's put me right off going to Bexhill though.

I really liked it.

Just complained about a delivery driver parking over my office entrance. If he'd apologised and said he wouldn't do it again I wouldn't have bothered but he was utterly unrepentant so I phoned up his governor and complained.

I am turning into a MaliA. Hopefully the full transformation doesn't take place although I do happen to need some superglue to mend my blind.

Subliming, sir, you are subliming into me.

Anyway, Building and contents quote now down to £215.

Apart from the Hostas, can anyone plant ID me do, please?

Ivy.

Mud.

The campaign to get Brian Blessed to do a Satnav voice hit 25,000 members this morning which is the threshold Tom Tom said they required to convince them there was enough demand.

Are you showing any signs of the full transformation yet? Increased snacking, anger management issues, aversion to daylight?

Our hostas are flowering at the moment. If ever there was a plant where the flowers look like they belong to a different plant in the same pot, it's hostas

Yeah very J-Lo are hostas. Huge succulent mass at the bottom with a pretty top end.

Those hostas will fill that whole space by next year btw, MaliA. Planted them too close really, IMHO.

Should I try and move it about a foot further away? They were in pots, you see. DUnno what the red flower is, I've lost the packet.

Mimi's not to well today so do send her a cheery tweet or something. She's never too ill to check that it seems