NEWS ROUNDUP

I like to think that I’m generally reasonably well informed and in touch with what’s going on in the world, so, when the polling cards popped through our letterbox a few days ago I paid them little heed, propped them up on the mantelpiece and forgot about them, assuming of course that the election literature would start to arrive any day and I would trudge wearily out on the appointed day and execute my democratic duties as per usual. I was rather surprised therefore by the evening news telling me about the forthcoming referendum on voting reform because, somehow that had slipped under my personal radar, and now I have something else to think about.

I know that I’m a bit of a traditionalist at heart and would probably prefer things not to change, but then I do wonder whether a lot of people will vote for change for change’s sake. I tend to think that if you’ve got a system that has worked for hundreds of years, maybe mucking about with it for short term expedience isn’t the wisest  way to go, but then I thought that the Lord Chancellor losing his robes of state was a little bit too modernist for my tastes.

Whether or not it would leads to a permanent system of coalition is another thing to consider of course, but it did strike me as significant that it was decided that Nick Clegg shouldn’t attend the cross party launch event that even Ed Miliband was present at, because he was seen as being too ‘unpopular’ a figure at present. I suppose if you are seen as having ditched your principles in order to get a sniff of power and become the glove puppet of the establishment, then that’s what tends to happen.

Then again, ‘Big Society’ doesn’t seem to be working either. I’m beginning to think that we’ve become a ‘let someone else do it’ nation on the whole, as we were when it came to voting, because it always seems that we believe that everyone else has got acres of free time but that we’re too busy to do it ourselves. I can’t really comment further because I personally do very little [expletive variant deleted] to contribute to society myself any more. I barely leave the house (unless it’s to deal with the latest development in my own ongoing family crisis) if I can help it.

One thing that did rather disturb me was this idea that children should be allowed to be involved in the interviewing and selection process of their teachers. “Now” I thought, in my most ironic manner, “that’s a bright idea in the age of the ‘X-Factor’...” As long as they’re good looking and appear to be cool and easy going they’ll be fine. Or maybe if they were to hand out free iPods or somesuch.  Stupidly, it doesn’t seem to cross the minds of the idiots making these suggestions that the children are the work or product in the system and not the “customer”, in fact in real terms it is the parents who are the customer, if not society as a whole.

I noticed in a news item about council cuts that Nottingham also now has a big wheel, which, since the millennium now seems to be a standard requirement for all major cities to have. Strange how expenditure on such things doesn’t seem to bother people, but stopping people in the street and asking them if they’re happy that their council is spending money on flapjacks and beer does. Oddly enough, the hospitality and fund-raising aspects of these purchases were only mentioned later on in the item, but the reporter only approached people with the “what do you think of the council spending money on flapjacks?” which, out of context, is almost bound to get a negative reaction. Gaaah! Vox pops! The most pointless part of news coverage. We... Know... NOTHING!!!

Meanwhile, I saw an advert for a film in my new edition of Empire magazine: “Nude Nuns with Big Guns”. It says it all, really.

In other film news, Jennifer Garner was picked by Disney to be their new “Miss Marple” which sounds like the best idea anyone’s had since deciding to have the cooling systems of a nuclear plant powered by the electricity supplied by that same plant. I fear that one of Agatha Christie’s great creations is going to get a “Nancy Drew” style makeover which sounds, as my alter-ego Marvin might say, “Ghastly”. Mind you, I so wanted to dislike Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” and that turned out to be OxygenPotassium*, so you never know… I suppose I should just be grateful that any movies get made at all what with all the arts funding cuts that are going on, but that’s a rant for another day.

Hearing names sometimes makes me think in all kinds of unusual tangents. I saw a surgeon called Professor Monty Mythen being interviewed on TV the other morning and the “Liberty Bell” march was playing in my head for hours, although it tended to alternate with the tune that pops into my head whenever Ben Ando does a news report (“Can you hear the drums, Ben Ando?”). Unusual names have been cropping up a lot what with the sad demise of Leo Sivoubi, which is all mixed up and an obvious lie by any other name, but then these things are not what they once were (7, 3). Speaking of mixed up, I recently discovered that my name is an anagram of “Mainstream Howl”, which somehow seems appropriate...

Another (genuine) unusual name also left us this week, one Farley Granger who was guaranteed movie immortality by his appearances in two of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, “Rope” and “Strangers on a Train”. I lift a metaphorical Iced Tea to your memory, sir. Those films seem to be so iconic and so much part of our culture that it’s sometimes hard to believe that they were not made hundreds of years ago, but actually within our cultural living memory, so that there are still people around who actually worked on them and who are still able to share with us their memories of doing so. We should try to touch history while we still can.

*OK