In past years, I have got unnecessarily exercised about the barrage of furniture sale and holiday adverts on TV that bully us from Boxing Day onwards. I thought that was bad enough.

But today - I've hit a new low. I just received an email from the BT Shop entitled "Huge January Sale Now On! Grab a deal whilst stocks last".

"Dear Lois,

Christmas is a time for giving and it's no exception at the BT Shop because we're giving you the bargains! That's right, our huge January SALE starts right now! So get clicking for rich pickings in the BT Shop January Sale!"

Is it just me, or are they just a bit premature with this?

And a merry January Sale season to you all. Hmph.

'Tis the season to install flashplayer, ready to view the electronic greetings cards from clients and service providers.

Today I had 2 such missives. The first from the Design Council, a relatively tasteful and mercifully almost silent eco-plea, to save trees by sending virtual cards.

Happy Christmas Trees

The second (how apt: number two!) was from Business Link Southwest, who tell me that they "commissioned a South West based creative to design a holiday animation to celebrate the season". I hope they didn't pay him/her more than sixpence for this over-long, noisy festival of tat and cheesiness - or perhaps it was really the office boy wot did it. My son knocked out this sort of thing when he was about 10.

Santa's Workshop - then and now

It starts with an outright lie "(best watched with sound...)" - unless they forgot to put "turned off" at the end.

If you actually get as far as 'Now' - have you any idea what the bastard child of a JCB and an industrial robot is supposed to be doing behind the conveyor belt? Watching a tennis match perhaps...

Have you noticed how stuttery many digital tapes are these days? In the bad old days of analogue recordings, you got other problems of course, but not what I call the Max Headroom effect.

Does this happen on digital TV? As a diehard analogue viewer, it might be my aging technology: I am sure they are pinching some of the signal to try out digital transmissions ready for 2009, as it's often very thin and we have letters missing from Ceefax, even though we are in clear line of sight to the local transmitter at Stockland Hill and used to be able to pick up a good picture using a bent coathanger. No longer though.

Perhaps the tagline for another story - 'digital gremlins ate my hamstersignal'

Meet Max Headroom - and note the site's nifty icon. Neat! Or watch him interviewed by Terry Wogan on YouTube.

... And the transmitter even has its own web page - I'll get me anorak!

A lot of my technical writing is concerned with clinical trials, so I was especially interested in last night's edition of File on Four, which explained how many researchers are using wrongly-identified or contaminated cell lines in their cancer research. Examples included studies on breast cancer using ovarian cells, and "human" brain cells including mouse or rat DNA.

Validation of such cultures only costs a couple of hundred pounds, and some strains have been known as wrong for over 20 years, but are still being used today.

One of the big incentives for researchers is to get their work published in peer-reviewed publications like Nature. But a representative blustered in a very political way when asked 'why not insist on the validation of cultures before allowing publication?'

Likewise, a government spokesman refused to give a straight answer, and Cancer Research UK wouldn't even be interviewed.

I know scientists are human beings like the rest of us, but I had expected more than the dissembly, obfuscation and disingenousness exposed in this very revealing programme. Listen again while you can - or Podcast if you must.

Will you be giving to cancer charities knowing they carelessly waste your money like this?

... living in Sweden as a copywriter for Vantage Technology Magazine:

"To inspire, enlight and celebrate the beauty in life

Welcome to Vantage Technology Magazine... We want to inspire and enlighten you, with fine deep articles and advice about the most valuable technology... And celebrate the beauty in life...

Vantage Technology Magazine include more articles and pics, than five fine paper magazines... So bookmark us, now!

The word "vantage" mean shortly that you got a "superior position or view" and is related with "advantage" which is a quality, we especially want to give our readers...

You will first find The big Best Buy guide, with the most valuable and some fine alternatives, in almost every category... Great Technology, with a long article about the finest motor boats... An advanced HiFi school, that explain everything... We have also a long page with the almost secret history of the world and over 80 links to the finest sites...

Then are a few pages, not very big yet... But the Art, great beauty & joy section, will grow with a lot more pictures and the great Technology section, will get deep articles about exclusive homes and include many more small delights (as hifi, computers and time pieces) extra fine vehicles (cars, boats, airplanes) and other excellent technology... Welcome to the golden past and future, in Vantage Technology Magazine!

The word "vantage" mean shortly that you got a "superior position or view" and is related with "advantage" which is a quality, we especially want to give our readers!" [Ed: you already said that]

As soon as I came across this site, I immediately heard Stanley burbling away in his inimitable brand of almost-English - which I remember so well from my childhood. "Goldiloppers and the 3 bearloders" was a tape we frequently enjoyed.

I know one should not make fun of foreigners - after all, my Swedish is limited to a few food and drink items, but I only write web sites in my own native tongue, and wouldn't dare to try in, say, French or German without help.

More stuff here: http://vantechmag.com/index.htm

This morning, I opened some promotional mail from BT offering me IT support services. I was somewhat surprised to find that it contained a pair of rather horrid red nylon Y-fronts with a yellow IT logo on the front. The idea is that I can be a super hero in the IT world using their service; and possibly wear men's pants over my tights.

No doubt some bright young exec thought this was a good wheeze, but I was less than impressed.

On Saturday, I had a rare treat - yes, I actually wanted to watch the TV at the weekend! A Stephen Poliakoff night on the Beeb was just the ticket: Gideon's Daughter is one of my all-time favourite modern dramas, and so I settled down for an evening of unalloyed pleasure.

Not quite unalloyed however. On ITV, the ads are a tedious but necessary distraction; on BBC, they just enrage me. At the end of the Culture Show special about SP (which included extensive coverage of a new piece A Real Summer), Mark Kermode mentioned that it would be on next, so I jokingly said "Oh yes - I bet there's a trailer for it now" - and lo and behold, there was, immediately after the credits. Then the piece itself.

Perhaps I am unusual in not being tempted by endless trailers for the same thing, however good it is. By the time Capturing Mary eventually appears on the screen, I shall nearly be at screaming point from all the repetition: more a spoiler than a trailer.

Are BBC marketing executives all complete cretins? Or do they so underestimate the attention span of the general public that they think we need hourly reminders about what's on later? Sheesh.

BBC TV is a wasteland of lifestyle rubbish in the mornings - at least, that is what seems to be the case during my 15-minute teabreak each day.

If you thought 'Omes Under the 'Ammer was cheesy: try Homes Live - on for the first time this morning apparently. Complete with male and female presenters on joky first terms, requisite camp Scots interior designer, and mouthy sales executive, this is presented in an echoing warehouse conversion, with cheap furniture and props plonked into it.

The hallmark of extreme low budgetness was confirmed when they announced the phone-in and there was an embarrassing silence, followed by anguished reassurances of "We do have callers, honestly", and ill-concealed panic. Priceless - as well as very cheap. Just what your MasterCard is for.

I wonder what the Beeb actually spends all our money on? Probably sending correspondents all over the world on jollies, I think.

- or should that be:

"I'm all right" - Jack Straw

Last night, Channel 4's documentary series Dispatches investigated the shameful story of how our Parliamentarians not only award themselves vast and often unchecked expenses, but also waive the normal pension rules that apply to ordinary people to amass funds that we can only dream of, and also connive at preventing us - the taxpayers who fund them - from finding out what they are up to.

Peter Oborne, a political journalist, turned up lots of stones to find nasty slimy things lurking underneath. And there they will stay, since there seems to be little appetite for reform of the sleazy world of MPs' pensions, privileges, and expenses.

MPs of both left and right who complained about unethical, if not downright illegal, behaviour by their fellows were given the brush off or were reprimanded themselves by the Standards and Privileges Committee. (Low standards and undeserved privileges, one might think.)

Some of the chief architects of cover-up (including Leader of the House Jack Straw and Speaker George Martin) were not willing to account for their actions, and those that were, blustered and squirmed under Oborne's questioning, without actually answering the question.

The National Audit Office tones down its more damning reports, and its own high panjandrum has a snout in the taxpayer's trough; police investigations into cash for questions were hindered by parliamentary meddling; and Commons Standards Commissioner Elizabeth Filkin was bundled out of the door when she did her job too well.

And they wonder why most of the British public hold politicians in such contempt? A bouquet to Channel 4 for an incisive, but very enraging, programme. And brickbats to all those self-serving politicians and civil servants who spend our hard-earned money on their own comfortable lifestyles, as we struggle to pay our council and income tax.

You can read a bit about the attempt to amend the Freedom of Information bill to prevent MPs' expenses being published on this excellent page:

http://www.cfoi.org.uk/macleanbill.html

As I got hot under the collar about two items in the same prog yesterday, I split them into two slightly more digestible chunks! Read on...

Secondly: all this vague waffle from both main political parties about cutting down on car use, which goes largely unchallenged by the pundits.

As I have said before, the blindingly obvious (and very cheap to implement) way to discourage unnecessary mileage and fuel use is to load all the green tax on fuel. But no – they want to make an example of "the owners of Chelsea tractors and gas-guzzling cars" (to trot out a tired cliché or two) by putting up the purchase price. And of course Ken Livingstone has it in for drivers and parkers of same in London.

That has little effect on those of us who can't afford a new car, and certainly doesn't discourage us from making unnecessary journeys in our old bangers.

And it completely ignores the fact that some cars are used for a specific function rather than as a status symbol – at least where I live.

A Defender 110 in London is out of place – but in the country, it is an essential part of the farmer's kit, to drive in fields safely, to transport feed, fencing materials and small livestock, and all the rest. Why should my neighbours be penalised just because some silly woman in London chooses an inappropriate vehicle to take Sebastian and Tobes to their posh school?

However, politicians don't, generally, live in the same world as us ordinary mortals, and probably don't realise that cars can actually be driven after they are three years old, or carry bales of hay in the back.

I'm afraid it all smacks of Old Labour "if we can't all have one then no-one can" – much like the hunting ban was more about giving the toffs a bloody nose than animal welfare. I am very surprised that the Tories are following the same line though!

Two things caught my attention today on the Today programme.

First, a piece about Terry Leahy's allegation yesterday that it was not practical for Tesco to stop selling tungsten lightbulbs, since a significant number of their customers have fittings that require them.

Now, I am the last person to defend Tesco against their more obvious failings – but in this case, even a householder with a rudimentary understanding of lighting would probably defend them.

So, when some greenie was wheeled out to explain why Tesco was wrong, one might expect the interviewer (Sarah Montague) to have mugged up just for 5 minutes before questioning her. But no: just a "Why was Tesco wrong then?" and very little in the way of incisive questioning.

Point 1: low-energy bulbs are not commonly available in unusual sizes (e.g. candle, pygmy or for older spotlighters) either at all, or except at prohibitively high prices.

Point 2: At least until very recently, they couldn’t be used with dimmer switches. And the ones that can cost an arm and a leg (e.g. £12.95 vs about 35p).

Point 3: basically, despite what Ms Green said, they are not really anything like as bright as the tungsten "equivalent". 11W = 60W, and 15W = 100W – my arse, as Jim Royle would say.

We have low-energy bulbs in most fittings now, and an old house with small windows. As a result, our evenings and overcast days are spent in a dim religious light. For example, in the kitchen, we have two 60W equivalents over the table. For the first month or so they were about as bright as the old bulbs, even if they cast a ghastly pallor over all. But now, a year or two on, they are as dull as ditchwater, and not really up to the job of illuminating things brightly enough to do close work. Which is fine for those who sit slack-jawed in front of their TVs of an evening, but not for me if I need to sew a button on or do other such chores.

They touched on point number 2, but conveniently ignored the other points or skated round them.

If it's that hard to have a sensible discussion about something very easy – how hard would it be for them to discuss a complex issue? Too hard, is the answer.

The other thing I will save for tomorrow!

As you may know, Luciano Pavarotti has died, and as a tribute, the Today Programme played his performance of Nessun Dorma this morning. This oasis of serenity in a sea of argumentative voices and fatuous news was ruined by the voice of James Nauchtie muttering "It's almost the end now" towards the end of the piece. Obviously responding to some anxious producer over his earphones - but what a shame to spoil it for us all by sloppiness in production.

And another shame - that this glorious piece of music has been forever tainted by its association with football.

Only a week late in reporting this - but work gets in the way!

Still worth noting I think, for those who missed it.

Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman ("Paxo") used his MacTaggart lecture at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival to launch a scathing attack on the BBC, saying it's lost its sense of purpose in a welter of Stalinist 5-year plans, initiatives and missions, not to mention 'salami slicing' of programme budgets to accommodate the burgeoning non-broadcast spend (podcasts, web sites, phone in competitions, red buttons, email newsletters, blah blah blah).

He echoes what a lot of us feel - with some vehemence and force. I say well done - about time someone who will be listened to told it how it is. We pay our licence fee to watch 90% populist drivel; the remaining 10% would cost pennies of a cable subscription, not £135.50 per annum.

That's why I am going to cancel my TV licence when they turn off the analogue signal, and listen to radio and watch DVDs instead.

More reading:

Read a summary of his speech here:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2155874,00.html

and the full text (contains adult language - aka swearing) here (PDF):
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Media/documents/2007/08/24/MacTaggartLecture.pdf

And a bit more about the man here:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/571500/

Mmmmmmm, Paxo stuffing:
http://www.rhmfoodservice.co.uk/brands/paxo/

I'm fairly often disheartened (but no longer surprised) by the general laziness of journalists reporting the news. Their lack of curiosity and intellectual rigour seems to be more or less endemic.

What prompted this particular post was a conjunction of two items on the BBC TV news at lunchtime.

First was a piece on violent street crime, with some government stuffed shirt failing to acknowledge that the new licensing laws might just possibly have something to do with it, and then saying that society and parents needed to take more responsibility. The interviewer forgot (or hadn't the nous) to point out that the law stopping Joe Public having a go at thugs and vandals has hardly assisted in this process.

The next item but one reported the news that Learco Chindamo, the man who murdered head teacher Philip Lawrence with a knife 12 years ago, has been allowed to stay in the UK after winning an appeal against deportation.

I cannot help thinking that there is an obvious story to be drawn out here: knife crime is a real problem in the UK, and unspeakable people who commit it are not deported because of their human rights. And we wonder why society is in such dire straits?

... but not on the Titanic*. The View from Seaton reported, on 3rd July, that

"Civic chiefs are to experiment with their seating arrangements at Seaton Town Hall in a bid to improve public participation in council meetings.

They are to rearrange their chairs - currently in a square formation - every three months and then decide which best suits the members of the public who attend their meetings."

Who says that the local news is boring? I bet you wish you lived in East Devon so you could witness the quadrannual funiture shuffling as it happens!

* However, they may be about to blow up the Napoli - which would be real front page news.

Maybe I am a boring old fart (OK, I know I am), but a lot of TV advertising is either perplexing in its opacity, or just plain annoying. I shan't list any particular ad - but cars are a good example of what I mean: by the time you get to the end, you often can't even remember what they are trying to sell, which seems like a basic failure.

So, I was quite tickled by this ad for Big Yellow Storage, which uses stop-frame animation to show the way our possessions change as life changes. It is witty, nice to look at, and reminds me of being in one of my favourite places - the seashore.

The web site is rather pedestrian by comparison, but functional.

Heard on the BBC1 teatime news programme yesterday:

Female interviewer to Lewis Hamilton: "Young, good-looking and single - the girls must be throwing themselves at you - how do you cope?"

Talk about double standards. If a similar question had been asked of a female sports celebrity, you can be pretty sure the feminists would be jumping up and down saying "what sort of a question is that?". And if I were Lewis, I'd be sorely tempted to punch the interviewer squarely on the nose, 'lady' notwithstanding.

And anyway - what were they thinking of, asking Hello-style questions that have nothing whatsoever to do with news in any commonly-accepted sense? This is what I pay my TV licence for - aaaaargh.

I have previously reported how bits of old programmes are recycled, so that the Beeb has lots of money for reality TV shows and other similarly worthy projects.

Yesterday, BBC Countryfile was based in Scotland, around Glencoe. The presenter, Adam Henson, said (I paraphrase* as I forgot to wrote it down at the time) "John [Craven] isn't with us in Scotland this week, but down south", implying strongly that the feature following was contemporaneous with the broadcast. Actually, it was yet another of their tedious repeats stuffed in to stretch the programme out to an hour. Even if I hadn't seen it before, the time of year was clearly not mid-June. Newborn lambs are not completely diagnostic - but budding trees and wild garlic flowers in Somerset sure as hell are.

It's bad enough reusing stuff, but to pretend it's new is plain dishonest as well as patronising to our intelligence. Shame on you, BBC.

* If anyone recorded the prog. and can supply a transcript of the link, I'll be very grateful.

One for cricket lovers: if you didn't hear the Archive Hour for the 50th Anniversary of Test Match Special on Saturday, then may I suggest you Listen Again for a real aural treat.

Johnners, Aggers, Blowers and CMJ - and the incomparable John Arlott - all contribute their voices to a wonderfully English feast of cricket, trivia and cakes. Switch on the radio, shut your eyes, and you can almost smell the grass and hear the thwack of leather on willow. Magic stuff!

As they often say - on radio, the pictures are so much better than on the TV - as this programme demonstrates in spades. The only annoyance is that Rory Bremner provides some entirely superfluous and distracting impressions in his narration - when the real voices do it so much better and more subtly. Apart from that, top marks BBC.

Warning: includes the (in)famous "Legover Incident" at the end - so make sure you are not drinking tea at the time, or snorting will inevitably result!

Contrast with:

The oikish TV commentary on Formula 1: lots of shouting, with semi-coherent speech and often tedious rambling - all heat and no light. Because the brilliant newcomer Lewis Hamilton came second on Sunday at Monaco, the gormless pundits are already forecasting doom and disaster. I really do despise the way they set people up and then gleefully tear them down again.

Look to the gentlemen of TMS for some inspiration, you numpties!

"Do we actually need biology in this technological age?" – John Humphreys on the Today Programme this morning.

My opinion of journalists is not high as you can tell from other posts here, but can Mr Humphreys really be that stupid – or is he just being deliberately controversial?

Perhaps because he only 'did' frogs, amoebæ and rabbits' naughty bits at school some time last century, he imagines biology is a cissy science that isn't fit for the world today. I suspect he is not alone in that – but where do these people think that modern advances in gene therapy and medicine comes from, for instance? Media studies?

Heard on the Today Programme this morning: a weedy article on social networking sites – done in the usual heavy-handed and jokey way that older people use to cover topics that only the young are comfortable with. John Humphreys mentioned Faceback in his intro to the piece – which got me thinking about silly names for such sites. Squitter and Bubo come to mind. One a site for mindless textual diarrhoea, and the other for teenagers to squeeze their virtual spots in front of the cybermirror.

There was me thinking that we had developed brains and speech to filter out the stream of consciousness into something approaching coherence – and there goes Twitter encouraging us to spew it all out regardless. How annoying is that?

First it was Princess Diana, then it was Our Brave Sailors in Iran, and very recently, Our Maddie (or Maddy - depending on which paper you read).

Am I alone in finding the mawkish coverage of this tragic affair distasteful in the extreme? The McCann family has been dignified about it, especially considering what has befallen it. If only the TV and newspaper coverage could be similarly restrained, instead of churning out reams of ignorantly over-familiar coverage, sentimentalised images of the mother holding a toy, gruesome piles of soft toys and yellow ribbons and so on.

What has happened to the English tradition of private grief for a private affair? Only someone who has gone through a similar experience can really feel for the protagonists, so why should we, the great unwashed, be invited to emote all over the place? Not only by the press - but by fading footballers, for goodness' sake.

I wonder if it is all of a piece with the consumer lifestyle that is supposed to be our crowning glory today - rather than living a decent life?

Much better to be seen by all and sundry to be buying loads of stuff, living in a tasteful magnolia, stainless and laminate "home" (not house - dear me no) and overtly proclaiming our solidarity with people we have never met, than actually getting on with our own lives quietly in the background.

I had a mild snigger on Saturday morning listening to the radio, when Ed Stourton was interviewing the actor Mark Rylance about men playing women and vice versa. He said what sounded to me like:

"of course that is the question mark, Rylance"

- which would have amused Lynne Truss no end if she was listening, as a sort of misplaced audio comma.

The other oddity in his interview was the way he pronounced "biopic", as "bi-opp-ic", rather than "bio-pic". I noticed as the first (mis)pronunciation was a family tradition - one of many word plays that we enjoyed. You can hear it pronounced properly here.

Does your family have silly sayings and puns - or were the Brethericks just odd?

Whenever I pick up a weekend paper, I often cringe at many of the "lifestyle" articles. I suppose the epithet is half-accurate: it is all about style, and very little about real life as she is lived by ordinary people like me. Food that costs more for a single meal than I spend in a week, outrageously expensive and hideously impractical clothes, wallpaper at £300 a roll - what planet do these people live on? Not mine, thank goodness.

Anyway, on to the main topic of this post. The Telegraph's last Shop Local column was all about Chelsea (home of the eponymous tractor, but one would think, few food producers). If you live in Chelsea, it seems that Kent is local - but even by these standards, I thnk it is stretching the point too far to include "Rainforest Creations (07985 235 219) [which] makes salads and cakes from raw foods that only grow in the tropics - a must-try."

I am fortunate enough to live close to Bridport in Dorset - where I can go on Saturdays and buy real local food - produced by farmers, market gardeners, cooks, apple and cider producers and the like, who all live a short drive away. Now that's what I call really local - but I'm not a London journalist - so what do I know?

(Locals are already up in arms about thowaway comments by other distant journos,as you can read on the local paper's web site. Bring on the pitchforks, I say!)

"In animal-loving Britain, not all humans are as exasperated as Howard, whose daughter’s chickens keep getting slaughtered: Alan and June put out chicken livers for Miss Fox and her family while secretly filming them from cameras hidden in plant pots. They’ve obviously never witnessed the needless and wanton destruction a single fox can wreak on a killing spree." - Patricia Wynn Davies writing in the Telegraph TV review section

And Ms Wynn Davies obviously has no real understanding of animal behaviour. The way that foxes survive in the wild is to kill as much as they can in times of plenty, and bury it as a larder for use in leaner times. What seems superficially like a senseless orgy of destruction is in fact a useful survival strategy in the wild - but not for urban foxes, who haven't had time to evolve a new strategy that accounts for the existence of confined prey that cannot escape and is the property of vengeful humans!

A shame that she didn't bother to do just a little bit of research before committing pen to paper - but as hardly anyone seems to worry about getting their facts right these days, perhaps not very surprising. And how much more satisfying for those of limited attention span to read more sensational descriptions

For a welcome change - a bouquet rather than a brickbat for TV.

Last night saw the final episode of "Life on Mars" on BBC1 - apart from a bit too much talking to white noise on the radio, a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to a gripping drama that dared to be a bit different from all the common formulae today. To someone who remembers the 70s first-hand, the period detail was very evocative, and the use of the storyline to compare past and present attitudes was, I thought, very telling. Like Sam, I can't help thinking that we have gone too far the other way in our relentlessly PC and safety-obsessed age.

(Perhaps it should be made compulsory viewing for all those bleating about reparations and apologies for slavery: the past is indeed another country that we can never revisit, except in memories.)

And a belated pat on the back for Channel 4 too. Remember that once upon a time they used to rival BBC2 (as it was then) for programmes that covered serious subjects? Well, on Easter Monday, we had quite a treat: a documentary about how English translations of the Bible affected English history and literature. Presented by Rod Liddle, it was an intelligent look at what might seem a dry subject, but was in fact full of interest.

Only marred by pointless out-of-focus wobblycam reconstructions - do they really think that the people who find this topic of interest will be impressed by such cheap fillers? Better the shorten the prog. by 30 minutes and "leave it aht", as Arthur Daley used to say.