celticman's blog

The Super-Rich and Us, BBC 2 9pm written and directed by Jaques Peretti.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04yn2yq/the-superrich-and-us-episode-2 This is the second episode of Peretti’s investigation into the relationship between the super-rich and us – the other 99% of the population. He begins with a sobering statistic, but only if you’re drunk, eighty-five people own the equivalent of half the world’s population. I quite like that statistic. But it’s unfathomable by its sheer immensity. Sure you can divide...

Angry, White and Proud, Channel 4, 10pm

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/angry-white-and-proud Jamie Roberts spent a year of his life making this documentary. I’d guess at a cost to Channel 4 of about £250 000. Compare that to estimated £1 million ‘kettling operation’ in which police officers flung a cordon of men, woman and horses around far-right-splinter groups, (‘Engl-i-and, England, England till I die’) protesting about Muslim Pakis abusing white girls in Rochdale. Protesting...

The Duplicity of Prince Andrew and It’s not Sherlock-Sherlock!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is perhaps best known for his creation of the fictional figure of Sherlock Holmes. Keen Sherlock Holmes aficionados suggest a link between Holmes and nineteen-century Edinburgh medical school lecturer, Joseph Bell, grandson of forensic surgeon and pathologist, Benjamin. Keen observation and deductive reasoning were the hallmarks of Bell and Holmes’s observations. Joseph Bell, for example, would demonstrate this ability to...

The Super-Rich and Us, BBC 2 9pm, written and directed by Jaques Peretti.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04xw2x8/the-superrich-and-us-episode-1 It’s no longer enough to say people are rich. We don’t for example say: the super poor and us. There’s nothing super about being poor and it’s less easy to play with such words and quantify meaning by adding another layer of description. Let’s just say that if a hypothetical me existed on less than £8K a year and Peretti is on about say ten times as much, for example, £...

Chimamda Ngozi Adichie (2007) Half of a Yellow Sun.

I thought the idea of half a yellow sun, a poetic idea, a trope with no real meaning. I knew nothing of Nigeria. Ignorance is not an excuse, but it is an alibi. However unfeasible I associated Biafra with tearstained and potbellied children starving to death. I wasn’t far wrong. Half a Yellow Son was the emblem worn on the sleeves of Biafran soldiers during the Nigeria-Biafar war, when the latter fought for independence, to become a separate...

New Year -getting old!

Here are a few markers of decrepitude. Going baldy. There’s literally a big stamp on your forehead that screams baldy old fart. Your gums are white and receding and what teeth you have are yellow. The left hand that doesn't grip as well as it should and the right hand isn't what it was. Try opening a jar. Your balance is that of a two-year old child. You trip over things. Literally a five-year old could push you over. When you trip, you fall...

Tony Bennet & Lady Gaga Cheek to Cheek

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04vkcgz/tony-bennett-lady-gaga-cheek-to-cheek-live I don’t listen to music much. The radio in my van turns on automatically. I turn it off automatically. I prefer listening to the engine whining and failing instead. Elvis was on BBC 4 last night, it was the young Elvis, not the bloated star he later became. Elvis live at, probably, Las Vegas. I listened for two minutes during the adverts. He was terrible...

Why can't the best player in Scottish football get a game?

Kris Commons, Scottish footballer of the year with 32 goals last season, described by Chris Sutton as the nearest Celtic have got to a Lubo Moravcik and voted as the best player in Scottish football by his fellow professionals is leaving Celtic –why? He’s 31. Lubo Moravcik was 49 (well 33) when he came to Celtic, or so it seemed as the time. He scores on his debut against Dundee and a fortnight later against Rangers and let’s face it, there’s no...

Why you find yourself humping the internet - and being humped!

Remember the internet in December 1983? Morphing about the place with floppy-disk hair talking about equality, freedom and changing the world. How we laughed loading up computers like washing machines. We’d go to bed, get up in the morning and it would be making that strange noise as it dry humped data, trying to get its insides out. We’d explain comparing a computer to an electrical typewriter was the wrong analogy. One worked by electricity...

Avengers Assemble (2012) BBC 1, 8.30pm

Note: nobody in Hollywood has a normal sounding name, the screenplay was by Joss Whedon with help from Zak Penn. I’m not sure why dear old Joss needed any help with his screenplay but when Walt Disney Studios is paying out (a declared) $220 you can be sure they want bang, bang, bang for their buck. And boy do they get it. There’s a fight every ten seconds involving Loki, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Scarlett Johansson (I can’t...

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