Brands2Life is fielding a team for this year’s Byte Night charity sleep-out - a team of five will head onto the streets of London and rough it for an evening to raise money for Action for Children - a great cause.
Byte Night this year is on the 3rd Oct — my birthday — so needless to say I’ve made a craven excuse and ducked out — but would really like to support the cause, so encouraging my readership to donate, and donate generously! I have donated some cash towards an office bake sale the team coordinated, offered my (limited) skills as a guitarist as a prize in the raffle silent auction (I’ll be giving someone a guitar lesson), and will make sure I have an ‘extra cold’ beer the night they’re camping out.
Please do donate generously here.
The atmosphere in Malaysia is very weird at the moment. There’s a huge build-up to the country’s 50th Independence day celebrations (Merdeka), but at the same time we’re standing in the wake of a considerable amount of racial and religious tension. The deputy Prime Minister, Najib, called Malaysia in Islamic state… and the government issued a gag order to stop the mainstream media from discussing it. You’d think it would be difficult to come up with something more absurd…
…and then this. A Malaysian student studying in Taiwan made a video parodying the Malaysian national anthem is under investigation by the Malaysian government, who are considering confiscating his passport and prosecuting him for sedition. The video raises controversial issues like - accusations of corruption in the Malaysian police force, referring to the morning Muslim prayers as ‘crowing’, and comments about the way the Malaysian Chinese are discriminated against in Malaysia. I’m afraid its in Hokkien and Malay, but you can view it here if you are interested.
It’s all a bit weird. Needless to say, I’m not impressed with the way Malaysia is handling these things. Fortunately, the Malaysian blogosphere is keeping the discussion going.
If you missed it, I’m sure it’ll repeat on More4 soon. Whatever you think of the sentiment, this is a stunning piece of television; beautifully shot, great timing, fantastic music. Just really well put together.
Oh, and Sophie Winkleman (who I was at college with) is in it.
If you don’t know what it is, it’s the year 2010 and Tony’s about to hand over the leadership to his successor. But Mr Blair has got more in store for him than his book deal and conversion to Catholicism… The Americans would like a word…
The industry trade magazine of the, erm, newspaper industry has shut down today after 41 years (via Guy Clapperton).
Sad. End of era. Yes. Best wishes to the people struck by the redudancies.
But - do we now have room / demand for an open source Press Gazette equivalent, powered by WordPress? Am sure that people would contribute; all you’d need is a hack (or group of them) willing to put some free time in, as The World’s Leading does for the PR industry…
It wouldn’t be as thorough, but it could still be fun. Volunteers?
I am aware that there’s probably a few blogs that do stuff like this. Please point me in their direction…
Update: Ah, yes - Martin Stabe is carrying on with Press Gazette style blogging on his website. Am duly subscribed.
Regular readers will know I saw the movie back in September, and loved it. Been following the hype with some interest, from Borat’s response to the Kazakh government following their criticism, to his appearances at premieres, and more, and simply can’t get enough. There’s something very captivating about that silly man.
Interestingly, in my hunt for more Borat related content, I found a couple of relatively sane interviews with Sacha Baron Cohen (playing himself). I don’t think Sacha does interviews any more (only Borat, Ali G and Bruno), but its definitely interesting to see the man behind the mustache.
Kazakhstan the greatest nation in the world, all the other countries are run by little girls…
My friend Kate has been working at BBC Radio 2, producing the Jeremy Vine show. She dressed in a veil (the niqab) for a while to see what it was like and discussed it on the show on Wednesday. Check it out!
I’ve missed the last few Spurs matches (crushing defeats) and kind of been glad of it. Whilst I still make no pretence to know what’s going on, I have found myself quite emotionally invested and am actually getting quite stressed at Spurs inability to score tonight.
Argh. Hope we get a goal quite soon in the next half… expect updates!
Update: WE WON! Come on Keane, you got the monkey off our back! That was fantastic… I was really expecting a 0-0 draw, so a 1-0 victory is approximately infinity better. Woohoo! That feels good.
Spurs took a hit losing to Bolton this weekend. Read about it here. I didn’t watch the match and am not following the season that closely, but the decision to support Spurs a little more actively this season has been enough; I felt/feel duly sad. And then I felt appropriately amused by reading Martin Jol’s comments about the game:
“The only positive for us is the new players now know the Premiership is different.”
There was doubt?
Still, I’ll be watching with interest. I understand that we’ve lost the last 5 matches against Bolton away and that it was more or less a foregone conclusion, so hopefully we’ll have more luck in the next game.
I’ve had enough of this terror crap. My reaction was one of instant contempt for people planning as unpleasant as what’s been reported. Although, like Ze, I agree that ‘unimaginable’ horror might have been an overstatement. It’s a great piece - if you haven’t watched it; do.
Unlike a lot of people (Doctor Vee has good links), however, my reaction hasn’t been one of immediate mistrust or anger at the government. I find that an unsustainable [sic] view: even though we have been misled in the past (the 40 minute claim, the Menezes shooting etc), we’re always going to be reliant on an institution to suport us in this kind of situation. If there’s a problem with the specific institution - MI5 etc - then those need reform.
As to the bigger question? The civil liberties issue is a complex one; but I think I maintain my Millsian perspective on this — the needs of the many… Appreciate that’s a massive oversimplification and it’s still an ‘alleged’ plot, but still. That said, that the government might use the atmosphere of fear to generate support for more, liberty restricting, ‘terrorism acts’ — whilst inevitable — is annoying.
For me, even if the threat on Thursday was massively overstated, I’d rather be inconvenienced than accept even a slim risk of lost lives and don’t think many would disagree. And we’re not speaking NewSpeak just yet… (although many of the politicians are, as you will see if you watch Ze’s show on the Israel/Lebanon situation).
Update: Chris has just written some great stuff about this too, highlighting the doubts he (and many others) are having. His last paragraph hits it on the head:
I’m not sure which situation I would prefer - to find out that the we’re in denial and we came perilously close to mass murder conducted by a sophisticated conspiracy, or that our government and security services don’t have a clue about whether such threats exist, let alone who or where they are.
I am, to the shock, horror, bemusement and outright disbelief of everyone who knows me, trying to understand a bit more about football this season. I’m not sure why - I guess I did enjoy the world cup (despite England’s mediocre performance) - and to a certain extent have had enough of looking and feeling completely clueless everytime a conversation about the latest premiership transfers kicks off.
So I’m supporting Spurs, am subscribed the the right RSS feeds (as provided by the BBC), and even signed up to the Metro’s fantasy football game, playing in a private league organised by Tom. If you’re up for getting involved, let one of us know and we’ll send you the pin. For those curious, my winning striker combination is Berbatov (who I have high hopes for) and Crouch (the funniest man in football). I’m playing a 4:4:2 and have Paul Robinson in goal.
Why Spurs? Well, I’m not sure who my local club would be by geography, but have taken a policy that I’ll support the team supported by the first person who explained a sport to me. For football, this was Bozza back in my school days and Damo more recently (both Spurs fans, obviously) and Daf explained Rugby to me - so I support Wales in the six nations - and everywhere else. It’s one of the advantages of having no ‘origin’ location to speak of - Malaysia only really figures in international badminton and squash (and sepak takraw, but who’s counting…).
I am enjoying freaking out people who expect me to know nothing, though. I just keep saying “Berbatov’s having a great run,” or “I think Berbatov is going to make his 25 goals this season,” or “We’re doing well in the pre-season friendlies,” and people just stare at me blankly.
The joys of RSS ;).
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