gatecrasher summer sound system - the review.

"Whether it be sheer cheek, lack of intelligence, commercial greed, or laziness, this must be the only major UK festival not to make sufficient plans so that their own customers are not left severely short-changed."

So how would a seasoned Glastonbury patron cope with a more commercialised, dance orientated, festival?

No alcohol allowed to be brought in to the main arenas, you say?
Having to pay just to find out the set times?

Is this what the average UK festival goer has to put up with…?

Arriving on site Saturday afternoon, it's a mixed start. Fully expecting to have to pay through the nose for an official program as the only way of getting hold of the set times and site map for the weekend, the £10 price tag is still jarring, and depression soon kicks in when the extent of how bad the stage clashes are become apparent.

Justice or Soulwax? Chemical Brothers or Zane Lowe? Pendulum or DJ Yoda? Dizzee Rascal or Hot Chip?

No point in agonizing over such issues all day, so we instead forsake seeing Adam Freeland or Does It Offend You, Yeah? in favour of firing up a barbecue.

When we do eventually get into the Arenas our first port of call is Digitalism, who bash out their electro with just enough energy to get us dancing for the first time. Pogo, I Want I Want and Zdarlight sound great, but otherwise the source material is a little to dull to prevent the set from lagging in between.

No such problem for The Prodigy, naturally, who are able to draw on two decades of material for their headline set.

Not helped by strong winds hampering sound quality, they only succeed in matching expectations, rather than exceeding them. Whilst Out of Space and Smack My Bitch Up are the show stopping festival anthems you would expect them to be, a lifeless Firestarter falls flat.

Roni Size – Reprazent on the other hand happily tear up the Drum and Bass Arena with an hour long set that barely leaves the audience opportunity to catch their breath. It's a welcome expelling of energy that had been lacking in the patchy early performances, and feels like a genuine thrill.

From there things can only get worse, which they do in spectacular style as 25 minutes of Pete Tong's inexplicably boring set are endured before an escape plan to see the end of Audio Bullys is hatched, who whilst hardly revolutionary are infinitely preferable to Tong.

Then it's a case of sticking around to see the air-horn wielding Kissy Sell Out prove why he's one of the most eccentric DJ's on the scene. Mixing inventive beats with intensely danceable hooks, and throwing the odd shot of surrealism into the mix, he's a genuine highlight. Any DJ that will throw R.E.M. and Wham – Last Christmas into a club set has got to be worth their salt, surely?

From there a snacking approach dominates as a visit to TC in the Drum and Bass Arena is a lifeless affair, we prove too sober to enjoy the minimalism of Vitalic, and are just too plain wiped out by the time we sample the actually very accomplished trance DJing of Ronald Van Gelderen. At 4am then, we retire to our tent for the night…

Sunday

…where we would end up staying for the next 13 hours. A mixture of sporadic sleeping, entertaining visitors to our tent and general laziness would mean missing the likes of Plastic Little, Skream + Benga, Annie Nightingale and Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip.

Eventually we emerged, and set about attempting to beat paying £4.50 a drink by successfully finding a spot along the perimeter fence we could lob our wine box over.

Once inside, the (hardly torrential) day's rain had meant that the Live Stage acts were being cancelled, meaning no Hot Chip performance, and that disappointed crowds had instead packed out Dizzee Rascal's tent making it impossible to get in.

Dejected, it was a case of waiting until the tent cleared out so that Freq Nasty could spin a highly enjoyable warm up set to the fantastic Dj Yoda's Magic Cinema Show.

Thoroughly entertaining, Yoda mixes live an eclectic range of DVD imagery and music ranging from Super Mario Brothers through to Chemical Brothers and back to the Rocky theme. It's just about the most inventive live music proposition out there and the only fault is that after 50 minutes the decision is taken that we have to leave to go see some major headliners.

Developments have reached their disgraceful nadir though, as it transpires that main headliners Chemical Brothers have also been cancelled due to the weather, so instead we put up with 10 minutes of Mark Ronson's over-running DJ set in preparation for Zane Lowe.

Ronson may actually be a good DJ one day, but as he still has a commercial reason to rely on playing out rancid songs from his awful Version album, you sense that day won't come anytime soon.

Zane Lowe meanwhile, immediately goes about proving why he's the very best party DJ out there. Mixing up genres as he is known for, his choices of tracks are 10 out of 10, his inventiveness is 10 out of 10, and his technical ability as a DJ rates pretty damn highly too. It's a show-stealing and raucous affair.

Next comes the difficult decision to miss Soulwax and a rescheduled Pendulum, to instead crowd into a brim full tent to see Justice.

Remixing, cutting and mashing together the already brilliant material from their "†" album couldn't really go wrong, but live they've continued to improve how they reinvent the material so that the crowd is teased and punished by relentless waves of insanely danceable music, which reaches it's climax with three false endings and the destroy-all-in-path Soulwax remix of Phantom pt.2. It's a down-right logical end to the best set of the weekend.

The final five minutes of Soulwax's alright-sounding set are caught, before Paul Oakenfold headlines Gatecrasher's own tent with a moderately pleasing trance show.

Tiredness and sobriety are again setting in though, and managing to drag ourselves to Simian Mobile Disco's 2am live performance is partly rewarded by a proficient and lively set that is sadly unable to stop the pain of the weekend mounting up, and 40 minutes in the decision is taken to retire for the night.

Overall though, the inexplicable event management must be questioned.

Whether it be sheer cheek, lack of intelligence, commercial greed, or laziness, this must be the only major UK festival not to make sufficient wet weather plans so that their own customers are not severely short-changed by what was – realistically – an averagely wet British Sunday afternoon.

Festivals like the constantly drowning Glastonbury show Gatecrasher to have complete contempt for their paying guests, and the public should respond with that very same contempt.

gig reviews: elbow, hot chip, justice, twilight sad

Four reviews written over the last few months, all of which were also featured on Teletext's Planet Sound pages.


Elbow/Nottingham Rock City

Three times better than the superb show when they last played this room, Elbow are now an unmissable live outfit.

Guy Garvey only gets more captivating with age - now attaining Dean Martin levels of stage charisma, whilst the band serve up a faultless setlist of songs, culminating with a devastating eight minute New Born that leaves the room utterly breathless.

One can only assume they'll never play this room again. 9/10



Hot Chip/Manchester Academy 1

Or: "Hot Chip attempt to warm up the still half built and freezing cold Academy 1"

They succeed, for the most part. Sensibly avoiding most of their ballads to present an 80 minute dance-athon, their only fault is placing a raucous Over & Over half way through, as not even penultimate track Ready For The Floor can match it for sheer dance-ability, and the pace never quite recovers.

Address that, and 2008 really will be their year. 7/10



Justice/Nottingham Rock City

Nottingham is already something of a Justice stronghold, so remixing and splicing together their own tracks alongside their remixes of Franz, Klaxons and Metallica was always going to provide an easy win.

So it is here. The 1,300 strong crowd lap up the duo's tight and well crafted party soundtrack.

Some leave in a confused moment where the house lights turn on, before a heavier techno encore which puts off a few but sends most crazy. 8/10



The Twilight Sad/Nottingham Bodega

Finally headlining their own tour south of the border, and one still wonders why they can only half fill this 200 person venue.

Those who do show are literally battered by a wall of sound, as James Graham leads a tight and mesmerizing 50 minute blast, singing acapella, knelling to pummel a cymbal, and all whilst stringently avoiding eye contact with anybody.

It's literally breathtaking. LP2 can't come soon enough. 8/10

my top 10 albums and singles of 2007

Albums

1. A Weekend In The City - Bloc Party
2. Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
3. An End Has A Start - Editors
4. We Are The Night - Chemical Brothers
5. Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters - The Twilight Sad
6. Myths of the Near Future - Klaxons
7. Thirst For Romance - Cherry Ghost
8. Hit & Hope - Ormondroyd
9. "Cross" - Justice
10.Between Voices - Anti Atlas


Singles

1. Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors - Editors
2. No Cars Go - Arcade Fire
3. Can't Stop Moving - Sonny Jim
4. Sirens - Dizzie Rascal
5. Breakin' Up - Rilo Kiley
6. I Wish I Could Have Loved You More - Candie Payne
7. The Beat That My Heart Skipped - Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip
8. Selfish Jean - Travis
9. Granite - Pendulum
10. Mammoth - Interpol

simon's job interview calamity

So dear friend Simon emailed me with the story of a job interview he'd just been to. We both then agreed that it would make an AWESOME blog post. And so here it is:


went for a job interview the other day, walk to reception they take a picture of me and put it into an open plastic wallet to pin to my suit for ID purposes, bit nervous i pin it on, go to the toilet whilst someone is coming for me from upstairs. go to toilet to have a quick piss and make sure im looking good. have a piss bit yellow, look in the mirror lookin good paronoid about possible piss stain in my suit which i happily avoided, i bend over to flush the toilet.

before i reach the handle to flush i realise i have not properly secured my plastic open wallet to my suit because it is filling up with piss at the bottom of the toilet.

i pick it out straight away think ill get another one, but then think right im on my own i cannot describe what i have done to anyone, start taking the paper of my name and face out of it which luckily still is half dry . i turn upside down the plastic wallet to return the piss back to the toilet. i try to dry all the piss but it is difficult to get out of all the corners, so remembering someone is on there way i put my damp ID on and leave the toilet. at the end of the interview i had to give the damp ID back felt a bit bad.

got a call today that i didnt get the job, which was a bit disappointing

gig reviews: pendulum, cherry ghost, damien rice, foals, air traffic, amy macdonald

I haven't posted any gig reviews up here since Glastonbury, so here: have six at once.


Pendulum, Nottingham Rock City

Always teetering on the edge of fully-fledged mainstream success, with a new band aesthetic Pendulum appear hungrier than ever to achieve it.

The songs previewed here have a new intelligence. It's still drum and bass, but now guitar heavy, seemingly more influenced by the likes of Zeppelin and Muse. That this performance is an all-conquering riot despite only paying brief lip-service to signature-track Slam indicates the strong body of work they have now built up.

It all makes one confident enough to make this prediction: 2008 will be Pendulum's year. 9/10


Cherry Ghost, Nottingham Rescue Rooms

Simon Aldred appears every inch a studio artist.

Throughout his set he speaks only to thank his audience and never veers a note away from his (unquestionably wonderful) source material. Such an approach then becomes a chore as it is stretched over 80 long minutes.

The crowd never returns favour with more than polite applause, and presumably leave wishing they'd stayed home with their copy of the album. 6/10



Damien Rice, Nottingham Arena

Damien Rice really has no idea how to play arenas. Ignoring several of his best known songs in order to air four b-sides, the casual fan must have started out dumbfounded.

For the obsessive though, it's more a wet dream.

Singing Cannonball unamplified to a pin-drop silent audience, Guillimots-esque reworking and extending of songs, breaking fire regulations and riling the furious stewards by inviting the seated audience to all stand at the stage front...

Afterwards, one thing becomes clear: Damien Rice really knows how to play arenas. 8/10


Foals, Nottingham Rescue Rooms

There is an unprecedented amount of between song chatter amongst the audience for a gig outside of London.

Many have clearly come along to check out the next big thing. Indeed for a band so early in their career headlining the 500 capacity venue seems a tall order.

Aware - and yet slightly fazed by - the challenge, the band power through a raucous 35 minute set that sees most won over. Any longer and their staple dance-punk sound would get tiresome, but in this well sized portion, they're a riot. 8/10


Air Traffic, Nottingham Rescue

Special mention must go to support band The Law, who only turned up 20 minutes before their set time, and put on a similarly botched performance.

For Air Traffic themselves, a dull opening 20 minutes doesn't provide much confidence, but when they belatedly burst into life with Charlotte its as much a relief as a joy.

A storming closing gambit of Empty Space and Shooting Star seals the deal, and if nothing else they're a perfectly amiable way to pass the time waiting for the next Coldplay album. 7/10


Amy MacDonald, Nottingham Social

Amy is doing nothing particularly original with her blend of Radio 2 friendly acoustic pop, but she's doing it better than most purely thanks to the strength of her songs.

Live, she's also helped by a fine line in telling chattering audience members to 'shut the hell up', and a charming stripped down cover of Mr. Brightside which seems purpose built to be played on Jo Whiley's Radio 1 show one day. It all makes for an endearing performance that hints of greater things to come. 8/10

who'd be england manager?

Christ, can't believe I'm posting a blog about football. It must be a big news day in the sport world.

Seriously though: England, as a competitive force, are permanently screwed. They'll never win a major competition again. Because, realistically who on earth is going to be daft enough to ever take the England Manager's job ever again?

It must rank down there amongst 'traffic warden', 'Blue Peter competition operator' and 'terrorist' for professions where everybody is going scrutinise you and end up hating your guts.

The knives came out for Steve McLaren today, as you might expect. Graham Taylor was Public Enemy #1 after England last failed to qualify for a tournament back in 1993. Other managers have enjoyed relative success then hit a bad patch and had to endure the country turning on them (Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan). Even Sven-Goran Eriksson at the height of his success in the role had to cope with ridiculous amounts of press and public scrutiny into his private life. Only Terry Venables seems to have escaped unscathed from the job in the last 15 years.

So, the question has to be asked: who on earth would be stupid enough to take the England Manager job now? The media scrutiny and willingness to change their opinions as regularly as the wind changes direction means that the best people for the job are going to have the good sense to leave it well alone.

is this the tipping point for facebook?

Anybody been having problems with Facebook over the last few days and weeks?

Quite possibly. For me it's been the odd error message here and there. Today the site has decided not to send out any email notifications to me, which is odd. Meanwhile my friends' status updates page seems to fill up with people complaining they can't access their message inboxes, or write on people's walls.

And well, it all seems a little too familiar.

Familiar because, we were all here a couple of years ago. When Myspace was at it's peak, and then started to have a few technical difficulties. Bulletins not working, the occasional error screen - nothing too damning, but mildly irritating all the same.

And of course the spam. Mildly forgiveable at first (hey, we're a slightly above average unsigned band, can we be your friend please?), and nowadays taking a more traditional spam format (hey, I'm new to this place, I've got this other site, a webcam and slight nymphomaniac tendencies. Can we be friends please?)

And then it was sold for a ridiculously over-the-odds amount of money to News International, and sat there for a good two years barely receiving any new features, funding, or attention whilst Facebook slowly stole it's limelight.

And so I'm just wondering, when will this all happen for Facebook too?

It's certainly still enjoying the same surge in interest that Myspace had in its heyday. And generating the same stupidly lucrative takeover talk.

I've had friend requests from a couple of organisations irritatingly posing as people. And the site's equivalent of unsigned band spam (hey, we're a local clubnight promoter, please come join our group which will never top 100 members) has been around for a fair while.

So what's next? Increasingly severe breakdowns like the ones we've been getting recently? An invasion of the spambots? Lucrative buyout from a clueless snail-like old-media organisation?

I'm not sure. I'm just hope the organisation is wise enough to learn from the past mistakes of it's competitors.

People inevitably ask whether or not Facebook is just a passing fad, but in all likelihood that's probably only going to be true if a better product comes along to replace it. That's all that's happened to Myspace, and previous flash-pan successes like Friendster. Who knows how Facebook will fare?

my mum likes spooks

A quick hello to my mum, who's a big fan of returning BBC spy drama Spooks. She rushed in to the lounge to watch the 10:30pm showing of Spooks on BBC3 tonight. She turned it on 4 minutes late, thinking it was a repeat of the BBC1 episode that was shown at 9 o'clock, then proceeded to ponder that they seemed to have jumped straight into the plot a little quicker than usual.

It was only when I got home at 12:30 that I explained how BBC3 often broadcast the following episode of big shows shortly after their terrestrial counterparts have screened the preceding ones, and that she'd actually just watched episode 2 by mistake.

Bless.

nottingham city transport axe nightrider services

Here's some news that pretty much nobody else will care about apart from me: Nottingham City Transport are to end their night service buses from the 24th November, so I hear.

The services are to be replaced by buses travelling along the popular Go2 routes after midnight on Friday or Saturday nights only.

It's hardly surprising, the service must have been making a huge loss for months. Barely anybody uses the things. So it's not really their fault if they cancel them, right?

Well, wrong. Plenty of people would use them, but the operation of the services over the last few years has been a joke.

Firstly, the price. It has risen by 50p every year recently. It now stands at either £3 or £3:50 for a single ticket, I can't remember exactly because I've got a bus pass. But either way, that's a ridiculous amount of money. The only people who are going to pay it are customers who regularly get the bus on their own (read: me). If there's two or more of you, you might as well get a taxi at that price, and you'll be home a lot sooner too.

So it's hardly surprising that the amount of people using the service now has completely nosedived. Why wasn't the price kept at a more competitive level, hmm?

Secondly, marketing. Or rather, the lack of it. Hardly anybody has ever known about the existence of the night services. People don't even know of them as an option. It wouldn't have been hard, NCT: put up adverts for each Nightrider service on the applicable daytime bus routes that go to the same areas - so - advertise the 99 Nightrider service along all the daytime busses that go to Clifton, Ruddington and West Bridgford, alongside all your adverts for Skylink services and sex advice clinics.

So, the Save The Nightrider Services campaign starts here. If nothing else, I need them to get home from work during the week or I'll struggle to keep being able to work at Rescue Rooms. Are you listening, Nottingham City Transport?

dirty thieving asylum seekers

Wow, people really have a problem with the whole immigration thing in this country don't they? It seems like every week somebody's informing me of how this country is now being over-run by foreigners, stealing either our benefits, our jobs, or our wives. Or all three. At once. Whilst grooming our children. With Gangsta rap and Turkey Twizzlers.

Just the other night one of our bouncers at work was sounding off about how this country's lost the plot regarding the whole thing, and I could only reply with "well I disagree, but I don't want to get into it". Mainly because I try not to get involved in big arguments with people who's job role could encompass saving my life one day.

But yeah, why is this opinion so overwhelmingly widespread, mmm? Have people simply been paying too much attention to what the Daily Mail tells them? (Along with the rest of the newspapers, come to think of it)

I thought I'd attempt to douse the situation with some cold hard facts I came across, instead of - you know - scaremongering and distortion and that...

The number of people applying for asylum in the UK is at its lowest level since 1989.
The UK hosts 3% of the world's refugees. Germany hosts 8%, Pakistan 13%.
Asylum seekers supported by the Government receive less financial support than British citizens are entitled to.
Albert Einstein entered Britain as a refugee.
The value that immigrants - including refugees - bring to the economy is that they pay £2.5 billion more in taxes than they take from the country in welfare benefits.
(source)

Some of those surprised me. I mean it's not as if you ever hear them from the non-BBC areas of the media is it? They'd rather stoke the fires and sell more copies, turning us into a country of paranoid racists, of course. They know full well that immigration is the one issue that will really get their readership riled up while they're necking their Carling's watching the football on a sunday afternoon.

Even without all those perspective-setting facts, why are the public so paranoid about people seeking asylum in this country anyway? Where's the compassion to say that just because you're not fortunate enough to be born in this country, it means you're less deserving of our help? We're happy to help you out with a few quid to save our conscience when the TV appeals to us to do so, as long as you don't actually come anywhere near where we live, thankyouverymuch.

Am I just being a silly idealist here? Thoughts please.

tales of an ex-barman

Given that this blog is supposed to be vaguely themed around the struggle to get a career started post-graduation, I suppose I have to make this post: I've kind of had a promotion at work. I'm now apparently a Cellar Supervisor, which is exciting news. (it isn't)

So instead of doing everything customers and managers tell me, I'm now doing everything bar staff and managers tell me. Changing barrels, stock takes, deliveries, that kind of thing. Joy.

Anyway, this is pretty much the dullest subject for a blog post in ages, I think I'll liven it up with the exact, full transcript from the interview for the new job:

"Mark, are you interested in that Cellar Supervisor position going?"
"Yeah"
"What are you doing next week?"
"Well, taking some Class A drugs, mainly crack cocaine and heroine"
"Excellent, well that's the interview for Cellar Supervisor. You start Monday"

job interviews are rubbish

Is it a good idea to mention the fact that you write a blog when you're at job interviews?

I've never been sure. On the one hand, it's a vague example of the creative writing that I list as one of my interests on my CV. But the problem is, recruiters can then go off, find your blog through Google, and know far more about you than any interviewer really should. But then again, if I don't mention it, there seems to be this big gap in my life that they'll no doubt assume I fill with sitting on my arse watching TV, or throwing eggs at pensioners whilst riding a chopper around my estate, or something.

So yeah, I've been struggling with it recently. I'd generally preferred a cautious approach, not mentioning anything up to now, but after something like 9000 failed interviews recently, I was willing to have my mind changed. So last week in an interview for the head office of a famous British high-street retailer I brought it up.

And the next day, I remembered that I'd actually been quite anti-capitalist on this blog in the past. Even, on occasion, quite anti-British retailers. Which might be a problem.

And the next day, I heard I hadn't got the job.

Balls.

news international is watching you

This is a bit of a weird one, but because I'm sad, I have often find myself commenting on BBC News articles online. Often the site gives you the chance to have your say, alongside boxes where you enter your name, your email address, and your websites' address - should you have one.

Naturally I enter the address for this here blog.

Now, whenever I have done this, there is an unnerving habit to get a hit on my blog from somebody within a BskyB building (that being the mega-company that owns The Times, The Sun, Sky, Myspace and a fair few other things). They have clicked on the link in that BBC News article to go to my blog. And it happens with quite disturbing regularity. Am I under surveillance here, Mr Rupert Murdoch man? Have you got your binoculars out, peering through my window whilst chomping on a Cornetto? Hmm?


hurrah for klaxons

In a vaguely related note, many congratulations to Klaxons for scooping last night's Mercury Music Prize award. As I detailed elsewhere yesterday afternoon, it more than deserved to win. It was an innovative, trend-setting, and all round accomplished work. Which is really exactly what the Mercury prize should stand for.

the 7 songs i currently can't stop listening to

Elbow - Forget Myself

I always quite liked this song, but over the last month or so I've become really quite obsessed by it. It's a soaring anthem of a track that's sheer epic feel exhausts you by it's end, yet still leaves you wanting to play it again immediately afterwards.

Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip - The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Underground hit Thou Shalt Always Kill was a clever track that got this duo noticed, but which also got annoying after five listens. This offering though is a far more addictive prospect, with a subtler subject matter that still remains as smart as before, over a killer tune that will be knocking around your head days later.

Candie Payne - I Wish I Could Have Loved You More

I wasn't sure when I first heard this classy soul effort, through headphones whilst on the bus into town. but a few days later I was picking some songs to play out on a Saturday night in Main Bar at Rescue Rooms, and I gave this one a go, and man, did it sound glorious thorough our deep, powerful sound system. Could be a bond theme with it's rich, dramatic sound.

Chemical Brothers - Saturate

The understated highlight of their We Are The Night album, here's a track that starts based around an addictive little hook, then keeps building the same idea over 5 minutes until you're forced to dance regardless of whether you're in a club, or walking down a crowded highstreet. Mixes that killer hook with a dizzying euphoria to dynamite effect.

Sonny Jim - Can't Stop Moving

The song I can't stop going on about at the moment, and the sole track that's keeping me going during the horrid wait for The Avalanches to follow up their 2001 album Since I Left You. Seriously, you need this song in your life.

Athlete - Hurricane

Always good for at least one triumphant, rousing pop tune per album (remember Half Light and El Salvador?), here's this album's example. Completely unchallenging, yet simply lovely. The audio equivalent of a particularly gripping game of cricket.

The Courteeners - Cavorting

Widely predicted to be the best thing ever, this song lives up to the considerable hype that already surrounds the Mancunian band. A simple tale of rubbish nightclubs and the overly-indulgent folk that inhabit them.

thank god it's autumn

If there's one thing I try to avoid blogging about, it's the British clique of writing about the weather. Regardless, though: thank God it's September. Not because I hate hot weather, or like the sight of leaves falling off trees or something, but because of this simple fact: stuff gets good again.

And there's lots of stuff to look forward to now that autumn is finally hear: new album's from The Go! Team and Pendulum are on the way. TV also becomes good again: Spooks will be back in a couple of weeks, along with Never Mind The Buzzcocks around mid-October.

Bands start touring again as well, and I'm somewhat overly excited about upcoming tours from Editors, Bloc Party, Stephen Fretwell, Feist, Foals, Damien Rice and Arcade Fire over the next few months. Along with that it'll be great to have Manchester's Warehouse Project back - I'm already booked in to the opening night Essential Selection Party and the Pendulum gig.

And then there's videogames, where there's Super Mario Galaxy and SingStar PS3 to look forward to. Not that I actually have a Playstation 3, or could remotely afford one, but this is the first game to make me actually want one.

So yeah: hurrah for autumn and that.

5 things i hate about asda

1. Rubbish products. It's all very well battling to have the lowest prices in town, but if those low-priced products are awful quality, I don't care. And it happens too often in Asda's case: Jam Doughnuts with the tiniest amount of jam in their centre, fruit loafs with about 7 sultanas spread miserly throughout, trainers which you only discover two days later are cripplingly uncomfortable...

2. Reducing Choice. In the never-ending rush to sell as many different ranges of products as possible, they save space by reducing - say - how many different sizes of baked beans cans they sell. Sometimes this is okay. But sometimes it is bloody annoying. When I pop in to buy some deodorant, I want to have the choice between the big 250ml can and the smaller 150ml one, not be forced to buy the 150ml one, that you are then going to charge me over the odds for, thanks.

3. The new food labelling guidelines. Now, I was upset when Tesco ignored the Government's wishes to introduce the new traffic light system for food, in favour of their own stupid system, but hey: at least Tesco have done something. I may be wrong, but Asda haven't introduced any system to their own brand products have they? This is shameful.

4. Opening Hours. My local one (Asda West Bridgford, supermarket location fans) is no longer open 24 hours a day. I mean, even if they were making a loss by opening 24 hours, you'd think they'd absorb that loss for the sake of having that perception that they're always there for when their customers need them.

5. The Self-Service checkouts. God they are strict. They moan at me if I put a scanned item anywhere else but the bagging area, like, I don't know, in my own bag or something. And God forbid I should place that bag of mine in the bagging area while I pack it instead. That's against the rules that is, and the machine will scream UNEXPLAINED OBJECT IN BAGGING AREA at you, before setting off a big red flashing light above the till accusing you of being a thief, and then notifying some spotty member of staff to come over and encourage bystanders to point, laugh, and pull down your trousers*.

These, it should be noted, are in addition to my generic gripes about the supermarkets, such as screwing suppliers, using loss-leader and predatory pricing tactics, and destroying competition in the sector.

But of course, I still shop there don't I? So feel free to call me Jimmy Hypocrite.

*may not have actually happened

listen to this

Please click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9e_4A7EKoA and listen to the resulting song.

It's by a chap called Sonny Jim, and since hearing it for the first time last Wednesday, I can't stop playing it now.

Take the following ingredients: The Avalanches, The Go! Team and Lemonjelly, mix, then shake, and serve over ice on a hot summer day. Loooooovely.

bad toilet habits

Like many young people, I've spent a fair few cash-strapped evenings in Wetherspoons pubs, enjoying their reliable mix of dirt cheap drinks, quiet distraction free atmosphere, fiercely brand loyal staff, and secret lapdancing rooms*.

One other thing you could always be assured of from Wetherspoons pubs though was very well kept toilet facilities. Always clean, well maintained and smelling oddly like a packet of Refreshers.

Except, I haven't been to a Wetherspoons in ages now, so when I briefly popped in to one last night (Nottingham's Roebuck Inn, pub chain fans), I was reminded of how they have introduced one tiny new thing, and completely ruined their long-standing super-toilet reputation.

Right: urinals. Not the most pleasant subject in the world, but has anybody else noticed the stupid plastic things Wetherspoons have in their urinals now? That look like giant white slices of swiss cheese, or something?

And if so, can anybody else testify that it is utterly impossible to pee on the things without getting at least some form of, well, splashback?

It's bloody annoying, Wetherspoons. Every time I'm drinking in one of your pubs girls think I have the world's most reliable incontinence problem. Sort it out please, mmm?

*may be a lie

knife crime on the up

So the big news story today is that knife crime cases are on the up, and are currently double what they were last year.

Which all looks very nice and panic-inducing on the front page of the Mirror, or whatever newspaper you choose to rub over your nipples on a daily basis.

I wonder how many of the news articles covering this story though, also include this related statistic: that knife crime is lower now then it was 6 years ago.

I'm going to assume not many.

Also: I'm going to further assume that those that do have the balls to include this, or any similarly vital quantifying statistic will have it buried towards the back end of the article, which only a few people will actually read, thanks to the fact that they had to turn to page 9 to get the full story because the huge headline THE WORLD IS GOING TO END dominates the front page.

Indeed, it seems you can't move these days without some foaming 47 year old bemoaning how society has broken down over the last couple of years, and that 'it's not safe to walk the streets anymore'.

And I blame the media. Safe in the knowledge that bad news sells more papers than good, somebody has latched on to the fact that if you can make people fearful, they will continue to relentlessly consume your newspaper/program/whatever.

And the only way the problem will ever be rectified? If people stop consuming the offending media. Likely? No.

Depressing stuff.

RIP newsnight video podcast

Oh man, sorry about this blog post, but I haven't been as upset about losing a TV program since Channel 4 decided to axe Hollyoaks In The City. And some of you will remember what a traumatic blog post THAT was.

But yes: Newsnight had for the past few months been doing a video podcast consisting of some of the weekly highlights of their TV show. And last night I discovered they had stopped doing them, presumably due to the lack of take up, or something.

This is upsetting. You see: I would never bother to actually sit down in front of the TV and watch an edition of Newsnight. But it was a brilliant service having bits of it downloaded to my ipod without even having to think about it, for me to flick through on my regular commutes. I could be on a bus travelling through the Nottingham countryside at 3am, whilst learning about Egypt's police state, or a debate on the conflicts within Islam, or something.

But they're no longer podcasting the thing. Despite the fact that the same highlights show goes out on BBC News 24 every week anyway. Upsetting. If nobody was using the service, it's probably because nobody outside of Newsnight's regular audience knew of it's existence. And at a guess, maybe there isn't much overlap between the group of people that watch Newsnight and the ever-busy group of people that own Video iPods?

Right, this is all getting a bit too highbrow for me. I'm going to go read Nuts magazine, drink some Carling, and discuss the merits of breasts. Whilst watching some football. In the nearest branch of Yates's.