Most pedantic man of the year award goes to...

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Jeremy Clarkson!

He truly is the most pedantic person ever - As a lot of you will know, he announced not long ago in The Sun that even though the continuity announcer had said after their last episode in the current series, that Top Gear would be back in the summer - It won't be.

Thus sparking a whole load of controversy - Is Top Gear canceled? Is Jeremy Clarkson leaving? Is Clarkson just messing with us?

Answer - A little of the latter and quite a lot of secret option D - Top Gear is back in the summer but only as a one off special. The actual new series doesn't start until Autumn 2007.

I think Clarkson really enjoys pointing out these little mistakes...I feel a little sorry for the continuity announcer - He makes one tiny mistake and Jeremy pounces on it and makes a big national story of it.

Ah well, what else can we expect from Mr Clarkson really? Anyway - At least it means Top Gear's future and that of Clarkson, Hammond and May is fine and so all is good with the world...Except the longer we have to wait for each new series, the longer those on the ticket waiting list (me included) will have to wait to go to one of the recordings...

Political correctness takes the bacon

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First of all; Apologies to the terrriblepun - If it even can be called that... And now on to the story. Okay, so I had BBC 5 Live on in the background the other night, when suddenly they mention Honley C of E Primary and Kirklees - Kirklees is the name of our local government and Honley is two villages over from me. I went to Honley High - Would have gone to the primary too but there was a clerical mixup and I lost my place...

Anyway, I instantly turn up the radio and turn up the sound wondering why on earth Honley C of E would be mentioned on a national radio station. Turns out the school is putting on a play for the parents. Okay, so nothing new there - It's a dramatizization of the story the Three Little Pigs....Again - Nothing strange there.

But the school had made the decision that the play the 'Three Little Pigs' would be insensitive to Muslims because they don't eat pigs, and of course in the story the wolf tries to, so instead of pigs it would be the... 'Three Little Puppies'...For heavens sake!

That has got to be one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard in my life! For a start Honley Primary is a Church of England school, meaning it's a Christian school - So technically there should be no Muslims there to be offended in the first place!

That said, my C of E in the next village over had about half a dozen Muslim students when I was there, as well as some Jewish and an odd Jehovah's witness - The school bent over backwards to not offend them and kind of forgot it was supposed to teach Christianity...We never even read from the Bible - Just some good morals and ethics book.

Anyway, the 'best' part of this story has got to be the fact that nobody even complained about it being called the Three Little Pigs, plus a man who phoned in because he was Muslim himself said that the idea anyone from his religion would be offended by the story was just not true.

5 Live then interviewed a member of Kirlees council who said the decision was all the school's own decision, and had nothing to do with them.

Actually no - the story's 'best' part is that about ten minutes after the interview with the 'man from Kirklees' a statement was issued that Honley wouldn't be changing the pigs to puppies after all. Probably because they got told off for being so idiotic.

I must admit when they first started talking about changing the pigs to puppies i couldn't think why they would do that - The only reason I came up with was that fat people were somehow offended - The Muslim/Kosher aspect didn't even enter in my mind at all.

I suppose now is when I should write a summing up paragraph about the state of education today and the problems/stupidity of excessive political correctness..But I think the story kind of speaks for itself...

Stories I missed reporting on part 1...

Photo from www.celebrity-gossip.net (edit by me)

On Friday 23rd of February in Amsterdam at Hugh Grant's Dutch premire of Music & Lyrics - Where a woman jumped out from the crowd and handcuffed herself to him, where she stayed for ten minutes till she was cut free by firemen and hauled off to the local police station.

The woman - Cielke Sijben, a Dutch journalist wasn't a mad stalker fan or anything. She did it as part of a stunt organised by her and her crew from Dutch network 101 tv. They wanted to see if Cielke could walk down the red carpet with Hugh, so decided handcuffs were the way to go, because if she just dashed over and took his arm, body guards would easly haul her away.

Cielke didn't actually think they could do it (otherwise she would have dressed up for the occasion) but thought she'd try anyway, so was suprised how easy it was to reach Hugh and slap on the cuffs.

She introduced herself and explained, etc... So as to not worry Hugh too much, and when she was cut free she was taken off to the police station, but wasn't actually charged.

I got most of the story from Cielke herself from when she appeared on BBC radio station 5 Live to talk about it, though additional information came from starpulse.

I don't think doing what she did makes her a maniac as such (who wouldn't want to walk down the red carpet with a celebrity?) and if she had asked they probably would have said no - even for a publicity stunt, afterall celebrities and journalists in general don't have that great a relationship.

No, in my opinion the only thing that posibly be a bit mad is that she chose Hugh Grant - No offence to him of course, it's just I can think of a few celebrities I'd much rather handuff myself to on the red carpet, (not that that is really my style of course though) and no, I'm not going to give examples...

Life On Mars S2E2 (Contains episode spoilers)

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I have to say, I think this is the best Life On Mars episode yet. Partly because it doesn't overly focus on events surrounding Sam being stuck in the past. Except for the newspaper switch about 7 or 8 minutes in, and then the phonecall near the end. Instead it was a much more physiological and character based episode, which I don't think we get to see enough of. Especially not for Gene, not that properly explores his character like this did.

The episode starts off simply, Sam, Chris and Ray are moving Dickie Fingers, a safe cracker from prison back to the station to ask more questions about a few robberies he was involved in. A van gives chase, and a gang of armed men run the police car off the road (not that Chris's driving did them any favours) and the men take Dickie.

Arnold Malone is their number one suspect for robberies that have being happening in the area for years. However Malone tips them off about the next robbery.

Another plot is that one of the first black police officers is transferred to the station - And he also happens to be Sam's mentor. Sam due to a little time shifting or whatever the writers want to call it, knows Glenn Fletcher is dead back in the present, but is surprised to see him back working along side him. But is even more surprised how weak and scared of challenging ideas he is, so sets about trying to give Glenn some back bone and be the first to change how people treat Black officers and racism in general - So pushes him to be the man Sam learnt from when he first became an officer.

Back with Dickie Fingers they find him red handed and question him. But Dickie instead of dropping Malone in it, points the finger at Superintendent Harry Woolf, the officer who happens to be presiding over the case and has been trying to get Malone sent down for years. Not to mention the fact that he's Gene's mentor...

As I said before I really did like this episode, I thought the dynamic between Sam and his will-be mentor and being disappointed, mirrored with Gene and his past mentor and still being disappointed was very well done, and the showdown scene as it were with all four was just brilliantly done.

I especially loved the camera angles as Gene's arm shook with holding the gun, and Sam was stood in the background, watching seeing what he would do. Because in a way I think Gene and Sam kind of mentor each other and are great friends, as the final scene in the pub helped to show.

There was a bit of humour in the episode, mostly from Annie and Chris - Such as Annie half threatening to shoot Gene after being refused gun training, and Chris forgetting whether they were staking out a Post Office or a bank.

However it was still a mostly character based episode and touched on both police corruption and racism within the force, but in a way that didn't seem too trivial.

I think my favourite moment for me was at the end when Gene said that even after everything Woolf had done, he would still stand by him when he died of cancer in a few months. It would have been all too easy for Gene to just hate him and walk away, which he would have being doing really had he let Woolf escape, but he proved he was a better man by not letting him get away with it, and proving it again by sticking with Woolf to the end.

Life On Mars isn't on next week so the next review for it will be in two weeks time.

British teenagers & gangs targeted by new gun laws

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http://www.brentbrain.org.uk

As I scanned the headlines on the web, a story from Times Online stuck out in my head. It was about how Tony Blair has today announced that the government will be reviewing the laws and proposals for crimes involving guns, in particular making the minimum age someone can go to prison for being in pocession of a firearm 17 rather than 21 as it is now. - So as to discourage gangs from giving younger members guns.

The full story as reported can be found here.

Now, I totally agree that a crackdown on gun crime in the UK is the way to go, especially in the light of the rising amount of gun crime in London in recent weeks. However in the article Mr Blair is quoted as saying:

“It is about a specific problem within a specific criminal culture to do with guns and gangs, which doesn’t make it any less serious, incidentally, but I think it’s important therefore that we address that actual issue. How do we make sure that these groups of young people within these specific criminal cultures, who are getting into gangs at an early age and using guns, how do we clamp down on them very hard and provide solutions for that?”

I'm sorry but I really don't believe it's just a few misguided teenagers entering into gangs causing the problems - What about those smuggling them in in the first place, or manufacturing them here. Then there's the theives and drug racketeers, etc... It's not just people joinging gangs at a young age who are 'packing heat'.

But the fact remains that this is Britain, not America - Nobody should be packing heat except possibly special branches of the police.

It is probably easy to tell I am not Tony Blair's biggest fan, but I do agree with what he's doing, I just don't like the fact that he's putting all the blame onto today's youth, and not admitting that maybe if his labour government had been more tough on immigration and smuggling laws - As well as actually having a decent policy of 'Education! Education! Education!' like he was always banging on about, then maybe there wouldn't be any major problem with gangs now.

Tony Blair isn't even admitting that the plans to review the UK's gun laws have come because of the sudden influx of gun crime and murders hitting the headlines (Most occuring in London) in the past month or so. Because I'm pretty sure that if they hadn't happened, or more specifically hadn't happened in such a closed time period, Tony Blair wouldn't have made that announcement.

After reading the article I went on good old Google and I found the below chart from this page on the BBC news site.
Ok, technically this doesn't go up to 2006/7, but it does prove that Labour didn't do much to put a stop to the crimes being committed with firearms over their first term in power - Not that the figures the Tories left behind were great either.

I think today is actually one of the first times Tony Blair has properly and publically addressed the problem in any form, and even though I have no evidence in front of me to back this up, judging by the chart on my left, the gun crime figures for the present can only be even higher.

Now I don't know what those of you reading think about the story, or of the opinions and conclusions I have drawn from it, but I'm interested in hearing what others think, so leave a comment and tell me.

Life On Mars is back on BBC1

Photo Copyright of www.timetravelreview.com and the BBC

Just like the title says, and I for one was certainly not let down. I know I should be going into more detail but I'm really at a loss for words. For one thing Marc Warren's cameo as Tony Crane was just so creepily good. Though that fur coat he wore did make him look more than a little pimpish.

One big change you notice is the dynamic between Gene and Sam - In a twist of irony it is the 70's coppers doing everything by the book while Sam is trying to fit Crane up any which way he can to stop him from being able to commit crimes he knows Crane is going to do in the future.

I have to admit a lot of last series is a bit of a haze now, but that gives me an excuse to watch the series again so I'm not complaining. However, one thing that does stick out in my memory due to the pure creepyness factor is that girl from the BBC testscreen, and the whistling in tonight's episode has a similar effect.

One problem I do have with Life On Mars though, is that while it is a fantastic 70's cop drama, it can sometimes be hard as a viewer to believe in all the back in time, or back in a coma business considering just how real and gritty the rest of the show is - It's not like Life On Mars is any real sci-fi show, it's supposed to be real within our own physical laws and reality. But at the same time I guess that just adds to the charm and originality of the show.

On another note, I could see the ending coming - Not the ending where Sam got that phone call about his predicament being a 'job' of course - I'm talking about how he got rid of Tony Crane - Like all cutting edge and smoothly done shows nowerdays they don't include little extra scenes like the 'stringer/stinger' scene and to some extent the scene where that man was getting sent to a padded cell, without it meaning something to the plot later on. Then Sam goes and tells Tony 'the truth' and you kinda know that that is going to come back later and bite one of them in a very sensitive place - And as we're only on episode one, it's kinda obvious that it's not going to be Sam.

All in all a very enjoyable episode with good support acting and as usual more fantastic one liners than I can mention - A great start to the new series in my opinion and I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest pans out, as well as finding out how the writers have decided to end the series - Though all I can say on that front is that I'm glad I'm not responsible for the final episode, but I of course have no problem in watching and seeing what brains much more brilliant than mine have decided to do.

Episode Two is of course now airing on BBC4, but I think one ranty episode 'review' is enough for now, besides - I don't want to spoil my Tuesday evening for next week.