As I made links for the last post, I noticed there were a lot of comments on AROnline about the replacement for the Roewe 750, the Chinese car that is based on the old Rover 75. The replacement will be on the Opel Insignia platform, owned by GM. It’s been followed by a lot […]
Read More… from Johnny Foreigner might be better at running a car company in Shanghai
In the news: Julian Assange. While the prosecutor in Sweden is denying it, the lesson here seems to be: publish a Wikileak naming anti-Taliban Afghan sources and risk getting them killed, and nothing happens to you. Publish a Wikileak embarrassing the United States, and get the whole media talking, while you’re charged with rape. […]
Read More… from The Julian Assange affair looks like a Smith and Jones gag
During the Paul Henry débâcle, I was surprised to find that I had friends who joined the pro-Henry groups on Facebook. This included friends whom I thought were cosmopolitan and internationally minded. It dawned on me that they were probably supporting the first Paul Henry who many of us encountered, when we were watching the […]
From the ‘Whatever happened to …’ and the ‘My God, is (s)he still alive?’ files comes this promotional video for the (Norwegian) TV2 show Gylne Tider, with a bunch of celebrities lip-synching ‘Let It Be’ (including, appropriately, Fab Morvan of Milli Vanilli). Sir Roger Moore kicks it off, but right after, you’ll catch (inter […]
BBC2’s Mongrels was probably the best thing on telly for me in 2010. Hustle suffered from being filmed in Brum and the scripts weren’t as good (the “Kylie Minogue” scene being one of the few highlights); Ashes to Ashes’ ending was disappointing and the whole series felt cheap; Luther had a few too many […]
Matt Smith completes his first calendar year as the Doctor with a Christmas special, inspired by Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Michael Gambon! Best guest star since Bill Nighy. And if that’s Katherine Jenkins, that’s an extra reason to watch this. (Hope she sings, and not the Singing Detective.) You may also like Is your […]
Read More… from Doctor Who’s Christmas ’10 special: US trailer
Last week, our company’s Nokia 2730 Classics arrived as part of a contract with Telstra Clear, of whom we’ve been a customer since the 1980s. They are a reminder of how technology is regressing. Remember that scene in Life on Mars, where Sam Tyler, or Samuel Santos in La chica de ayer, tells Annie […]
I still have Adam Curtis’s The Mayfair Set, a TV series charting the decline of British power and the rise of the technocracy, recorded on video cassette somewhere. I consider him someone who can see through the emperor having no clothes, and in The Mayfair Set, he certainly saw through the Empire having no clothes. […]
Read More… from How MG Rover mirrored the developments at Lada
I’ve had a long 54 weeks, so I will leave it to Paikea to say what needs to be said about Paul Henry’s decision to resign from Breakfast. She is a lot more succinct than me and her three bullet points largely reflect my own views. I noticed that she embedded the clip of […]
Yesterday, I began watching the Indian media get hold of the Paul Henry story. Indians are, rightly, up in arms with the TV host’s insult of Chief Minister Smt. Sheila Dikshit’s name—this, plus the incident questioning whether Governor-General HE Sir Anand Satyanand was a New Zealander, shows a pattern where Henry thinks poorly of people […]
Read More… from Paul Henry is only the tip of the redneck iceberg