Politics

Well the Paradigm has well and truly shifted (perhaps) with another TV debate by the leaders of the UK major political parties keeping the Lib Dems in the frame for a coalition government or so it seems.

I'm not so sure that people will always vote for the person/party that they feel has won a TV debate, which brings us to the question do we vote for what we believe? (or perhaps we vote for the party that we think will do best for us and our nearest and dearest? )
Anyway 3rd debate this week and I reckon Brown might surprise us.

ITV new boss arrives as mood music improves.

Interesting that the decision to run QVC and gambling overnight on ITV has been made ahead of the arrival of ex Post office boss Adam Crozier by all accounts he's got a fantastic deal and the ad market has started to pick up - lucky or what?
Seems ITV might try and acquire C5 too - it's got some bankable shows and the synergy looks good.

Good Programme on McLaren

Watched the Yentob tribute to Malcolm on BBC iplayer - is linear TV dying even for me?
And the press
Have been given two copies a day of the free cut down independent , can't see it'll be doing too much for their sales also for a change bought the Observer today and thought what a good paper it is.

UK TV Prime time political debate ratings shocker

Like almost 10 million other UK citizens I watched Brown, Cameron and Clegg respond unscripted to questions posed by potential viewers in a Manchester TV studio.

Many had predicted that the 76 'rules' that were being invoked would mean that the debate would be boring, for me this was not the case and the 90 minutes mediated by a largely unseen Alistair Stewart was almost compelling.

How much of a paradigm change it wil invoke remains to be seen but the immediate jump in Cleggs popularity is in itself an indicator that things will not be the same - I did anticipate that the Lib Dems would be the big winners just by the fact that they are being treated as equals (whiuch they have not been in recent times) they also have a very big advantage in being able to blame the labour and conservatives for all recent woes.

I don't expect the audiences or reactions will be so great to the next two debates (particularly as one is on Sky News).

Let's see how the 2 majors (labour and tories) cosy up to the cleggies in the next 3 weeks.

End of Malc (22 January 1946 – 8 April 2010)

As you get older 64 no longer sounds like an old man - and I think McLaren could not have been an old man.
I wasn't an enourmous Sex Pistols fan although I'm about the right demographic, what I did like was the contrary personality he showed when ever questioned, the fact that as a non musician he felt qualified to make 'recds' and that he mixed together things that shouldn't go with such aplomb - I hope someone will surface to carry on his work as a cultural irritant with the humour that he had.

that Ofcom ruling

The ruling by OFCOM that BSkyB should drop the price which it offers Sky Sports 1 & 2 to Virgin and BT might seem like unnecessary market intervention for the simple reason that it is.

Despite what some people might think Sports TV channels are not a necessity and in a capitalist market (ish) if Sky choose to charge too much for the channels they will lose customers, they will then have an opportunity to re visit their charging structure if ultimately they are unable to create a profitable proposition they will go out of business (like ITV digital did a few years back and more recently the way Setanta did) and another operator will then be able to put together a bouquet of channels buy some rights that they hope will meet/desires/needs of viewers.

This sort of intervention by OFCOM (an unelected regulator/quango) is a reason that politicians (and not just those of the right) are calling for OFCOM to be trimmed back, one can not help but be cynical of the objectives of government in that it fulfils an agenda relative to News International/Sky.

Be interesting to see how the issue is tackled post election.

Windows 7 tune up

I got an unsolicited e-mail asking me to provide a link to a so here it is it is for Windows 7 tune up and the words to go with it are :


Windows 7 TuneUp suite is your all-purpose tool for better PC maintenance and security. Plus, it protects your computer from system crashes, repairs and maintains your PC health, removes unneeded Internet clutter, regains valuable disk space, cleans your registry and tweak windows to perform better.
Main Features:
* Support Windows XP/Vista/7
* Eliminates system crashes, freezes and slowdowns
* Automatically identifies and repairs common Windows problems
* Eliminate BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)
* Speeds up boot up time
* Repairs defects by building a fresh registry
* Compacts registry by removing gaps and unused space
* Removes fragmentation with a linear and sequential registry
* Improves system performance due to faster registry load/read
* Finds and deletes duplicate files of any type
* Saves space on your hard drive
* Extends internal system uninstaller with features to find and delete left traces (e,g registry keys, folders etc.)
* Improves your Windows PC's overall performance and stability
* Question based services and drivers tune up
* Automatically tweaks system services and drivers for better performance
* Recovers CPU & Memory usage taken by unneeded services and drivers
* Full control of the programs that are loaded during Windows startup
* Add/remove/edit startup items
* Task scheduler configurator
* Cleans Browser History
* Cleans history index.dat file content in Internet Explorer.

Sounds good doesn't it?