Austen Day

 So, 250 years ago today, Jane Austen was born.

We remember reading Northanger Abbey for O Level. We spent more time in the exam writing about her than the other two writers combined (Shakespeare and Tennyson, since you ask).

For A level, Mansfield Park and Emma.

For our degree Everybloodything. And 'Regulated Hatred' and Locke, Barbara Hardy and Marilyn Butler.  And everything else relevant...

BBC Radio 4 was in full celebration mode today, from Woman's Hour to Front Row and all points in between. Radio 4 presenters in crinolines and strange voices.  Versions of the books, and some brilliant discussions.

I think this was my favourite.

Lizzie, Again

Quite a good BBC Radio 4 version of Pride and Prejudice is on at the present.
Severely edited, but still fun.

Tamsin Greig as Jane Austen.

The CPI versus the Vimes Boot Index

 

In today's news, the UK's unofficial arbiter of all things statistical, 'More or Less' on BBCR4, has had a look at Jack Monroe's strong criticism of the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). For those who've missed this, they argue that it massively underestimates the inflation felt by the poorest consumers, because the cheapest essentials rise in price by a greater percentage.

Short answer: They're right, and the Office of National Statistics admit it.

The programme also mentions their proposed new measure, the Vimes Boot Index.

The whole programme is worth a listen. It includes the usual calling out of pernicious Covid myths, as well as a debunking of the 'five second rule' for dropped food.

42 Years

42 years ago yesterday, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was broadcast for the first time.  On Radio 4.  I was at University, and listened to it, I think, with Ken Brown and Andy Crook in Andy's room. 

Pretty damn good.

So, anyway, last night Radio 4 Extra played the first series, with some bonus programmes.  I couldn't listen to it.  But, of course, it is still there on Sounds.

Listening now...

Spacey...

Well, yesterday was a bit spacey.

First on the terrible R4 programme, the inheritance tracks of Chris Hadfield.  Including 'Where Have all the Flowers Gone?'.  Mind you, although he wanted to hand on a song we certainly hadn't heard of, we all know what it s he's really passed on...

Then yesterday afternoon through the driving rain to the Odeon Greenwich - which looks a little space agey, to see Gravity.  Which was enjoyed, I must say.  Lots of references to other space movies, and only the odd faux pas.

And so to home, and as it was a clear night we set up the telescope and looked at Jupiter.
A clear orangey disk, and all four Galilean satellites clearly visible.

Marvellous.

Finnamore Crescent

We weren't going to listen to this (things to do). But the great John Finnamore was on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.  Wonderful.  Especially his first go at Mornington Cresecent...

New Prince

Today Programme: 'A Newly-Christened Prince'.

So what do we call him now?  "The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as..."?

Gaiman Live

On the Execrable Saturday Live this morning, Neil Gaiman as studio guest and the man who played the chief Yeti in the recently recovered tapes.  So they say.

I may have to stop hating it.

...So?

..Have the chatterati discovered a love for this corner of South East London, and decided it is no longer humdrum?

...And Then...

...the next thing on was a piece on old situation comedies, featuring Desmond's, set in a Peckham barber shop...

Radio Cemetery

Much as I dislike Saturday Live on Radio 4, it was nice to hear an extended piece on Nunhead Cemetery this morning. And remember, it's the Open Day next week!

Sharp Elbows

A lot of people seem to want to mourn the passing of Margaret Thatcher. 

A few will be family and friends, of course, who knew her as a person, and didn’t hate her. 

Others may think of her as someone who gave them opportunities when she was in power, to ‘get on’ and to strive to do well. 

Still others will feel that, although they didn’t benefit personally from her policies, she did achieve a number of much needed reforms, such as breaking the power of the Unions and privatising a lot of state-run industries so they could 'thrive' away from the public sector. 

And of course there are the Tories who, as well as falling into one or more of the camps above, are taking the opportunity to turn the whole event into a long-running party political broadcast.

I’m afraid we at TANH don’t fall into any of those groups.

The greatest peace time Prime Minister of the Twentieth Century? Unquestionably Clement Attlee, who achieved more, of greater and longer-lasting benefit to the people of this country in one term of office than she managed in three.

And the things the Attlee government achieved – the welfare state, the NHS, a cradle-to-grave safety net for the citizens of the UK – helped the poor and the disadvantaged, helped to build and nurture people’s lives, and helped to construct a fairer society.  They assumed an inherent sense of community and shared values.

Whereas the ethos and spirit of the Thatcher-led changes were captured brilliantly by Glenda Jackson last week: vices become virtues; you need ‘sharp elbows, sharp knees’, not care and compassion.

In ThatcherWorld, you get on by shoving people aside, pushing them out of your way, and getting one up on them.  You don’t inhabit a common society with shared goals.  Her policies were needlessly brutalising and destructive; if you accept that her objectives and intentions were sound (and we don’t), there were more collaborative, less plain nasty (to quote Theresa May), ways to achieve them.

Jeremy Hardy on the News Quiz refused to crow over her death, saying he sided with John Donne: ‘every man’s death diminishes me’ – a sentiment, I feel, she might have struggled to understand.

One of the things we’ve found interesting has been the way in which any dissent from the institutional praise of this most divisive of politicians has been carefully muffled.  Not silenced entirely, but certainly sat upon - from the BBC playing only a few bars of ‘Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead’ (no. 2 in the download chart as a result of market forces), to the criticisms of the ‘Turn Your Back’ movement, and the Sun’s ‘Spot the Leftie’ headline. 

Of course, some of this is understandable – a reticence about speaking ill of the dead, a desire not to upset her family and close friends, but we detect more.  The industries and cronies that have grown up on the coattails of the awful changes her government made to the way our country works are trying to avoid an Emperor’s New Clothes moment.  

Because if the death of Margaret Thatcher gives the right a chance to eulogise, it gives the rest of us the opportunity to point out just how fundamentally, fatally, destructively and hatefully wrong she was.

April 1 2013

I loved Radio 4 on barcoded trains this morning, but this was better...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/apr/01/guardian-goggles-video

Yesterday's Armageddon

I remember being told once that in the '80s nuclear submarine commanders were instructed that should the Jimmy Young show ever go off the air, it was a sign that nuclear war had started, London had been hit, and they were to open their sealed orders. Armageddon was at hand.

So yesterdaay morning, as I slowly surfaced from a night's sleep, I could hear Evan Davies voice but something was wrong.  It wasn't the Today programme I was listening to but a repeat of The Bottom Line.

There was no Today programme.

And this came only a few days after a fireball had been filmed streaking across the Russian sky.  How did we know it was a meteor and not an alien spaceship?  No crater has yet been found.

Let me repeat:  There was no Today programme.

At 8:00, to my relief, we were told it was because of an NUJ strike. 

And today, Today was back, with Evan.  So that's all right then.

But he and Jim Naughtie didn't sound quite like they normally do, and this nasty thought won't leave my mind:  When the aliens do invade, and start replacing us with copies, who will the pod people target first?

I'm sure it's nothing. Honest.

Radio 4 Liberty

Oh, and there was a marvellous radio play based on The Liberty of Norton Folgate on Radio 4 yesterday.  Catch it while you can!

Oh Araucaria

Arucaria has 18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13,15.  This puzzle was first published in the December edition of the magazine 1 Across (c) and is repeated here by kind permission.

Oh.

That was the preamble to yesterday's Araucaria Cryptic in the Guardian.

18 down was a write in:- 'Cancer'.

Here is how much I managed over all (not quite all of it, as you can see).

This was so hard to do - not because the clues were extra hard - although I failed to get two solutions.  But because of the theme.

I've posted about the estimable John Graham before, of course, a number of times.  But even for this extraordinary setter, this was an extraordinary crossword (as Tramp said on the Fifteensquared discussions of this puzzle).  To use his own terminal disease as the theme was typical of him, I guess - but even so substantially disconcerting (to say the very last).  It made the National News (the 'Today' program this morning, Guardian front page) and there are, unsurprisingly, letters in today's Guardian (and lots of comments on the Web site).  According to one of the other posts on Fifteensquared he is likely to be around (and puzzling) for a while yet, which does seem good news.

I can remember (I think) the first Araucarian clue I ever solved - "Begin Description of a Dining Room", (8) (*) - in the library at school when I was new sixth-former.  I've been attempting to match the man ever since (and usually struggling).

More than most setters, there always seems to be a playful, emotional heart to many of his puzzles - they are sheer fun, pleasurable, frustrating and satisfying by turns but  rarely merely mechanical tests.

This was no exception and there are many fine clues scattered around it (see 7D and 27A).  But I have never felt so sad when doing a crossword as I did with this one yesterday.

(*) - Initiate.

Suggs' Inheritances

Suggs Inheritance Tracks on the usual execrable Saturday morning programme on Radio4.  His choices were nearly as good as Alexei Sayles's.  Miles Davis 'Sketches of Spain' and Leiber and Stoller's 'Is That All There Is?' sung by Peggy Lee.

Siteswap BBC 2

... and then we listened to the actual broadcast of More or Less on BBC Radio 4 which discussed juggling notation. 

Super.

Dawson Quip

A favourite Les Dawson joke appeared on the hated Saturday Live this morning:-

I was sat at the bottom of the garden a week ago, smoking a reflective cheroot, thinking about this and that - mostly that - and I just happened to glance at the night sky, and I marvelled at the millions of stars glistening like little pieces of quicksilver thrown carelessly onto black velvet. In awe, I watched the waxen moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an amber chariot towards the void of infinite space wherein the tethered bolts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever festooned in all their orbital majesty, and as I looked at all this, I thought to myself, 'I must put a roof on this lavatory.'

- and thanks to h2g2 for the quote...

Gregory's Again

Good to hear Clare Grogan on Radio 4 this morning.  Her voice sounded almost completely unchanged from the 80s.  Rather like all those nice HHGTTG people.