Dave's Wibble, Rants and Stuff

 There have been several well-written rants about Jamie Oliver's attempts to drum up an audience for his new programme. There being no such thing as bad publicity, he's decided to do so by offending exactly the groups of people his programme is intended to entertain, educate, and inform.

Jennie has already explained the reasons why people might buy ready meals rather than make stuff, far better than I can. I've done the living on minimum wage thing, and it isn't fun. I was lucky in that I had parents I could fall back on if necessary. And, importantly, the only person I had to support was myself. Cooking on a budget of £10 a week is not something I've ever had to do. I couldn't even get a wildcard entry to the All-England Four Yorkshiremen Contest. If I'd had to look after anyone but myself I don't think I'd have coped. I'm amazed anyone can frankly.

The comments on Jennie's article are very interesting and I recommend reading them, as are the ones on Jack Monroe's (although I'd avoid the ones on her Independent one like the plague). I want to like Jamie Oliver. I really do. I think his heart was in the right place when it came to school meals, and I like what I've seen of his style of cooking (measuring? pfft! chuck it in, slosh it about, off you go). Its just that I can't stand his chirpy mockney twattery, and the more he opens his mouth the more like the objectionable brand of Tory he sounds. On the other hand I can make a pretty good guess who Nigella votes for (and I wouldn't be surprised if I was completely wrong), but she makes aspirational food pr0n, rather than being on a mission to save the world from twizzled turkey..

I don't know what kind of programme Jamie has made, and frankly I've been thoroughly put off watching it. Besides the programme that should have been made would be much better anyway. It should probably have been made by the Kamikaze Cookery guys and Jack Monroe.

For most people in London, fresh fruit and veg is readily available pretty cheaply. There are lots of greengrocers that will sell a kilo of slightly wonky peppers for what the supermarkets will charge you for one perfectly formed one, that tastes exactly the same when you cut it up and put it in a stew. If you have a reasonable sized saucepan you can make a decent stew from onions, peppers, whatever seasonings you might have (mustard, chilli sauce, marmite/bovril instead of a stock cube), and a tin of kidney beans, and some tinned tomatoes which won't break the bank, won't take very long, and depending on how many it needs to feed whatevers left can be whacked in the microwave the next day. I haven't costed it up, but per person it'd be under a pound. If you have access to cheap fruit and veg.

For people in this situation, where cheap healthy food is potentially available then "all" one needs to do is help them understand the resources they have available, how best to make use of them, such as the variety of "one pot" recipes, and how to make the best use of tiny kitchens with next to no equipment, and understanding the economics of scratch-made vs ready meals, and when they're a saving and when they're not. Which is something I think not even the sainted Jamie Oliver is equipped to do. Its certainly beyond my ability, and I can't help but feel that for many people its too late. They never learnt to cook, and while it doesn't necessarily have to be difficult, as Jennie so rightly says it takes time and effort to acquire new skills, and time and effort to use them. Which many people regardless of their financial status just don't have.

Perhaps we should be teaching this in schools. You could call it "Economics of Household Management, including Essential Practical Skills". Of course there might be a better title out there. With all the money the government has saved by implementing the Bedroom Tax they could provide information packs with important and useful information at the benefit office. If you have to have training or lose your benefits perhaps this should be an option?

Like I said, the recipe idea above works if you can get cheap fresh fruit and veg. Unfortunately having spent my life in an area where they are readily available I don't have a solution for what  to do for people for whom this is a luxury. Which of course would be an ideal hook for episode 2, and might open a serious discussion about food deserts, because that's something that needs to be had. Its all very laudable of me, Jamie, and the rest advocating educating people about how to eat healthily and cheaply but its a waste of time if they can't put it into practice.

And I can't help but feel after all that rambling that nothing will change, that Jamie Oliver's programme will achieve nothing but make the typical victim-blaming Fail readers feel smug, and that I'm no better than the rest of them, because like the young lady in the Pulp song, I'll never really understand either.

So. Star Trek Into Darkness. Was a film. In which things happened.

And I really can't say much more about what happened in it and my reaction to it without spoilers. Although I'll note that it has exactly the same problem as the last Trek film had- it really doesn't spend enough time establishing the character of the villain. He's there as an anatagonist, but you never really get to know his motivations, which is a real shame, because Cumberbatch is a great actor, and is clearly having a great time running, jumping, and shooting guns.

So don't click on the cut unless you've seen it, Or Iron Man 3. Because I'll be spoiling that too.

( I mean it )

Its been a slow day at work, so I've been watching the Grauniad's feed of the debate in the House of Commons. Mainly because I heard Charles Moore on the Today programme being mind-bogglingly stupid, and I had to check that he wasn't just a complete idiot they'd dragged off the street, and those opposing the bill actually had some sensible reasons for opposing the bill.

Apparently for Charles marriage is all about shagging and having kids. So anyone who can't have kids, or doesn't want them shouldn't be married. Nor should people who don't like sex be allowed to get married. Except they should because it would be "open to the possibility", but same-sex marriage isn't. Unless of course the woman has had a hysterectomy, so that argument doesn't work either. I do see his point that marriage these days may be more about the wedding than the actual relationship. But that says far more about the willingness of individuals to enter into agreements without due consideration than it does about what shape genitals they have. In which case Las Vegas has probably done more to harm the institution of marriage than the homosexuals will.

So far I've been disappointed.
Sadly I suspect this is not what Sir Tony had in mind.


Given that the CofE and the Anglican Church in Wales are expressly forbidden from marrying same sex couples and no religious institution or minister has to marry a same-sex couple if they don't want to, then I'd say that's not far off what we've got. We just haven't given them the same names. Alternatively, perhaps we should have state and religious marriages, and only state ones confer the legal benefits. Allegedly this is the situation in France. Again, I don't quite think that's what he was getting at.

Nadine Dorries continues to be an utterly vile and completely clueless individual.


I'm pretty sure a heterosexual couple don't have to vow to forsake all others if they don't want to. Plenty of people are in open marriages, and of course because adultery is defined as having sex with a member of the opposite sex that you aren't married to you can't sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery if your husband leaves you for another man. So its a pretty restrictive requirement of faithfulness, even if only the straights can get married isn't it? Of course most sensible people would be suing on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour. But then Mad Nad hasn't made a career out of being sensible. I was hoping that someone would have tabled an amendment to redefine adultery so that it does apply to people sleeping with members of the same sex, which would handily shut these people up, but that doesn't seem to have happened.


Poor little mite. Did the nasty opposition MP hurt your feelings? Tough. Because the people who are opposing this bill are similar to those who opposed the Civil Rights movement. Specifically the ones who wanted to keep the miscegenation laws.


I deplore the death threats, but the description of MPs opposing the bill as homophobes and bigots is perfectly accurate. Also, I'm pretty sure we started downgrading marriage when we allowed people to get divorced, stopped putting people to death for adultery, stopped thinking of women as property, that sort of thing. And what's so bad about that pray Matthew?

So, Dredd. Was not dreadful. Which, given its much (and by and large justifiably) maligned predecessor was all I was hoping for when I heard about it. If its basically the same film and Karl Urban is humble enough, and familiar enough with the source material not to show his face, then that would have been good enough for me.

However, having read feedback by 2000AD fans I was expecting something very good. It did not disappoint. Is it better than The Avengers? Its a lot less fun, certainly. But then living in MegaCity One is not supposed to be fun. Being Iron Man is clearly supposed to be fun, hell even being the Hulk isn't too bad. However no-one really wants to be Judge Dredd, and anyone who does, probably shouldn't be allowed anything sharper than a spoon. It's a pretty humourless film (there aren't even any District 9-esque death-by-cow moments to lighten the mood), but its not po-faced. It isn't funny, because life in a city of 800 million people in an area about the size of Scotland on the edge of complete anarchy isn't going to be "funny".

Its a much smaller film than its predecessor. We don't see the Cursed Earth other than in brief shots topping and tailing the film. As I haven't seen The Raid don't want to draw too many comparisons, but the plot is largely the same- I'd also compare it to Die Hard for obvious reasons. I definitely missed the sale that the Stallone version went for- but as with so many comic book adaptations that haven't worked it tried to cram too much in. In Judge Dredd, the Angel Gang, ABC warriors, and Dredd's origins, are all picked up, toyed with, and dispensed with after five minutes or so. It gives you the feeling of a large world, but everything's disjointed and spread thinly. Dredd doesn't even try this. We get the feeling of a wider world, but its very self-contained- almost too self contained. I'm sure there are a fair few shout-outs that the 2000AD readers will pick up on, but are lost on me. And I don't honestly mind. It feels like a short, one-shot story, rather than a story arc. And I have no problem with that, whatsoever. Its certainly preferable to watching it done badly. If this is the start of a franchise, or given what HBO has shown you can do with TV series, essentially a pilot with a cinema release, then I'll be more than happy.

The acting is definitely better- when Karl Urban says that he is the law he's asserting control. Stallone was whining like a petulant child. He's also got a much more expressive chin than Sly, which helps, because he doesn't take his helmet off. Those of us who have seen Game of Thrones know that Lena Headley can do scheming very well, and in a contest between Cersei Lannister and Madeline "Ma-Ma" Madrigal, I honestly don't know who would win. Olivia Thirlby as Anderson gets lots to do, at no point does she seem like a damsel in distress, which more than most women in action films get.

I want to describe it as beautiful but I can't. Because its ugly, dirty and noisy. Just like MegaCity One is supposed to be. MegaCity One in the Stallone version wasn't spotless, but it didn't look much worse than many cities today. This MegaCity? It really is a dystopian hell-hole.

The SloMo scenes are very well shot, and work well in 3D, with one or two exceptions, where it really looks like the front of the scene is a 2D shot pasted in front of a backdrop, like those paper model theatres. However this is the first film I've seen in 3D (there's only two places in London that are showing it in Glorious Two Dimensions) so I honestly don't know if that's a criticism of the 3D-ing in this particular film, or a problem with 3D in general.

There's a completely callous disregard for human life, and a civilian bodycount probably in the hundreds- something, again, completely absent in Stallone's version. I hope it does well, because not only does it mean we'll get sequels (and they've hinted they'd like to do the Dark Judges, or Judge Tyrannosaurus, which could be really good), but it shows there's a market for properly dystopian sci-fi, which I've always had a soft spot for, ever since Robocop.

Thinking about how well the team handled this very massive, deep, and rather British dystopian future, I'd like to see what they can do with that other vast and complex crapsack world, we created- Warhammer 40K.

So yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you haven't seen it, do so.

As usual the world has shown its knack for horrific timing. A day after the death of Caroline John who played one of the few Doctor Who companions who could match him in a battle of wits, and who I'm sure did much to inspire many women scientists (and indeed women generally) who saw that yes, you can be whatever you put your mind to even if you're "just a woman" we have this from the EU.

Here's the teaser trailer.



Are you done with the vomit bucket yet?

To be fair, the profile videos are pretty good- here's Joanna Zmurko, a Polish student working for a PhD in Virology in Belgium:-



She makes a pretty good case for why science is so cool. "On Friday I didn't know what the function of a certain gene was, but on Monday I did". That one sentence will do more to inspire young women to go into science as a career, than any number of flashy ads with pouts, lipstick, high heels and short skirts.

Naturally enough twitter has completely exploded against this #sciencegirlsthing, and the alternative #realwomenscientists is doing very nicely. Rarely has the "can we make maths pink?" joke felt more like reality.

If you want to inspire women to be scientists tell them the story of Vera Rubin, who had to meet her prospective PhD supervisors in the departmental lobby because women weren't allowed inside the offices, and provided the evidence that convinced people that Dark Matter exists.

How about Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who showed that the sun was made of hydrogen, and said:


You want inspirational women scientists- Caroline Herschel, sister of the more famous William (who discovered Uranus), was a first-rate astronomer, and was the first woman awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's Gold Medal (the second? Vera Rubin). Or Margaret Burbidge, coauthor of the B²FH theory, that still explains how the elements up to iron are made, and is an ardent feminist who turned down the Annie Jump Cannon (another female astronomer) Prize because it was only given to women.

And that's just four of the astronomers I could name off the top of my head. You want biologists? Barbara Hastings, Dorothea Bate, Miriam Rothschild, Mary Lyon. We have Florence Nightingale to thank for the pie chart- I'd argue that was a far more important contribution to medicine than being "the lady with the lamp".

But no. We have high heels, lipstick, and pouting. Its enough to make you give up and become a hairdresser...

Via magister 

Sensible Answer: Matt Smith. Answer subject to change at short notice.

I am now gradually moving over more and more to DW. Officially. Most of the people on LJ I follow either already blog here, don't blog on LJ much any more, so the fact that I don't have a paid account over there is now a pain as I can't subscribe to the RSS unless someone's already set up a feed for me.

So yeah, hello Dreamwidth.

Don't expect me to actually write anything here for the next six months though...

I keep fish. Until today I had three weather loaches, Sixteen White Cloud Mountain Minnows, and a male and two female American-Flag Fish. So called because the males look like the American Flag. They're mostly vegetarian, and the males especially, are renowned for being belligerent arseholes. Compatible tankmates should be "robust enough to survive or fast enough to escape" They get to two-and-a-half inches long (the females are a little smaller). And they look like this:




I say, until today, because today I found "Mr Grumpy" tangled up in some thread I'd used to attach moss to a piece of wood. The thread had been wrapped around the wood, and a piece of rootlet, and he'd got in between it, probably to munch on a bit of algae (Like most fish they're perpetually hungry, but apparently are a little calmer if they've got something to snack on throughout the day. The stereotypes just keep building up don't they? Its most unfair) he'd got trapped, and suffocated.

:-(

Mr Grumpy. c2010- 7th November 2011. Leaves behind two female companions, but no children.

And the one band I forgot to mention in that big post-o'-doom were one of the most entertaining ones. Alternative Carpark's acoustic set, was definitely one of the most entertaining gigs I've seen, even though I missed the beginning. I like the Jagermeister Stage a lot. I hope these guys come back to London sometime soon.

Fortunately LoungeBarAlton has posted pretty much their entire set on youtube, in glorious technicolour, with no wobbly bits, or tinny sound either.

I think this remarkable woman nails pretty much everything I have to say about the riots in London. (Click on the link for the video LJ doesn't want to embed it I'm afraid).

The Met Police and the IPCC clearly could have handled relations with the family of Mark Duggan much better. They have every right to feel upset, angry, and to demand answers. You'd have thought that the Met should have learnt that lesson after the Jean Charles De Menezes clusterfuck. Burning down your neighbour's livelihood and home and looting a friend's workplace doesn't solve anything. It only makes things worse.

Equally however I want to understand why all these people are rioting and looting. And I think Hannah Nicklin pretty much nails it in this post.