Amazon can be amazing
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: January 28, 2010
An unusual outburst from dour old Malcolm: a paeon of praise for Amazon’s mail-order.
Yesterday morning, Wednesday, Malcolm placed an order for two novels with Amazon.
Amazon acknowledged at 8:34 AM.
Yesterday evening came the confirmation that the order had been despatched.
Soon after 3:00 PM today, Thursday, Malcolm received the two books.
For the record there was no express delivery: the order came free postage.
Respec’!
[The two books, which may deserve further comment from the ol' fella, are:
- Jasper fforde's Shades of Grey
and
- Malcolm Pryce's From Aberystwyth with Love.
Yeah: he's been slow off the mark with the latter.]
Another story that provokes “Extraordinary!”
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: January 27, 2010
09:34 am: Malcolm reads news-story:
LATEST: London Mayor Boris Johnson standing down as head of Metropolitan Police Authority
Malcolm mutters: “Extraordinary!”
___________________________
09:44 am: Malcolm attends to small task, brain still rotating on why and how: incompetence? inappropriateness? inadequacy? incompatibility? Did he go or was he pushed?
Still, “Extraordinary!”
____________________________________________________
09:54 am: Curiosity overcomes application. Malcolm goes and looks it up again. Fuller story now on line:
London Mayor Boris Johnson has said he is stepping down as the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA).
It is believed he made the decision because he was finding it difficult to devote enough time to the job.
When he was elected, Mr Johnson said he would personally take charge of the police to tackle crime in the capital.
- claiming that the already-falling crime statistics, a legacy from his predecessor, were somehow the result of his intervention;
- the odd appearance in a hi-viz jerkin;
- kiboshing Commissioner Sir Ian Blair in an “extraordinary” piece of political revenge.
The current MPA vice chairman Kit Malthouse will replace him.
Deputy Mayor ‘Weapon Cat’ Malthouse’s mental ticks (banning prostitute cards, Thames Estuary airport, tunnels under Park Lane, Dangerous Dogs – it’s a litany of moribund Tory big ideas really) …
Malthouse appears to be essentially a top-down authoritarian, where society is best structured with solid, reasonable True Blue chaps (K. Malthouse) at the top telling everyone what they can and can’t do. Boris, of course, recoils instinctively from that in favour of a freewheeling English anarchy held together with the milk of human kindness and corporate sponsorship …
More devious dubious Cameroonie manoevres in the dark
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: January 24, 2010
Another day, another dollar. Still no signs of comprehension from the massed “intellect” of Tory blog-artists.
Overnight, the story gets more complex, thanks to Henry McDonald in the Irish edition of today’s Observer. For some inscrutable reason, it seems this dynamite had to be kept away from the rest of the UK readership.
What we know for certain is that the Tories, the UUP and the DUP inner circle met up at Hatfield House a week back. Already the story enters the realms of surreality: the modern progressive Tory Party doesn’t revert to Edwardian skullduggery in the country house of the Lords Salisbury (hereditary owners of the Tory Party) ? But it did.
Subsequently two totally opposing narratives have emerged:
One is that Owen Paterson, the Tory Shadow for Northern Ireland, was doing the decent thing, elbowing aside Secretary of State Woodward, and oiling the squealing wheels of Unionist Policing and Justice “policy”. Therein lies another preconception: that Peter Robinson and the DUP leadership want such movement. For reasons nobody has yet explained, all this ultra-altruism needed to be kept from public scrutiny.
The other is that the Hatfield House Cabal was in part or in whole a stitch-up of NI constituencies to benefit the London Tory machine. For very obvious reasons this had to kept away from the public, and indeed most of the UUP and DUP. When this was realised by the poor bloody infantry back in Northern Ireland, three would-be Tory candidates pulled the plug on their potential nominations. What adds spice to the pot is the three candidates were:
- Peter McCann, a BBC producer for Top Gear, who must on any grounds qualify as one of Cameron’s A-listers, but who happens also to be a West Belfast Roman Catholic;
- Sheila Davidson, a high-profile businesswoman, another “star” candidate, who happens also to be a Roman Catholic;
and
- Deirdre Nelson, a Ballymena councillor who defected from the DUP to the Tories last summer.
On the surface, three highly eligible and photogenic potential candidates. Yet, two RCs and two women: not qualities which command respect from your average DUP stalwart.
So we are left wondering: did they jump precipitately, or were they sensing that the wind had changed and they were no longer welcome?
All of which is part, but only one part of a far greater story:
Why are the Tories and their London megaphones ignoring the dark depths of this story?
As if we couldn’t guess.
Silence is golden …
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: January 22, 2010
A sixth of your Party’s candidates (sorry: “nominees”) stand down because they don’t trust the leadership.
Surely a story?
Except that these are Tories (no longer) standing in Northern Ireland: in East and South Belfast and the Lagan Valley constituencies. At least one of those was a Tory (sorry :”UCUNF”) possible, another an outside chance.
Now, that story has been out and running for some time.
So far:
Guido Fawkes: nothing;
ConHome: nothing;
Iain Dale: nothing.
So no sign of bias there, then.
As a previous Tory leader would have put it:
a quarrel in a far away country by people of which we know little
Update:
Twelve hours on, and no change. What about Dale’s “bigger scoops than Ben and Jerry’s?” Or the famed “blog of plots, rumours and conspiracies”?
And, equally, nothing on Politicshome.
Definitely one for the Home Service
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: January 20, 2010
Today Malcolm found himself doing the extraordinary: contacting the Conservative soft-soap machine.
His message went like this:
1. I notice that you do not have a separate policy topic on “education”. What you do have is a section on “schools”. The two are not synonymous.
Under which topic should the following query be submitted? –
What do you plan to do about the educational needs of the 1 in 100 children with autism, many of whom need intensive specialist teaching from age 2?
2. Equally, you conflate “Universities and skills”, implicitly implying that higher education is largely vocational. Why?
Plan B: back to Blogger!
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: January 2, 2010
Subterranean enucleation
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: December 30, 2009
The Northern Line has those posters, puffing Jeremy Clarkson’s latest opus. The profundity of the work is demonstrated by the slogan:
Shakespeare? I’d rather stick pencils in my eyes!
Clarkson, it should be remembered, is a thinker so influential that Iain Dale’s readers recently voted him 47th among political commentators in Britain today. So, eat your heart out, Vernon Bogdanor. Which says a great deal about all three parties there involved in that bathetic beauty parade. Lower still and lower shall the bounds be set.
As for that poster, Malcolm was at a loss this dreary afternoon. Who would want Clarkson in a book, for heaven’s sake? He’s bad enough as lining for a budgie cage, or to wrap the ashes in.
Out of the ether came an imagined note, writ full in quill-pen:
As I wrote for Cornwall (Act III, scene vii):
See’t shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair.
Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot.
Ah yes, thought Malcolm. That last line’s Trinculo, to Caliban. Appropriate indeed. So the mind goes from one monster to another to another to another.
Froth on the coffee = spring in the step
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: December 30, 2009
Malcolm’s mornings have been transformed. By an appliance of science.
He came across one, initially, in the dee-lite-ful home of his emigré daughter, as he tried to face the rigours of a Noo Joisey morning. A milk frother.
Insert a small quantum of skimmed red-top. Press the button: blue light comes on, frothing starts. Press the button again: light changes to red, milk is being frothed and heated. Wowza! Seconds later, scalding black coffee is topped with a white duvet of foam. A new way to counter last evening’s hangover. Aaah!
The wee appliance that delivered this wonder has been available in all good UK stores (i.e. John Lewis) for some time, at an inordinate cost out of all proportion to the benefit gained. But, hey!, that’s what Christmas presents are all about, huh?
Sometimes I sits and thinks …
Pause. And sometimes I just sits. The profound two-part observation, regularly repeated of Malcolm’s dear, dead old Dad, with the obligatory mid-point double puffing of pipe.
So, today, Malcolm sits and blogs, with his cup of froth-topped coffee. And reminisces of drinking frothy coffee, fifty years gone, in a coffee bar just off Dublin’s Dawson Street (so the time must be the droughty mid-afternoon “holy hour“). And the memory is the juke-box playing Jimmy Giuffre and The Train and the River
And, inevitably, this mentally morphs into colour and the titles of Jazz on a Summer’s Day:
Nostalgia: froth up and taste the Arabica.
Any man’s death diminishes me …
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: December 29, 2009
Which is the more disgusting?
- The paeons of bloodlusty applause from the Main Street Media for China killing Akmal Shaikh? In which regard, step forward Leo McKinstry in the Mail (complete with wholly relevant, no doubt, piccie of Kate Moss). Britain expected no less of you.
- The like of Iain Dale blaming it all on the present British Government for the singular failure to send a gunboat. Britain could never expect a whit more of him. Alas, poor Dale, struggling to find a seasonal voice: even his hot-links seem not to be working. Compare and contrast with Tim Montgomerie’s humane, decent and rational stance: perhaps it’s the difference between an intelligent Tory (a rare but identifiable breed) and total, irredeemable dross.
Medieval filth (part 92)
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow on: December 28, 2009
Obviously, this season of peace and goodwill, the dog-walkers of Norf Lunnun did not extend the same to other pedestrians.
