No geek
is an island

BBC News: Pet Shop Boys protest at ID cards:

A spokesman for the Pet Shop Boys told the Evening Standard: “Neil has always been a Labour Party supporter, but at the last election he voted Liberal Democrat because he is completely against the idea of ID cards.”

(This story’s about a month old, but I missed it originally.)

…is the new Deputy Leader of the LibDems (or, more accurately, of the parliamentary party).

He won by just two votes, beating Matthew Taylor. David Heath, who I suspect many bloggers and activists (including this one) would have preferred, went out in the first round; three of his voters didn’t express a second preference.

Full result is on Wikipedia.

A report in theguardian reveals that a two-day follow-up to yesterday’s local government strike is no-longer-secretly planned for May 3rd and May 4th. The latter is the day of local elections in England, which are administered by local government.

If the unions think emphasising the issue on local election day is a good way to put pressure on Labour, then they’re probably right, but it would be a sensible move for them to guarantee that the elections won’t be disrupted. Labour has every interest in delaying what is likely to be an embarrassing plebicite - undermining local democracy would only play into their hands. The unions should come clean about whether there is a strike planned for May 4th and reassure voters that the elections will be able to go ahead as normal.

On Monday, following on from last year’s live remake of The Quatermass Experiment, BBC Four screened a new version of 1961’s A for Andromeda. I’m not going to be nice about it, so let’s start with the positives.

(Spoilers ahead…)
My favourite line in the whole thing was:

Where there is intelligence there is Will,
and where there is Will there is ambition.

Ta. Shame the rest of it was a load of old boots.

For an alternative view, ask Millennium Elephant.

Writer-director Eli Roth’s second film, Hostel, is an improvement on his enjoyable but relatively unremarkable debut Cabin Fever. Hostel seems closer in content and style to British horror films of the 1970s than the usual American slasher fare - and, occasionally, a voyeurism that it also shares with 70s horror - but with a slickness that’s suitable modern. That an executive producer is Quentin Tarantino, whose Pulp Fiction plays on the television when the protagonists arrival at the eponymous hostel, is no coincidence.

The film follows two American backbackers, competently played by Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson, who travel to Slovakia with their Icelandic friend. There, an apparent utopia of drink and sex masks a violent and deadly truth, as one by one the travellers disappear. Slovakia is unfortunate enough to be picked on as the location and as a result gets somewhat misrepresented - although it’s not always clear in the film who’s telling the truth.

Effectively directed, suitably eerie, and with a satisfying finale, Hostel also has its fair share of gore - although not notably more than other recent horror films. It is a touch more sadistic, but just about justifies this as a necessary part of the plot. It lacks a clear message beyond “Americans need to get out more” - although given what happens to the Americans in the film, it may have the opposite effect. Nevertheless, it’s a strong challenger to Saw for the best recent American horror movie.

BBC: Blair admits resignation mistake:

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has acknowledged it may have been a “mistake” to announce he would not be serving a fourth term in office.

“People kept asking me the question so I decided to answer it. Maybe that was a mistake,” he told Australian radio after attending the Commonwealth Games.

Later Downing Street said what he meant was it was a mistake to expect the announcement would end speculation.

I can see a couple of possible reasons why this might be newsworthy: Downing Street can’t help living up to their reputation for spin, backtracking what Blair said; and the sheer idea that Blair has admitted to a mistake about anything.

But this off-hand, drowned out comment doesn’t affect public policy one jot. It also doesn’t even have an implication for the increasingly tedious and over-written “will-they-won’t-they” question about when Gordon Brown - John Major to Blair’s Mrs T. - will take over. So why is it the top story on the BBC, the front page story in theguardian, and all over Sky?