Satan takes a lift

This is obviously a review for the latest film produced by M. Night Shyamalan not the arch nemesis of the bible, for information on the devil click here

The film is the first of the Night chronicles (Currently planned to be three movies based on the supernatural in modern urban settings.) I personally was not a fan of Shyamalan when he first burst onto the scene, I think this was partially due to having Sixth Sense ruined for me long before I got to see it and partly as the first film of his I watched was Unbreakable which I still don't rate, however with each film after that (Signs, The Village and the Happening ... Less said about Girl in the Water the Better.) I have really started to like his version of story telling so I was quite excited to watch this film but had a few reservations, for example can a film in just a lift be interesting (Of cause not as worried as I am about Buried, 2 hours of a man in a box?)

As it turned out I really enjoyed this film, it struggles as it is trying to be a suspenseful "Who's Evil?" film but everyone I saw the movie with guessed instantly who it was as soon as they 1st appeared on screen - but perhaps we just watch too many movies! I recently watched a movie on Sky (The name escapes me at the moment.) this was basically three people in a lift, one of who was a murderer. there were obvious comparisons between the two and thankfully Devil wins hands down.

Briefly the story is told of when Satan comes to earth to test sinners by tormenting them before returning to hell with their souls, the story is fleshed out by a catholic security guard whilst the events are viewed by a policeman in the control centre - I wont tell you too much as I don't want to do what happened to me with The Sixth Sense.

Britain in Bloom

Last night was the award ceremony for the Royal Horticultural Societies Britain in Bloom, Crawley were one of the finalists due, as I understand it, to being crowned South & South East in bloom best Large Town/small city this was a great achievement for the town. As an outsider when I first came to Crawley I was immediately impressed with the street scene work, but have found that many of Crawley's residents take it for granted.

Crawley were victorious winning the silver gilt award and being crowned category winner, a massive achievement for amenity services and for the community groups that work hard to make the area a nicer place to live.

Crawley also picked up a community award, I am not sure if this was for an actual specific group or the work in the town generally, but for a new town that has been accused of lacking community, this is obviously pleasing either way. The overall champion of champions was the small Scottish town of Falkland in Fife, winners for the second year in a row.

Roll on next year!

Bexley now with new sponsor

Went out for a lunch time walk from work a few days ago and spotted this sign. It is part of a new series of signs that have gone up around the borough.

When I first saw it I have to admit I thought there was something a bit wrong with having it like this, kind of saying, "Welcome to Bexleyheath, sponsored by Bexletts" but after a little while I thought why not? If it is at all possible, why should each council service not be self funding?

Maybe we could take it to the next step and sell the naming rights to the town hall - the Crawley "Coke" Hall or maybe we shouldn't stop there, maybe it is time to change the signs to "Now entering McDonald's Town, formerly known as Crawley" well perhaps that is a bit far, and could get confusing if we were sponsored by Halifax.

What is best nickname for Nu Layb'R Leader

Last Post gave me an idea for a Poll:

Which is the best nickname for the Nu Layb'R Leader, My personal favourite is Lill' Mill.

The ones I have come up with are

Miliband Junior
Ed Milibland
Red Ed
Redward
Lill’ Mill
Miliband the Younger
Reddy Eddy

Have a vote in the poll or leave your own.

The Launch of Nu Layb'R - Soft on Crime, Tough on the Victims of Crime

A strange thing happened to me this morning as I watched sunrise on Sky News, I actually gained a great deal of respect for Mr. Miliband, Not Ed obviously but David, I felt on Monday that his speech was very well written and delivered, much better than the excuse for a speech given by Miliband Junior yesterday, But what increased my respect for David is the comment he made to Harriett Haman during his brothers speech, whilst Edward (or should it be Redward?) was trying to pretend that the Iraq war had nothing to do with the Labour party David turned to Labours Deputy Leader and said ‘You voted for it, why are you clapping?’ finally a member of the Labour party who actually remembers that a great deal of the issues they are so upset about are problems of their own making.

As for Miliband the Younger’s Speech I think it was a weak speech, weakly given in which Jr tried to be a soundbyte to all people and ended up being a politician to no one. I actually gave an audible laugh to the comment he made about how New Labour had realised they had to be tough on crime as well as tough on the causes of crime, and they were right to do it!! Right to do what exactly? How out of touch can the Labour party be if they honestly believe that we live in a society where the man on the street believes that there is justice and the streets are safe, I would perhaps suggest that Labours mantra really should be “Soft on Crime, Tough on the victims of crime!” He came out with another claim to be the next generation of Labour (I know that Red is a little bit of a non-personality but surely people remember that he was in the last cabinet, so not exactly a fresh start, and surely if Ms. Harman is still involved we will still get the constant stream of ridiculous ill thought out edicts.) We have had Labour then New labour so I guess Lill’ Mill must be announcing the launch of Nu Layb’R

I think the real question is that when Ed Milibland (Yes I can keep coming up with new names.) gives a speech to the TUC what will he use as his entrance music? “Puppet on a String.” Or “A little help from my Friends”?

And the winner is ...

The Labour Leadership campaign is over and the Winner is Ed Miliband, despite not being able to hold the majority of support of MPs, Euro MPs and Labour activists, the stranger looking Miliband was able to overcome the odds and beat his much more experienced (and more normal looking - ok I wont keep going on about his look as it really isn't important in a politician but you have to admit he is a strange looking guy.) Brother.

Anyway, what does this mean for the country? personally I have no idea! in theory the fact that anyone is willing to vote for Labour, a party who have never had a government who have not bankrupted the country, is completely beyond me. but I am happier to be up against Ed than David as I think that the public are starting to see right through the Unions so I can't imagine anyone would happily elect the Unions boy to run the country.

Blue Boris Vs Red Ken - the rematch

Well news has come through that it will be comrade livingstone who will take on Boris in the 2012 election to find out who gets VIP status at the Olympics, oh and they also get to be mayor of London.

Obviously as I now live in Crawley I am not covered by the London Assembly, but maybe it's because I'm a Londoner at heart that I really do care what happens, or maybe it is just that the UK lives and dies financially by the health of The capital.

Any way, the result is in and it will be Boris vs Ken, I doubted that Oona King ever had a chance to win the Labour nomination but having seen a few interviews with her the last few weeks I have to say I am glad she didn't get selected as I think she would have given Boris a real run for his money.

Now as long as the Lib Dems pick Lembit Opick it shouldn't be too hard a campaign for Mayor Johnson after all.

US Grandmother Execution

This morning the US executed it's first female prisoner for 5 years, and the first in Virginia for 98 years. Now whilst I am not actually a supporter of the death penalty this is not due to a belief in the sacrosancticity of human life but rather that I believe that there should not be a death penalty until there can be no doubt of guilt, as long as there is a chance that the conviction could be wrong the punishment has to be reversible. I am not however joining the, apparently, thousands of people who are complaining at the execution of Teresa Lewis, this woman arranged for the execution of both her husband and her step son to claim on a $250,000 life insurance policy. It is reported that she not only offered to sleep with the two gun men in return for their assistance, but also allowed them to have sex with her 16 year old daughter, after both her husband and step son were shot she went through their pockets in order to check for money before calling the emergency services. If the Death penalty is to be used, then surely this is the kind of criminal it should be kept for. The two gunmen Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller were sentenced to life in prison where Shallenberger took his own life in 2006, Lewis' defence lawyer James Rocap III has claimed that Shallenberger was the real mastermind behind the murder (A claim they did not make before he committed suicide.) and that Lewis therefore did not deserve the death penalty, it is hard however to understand how he can claim this when you take into account that this was her second attempt to get her husband murdered. I also find his statement 'A good and decent person is about to lose her life because of a system that is broken,' a little hard to accept as well.

The final "Seriously?" moment of this story involves the international outcry, from none other than Woman's Rights activist and humanitarian: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Moral victory

Just had my first happy experience in an Asda store. Walking between the aisles when an old man complained. "Look at all these lot what don't speak our language."

To which I happily replied "who don't speak our language."

I doubt he understood my sarcasm, but it made me feel good.

Can a Council Outsource all Services?

Suffolk County Council has revealed plans to Out Source all of its services, they claim to be able to save approximately 30% of their 1.3bn pound budget. This will basically transform the council from a service provider to a contract manager.

When I first heard this I suspected it could simply be a headline grab and that there was even a chance that it was simply some grandstanding aiming at making a point to central government however the more I think about it the better it actually seems, after all, why do we feel that the government should be a service provider? I agree that the government have a duty for order and protection of the most vulnerable in society but have we become so convinced over the years that this can only mean direct service provision that we have stopped thinking there is any alternative?

Obviously the Union (Unison this time) have warned that this will lead to danger for the poorest members of society and there will be massive redundancy of the staff, but as I have mentioned before I would take more notice if the unions said something different just occasionally, but I doubt that is happening anytime soon.

Anyway, I do agree that this is a highly risky strategy and if Suffolk are to go ahead with this they really need to ensure that the contracts are well written and contain very clear service level agreements. I also hope that the government keep a close eye on it as although I doubt it will be a fit for all areas it will certainly be a very interesting model.

The other guys fail to impress.

As the last two "comedy" films I have seen were depressingly unfunny I was dearly hoping that the new Will Ferrell - Mark Wahlberg movie would make some recompense. However to get things clear upfront, out of the few hundred movies I have seen (like a nerd I used to count but stopped three years ago at 357) this is only the second movie I have walked out of, I accept then that this film may have the greatest ending in movie history, but I was unwilling to allow anymore of my life to be wasted on it.

The film was your formulaic set up of disgraced super cop teaming up with a pen pushing loser, unfortunately this is as close as they came to a plot. What sets this film apart from the plethora of (still very bad) better movies is that this film did not feature a single likable character. The loser was a horrible person, who treated his wife with utter contempt. Whilst Marky Mark winged and whined his way through the film like a petulant six year old.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Samuel L Jackson are ok in their brief cameo at the start of the movie, but after their unexpected exit you are left wondering if they simply read the rest of the script and decided it was better to kill the characters before their careers.

In summary I would probably say that this film provides a good service as it should ideally prove that brain storming humorous ideas before throwing away the funniest two hundred does not make the rest a script. I am sure that during the planning stage for this movie a selection of comically challenged writers said to each other on many occasions "wouldn't it be funny if..." well now I can conclusively answer - No.

Gatwick Airport

Writing the previous post on the bus I suddenly became concerned that I have never been to Gatwick's North Terminal before and how can I be sure that I would know where to get off, luckily the long line of very cold looking people in shorts and flip flops tipped me off that I may be getting close.

Olympic trials

Today I join the list of many athletes hoping to feature at 2012, this may come as a shock to those of you who did not know how sporty I am, but I have a real shot of making 2012 in the volunteering team, now whilst I know this is not one of the most glamorous events, and working for free is not every one's cup of tea, I figure the Olympics are unlikely to be in the UK again in my lifetime so I may as well see if I can get involved.

It is actually a pretty good deal for me, my company are a main partner and so they will pay me for my time so it is basically a work placement for a couple of weeks.

First however I have to get through today, a full day assessment centre, featuring team tasks and eligibility criteria, they claim it is a lot of fun, but I will reserve judgement, the good thing is, if I mess it up, all I have lost is the chance to work for free, so pressure off a bit.

Champions League Draw Round 1

With one day down in the Champions League it has been a very mixed bag for British Clubs,

Arsenal and Chelsea both won comfortably, Arsenal hammering Braga by 6 goals to 0(Which is becoming quite a common scoreline this season.) and Chelsea beating Zilina 4-1. To be honest the Chelsea result is probably the best as although the Slovakian champions are hardly Champions League contenders it is a difficult away match out of the way.

Tuesday night there were draws for Tottenham and Man Utd vs Rangers, if I had been asked before the kick off I would have happily taken an away draw for our first game but after powering to 2-0 after 20 minutes I felt a little disappointed by the final 2-2 result, it isn't a complete disaster however as Inter Milan also drew with FC Twente 2-2 so the group is still together but we have one less away game. Man Utd were probably the biggest British Losers of the round with Rangers getting a great 0-0 result against them, this 0-0 at old trafford is definitely a point won for Rangers and 2 dropped for United as the top seeds really shouldn't be dropping points at home, although I still feel that come the end of the group stage you will find United going through and Rangers will still probably struggle to join them.

Papal Visit

With one day to go until the Visit of the Pope it seems that all of the buzz is about do the Catholics want him here? should the public pay for the visit? and will there be protests?

Personally I have to say that as a non-Catholic I really do not care if he comes to the UK or not but I can understand that if I was a follower of that faith I would probably be interested in seeing him. As for the subject of paying for the visit, I would have to say that as the Pope is both a head of state it is only right that whilst within our borders we offer him the same protection we would offer any head of state, regardless of his religious status. The only thing I may wonder is if we would allow Barak Obama to hold so many large scale rallies in the UK (As these are obviously much harder to police.)

Now for the question of protests, I am assuming there will be protests, however I think this is mostly due to a certain element of our population who seem to spend their lives constantly at a dangerous level of anger. The main elements of protest seem to focus around the Pope's views of Abortion, Sexual Equality and modernisation. I always find these arguments a little bit redundant when we are dealing with a Religion as I have always felt that you can either follow a religion or not, I struggle to support anyone who wants to take a pick and mix position as if you believe that the teachings of a religion are divine then they must all be followed, if they are not then why follow any of them.

Jokes don't quite Go the Distance

This weeks visit to the Cinema was to see the Romantic Comedy "Going the Distance" the film stars real life couple (At the time, I believe they have broken up now.) Drew Barrymore and Justin Long however even the chemistry between them was not enough to carry a very flat movie.

The Jokes ranged across the full spectrum of bad comedy from ridiculous setups that are signposted from so far away that you feel tired by the time it arrives, to the current trend for replacing comedy with too much information and random swear words. There were a few funny moments but unfortunately as we had already seen them so many times in the trailers it took the edge of them.

Christina Applegate gave a good performance as Drew Barrymores sister and got the best laughs of the film whilst London band The Boxer Rebellion put in a few long cameo performances which seemed to drag a little, but as I have always thought they were one of the best unsigned acts so any exposure they can get is a positive, although I was not particularly impressed of their decision to release an iTunes only album, but that was due to my dislike for Apple not the band.

The Award for most unbelievable characters go to Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day who act as the usual cretinous "Friends of the Boy" but are so unbelievable in their language and interactions with each other that you sit there wondering who would talk like that, When watching the film I could only assume that the film was written by a woman as it felt more like a woman's interpretation of male relationships. as it turns out it was directed by Nanette Burstein and I would be interested in how much input she had over the dialog.

Not that this film was entirely without merit, simply that what merit it has is lost in the telegraphed gags and unrealistic performances, I would recommend this film only to a couple staying in and watching it on DVD, and even then only if they had already seen many of the plethora of very similar movies.

Whose fault is it anyway?

Time and time again we hear about the greedy bankers who caused all of the problems that we are currently facing. But is it their fault, to listen to the likes of Bob Crow and other Union leaders then the fault has to be placed firmly on the shoulders of the Bankers who made the entire economy collapse with some dark magic. the important thing they tell us is that the fault does not sit at the feet of those working in the public sector or the unemployed.

However if we look at the facts we can see that no one group can be blamed entirely and like all global events there will always be several reasons we can look at for discovering what has happened.

1) The Banks took too many risks
2) People Borrowed too much money
3) the government dropped the ball

if just one of these elements had acted responsibly or even like addicts then none of the mess we are in now would have materialised, but they didn't. However from this list I would actually say that the main fault rests with the People who borrowed too much. at the end of the day as far as I was aware you had to be over 18 years old (i.e. an Adult) to borrow money, therefore you should be able to repay that money, otherwise you shouldn't borrow it, the banks possibly should have said no when you asked but if you couldn't afford it why did you take it?

Now the last government come back for blame here again, for it was the systematic nannying of the Labour government that appear to have removed the common sense of the population so that people are now completely dependant on others to do the thinking they seem to have forgotten how to do. this was perfectly encapsulated when someone called in a talk radio discussion on the Big Society (which is all about thinking for yourself) and asked how the government would bring in these projects.

Now the previous government come back in for more blame here for running a budget deficit during the good times so that the coffers were empty before the hard times even started.

Bob Crow rattles his cage again

Just seen an interview with Bob Crow on Sky News calling for a campaign of civil disobedience in response to budget cuts. Mr. Crow has called for people to sit down in the middle of motorways. It sounds like a good way to campaign to me, just as long as he starts early and lets the tube passengers who are so regularly effected by his ridiculous demands of TFL know where he will be doing it. unfortunately though once again this loud minority will be the one to get the most protection, they probably wont let us drive through them.

Jonah Hex - supernatural or just unnatural?

This week we watched the supernatural cowboy extravaganza that is Jonah Hex, the film is like so many these days based on a comic book, and during the long set up in which they attempt to pack in so much back story that when the film starts you are completely clueless as to what has occurred. This isn't much of an issue however as the first scene is ample to get toy up to speed and only takes a couple of seconds - after all this is not intended as a cerebral masterpiece.

This film will no doubt get a very avid following, if only as it features Megan Fox as a wild west prostitute, undoubtedly securing the attention of thousands of boys, and men, who sat through the Michael Bay Transformers tripe for a lot less than is delivered by this movie, in case you're wondering I actually went for the robots (and to fuel my anti Michael Bay bias a little more each time) on the subject of Ms Fox, she was quoted as saying how much she enjoyed making this film as she had the chance to do some proper acting, my only reply to that is "bless"

The film itself is a cross between the punisher (In fact the cartoon version is voiced by Tom Jane who stared in the punisher) and wild wild west both elements it handles as you would expect to deliver a film that is low on thinking and high on simplicity, however if you come out disappointed I would be surprised and suggest that 1, you expected far too much, 2, you did not read the synopsis before you went in, and, 3, you're not male.

Other acting talent was provided by John Malkovich, who was of course great, even as the over the top confederate general. As well as Josh Brolin who unfortunately fell slightly flat as the hero, possibly suffering from the fact that every time he fell asleep he became locked in a seemingly endless battle against his arch enemy - but I guess that would take it out of us all in the end.

Grown Ups fail to mature

Cinema this week was Grown Ups; staring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider it would look on paper to be a highly experienced comedic cast, however for all of their collected successes - and often failures - they simply didn't work well together.

The entire film was less of a constructed story and more a combination of set ups and one liners which very quickly got boring as the film limped towards it's non specific ending.

It would be a lie to suggest that I did not laugh at any point the only problem is it was only for a second before the next cringeworthy set up.

English as a second language

I attended an assessment and enrollment day yesterday at the Adult Education Centre in Thomas Bennett school. (Enrolling in a saxophone class.)

It was very interesting as along with signing up for classes they were doing assessments for the skills for life courses. I found it highly encouraging how many people were signing up for these basic skills, I think it takes a lot of courage to take a step towards improving your life and anyone who is willing to take that step should be encouraged. The fullest assessment however was for the English for speakers of another language, my personal belief is that language is the most important factor in building a cohesive society, so any encouragement that we can give people to integrate will in time lead us to a much stronger society.

If they say knowledge is power then surely a country which provides education to all is the fairest of all countries.