Happy New Year

Wishing all of my Readers (Both of You) a Very Happy New Year and a delightful 2011.

Band Aid not getting enough sympathy

Driving to work this morning on very icy roads I was listening to Band Aid’s do they know it’s Christmas (The original not the travesty of self promotion that was the latest effort) However I do not think the line “There wont be snow in Africa this Christmas Time.” Had quite the sympathy creating effect it was supposed to have.

What is wrong with the Press in the UK?

What is wrong with the press in this country? I listened to Nick Ferrari on LBC (97.3 FM) this morning on the way into work, he was interviewing John Redwood (Former Cabinet Minister, Current MP for Wokingham) and Ferrari was desperate to get Redwood to say that the coalition was in trouble, obviously Labour had been on earlier getting their political points in and trying to claim it signalled a general election around the corner but John Redwood was very level headed and simply gave his opinion this seemed to anger Ferrari who on a few occasions talked over him to try and bully (Which if you have ever seen John Redwood being interviewed you should know is nearly impossible.) to say that he felt that the coalition were in severe trouble. Now if you were to ask why he was so aggressive with him when he came on I am sure you would get the usual Press response. “It’s our job to hold them to account!” an interesting concept as surely isn’t the job of the press to actually report the truth? And as Ferrari is now a Talk Show host and not an actual reporter surely isn’t his job to facilitate a public discussion between alternate sides of a debate? Not to try and pick up some useful sound bytes?

This is not an issue unique to talk show hosts however as it would appear that an interviewer who does not attack his interviewee has failed his interview. Now I am not stating that we should return to the times where the interviewer was in awe to the politicians or even to a position where they were not allowed to go in hard when it is necessary, what I am saying is that it should not be the norm. It’s not that politicians need to be given greater respect, but that they should be given the respect everyone of us should be able to expect when being spoken too.

The other issue which the press bring up with our elected officials which has bugged me for a while (And which I may well have ranted about on occasion as well) is the way they attack politicians for changing their minds, the papers are full of stories of U-Turns and Backtracks as if the worse thing a politician can do is change their mind, now it may just be my naivety but personally I would prefer to have an elected representative who is willing to admit that they are wrong and make amendments to their policy than one who sticks blindly to their guns regardless of if the policy turns out to be wrong. This was typified for me in the debate about an Asylum cap before the last election. Cameron was pushed by Brown to give a number for the Asylum cap and when he said that he would have to work the figure out each year he was accused of weak leadership – for not giving an arbitrary figure. This was then repeated in the press so that a policy of having the right cap at the right time and for recognising that the world does not stand still (so what is right for 2010 may not be right for 2025, in fact I would say that it is highly unlikely to be.) was seen, rather than realism and a good policy, to be a lack of policy.

Can Vince Cable Bring Down the Government?

So it would appear from the press that the coalition are in the process of collapsing, this stunning revelation comes from Vince Cable stating that being part of the coalition is like a constant war. Now there are a few questions that come up from this story.

Primarily, is Vince Cable really a nuclear weapon? Or is this just wishful thinking? Personally I am taking this as a bit of a naive boast. Cable thought that he was talking to two Lib Dem voters in his constituency and it is possible therefore that he decided to “over egg” his power in the coalition in order to justify the votes he received. Surely there is no one man that could bring down the government in one move, if Cameron decided he’d had enough and walked away from Number 10, it may trigger an election but even then I think you will find that in this time of belt tightening and financial pain the general public have little appetite for another general election.

The Second question that struck me immediately on hearing the story was, Is anyone else actually surprised? This is a Coalition government not a single party system, a fracture in a party is something you may not expect (Although personally I welcome it.) but a fracture between two parties is hardly news worthy, I do not believe that the Lib Dems and Conservatives have formed a single party but rather are two parties doing the adult thing and are looking to put their differences aside in the national interest, this can not be easy for any of them and a coalition government will by the very definition always be weaker than a single party administration.

Finally I want to ask if Vince is actually wrong in what he said, he has always been a bit of an uncertainty in the coalition and is definitely one of the less easy cabinet members so I doubt very much that it will shock the PM too much. I am sure that they will be having a word with him to try and ensure that he is more careful with regards to who he talks too but at the end of the day shouldn’t MP’s be allowed to express their own opinions? Surely we elect these people based on believing they are the best person to represent us, therefore why do we insist on trying to silence them all the time. I may not like what Mr. Cable has to say but if it is what he believes then surely he should be allowed to say it (It would then be down to the PM to see if he should be allowed to remain in the cabinet, and the people of Twickenham to decide if he should be allowed to remain in Parliament.) I don’t really see what it has to do with the rest of us, I personally fear a time when our MP’s are not allowed to have independent thoughts, as then you will find that only a few people shape the entirety of our society.

Automatically Sort Excel Range

Had another Excel request through – You wait a month for one then two come through at once.

This time the request is how to make a sheet update automatically when a certain cell is updated, This is how I did it (Although in all honesty there are hundreds of snippets on the net if you look for them.)

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
If Not (Application.Intersect(Worksheets(8).Range("N:N"), Target) Is Nothing) Then ‘Change this Range to contain the cells you want it to trigger for
AutoSort ‘This calls the sub procedure below which does the actual work
End If
End Sub

Private Sub DoSort()
Worksheets(8).Range("L2:O49").Sort Key1:=Worksheets(8).Range("L2"), Order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlNo 'This line does the sort as requested in this case sorting the table L2:O49 by the field in column L2 – All of these calculations take affect on Worksheet 8.
End Sub

Handy Sub to Unlock Protected Excel Worksheet

Had a request a few weeks ago from someone who needed to unprotect an Excel sheet which had been protected by someone who was no longer with the company so they could not get the Password.

here is the procedure I developed,

Sub PasswordReset()

Dim ia As Integer, ib As Integer, ic As Integer
Dim id As Integer, ie As Integer, ig As Integer
Dim i1 As Integer, i2 As Integer, i3 As Integer
Dim i4 As Integer, i5 As Integer, i6 As Integer

On Error Resume Next

For ia = 65 To 66: For ib = 65 To 66: For ic = 65 To 66
For id = 65 To 66: For ie = 65 To 66: For i1 = 65 To 66
For i2 = 65 To 66: For i3 = 65 To 66: For i4 = 65 To 66
For i5 = 65 To 66: For i6 = 65 To 66: For ig = 32 To 126
ActiveSheet.Unprotect Chr(ia) & Chr(ib) & Chr(ic) & _
Chr(id) & Chr(ie) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & Chr(i3) & _
Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(ig)
If ActiveSheet.ProtectContents = False Then
MsgBox "Your Sheet has Been Unlocked Using " & Chr(ia) & Chr(ib) & _
Chr(ic) & Chr(id) & Chr(ie) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & _
Chr(i3) & Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(ig)
Exit Sub
End If
Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
End Sub

So next time you forget your password and need to unprotect a sheet just add this to the VBA window and run the Module. Hey Presto.

Movie Review: Mosters

Final film I am going to review today (Or the first if you are reading the posts as displayed on the blog) is for Monsters, There have been many comparisons between last years District 9 and Monsters, both stories are about a world where Aliens have arrived and are looking to be contained, there are obvious parallels looking at the subjects of racial disharmony (District 9 being a reflection of South African racial tension) and of illegal immigration (Mexico is being decimated by the Monster Attacks whilst the US has built a giant wall to keep them out) however Monsters is much more a film about the relationship of two strangers during a stressful time rather than a film about the Aliens, it is in fact this interplay that is explored along with (Apparently unintentionally) the subject of Cross border Immigration.

Gareth Edwards Directs in what is his biggest released movie to date, although still was filmed with a very small budget and staring real life couple and relatively unknown actors Scott McNairy and Whitney Able the film was mostly shot with just the two leads, a sound engineer and the Director and it is this intimacy which comes across in the filming as the giant octopi blending into the background of the story and being more the catalyst of the story rather than the story itself. The main issue with focusing so much on the story however is that the plot has holes bigger enough for the hundred foot squid aliens to walk easily through.

Firstly McNairy is told by his boss that he has to ensure that Able gets safely back to America, we are led to believe that Able’s father is a media mogul and that she is wearing an engagement ring that is worth over ten thousand pounds. There is also at no point any kind of information given that any of these aliens can fly. Both of these points lead me to question why on ensuring that she is safe and with Monster activity in the area why would he decide that the best way to ensure her safety was to head as close to the infected zone as possible to place her on a ferry, whilst an important plot point as if they are not there how would they end up having to try and cross the zone over land, surely the smart money would have been to head south to an airport and fly back to the states. There are constant Air Force flights taking place over the infected zone but even so there must be some kind of domestic flights which go around the zone? Eventually they enter into the zone and are carried across most of the zone until being left on their own after a monster attack; luckily they have a great sense of direction so are still able to find their way to the wall that marks the border in a very short amount of time. On arriving at the wall you start to think that their troubles have only just started as the wall is a few hundred feet tall and stretching as far as the eye can see, one of their guides a little earlier when talking about the wall states that in fact America is actually more like a prison trapping themselves in rather than keeping others out (Again the Director says that he did not intend it to be a commentary on immigration, which I find hard to believe.) However it is nothing like a Prison after all they can still get to Canada or the rest of the world – And as I say there must be a way to get to Mexico even if you have to fly around the zone. Anyway having made it to the wall they walk for what appears to be half an hour and find a massive gap in the wall where there is a small check point and after climbing about 12 feet (keep in mind this fence was built to keep out 100ft tall Aliens) they are able to walk into America only to discover the shocking news that this part of the US has been over run (or possibly lightly stepped over.)

The film has a few very good visuals of the Aliens right at the end although the tentacles searching the room shows that this film is not completely immune to Hollywood fashions (Skyline and War of the Worlds to name just a couple.) I would say that the main performances make this a worthy attempt at a compelling story but that I do not believe that it was not intended as a commentary on American immigration policy (Although if it was the final message appears to be that if you let immigrants in they will destroy your country and have sex in your petrol stations.) and the story that was used to add background was not thought out well enough to hold the plot in place, the small focus during a big event is very popular at the moment but unfortunately Edwards is not M. Night Shyamalan.

I would say however I disagree with the comment made by the person sat behind me in the cinema “That was the worst movie released this year.” But I guess he never saw The Other Guys!