Brian Haw has been arrested. He was arrested last night just seen this report on Indymedia. No details of why he was arrested or the charges etc. One of the comments says he is at Belgravia police station and ask people to ring the station asking whether Brian is ok etc.
Shouldn’t this be Director of Smear Tactics? The IPCC is beyond a sick joke especially employing this cop.
A top Scotland Yard officer who was personally criticised for failings in the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting has been appointed to the leadership of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Commander Moir Stewart will be the IPCC’s new director of investigations and a member of its management board.
I am sitting at my desk shaking my head in disbelief….. WTF!
It’s one of those top 100 greatest films polls…and this time the genre is horror. Well it is that time of year isn’t it… When the undead get resurrected (and no, I don’t mean Blair this time) and ghoulish fiends lurk the corridors (though that could describe the Tories). I always have two categories for horror, subsets of the genre if you must, ones that go for the spine tingly shocker while others go for buckets of gore schlockers…personally I like a combo of the two… I enjoy spine tingling nightmarish scary ‘things that go bump in the night’ to the Driller Killer/Texas Chainsaw/Night of the Living Dead squishy bloody gore…. I am eclectic… And there’s always slippage from other genres (Alien…sci-fi/horror…haunted house on the hill transported into space)
Back to this poll… I certainly wouldn’t put The Shining at no. 1. But hey, this is all based on subjective (bad) taste. Here is the rest.
And here is mine (in no particular order..) and based on the 100 (and included a couple of my own) though I couldn’t be bothered to list 100 so you’ll have to make do with 35. I am sure I’ve missed some off……And before you ask, I have seen all of these films at some point in my life, no wonder I am anxious and traumatised…..
1. Wicker Man
2. Rosemary’s Baby
3. Bride of Frankenstein
4. Alien
5. Night of the Living Dead
6. Nosferatu
7. Scream trilogy
8. Suspiria
9. Don’t Look Now
10. Repulsion
11. The Haunting
12. The Exorcist
13. Cat People (the original)
14. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
15. Carrie
16. Omen
17. Cronos
18. Dead of Night
19. Hellraiser
20. Let the Right One In
21. The Company of Wolves
22. Witchfinder General (Anything starring Vincent Price)
23. Hammer horrors
24. Martin
25. Vampyr
26. The Masque of Red Death (anything made by Roger Corman)
27. Martyrs
28. Shaun of the Dead
29. Zombieland
30. Psycho
31. Psychomania
32. Twisted Nerve (ok, ok really scraping the bottom and utterly reactionary bilge but I remember this film as a kid especially the chilling whistling soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann which was resurrected by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill the scene where Daryl Hannah dressed as a nurse walking down the hospital corridor whistling that tune ready to dispatch Uma Thurman).
33. The Old Dark House
34. The Blair Witch Project
35. Audition
NB: Another film I find an over rated schlocker is The Silence of the Lambs esp. the hammy performance from Anthony Hopkins as Lecter, I always think of Kenneth Williams in Carry on Screaming (‘Fryin’ tonight’!) and to be honest I much prefer Carry on…. and Kenneth Williams’ acting. And for my sins I have read the Hannibal Lecter books by Thomas Harris. Not impressed.
Just to include a couple of extra films.
36. Rocky Horror Picture Show
37. Planet Terror
38. Carry on Screaming
39. The Descent
40. The Orphanage
Another NB: Reading Sean’s and Tim’s comments about the definition of horror (and it can be loose) also Night of the Hunter is one of my favourite films of all time and really exposed how great Charles Laughton was as a director (and unbelievably the film flopped when first released) it is a kinda modern Grim fairy tale, is it horror? Also I suppose it is how we define horror… Anyway made me me want to include these (and thanks to Tim and Sean!):
41. Night of the Hunter
42. Pan’s Labyrinth
43. The Others
44. Devils Backbone
45. Halloween (never a fan of Friday 13th)
…..Twin Peaks exceptionally weird and chillifying….(I like David Lynch)
Finally have decided what I will talk about for my GMB branch TU history talks… the rise of the women’s liberation movement with a specific focus on socialist feminism. The talks have been widened to encompass radical history and a fair few revolve around viva la revolución (Soviet Union, China, Cuba…..). Mine has been slotted in for some time early next year.
Note to myself: Don’t do the preparation a week before the talk (like last time) that led to an almighty stress fest!
Off topic… saw this over at Hagley Road to Ladywood regarding this piece in the Indy about the Manic Street Preachers. As a sorta fan of the Manics (not as much as I was in the past) I liked reading these posts at Culture Sluts. Also, here’s an old post I wrote at SU giving my own tuppence halfpenny on the Manics….
Well, the weekend is approaching. Yay…
Though I have a LRC meeting tomorrow, slap bang late in the morning.
So hoping at some point to see the film An Education as I remember reading an extract from Lynn Barber’s memoirs about this teenage experience, and it has had good reviews. Have to say not a great fan of Nick Hornby but I did see a trailer for it some months ago and it whetted my appetite.
Banner of the names of people who have died in the custody of the state.
The inquest into the death of Mikey Powell will be opening next week after a 6 year wait. Six years! Why has it taken 6 years? Is it due to the bureaucracy, legal challenges, investigations? Such a long time to wait keeping families and friends in limbo. Where is the justice in that? I hope justice prevails for Mikey Powell’s family.
See links below:
Whatta a shame, eh?!
Honestly…..Gordon gets on board and does his cheerleading bit, kiss of death in reality as Blair’s bid to be el presidente of Europe is sinking faster than the Titanic (Sinking…sinking…sinking….gone). And says it all politically when The Bliar’s chief cheerleader is Silvio Berlusconi.
There’ll always be a job for one of the world’s top war criminals. I mean, I bet there’s a vacancy, for example, in the laundry section at one of Her Maj’s top notch slammers.
My first reaction reading this research from the DWP was a rather crude exclamation of ‘no sh*t Sherlock’! Reading it certainly didn’t surprise me and it chimes with what I have heard about the private/third sector ‘delivery’ of Pathways to Work.
Findings included the tension that existed between the aim to tailor support to client needs and the drive to meet job outcome targets. Provider staff felt that the focus on performance targets influenced their behaviour with clients, to the extent that they spent less time than required with people with multiple barriers to work (and perceived as harder to help). They also felt they needed to encourage job ready clients to take jobs that would enable a swift return to work, rather than take lengthier routes towards jobs that they wanted.
So much for tailored support.
Most providers who took part in the research perceived that clients were, on the whole, harder to help than they had anticipated and some staff expressed concerns that this had also lead to job outcome targets being prioritised ahead of clients’ wellbeing and ability to sustain employment.
In a nutshell it is all about targets and profits, the needs of the individual are not at the forefront neither is training good quality staff. What is the central tenet is incentivising staff to ‘cream’ off the profits from people that can be placed in work and ‘parking’ the ones who need further and more complex help. In the language of the market and the corporate sector, why spend time on these people when profits are to be made?
Also, I think (and this research backs that up) is the private/voluntary sector had a rude awakening regarding the delivery of welfare. They assumed that it would be essentially simple, but coupled with the economic meltdown where they bleated and whined for more funds from the government and the fact the whole welfare benefits system is massively complex and bureaucratic. Most providers who took part in the research perceived that clients were, on the whole, harder to help than they had anticipated and some staff expressed concerns that this had also lead to job outcome targets being prioritised ahead of clients’ wellbeing and ability to sustain employment.
Why didn’t NL invest the money in the public sector as opposed to wasting it on a bunch of bargin basement chancers? The other issue that hasn’t been mentioned in this research is once (and this has been exposed) staff are under pressure to meet their targets then fraud will emerge on a mass scale. Yet NL are still throwing good money after bad. You incentivise a system, based on greed as opposed to need then you will fundamentally change the ethos of that system. The public sector runs the benefits system on the needs of the individual not greed, dishonesty and exploitation.
The section on ‘sanctions’ is a grim and depressing read. People felt bullied and threatened and scared about losing their benefits. Yet where are the so-called customer care procedures, accountability and so on? But then this is the private sector where the wild West rules and piracy seem to be en vogue.
Some people were anxious where they had missed an appointment and had subsequently received a letter telling them that their benefit would be affected if they did not keep their next appointment. One other person who recalled being told that they had ‘better turnup to the next’ appointment or their money would be stopped subsequently felt like they had to attend appointments even where they felt like ‘death warmed up’.Two people had been sanctioned for failing to attend a work-focused interview at the provider. One had been in hospital and had not been at home to readthe letter telling them they had an appointment with the provider. Although this person saw their benefit reduced for failing to attend, the original level of benefit was later reinstated when they explained the situation. Another person had had their benefit stopped completely for failing to attend two appointments. They saidthat they had been unwell on both occasions and that they could not put how they felt at having had their benefit stopped ‘into words.
But as we know the ideology of NL is neoliberalism and the worship of the market. The public sector has been consciously run down by NL by bringing private sector individuals in (see Royal Mail) and/or contracting out large chunks of the public sector to the private sector. NL coulda shoulda invested that money back into the public sector instead we have the private sector taking over in a turbocharged manner, running roughshod and destroying public services. Accountability, transparency, openness and democracy don’t particularly exist in the private sector. And we have witnessed certain private companies being very viciously litigious minded!
Say it once, say it again…the private/third sector can’t run the public sector.
Need not greed!
Further to my previous post on keyword searches (fascinating stuff ya know) I discovered these two keywords that can be described as funny in a very surreal sense but also made me go huh..?.
Well Burnham – (Huh? Eh? What does it mean?)
Wipeout 2010
Actually Wipeout 2010 could be marketed and become a commercially successful board game where the aim is to predict how many Labour MPs will be decimated at the next election. Oh, the hours of fun…it could also have a Monopoly style format (yes, I would just lurve to see Gordon Brown land on the square that says, ‘Go directly to jail and do not pass go’…).
Chance and Community Chest cards that say things like, ‘Greedy MPs caught with snouts in the expenses trough pay back £xxxx to the striking postal workers hardship fund’ or ‘You have been caught moonlighting for a private company go directly to jail..’, ‘You voted for an illegal war and barbaric war…go directly to jail’…. ‘You are a spineless cowardly custard MP…go directly to jail’… ‘Your name is Jack Straw wear a ‘community payback’ bib while you sweep the streets while people throw things at you’… ‘You are Hazel Blears expect to be de-selected’… ‘James Purnell you’re a bastard. Need more be said?’….
The Monopoly style jail will be overcrowded …maybe build a couple of Titans to ease the pressure…nice places to warehouse the spineless ones.
