Trouble In The Message Centre

We've been fans of Spit When You Sing blog for a while now, but the sound the whole Blog-Google-real world triangle made when it splintered for the guy was almost painful to watch. It's detailed here, but in short, he made a blog entry about a secret crush because his girlfriend never read his stuff. She idly googles his name. The pixies that run Google threw up that entry. Ouch.

Making Movies

Alan Parker was priceless on Tuesday's Today. The head of the British Film Council told an independent film maker that if he can't raise the money to get his films into more than six screens he shouldn't be making movies at all, and then told him he was stupid for trying to offer something different at this time because Bond, Rings and Potter were all coming out. So, Alan Parker believes that independent British movies should wait until after Hollywood has chosen the best slots and just take what's left. Thank god he's being paid to promote UK cinema and not denigrate it - what sort of a job would he do if he was on the other side? Isn't a bit rich, anyway, that someone who came back from Hollywood with his tale between his legs should have been given a platform to lecture others on how to make internationally viable films in the first place?

Oliver, hardly

We'd nearly fallen for the line that Oliver Letwin was a clever, well-intentioned man. That was until we heard him flip-flopping trying to keep the Tories together over the vexed issue of non-married couples adopting. Duncan-Smith had put a three-line whip onto Tories to vote against the proposal, but this, explained Letwin, "was a soft three-line whip." Now, what sort of strange beast is this? A three-line whip is the Whip's Office way of telling party members that their vote for the party line is required. There are two line whips and one line whips also at the Office's disposal, so if Tory MP's votes really weren't that important, why wasn't a lower whip rating given? Nothing indicates just how far the party has got itself twisty-cracked in its bid to try and compromise keeping everyone on board as the sending of a message that everyone is expected to turn up and vote for the party line, except if they don't want to.

The whole debate over non-married adoption is pitiful anyway. Yes, it's inarguable that non-married couples split up more often than married couples, but that's why a lot of people don't choose to get married in the first place. Couples who are just going through a phase of living together aren't likely to be the ones who are going to be applying to adopt anyway - if Barry and Val can't agree on whether to watch Eastenders or the Football, its hugely unlikely that they'll be able to convince an adoption panel that they've reached a firm decision to adopt. It would be fairer to investigate how many couples who remain unmarried but make large scale commitments to each other split up compared with married couples - I'm guessing that the figures for splits amongst people who buy houses together, or otherwise merge their households is probably going to be on a par with that of couples who hold a small party for their friends to acknowledge their union. And are the Conservative front benchers really trying to tell us that two people who are committed to each other but can't afford the thousands a wedding costs are going to make better parents than a couple who are adopting in the hope that a kid might just bring them back together?

And, since it's meant to be an issue: Why not let gay couples get married, if its the only way that pairings can be shown to be for life?

Conduct Unbecoming: They attract radar, they can't swim...

We struggle to contain our mirth that the government believed in the 60's that nearly half of the Royal Navy had indulged in a spot of gay activity - although we're not sure that Pravda's claim that "in 1969, a great number of photographs showing Royal navy servicemen and their ships indulging in gay sexual relationships were found in Bermuda" can possibly be right (How do you tell if a ship is gay? And how do you have sexual relationships with a Fleet Battle Destroyer without the admiral noticing?), although it does sound straight from Chris Morris' naval officer's worst nightmares made flesh. Meanwhile, you can hear the "well, it's not natural, is it?" crowd sobbing ever louder as gay sheep are discovered - the don't court other sheep, apparently, but they stick to other rams. But our favourite sexuality moment of the week was stumbling across this piece on the website of one of those groups who believe that gay is something that can be cured.It seems that not only are gayers terrible, terrible people, but even when you do cure them, they don't bother to say thank you and won't give you a quote for your advertising campaigns. Blimey - I mean, even Stuart Hall offered to do those 'Bald Men Set The Pace' plugs for the hair clinics, didn't he?

I hate you, Butler

All the allegations, counter-allegations and counter-counter allegations about what the Butler did or didn't do, or when the Queen knew what, or if Prince Charles's chum did anal rape spin round and round our head. And what's really important is not exactly where the truth lies; what's clear is that nobody in this sad little saga would know the truth if it was handed to them by a small child in her Sunday Best with a polite little curtsey. Maybe the bloke who got the thirty grand payoff hadn't been raped by someone who still works for Charles. But it seems likely that he was, or how else do you explain a family so notoriously so stingy with their cash you'd have thought they actually worked for it suddenly giving the sort of golden handshake normally associated with EMI? But even if that makes Charles look unpleasantly like a callous conspirator to pevert the course of justice, what does it make Diana, keeping evidence about this in her magic box? Likewise, the Sun seems to think that running a front page story that Paul Burrell was sacked by the former Princess, and made to beg and kiss her feet to keep his job discredits Burrell; but it also doesn't paint the ex-Princess in a very flattering light, does it? Less Queen of Hearts, more Pauline from The League of Gentlemen. Perhaps the Queen is afraid of forces in this nation beyond her control. Maybe Earl Spencer is a hypocrite, turning a sister he couldn't stand into a lucrative theme-park in her death, using her funeral as a "roll up! roll up!" pitch. What it all amounts to, though, is that the whole bunch are beyond reproach. But on the wrong side of reproach. The only way to deal with them is to throw the whole lot out, now, for once and for all. Let them have their inbred spats elsewhere, away from the business of government, and give us a Head of State we can vote out if they start to stink like blocked drains in summer.

One thing that has caught our eyes is that Diana sent Burell out to buy porn for William. Apart from how cringingly awful that scene must have been - we wonder if, as they do with The Daily Telegraph, butlers will run the iron over a copy of Razzle? - we can't help but ponder what motivation there could have been for a parent to do such a thing. See, in our experience, young heterosexual and bisexual males who are curious about naked women will go to any extent to find answers to their questions up to, but not including, asking their parents for wankmags. On the other hand, parents who suspect that their children may be daydreaming about the "wrong" type of lover will often attempt to intercede by providing "normal" examples of healthy heterosexuality. After all, providing an heir is a serious business...

The Colour Supplement is a beta-test version of stuff that may have made No Rock And Roll Fun, but was off-topic.
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