Thank God First Great Western Railways don't run airlines

Imagine you pay for a seat on a airline. In the departure lounge you are astonished to find that the departure gate for is only announced 6 mins before the plane is due to leave, prompting a mass stampede of hundreds of people as they run across the airport to get to the plane,  with old people knocked out of the way by students, and a general air of crazed panic as we are almost running through the open ticket gates. At the plane there are  struggling queues of people trying to get on while airline staff scream at them to get on as the plane will be leaving imminently.

On the plane you find your seat but also find the plane is massively overcrowded, the aisles are full of standing passengers (on this apparently booked solid plane), who don't have a seat. You spend the entire flight in your reserved seat with a total strangers  looming over you. Every ten minutes the pilot comes on the intercom and apologies for the overcrowding. It is abundantly clear that no-one has any idea how many people are actually on the plane...

That is the train experience leaving Paddington for Bristol last Friday evening on First Great Western railways.

Train is traveling at speeds of between 90-100 mph at this point

After inquiries it seems the the train guards are supposed to be taking off standing passengers who do not have a reserved seat (as is is patently unsafe and - against the law) but don't because "no-one likes to get on the next train". There was obviously no check on the number of people going through the ticket barriers as the six minutes given to get on the trains created a stampede of hundreds of people which First Great Western were not willing to control as it would have delayed the train.

Of the options I was able to select on the train with my booking:

• The 'quiet carriage' concept was absolutely laughable
• The option to sit near the luggage rack was ridiculous; as all you could see in either direction was people. All of my luggage could have been taken straight off the train off at any of the stops and I wouldn't have been able to see a thing.
• The toilet was practically inaccessible

Here is the link to National Express.
Your life may well be in a mess, but at least it will make you smile. It is also a much cheaper and a lot less like a glimpse into a shambolic and lawless failed state.

This is the page for the UK train regulator.
The word is they get paid to do a job.

Hard Facts For U.S. Republicans

When Obama is sworn in for his second term in January 2013 we will be looking at a twenty year stretch of history (since 1993) when the Republican Party has only won one undisputed U.S.election, and that one undisputed win, in 2004, came within the trauma of 9/11 when the country was embroiled in two wars.

Since 1993 the only successful presidential candidate put forward by the Republican selection process, George W. Bush, was a man considered by historians world wide to be one of the worst, most incompetent leaders of any nation, let alone the presidency.

One of the (thankfully unsuccessful) vice presidential candidates to come out of the Republican selection process was Sarah Palin.

Considering the low expectations, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ran a damn good race, and Republicans should seriously consider if any of the other candidates would have come anywhere near Romney/Ryans level of success.

"We could have won with Rick Santorum/Michelle Bachman/Herman Cain"
Honestly?

Your selection process is an absolute disaster.

VOTE FOR 8 YEARS OF MITT ROMNEY

I'm a European and I'm not going to tell US voters how to vote on Tuesday.

I'm certainly not going to stand back and defend the performance of Mr Obama, he chose to continue George Bush's tax cuts (40% of your budget deficit) and when he had the choice to rebuild the US economy the way FDR did in the Great Depression, he chose to spend all his political energy instead on a botched compromise in health reform (kind of like FDR getting voted in and making a total hash of repealing Prohibition - "booze is legal if you are over 50" say).

So I'm  not defending Obama, and I'll steer away from the Republicans behind Romney who seem to want to turn the United States into some Rape themed amusement park.. I wont go into that.

I'm a foreigner and I'd just like to bring one thing to your attention which is plainly obvious to anyone on Planet Earth viewing Mr Romney from outside your borders. If you vote for Romney you are voting for EIGHT YEARS and not the usual four.

One thing we do know about US politics, that has been established without doubt in the last 15 years or so, is that US voters don't like to change Presidents in the middle of a war. I believe the phrase is "Don't change horses in mid-stream".

We know this is a very strong impulse because we know the US voter will vote for an incumbent war time president even if he is fairly obviously a total incompetent (and world wide laughing stock).

If the US is in the middle of a war the tradition is to keep the incumbent president. Even when that President started the war. Two wars in fact, and then cut taxes, a strategy so fiscally daring that no other leader of a major nation at war has tried in 5000 years of recorded history.

Such is the respect for the incumbent war President he will be returned to the Oval office, even though he dodged war service himself, when the challenger is a confirmed war hero.

So how is this relevant to 2012? Well it is not so much the relevance to 2012 as the relevance to 2016, the date of the next election, as it is obvious to any foreign observer that Romney will have the US at war again by the time 2016 comes around. I would guess either Syria or Iran.. but who knows.. you (and the UK, this is why I'm paying attention) may have troops dying in Korea or perhaps even Iraq. These are best case scenarios obviously, the worse case would be Russia or China.

I'm not saying this is conscious policy on Mr Romney's part. I'm observing that he famously has the diplomatic skills of a drunken marine (US or Royal, take your pick) and despite his weirdly low key performance in the foreign policy debate his backroom staff is stuffed with Bush era neo-conservatives.

We know Romney and Ryan will brutally slash government spending back to 1890s levels in every area except one.. a gigantic increase in military spending beyond even what the US military are asking for.

You know what most scares the rest of the world about politics in the US? In every other country the most hard right wing institution is the military (that's why you have military coups). In the US the military vote and opinion (Colin Powell etc) is staying where it is as Romney's party lurches to the right. The US military is not stupid - after the Bush era it can't afford to be.

Damien Hirst's Verity statue, Ilfracombe harbour

 See previous on this subject

I was very impressed with this, and thought it surprisingly restrained and tasteful in what is as you can see a beautiful  setting. The exposed insides of the figure are facing the sea and you would struggle to see them from the other side of the bay without a telescope (I imagine the kind of busybody objecting to the statue is well equipped with telescopes)

Approaching the statue from the other side of the harbour

There is definitely a touch of Ray Harryhausen Jason and the Argonauts's (the statue of Talos) about it 

I was thinking of Hurricane Sandy on the other side of the pond when taking this

It is obviously very popular. The pier was busier than I've ever seen it and  from talking to others I've heard hotel bookings in Ilfracombe have jumped since Verity has appeared

The dual nature of the statue fits Ilfracombe and  North Devon generally, an uneasy  mixture of  the  twee and the  primal.

Ridley Scott's Prometheus explained for morons

A bit peeved.

Finally caught up with that big movie of the summer, the one that allegedly made no sense, left a million loose ends, and requires half an hour of extras on the blu-ray to explain. I was expecting something like Peter Greenaway's Prosperos Books or some Terence Malik art  film. Instead I saw the best Alien movie since James Cameron's, leaving me with a level of stupefied disbelief at the people who struggled to deal with the plot.

What bits honestly didn't you understand? Can I dumb it down enough for you?

- It's  a remake of Aliens vs Predator with less Predators and more pretty pictures

Is that dumb enough?

How about

- it's a spooky mysterious space monster movie

It's got 'loose ends'? Hello? Blade Runner anyone? I guess these people are completely unfamiliar with anything ever written by Phiilp K Dick?

Unexplained plot elements? Does someone want to to explain to me how Daniel Craig acquired Sean Connery's gadget equipped Aston Martin in the "the best bond film of all time"*

(*all British newspapers)

Is it not enough that, aside from the Alien stuff, Prometheus is obviously the best Ridley Scott film since 2007, arguably since Gladiator (If you want to gauge the level of improvement, Ridley Scott's last movie featured 13th century landing craft in the most flat out ridiculous beach scene I've ever seen in a movie).

One of the benefits of being a middle aged movie fan is that you can remember the drubbing that classic movies got upon their original release. It is recognised today that classics like Blade Runner and John Carpenter's The Thing were somewhat - ahem - under appreciated on their release; but people forget Ridley Scott's Alien got a similar rough ride. "Nonsensical" is a word I remember. "Good horror movie terrible scifi movie" is another. "Captain Kirk wouldn't blow his ship up by accident" was maybe the most flat out stupid.

The lapses in logic in Alien, AND The Thing AND Prometheus are, for me, a bonus. These are nightmares. I don't want everything fully explained. I like that I don't know WTF Pyramid Head is in Silent Hill. I want my terror to come with a hefty dose of disorientation.

Loose ends? You should try some Italian horror movies.. it would take a week of DVD extras to explain the haunted underwater basement in Dario Argento's Inferno. Honestly,  these people would need a 5000 word backstory to view Fuseli's Nightmare.

The Alien films all generally make narrative sense but the horror of disorientation is a theme running through them, not so much in nightmare imagery like heads growing spider legs and running across the floor, but just in the loss of trusted authority figures. From the death of Captain Dallas on-wards the authority figure in each of the Alien movies dies or is lost and the collapse of the group dynamic (in contrast to the united front of 50s monster movies) is all part of the nightmare.

Compared to some of those re-valuated 80s classics Prometheus actually got an easy ride from critics this summer and made enough money for Ridley and Co to consider a sequel.What I think really irritates me is that I was lead to expect some Giger drenched version of The Shining and actually got something fast paced and straightforward, that was nevertheless beguiling, mysterious, thought provoking, funny and really scary in places. Frankly, for me, it could have been a whole lot more vague and mysterious, but I loved it as it was.

I highly recommend Prometheus for your Halloween viewing.

Mysterious inexplicable fish loose ends from the trip to see Damien Hirst's Verity statue in Ilfracome harbour

Y'know.. just because I know there are people who respond to this blog who genuinely, no kidding, ARE morons.. the plot of Prometheus is explained here

Elementary - Holmes - House

Just saw first episode of Elementary - loved it

It's not as good as the majority of the BBC SHERLOCK episodes and nowhere near the best of them but still well worth watching if you are prepared for it with an open mind. For me the definitive American Holmes will always be HOUSE, and the Johnny Lee Miller Holmes does have a bit of Hugh Laurie's drug addled Dr Gregory House but this is a far more passive character. Far more passive in fact than any previous Holmes I can think of. Somehow Lucy Liu creates a Watson that is nothing like a previous Watson yet is still  Watson.

Plots seem to be avoiding direct adaptations of Conan Doyle stories and much of the background around the characters is meant to be a departure.. which leads me to what I most like about Elementary.. It knows the real Holmes fans are sitting with their arms crossed outraged at the New York setting, and the female Watson, and right from the off it is deliberately tweaking their noses with a smile. It's smart, and it's cheaky, in much the same was as the Robert Downey Jnr film series is (at it's best)

HOUSE was brilliantly innovative in the way it transposed the cases to be solved into a medical, team format

BBC's SHERLOCK is innovative in the way it completely updates the Victorian concept into a modern environment and takes the method of storytelling (txts etc) along with it.

ELEMENTARY is really going to the bottom of those characters in a completely new way. Who knows if the standard of episodes will remains high (lets not forget BBC's Sherlock episode 2 is pretty crap) but I got to the end of Elementary episode 1 not wondering why they have a female Watson but why they didn't have a female Holmes as well (Tilda Swinton?)

Reality : "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"

Philip K Dick - Reality - Ilfracombe sea front

Thanks to This Is North Devon

Up here in Su's sunny attic room I have the GQ magazine Bond* special to cheer me up in my illness (terrible cold, missed work). Even when  listening to the new Muse album in the background GQ is 90% garbage ....but this one has a really great article on Philip K Dick by music critic Charles Shaar Murray. Very inspirational stuff.

Among the stuff in the article I didn't know:

• PKD was a classical music buff and actually wrote some music
• The schizophrenia in his later life he described to friends as the mind of an early Christian transported into his mind by a time travelling artificial intelligence
• Terry Gilliam said of him "For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplacating realities of the modern world remember: Philip K Dick got there first"
• The K in Phillip K stood for Kindred
• Dick himself described reality as "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"

It is vaguely dreamy here,contemplating the unlikely clear sky blue of reality through Su's velux windows (while overdosing on Lemsip), but when you are ill and on your own the only empty place you want to be in is your own place. After six weeks in London, I'm feeling a bit homesick. It's usually about this time that something happens in the sleepy perpetual twee of Englands Westcountry that makes you wonder what reality you are living in. Sometimes it's Great White Sharks being seen in the Bristol channel, sometimes it's the village you live in popping up in classic psychedelia.

After the incredible live Felix Baumgartner jump at the weekend we now have North Devon's follow up - Damien Hurst's 65 foot bronze statue of a woman with big boobies and her guts hanging out is lifted into place into place in sleepy Ilfracombe harbour. It's being shown live on the BBC as I type this.

What music could be appropriate? Also Sprach Zarathustra? Fanfare For The Common Man? Space Dementia? Drink Up Thy Zider?

Thanks to Belfast Telegraph

The boobie statue is called Verity* apparently and it'll be there for 20 years at least. Full report with my own pics and hopefully some gurning locals when I get back.

Reaction in the London press is not so positive

"Damien Hirst's new statue is a dangerous monstrosity  The giant bronze woman holding up a sword in Devon not only resembles the art of totalitarian dictators, it is helping Hirst destroy British art"

Of course it's hideous and I hope it's dangerous. Those are two words sadly lacking from the endless open air retirement home created West of Bristol. I live nearby (most of the time) and Ilfracombe needs all the attention it can get from people who are still interested in this reality (not the next one). Real Exmoor locals, who are a lot more lively and iconoclastic than you might think, will be loving it and good luck to them.

As for reality, Ilfracombe was the Monaco of the Victorian age, and has been sadly neglected for too long (I've seen more lust for life in Whitby). I expect Verity will at least make Ilfracombes next subjective 20 years move faster than the previous 50. Disbelieve her all you want, but she isn't going away.

*It's just occurred to me that VERITY is the name of the Madonna's character in the Bond film Die Another Day.. so perhaps this is all very strange Bond film hype