Philip Marsh

And some of that 0.001% own media outlets and social media outlets thats sole purpose is to convince the poorest 50% that the 0.001% aren't the problem, and encourage them to vote for political parties who will make the rich richer , and the poor poorer

The Home Office also recognise that this may have an impact on user of care services who are likely to be older people and those with disabilities. The Home Office believes that despite these points the changes are justified for a number of policy reasons including reducing net migration and ending reliance on overseas recruitment.

Home Office Ministers state publicly, on the record, that they are deliberately making life worse for older people and people with disabilities who depend on care services, but it's worth it because it reduces net migration.

Oh great. I had a bunch of tabs open on my laptop containing possible Christmas present ideas. I just opened it to order some of them and found i've lost them all because the laptop auto-updated to force more unwanted AI onto it. FFS.

Well done Toby!

Oh I see. You'll prefer the Manics' version of Bring On The Dancing Horses as well then 😅

I adore Love & Monsters. Along with Boom Town it's the new Who story thst makes me laugh the most, and it has that wonderful RTD switcharound where it suddenly becomes very moving.

Forever Delayed on Instagram: "📺| @manics featuring Ian McCulloch - Some Kind Of Nothingness - Later...with Jools Holland 17/09/2010 #manicstreetpreachers #manics #jamesdeanbradfield #nickywire #sean... 177 likes, 4 comments - foreverdelayedmsp on December 6, 2023: "📺| @manics featuring Ian McCulloch - Some Kind Of Nothingness - Later...with Jools Holland 17/09/2010 #manicstreetpreachers #manics #ja...

The Bunnymen version?

Have you ever seen their Jools Holland appearance from that year where they had live strings, choir and Ian McCulloch with them? Absolutely epic.

www.instagram.com/reel/C0g5AwW...

The extended Silver Nemesis rather than the cut-down omnibus edit I assume? 🤣

Greatest Show has negligible differences. Remembrance is a mixed bag. But The Happiness Patrol SE is a delight and either new version of Silver Nemesis is an improvement over the transmitted version, for me.

It's so sadly typical of some Dr Who fans that their reaction to the lovely mini-epidode that dropped the other day is to use it to bash other Dr Who that they don't like. They can't just enjoy something for itself.

A reminder to *never* read the Comments section of anything.

Oh I'd forgotten the meta joke was gone - what killjoys. I do also love the primitive video effect Dalek laser blasts from the original. The cliffhangers are much better edited in the bluray version though.

I've seen some little bits, been meaning to check them out more thoroughly though.

Oh I can totally understand preferring the original Enlightenment. But there's a reason for the DVD version other than to improve the effects.

I prefer the aesthetic of the original effects on Remembrance (although the new edit is better) even though technically the bluray effects are better.

Merriam-Webster has spoken...

For fun - what are your top 3 Calvino works?

(I'd prefer they'd used replacement model shots for the bluray Enlightenment version personally, as they've done with Terror of the Zygons and the upcoming S21 set, in fact the bluray effects were a let-down).

It also depends on what the new effects are for. The original modelwork on Enlightenment looks great, but it doesn't create the feeling of a race because it's mostly static. The CGI options are hardly photorealistic but they tell the story better and give the story a sense of movement.

They're obviously not Hollywood standard. But if they look less like a washing up bottle orbiting the Earth, or make the Cyberfleet look less like a collection of cheap toys, i'll take it. And the CGI on The Happiness Patrol won the approval of friends who hate 'revisionism'. So YMMV.

One of the things I like about having optional new effects or edits is that they make things i've become very familiar with feel a bit new again. I'll be watching a story and suddenly there's a new effect or a deleted scene that gives the story a freshness.

Well done Villa. Absolutely deserved that win. Especially funny that they scored just after ex-Arsenal Martin Keown inevitably gave Man of the Match to an Arsenal player even though Villa were by far the better side.

Letter to the Guardian. The protection of badgers has a long pedigree (Report, 29 August). Arthur Gore, known as "Boofy", the eighth Earl of Arran, was a fanatical defender of them. He was also a tireless campaigner for the rights of homosexuals. In 1967 he managed to push through a law in the Lords that decriminalised homosexuality but failed to pass a bill to outlaw the cruel hunting of badgers. When asked why he had not received enough support for his badger bill, he replied: "Not many badgers in the House of Lords." Tony Lywood Keswick, Cumbria

Found when sorting an old drive. I still, very occasionally, say 'not many badgers in the House of Lords' and this is why:

Them playing Strictly was sacrilege - once the 1992 Manics had stopped talking about loving Kylie and going on kid's morning TV to be interviewed by a glove puppet, they would no doubt have been horrified to find out what their future selves would do 🤣

Ditto I think!

As a species we have done nothing to deserve Calvino. He’s like David Bowie or Édouard Manet or Brunelleschi…from some other universe of vision and talent.

Again, I wish Bidmead had stayed on for at least S19 as I feel he would have made sure that the Doctor was strongly and more consistently characterised, setting the benchmark for the writers in his next two seasons.

(In fact Davison never quite gives his Kinda characterisation again which is a shame as it's somewhat different to what he does later - almost trickster-ish. You can see the influence of Troughton on his performance in that story I think and he never gets to be that playful again).

Or just because the script isn't giving him enough to work with so he tries to force it.

There's that interview with Bailey where he talks about tailoring the Snakedance script to Davison's strengths but he's wrong - Kinda is much better for Davison because it gives him more to go at.

This might be sacrilege but I think Snakedance is the only performance he pitches wrong. Whether because he thinks the story is too slow and needs energy, or because he's trying to create contrast for when the Doctor finds the stillpoint, I feel he over-does it throughout.

I said before but while I think S20 is a really strong batch of stories I can see why Davison might have been frustrated by the under-writing for the Doctor in them. He's still very good but he's not allowed to be great very often. In S21 he's allowed to be great.

Davison's performance is superb. If the story around it were better I think it would be spoken of in the same breath as Androzani. Whatever Saward's faults he seems to have realised in S21 that the scripting for the Doctor needed to be better and Davison absolutely goes for it every episode.

I actually like Warriors...more than most, despite its very obvious flaws. But a tighter edit, better lighting and a monster that doesn't look like a violently ill pantomime horse would make liking it a lot easier.