Breaking news! Bush has environmental concerns...

...so he's pulling the plug on solar energy...

Imagine the government saying that, because they're not sure about the full effect of sun lotions and solar creams, they put a ban on the stuff and recommend instead extra doses of UVB, preferably in the early hours of the afternoon.

No, don't laugh. Bush is doing the same about the environment. Courtesy of my friend Neal, I came across this article about Bush's green concerns. More oil drilling and less solar projects (banned for two years), that's what GW Bush says. I thought that we were fucked in Britain, but my American friends, you really aren't doing too good...

The tabloids? They don't pull their punches

Amy Winehouse at Glastonbury and the mystery "punch"

Did she or didn't she punch a fan? Glasto 2008 was the perfect example of how the words 'media' and 'reality' rarely sit together. It's not the first time that Amy Winehouse makes their day, but this time a fleeting scuffle with someone in the crowd turned into the singer "lashing out" and "throwing punches at the audience". Some accounts almost depicted her as Southgate's own Hulk Cogan. Make no mistake, at Hagley Road to Ladywood we despise the woman, but looking at footage available on BBC online (watch it here), we don't think she actually punched anybody. The Telegraph was the most cautious, with only a fleeting glimpse of "a scuffle" with [a] fan. "[S]he appeared to swing a punch at a fan", writes today's Independent, adding that "as she sang "Rehab" towards the end of her hour-long set, she clambered into the pit in front of the stage and got into a scuffle with a member of the audience". Yet, according to The Guardian, it all "look[ed] suspiciously like a quick succession of punches" and there you are, reader, picturing that poor sod on the receiving end of a Tyson-like knocker treatment.

The NME sports a proud "Watch Amy Winehouse 'punching' a fan at Glastonbury" headline (along with Glasto boss Michael Eavis pointing out that the singer reacted to someone in the crowd "touching her boobs"), and the Daily Mail can hardly conceal their delight with a sequence of shots that leave us even more puzzled. In their online version, Winehouse becomes a graduate from the school of hard knocks. She both "punched", "elbowed", "charged in" and "aimed blows" at a fan. If they had more space available it'd probably turn out that she alone battered a whole mob... But for moral lecturing -as usual- no one can outdo The Sun. This is their perfect territory: "Winehouse on the warpath" is the UK's best-selling paper's headline, the plot further thickened by the statement that "Amy Winehouse made Pete Doherty look angelic after punching a fan" and, with every other word reminding us of her drug abouse, more castigatory stuff about her "obnoxious" behaviour. What a bad woman this Winehouse is.

So obnoxious that not a single day goes without them devotedly talking her up. Boy don't they need her.

On top of Euro 2008

After a curse that lasted 44 years, Spain beat Germany 1-0 in the final and claimed the 2008 European Championship. People got (understandably) overexcited. (footage by Johhny T)

Zimbabwe

The Western powers went into Iraq with all guns blazing, so why the kid gloves approach with Zimbabwe?

The best article of the week was written by The Times' David Aaronovitch, someone we hadn’t been too kind to in the past. Writing last Tuesday on the subject of Zimbabwe, the columnist displayed some intellectual honesty and admirable coherence. He advocated foreign military intervention as the sole hope left in order to free the Zimbabwean population from Mugabe's horrendous grip. In the wake of yet more rigged elections, all hints suggest the dictator has no intention to step down.

Aaronovitch has been one of the most fervent pro-Iraq war zealots, turning a blind eye and a half towards the repercussions of Bush and Blair's military gamble. This time, however, we're on his side. If only those who were suddenly so anxious to bring democracy to Iraq, out of all places, showed Aaronovitch's same genuine concern for human rights across the world, things may be slightly better. Zimbabwe is being suffocated to death but you don’t hear the neo-cons priests and Blairite souls reciting that "you can't appease a dangerous dictator", "do nothing in front of genocide" and "those pacifists against-wars-come-what-may are all a bunch of Chamberlain-like chickens".

"The idea that Mugabe will cave in to sanctions or diplomatic pressure is absurd", Aaronovitch writes, adding that "unless you regard the recent burnings, rapes, beatings, murders, threats, arrests, starvings and raids as some kind of exotic preamble to negotiation, then what seems clear is that the Zanu (PF) military-security group has no intention of allowing any transfer of power to an elected opposition, no matter what a whingeing world says about it".

The Western powers went into Iraq with all guns blazing, in spite of a background which consisted of an explosive Middle East, belligerent neighbours, as well as a country so ravaged by internal divisions and ethnic and religious sectarianism. So why the kid gloves approach with Zimbabwe and a (comparatively and relatively speaking, of course) easier geo-political scenario?

This celebrity binge? Pure trash...

...and why a diet of bad television and shit magazines can have short, medium and long-term effects.

Physical laziness is an integral part of human nature. And it's not always that bad. Think of the appeal of an evening spent slouching around, arse firmly stuck to the settee, watching a DVD as you stuff down high-calorie food and a few drinks. Aware of the pitfalls of an existence outlining Wayne and Waynetta Slob's, we're constantly reminded of the importance of healthy eating, 5-a-day, exercising and doing sports.

Intellectual idleness follows the same pattern. Although having your mind floating about can also be insidiously pleasurable (to the point that you don’t even see it happening), the 5-a-day adverts or government schemes on the subject are notable by their absence. The articles you read become shorter and shorter and the pictures in the magazines that you buy get bigger and bigger. The stuff you watch on telly has got more and more premium numbers to call and votes to send and the celebrities stuck in that jungle become increasingly hilarious…Suddenly you know by heart Big Brother Chanelle's sexual CV while Lee v Alex on The Apprentice give you sleepless nights.

Until one day you find that using your brain becomes a dreadfully tedious proposition, the equivalent of your dad asking you to hold those wall-brackets up for 10 minutes while he's mounting the shelving unit. Huff. Something to shrink away from at all costs.

Why pick up a book if you can flick through Heat, Star, Closer, Reveal, More, Now (Zoo or Nuts if you like extra inches of naked flesh) and look at big photographs? Isn't an image of a wasted Sarah Harding all over a bloke much easier on the eye than a couple of sentences strung together by some Chilean writer you've never heard of?

And why should you bother with those long, complex, arsy articles that pad those "intellectual" broadsheets when you can get The Sun or the Daily Star which are a right larff, and whose nipples on display are larger than any of the articles? Why watch those late-night programmes that go on about wars, the economy and question time and only interview people who pronounce every "t"? Big Brother 12, Britain's Got Talent, tits, gossip and sex scandals are all much more entertaining.

First, there's the social acceptability factor. "Politics, current affairs, opinion columns, the news…they're all just so totally boring". You learnt it a long time ago and no-one's going to bully you for that. You automatically picked up that it's quite a cool thing to say, especially because everyone but maybe the geeks repeated it at every turn. Or think of the fag-break at work. They’re all gossiping about last night's Celebrity Freak Show and Jordan's new acrylic body part and there's a lively debate over whether that would make the celebrity's 25th or 26th set of implants. Do you really want to be left out?

And what the fuck is this credit crunch, anyway? Boooooring. I'll get me celeb/tits magazines and even though it's just a fiver, can I pay by Visa by any chance (and hope it doesn’t get declined)?

No doubt some trendy high-priests of proto-intellectualism will dismiss it all by arguing that the best thing about "celebrity culture" is that you can always switch the telly off and that no-one's forcing you to buy celebrity magazines. After all, the cultural version of double chocolate cake and supersized burgers & chips is just harmless fun.

There are, instead, short, medium and long-term side effects of a market saturated in in-yer-face mediocrity and triviality.

It's this same "bad intellectual diet" that makes it possible for the government to send your best mate to Afghanistan while you think that he's going "to fight for our country against the long-bearded ones" and that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 (come on, let's have it!).

It's this cerebral dearth that dampens the indignation towards sky-high house prices and rising income inequality.

It's this KFC of brains that makes it routine for your manager at the call centre to tell you that chances are they may be relocating and half of you won't be needed at all next week - and she can do it because none of you are on a contract.

It's this junk-for-thought that can make your gas, water and electricity bills routinely go up, in the style of Cristiano Ronaldo's ego, and in a state of total impunity.

And it's the same bad diet that makes it possible for councils to collect your rubbish once a fortnight while your Council tax reaches aberrant levels and hundreds of thousands of pounds are lavished on the Luxembourgian Festival in Victoria Square.

So it's true, this celebrity binge is bliss. For those who pull the strings.

Sex and the City: The Movie

Unless you're a hardcore fan, the film will probably leave you feeling a bit pissed on the superficiality of the whole affair

A review by EMMA MUNN

Darren Star’s Sex and the City (which will hereby be known as SATC due to typing laziness) is something that most women love and most men hate, unless they are gay or metrosexual and find Manolos fabulous. It’s a generalisation but it’s true.

I fall in the (obsessive) love side, and have followed the series since the beginning, mainly because of my love of fashion.

So, like the majority of 20-something women, I almost messed myself when, last year, I discovered a film was being made. Cue endless re-watches of every episode, nail biting and scouring the internet for clues. Is it true that Miranda dies?! What about Samantha getting cancer again?! Will Carrie and Mr. Big finally tie the knot?!

Well, the answers to those questions are no, no and yes in fact, because I eventually got to see the film yesterday, after many months of near-breakdowns and doing my boyfriend’s head in about Carrie’s outfits.

If you’re anything like me, you’d have found series 6 of SATC (especially the finale, An American Girl in Paris Parts une et deux) one of the most heartbreaking, tear jerking and applause-inducing pieces of television ever made. It quite simply left you begging for more. Following on from Samantha’s (Kim Catrall‘s character, promiscuous patron for STIs and misjudged clashing colours but arguably the star of the show) recovery from breast cancer, Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker’s curly haired sex columnist) flash-in-the-pan romance with an arrogant Russian who took her to Paris, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon’s fiery redhead lawyer) deciding that her husband’s terminally ill mum can live with them and Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis’ love-hopeful traditionalist) adoption of an Asian baby there was a hell of a lot of stuff to look forward to and a hell of a lot of unanswered questions.

From a fan’s point of view, the film was exactly what I wanted and more. Endless flurries of jaw-droppingly beautiful clothes, skyscraper heels, glamorous bars and glamorous people, basically so much glitter that you almost feel yourself frothing at the mouth from all the, well, frothiness.
Also, if you are an avid fan (desperately trying not to sound like a weirdo, here) you start to care about the characters and really wonder about what they’ve been doing, so in a way it was like catching up with old friends. Old friends who have a significantly fatter current account than you do, are sexier than you and manage to get you in to lots of pretty bars with waiting lists, that is. Oh to dream.

So, given all that, what does it offer to non-fans or newbies?
Well, sod all really.
Unless you’ve at least experienced one of the latter series of SATC, the film will probably leave you feeling a bit lost and disillusioned by the whole thing, and will probably also leave you feeling a bit pissed on the superficiality of the whole affair. Because, even though I adore this show, SATC is obviously a very superficial series. Fashion and nice photography has always been the primary objective. The script is okay, but just okay. It's weak, and that's a big shame. A meatier script would have made this film perfect, and above all more accesible to non-fans, who may not give a toss about the fashion but would have had a stronger plotline to hold onto.
The strange thing about the film, however, is that in all the two and a half hours (yes, only half an hour less than Titanic so bring a cushion) of it, there’s an undeniable sense that the storyline is second place to Carrie’s wardrobe. In one scene, Carrie is asked to do a bridal photo-shoot for Vogue, and after much protesting (what’s wrong with you, woman?) she agrees. Cue five minutes of nice angles of her face, and her reciting the names of the designers she’s modelling,
“Christian Dior, Vivienne Westwood, Oscar de la Renta… and CHRISTIAN LACROIX!!!) and another scene where she cleans out her wardrobe and walks around wearing her old outfits from seasons past (yes, THAT tutu, too) while her pals vote, with cards, whether she should keep them or not.
This kind of stuff is great for a couple of minutes, but there are only so many times one can say ’Oooh! Lovely dress, I remember that one… Nice… lucky cow…” Cue rabid froth once again.

And yes, Carrie does marry Mr. Big. Once almost, one properly. She’s still knocking about with him, which does bring the “SATC is female empowerment personified” argument into question. You go out on and off for ten years, he dumps you 48 times, he stands you up at the altar, but he emails (hello?) you a love letter by Byron and all is forgiven. Ms. Greer would have something to say about this, maybe. Also, there is a very drawn out scenario regarding Miranda's very sweet husband's infidelity (he shags another woman because she's very busy and she's gone off sex) which leaves you screaming at the screen for the great majority of the movie, until flogged horses come into view.

Samantha, as always, is hilarious, with some of the funniest scenes in the film. The best being an aborted Valentine's Day surprise involving sushi, "I got wasabi in places one should never get wasabi", and Charlotte's shock pregnancy will have you rooting for her after her long, heartbreaking struggle to conceive.

In short, SATC: The Movie is perfect for long-term fans like myself, girly nights in and something to watch when you’ve been dumped, but if producer Michael Patrick King wants to attract new fans from this film, he’s going to fail spectacularly.

Nick Hornby, "Slam" - a review

The finest English writer of his generation, Nick Hornby is always a pleasure to read. Too often, his stories are hastily packaged as "typical male", "hilarious" and "funny". Hilarious and funny, they may be - though that leaves out the high concentration of lifelike drama, neuroses, hang-ups and introspection that characterises all of his books - but the "typical male" tag is as lopsided as one of Luca Toni's shots. Simply, wrong.

With his latest novel, Slam, Hornby decides to take on a teenage audience. If you're one of his fans, that may put you off until you actually decide to read the book. You'll barely notice, the only change being that the whole story is from the point of view of 15-year-old Sam. A skate obsessive (the book will teach you that the expression "skateboarding" is considered as uncool as Michael Bolton's hair), Sam is an ordinary teenager, bored, into Playstations and stuff, but fundamentally alright.

Sam lives with his mum, a young lady of only thirty-two, a woman who actually managed as she raised him on her own. But it's all about to turn into a big mess. Sam's life will have to kiss a premature goodbye to a world of posters and skate-related tricks. His first 'proper' girlfriend, 16-year-old Alice, is pregnant and she wants to keep it. Family patterns are about to be repeated.

But before we give away too much, it's worth pointing up that Hornby doesn’t take any moral high ground. He's just an amazing social observer. His is an extremely accurate picture of today's Britain, a country where thousands of young teenagers who fear they may be no good decide that having a baby is the only doable way out of a merciless race for high grades, money and success. And, for better or for worse, that's become absolutely normal. A place where a kid having another kid is now completely devoid of any social stigma, never mind posing a million practical (and many other) problems.

There's Sam's school and their completely useless teenage-pregnancy Support Scheme (a "strategy") based on filling a form that says you're doing OK and then filling another one to say that you're satisfied with the same scheme. There's prejudice, whereby Alice's ultra-liberal academic parents are subconsciously convinced that, even though he's not, Sam is and will always be a "chav" because he comes from a single-mother family.

All of which comes across subtly. It's up to the reader to decipher whether Hornby is pro-choice or anti-choice and to make up their mind about where they stand.

What matters is that Hornby's style as a narrator is as engaging as ever and if you're not particularly busy, you'll devour the book the same way you guzzled A Long Way Down, About A Boy and High Fidelity. His language is absolutely real and accessible, while his psychological vignettes make you wonder if he's got some supernatural power in his interpretation and articulation of how people really feel. In fairness, there is, by Nick Hornby's standards, a minor narrative weakness. Sam's dreamlike trips to the future add little to the narrative and somehow increase the risks of predictability- if anything, they're quite counterproductive. But it's a minor glitch.

Slam isn't Nick Hornby's strongest book, but the truth is, that’s what happens when the standards set by his previous work were at such a high level.

Slam is now available on Penguin Paperback

The Oxford Murders - a review

A film that turns out more elitist in language than its original book version is quite a rare feat

As big screen readaptations go, comparisons with the original version (in this case Guillermo Martinez's award-winning novel) are never too kind. The Oxford Murders was doomed from the start. If the book version was already blighted by sections that are incomprehensible for all but PhD students of Abstract Logic and Mega Philosophy, Alex de la Iglesia's film version will simply make that DVD eject button too tempting to resist.

And it's a pity. Because the Oxford Murders carries all the premises for a gripping tale of mystery and creepy symbolism. No sooner has young American (Argentinian, in the original version) mathematician Martin (Elijah Wood) arrived in Oxford that his elderly landlady is found murdered in her wheelchair.

The only clues are a cryptic message and a circle scrabbled next to it. It's the door to a fascinating conundrum that involves respected academic Arthur Seldom (John Hurt) and a couple of ladies who are quite eager to inspect Elijah Wood's particulars. Perhaps they were big Frodo fans to begin with. We'll never know.

Yet, a film that turns out more elitist in language than its original book version is quite a rare feat. There are, for want of a better expression, visual references here. Yet, the viewer's drowns in a vortex of Heidleberg's Principle, Fibonacci series, Godel's Axiom, Whatsit Theorem, ThingyBob Maxim - stuff you'd only grasp if you've studied the stuff.

If that wasn't enough to get on your nerves, here comes the acting i.e. the nail in the coffin. Deliberate though it may be, the Thespian, uber-hammed-up nature of the dialogue is totally out of place. In the book Arthur Seldom is more subdued and less of a megalomaniac, but John Hurt, of course, can handle it. Everyone else though, including Frodo Wood, is as stiff as a morning boner that is put to no use.