After many recent multi-million pound apologies for logo designs by high-flying marketing studios, this one’s a real breath of fresh air. It was designed for a competition by 10-year-old Katherine Dewar, from Chester. Brilliant – and well chosen, whoever the judges were.

Next, the gubmint should commission this young lady to give the 2012 Olympic logo a swift makeover before the rest of the world start tuning in to our broadcast coverage and falling off their chairs with laughter.

A while back, I read an article on The Register describing how a derogatory spoof ’2012 logo’ was used in error by a South African news outlet to illustrate a story about ticket availability.

You can see why they got mixed up – the right and wrong versions are below

This cartoon struck a chord. BBC News is really getting on my nerves these days. Channel 4 News covers issues much more in-depth without resorting to the descent into ‘That’s Life’ (remember that?) style street interviews. Look East is a big culprit in that respect – go into a local town and ask random passers by what they think, ideally showing their complete ignorance of the subject. We KNOW what we think. Hearing what selected other people think or don’t know isn’t going to change our views. We just want to see a report about the issue and know something’s being done about it (or not, as the case may be).

Another thing… Why do we have to vote on TV programs and phone into everything? I know they make money out of our calls, but I thought we paid these guys to make our entertainment for us – they’re supposed to be good at it and shouldn’t be getting ignoramuses (ignorami ?)  like me to contribute to their output.

Oh yeh… Breakfast on the BBC. Why has it become a vehicle for overrated pop stars, actors and authors to peddle their latest outpourings? Why, also, does it insist on promoting other TV programs all the time?

More and more lazy journalism. I dislike it intensely. Bring back news and abolish ‘infotainment’. It’s making people dumber (with apologies to all people who dislike the increasing use of the antithetical Americanism ‘smarter’, meaning more intelligent).

Rant over… for now

In the UK, we love to criticize our own country. During this cold weather, we’ve seen endless stories about our councils running out of grit, UK drivers not being able to cope on the roads, trains and planes being cancelled, people dying because of the cold etc. “This doesn’t happen in other countries“, we hear people say. Actually, it does…

140 people have  frozen to death during the last weeks in Poland. 226 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt Airport.  Switzerland closed its alpine tunnels to lorries. Local power cuts and public transport disruption is forecast this weekend for Germany, where one area in the southwest has seen 300 car accidents – they also have a shortage of grit. Hundreds of trucks were stranded when French authorities closed the road near the German border due to snow.

See – it isn’t just us! Let’s stop spreading this misinformation. It happens all over.

The full article can be found on BBC News

Just thought I’d indulge myself  in providing you with an insight into the sort of guitar and Christmas-flavoured music I’ve been playing this afternoon/evening via Spotify, shared with various family members -well, if you run yer own blog, it comes with the territory! I always think it’s good to hear what other people are listening to (it provides a way to find artists and genres you may not have heard before, which is definitely a good thing) and to that effect, I humbly offer the completely disparate selection which follows….

Peter Finger – Wishbone Ash
Tom Petty – Free Fallin’
Rodrigo y Gabriella – Stairway To Heaven
Carol of the Bells (John Williams, from the film Home Alone)
Eric Whiteacre – Sleep
Hilliard Ensemble – O Lord, in Thee is all my trust
Vaughan Williams, Fantasy on a theme of Thomas Tallis

… well about 8 hours of it, so far. My home PC decided to foul up big time yesterday, so I had to reinstall Windows XP (it refused point blank to repair itself from the CD). Working until 1 o’clock last night. Now I’m slowly putting back all my software and settings – nightmare!

I’ll be happy to get to work today – just for a rest from computers. No… wait a minute. That won’t work, will it?