You can scroll the shelf using ← and → keys
Incredible guts and stamina to do such a climb without fear at his age. The incredible thing as you look at him climbing this steeple is that another video on youtube shows him explaining how he put such ladders there in the first place!!!
Thousands of people in complete unison bereft of any indiviuality… and that’s just the crowd!! A controlled and brainwashed population. How can a parade be so perfect yet be so frightening and ugly?
This was a compelling study shown on television in 2002 which explored the social and psychological consequences of putting people in groups of unequal power. The programme now is used by the Open university and the findings have since been published in leading scientific journals and textbooks. That’s why the 4 disc DVD is available at a special price of £100 at Pearson’s publishing!!! Makes me sick the exploitation of educational resources.
I remember feeling the psychological pressure of the guards just watching from my armchair. It gives a small insight into what it must be like to find yourself mentally harassed by people you can’t escape from. The inclusion of the shop steward introduced into the prison as an inmate and subsequently taken out of the study becvause he was so good at negotiating that he nullified all conflict was interesting.
This is the first series of the (British) Big Brother and it still is uncomfortable viewing. At the time it was dynamite and Craig went on to win on the back of him confronting Nick. Seems tame now considering the general standard of housemates today and Nick explained later that he went in to the game thinking it was OK to try and win, which also seems reasonable today.
Incredible courageous documentary on the subject of assisted suicide, presented by Terry Pratchett and featuring Peter Smedley, a 71-year-old motor neurone disease sufferer, committing suicide at the Swiss assisted dying organisation, Dignitas. Overwhelmingly moving,with Terry Pratchett, himselff being diagnosed with Alzeimer’s merely asking the question, ‘Should we have the right to choose to die if we wish?’
I remember watching this programme when this debate happened. Although this series featured Tim Rice as the presenter, he had replaced, wait for it- ex Prime minister Harold Wilson, as the host of the late night talk show. The result is history as they say. Michael Palin gets very angry but John Cleese is magniicent. It is a lesson to us all that you can argue your case but still remain respectful of your adversary. I think the Python duo especially treat Malcolm Muggeridge very courteously while showing a little contempt for the pompous Bishop of Southwark.
I have always loved all sorts of music and noticed that passion seems to grab some people from a young age whilst completely missing others. When we were young, our family shared a gramophone amongst six of us. It served as a communal musical watering hole where all our collective purchases of 45s and long-playing albums were kept together. I think of this today with kids on ipods and the mandatory use of socially isolating headphones and DVD players in bedrooms.
My older brother Peter’s musical taste ranged and changed from Cliff Richard and Rolf Harris singles to Vanilla Fudge’s ‘You keep me hanging on’ and the Zombies ‘She’s not there’, I occasionally listened, (under his tuition) to my dad’s choice of classical records and grew to love Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto No.2 and Ravel’s ‘Bolero’. My first ever record was ‘Needles and Pins’ by the Searchers. The strangest inclusion in our record collection was ‘House of the Rising Sun’ by the Animals because it was bought by our dad. He had watched a television talent show and this song had won and had made a great impression on him.
I was five when the Beatles released ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962. Growing up with them on the television, at the cinema or buying all their records. two or three times over in every format possible means they are number one to me. Their catalogue is incomparable as any hopeless 3-chord strumming guitar playing amateur like myself will testify.
Two years ago, my wife and I went to see Bob Dylan at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. As millions of others, we are devoted fans of pre-electric bob and we held our breath to recapture an experience something special. It didn’t materialise and it’s not his fault either because our memory of the Bob Dlyan that we went to see, frozen in time, is no more. The few classics he did play such as ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’, he mutilated beyond recognition on purpose. He has always been thus and that’s why still at 70 he remains the enigma and icon he is. He didn’t say one word to the adoring audience, left with no encore. He doesn’t want to talk and he doesn’t have to talk. We couldn’t wait for it to end. The music was so loud, I had my fingers in my ears for most of his slot. Mark Knoffler supported him and at least he said something even if it was self-indulgent and forgetable. On leaving, I listened to ‘fans’ vent their disappointment. Someone called him a c**t!
I have always loved the simplicity of Paul Simon’s songs and like the Beatles, they’re not defined by a certain few commercially successful hits reaching No. 1, the whole catalogue is important. Art Garfunkel’s voice is beautiful in this song. It is as flawless as his forehead!
The progressive rock music of Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Genesis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer etc was not a favourite genre of mine due to it being owned,(in my mind) by the older boys. I did listen to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and appreciated it but I was born too late to be the right age. Luckily that’s not the case when Monty Python appeared. Isn’t it strange after all these years, being a Beatle fan, I still wrongly remain ignorant and ambivalent to the Stones. My son Jack has beaten me to it there, recently being in the front row at Glastonbury and experienced what all the fuss was about. My other son Harry made his way to the front at the Isle of Wight festival to catch Paul McCartney. I’m increasingly no longer in the audience, but in one way, perhaps I am!!
In the unmissable oscar winning documentary, Searching for Sugarman, Sugar tells us that in the 70s every south african had three albums in their record collection. ‘Bridge over Troubled Waters’, ‘Sgt Peppers’ and ‘Cold Fact’ by Rodriguez. My older brother Peter bought me ‘Sweet Baby James’ by James Taylor one Christmas, saying everybody had it at college, whereas ten years later at the end of the 70s, for me, everybody seemed to have ‘Rumours’ and to be continually playing it!
Every film clip, picture and frame edited to perfection.
‘It’s time I had some time alone, I feel the same way, it’s time I had some time alone, my god, hands up, who wants to walk around thinking there’s a war that’s going to hit. That is a terrible system. I believe the majority of people want to live in a peaceful world, that’s what I believe. Because otherwise we’re looking at the potential world war. A world when modern governments get toppled by people willing to murder the innocent and if that were to occur, people would look back at this day and age and say, “What happened to those people in 2007, how come they couldn’t see the threat to a future generation of people?”
Look I understand here in Washington some people say we’re not at war, I know that, they’re just wrong, – in my opinion!’
You said it George!! (at some time or other)
RSA Animate – Crises of Capitalism
The story of the character from the gutter improving themself in character, status and lifestyle beit in ‘Pygmalion’ by George Bernard Shaw or ‘Educating Rita’ by Willy Russell, is one of the basic stories of relationship explored in literature and media.
This scene from Willy Russell’s play and film about Rita, a liverpudlian hairdresser who is being tutored as a mature student by a university don, sees Frank saturated in self-pity and guilty of denying Rita of the literary pleasures and social standing that she desires and he has rejected.
Rita – Yeah. Well, er…I’ll tell you what you can’t bear, Mr Self-Pitying Piss Artist,
what you can’t bear is that I’m educated now. I’ve got what you have and you don’t like it. I mean, good God, I don’t need you. I’ve got a room full of books!
I know what wine to buy, what clothes to wear, what plays to see, what papers to read, and I can do it without you.
Frank – Is that all you wanted? Have you come all this way for so very, very little?
Rita – Oh, yeah, it’s little to you, isn’t it, Frank? Little to you who squanders every opportunity and mocks and takes it for granted.
Frank – Found a culture, have you, Rita? Found a better song to sing? No. You found a different song to sing. And, on your lips, it is shrill and hollow and tuneless. Oh, Rita, Rita, Rita,
This conversation resonates in me in that through my upbringing, life experiences and admitted prejudices, I don’t want Rita to think she sings a better song but for different reasons to Frank.
I’ve always viewed the constraint and imposition of viewing high culture literature and other expressive arts such as opera, ballet and painting as the porthole for cultural acceptance as dismissive and insulting to huge numbers of people. It’s a cultural apartheid where only certain people are considered worthy enough to sit at the high table. Envious? – not a bit of it. In fact, it’s an extremely narrow and limited range of intellectual pursuits by which to discriminate people’s integrity. I have felt what it’s like to be held in this confining set of topics. All attempts to talk about other values and interests are met by a glazed look in some eyes and a silence or a polite acceptance accompanied at intervals by opportune ways to assert court behaviour and social order by perhaps being corrected grammatically or factually by a date, name or other irrelevantly insignificant detail.
Here’s an fictitious example but based on fact! :
Have you ever asked a question of somebody who cannot bear to show that he/she doesn’t know the answer and hence, in their minds, lose face, credibility or status. Perhaps I should say here, ‘an answer’ because invariably you get an answer of sorts but not to the question that you asked.
Hey Nigel, sorry to disturb you but how do you get a Lookup table to work across different worksheets in Excel for our reports?
-Ermm – I’m not sure, John, without looking at it for longer but did you know, by the way, that an elephant’s got big ears or that Ian McEwan is on the shortlist for the Booker Prize. Anyway, you don’t need to go into that detail for your reports.
OK thanks Nigel, your response was very interesting but alas completely unhelpful because I didn’t ask you for trivia or opinion. Listen Nigel, I wouldn’t think any less of you if you were just honest and say on this particular occasion, you don’t know the answer to my question. I’m not testing you, in fact, I wouldn’t have asked you if I hadn’t thought there was a good chance that you might be able to help me. It’s not a game or contest, you know, we’re not comparing the size of our nobs!
I’ve been entertained in the hallowed dining rooms of the Oxford colleges, taught at one of the country’s most prestigious grammar schools, rubbed shoulders with allumini of the academic world. Fellow of the Royal Society here, Doctorate there, I must say my gown’s B.Ed colours felt very sorry for itself amongst the grandeose ermin of the Oxbridge dons. I have sat on the banks of both Isis and Cam, punted and hung out with the best of the aspiring class. I remember one particular time when teaching at Oxford, someone asked me, “Do you row?” Not “Can you row?”, mind. Not – “Are you able to propel yourself through water with the help of oars?” No – that is a different kind of question altogether. This question is like another, “Do you read?” – I think I replied “Only Ceefax pages 341-9 and the Sporting Life” to that one. No – “Do you row?” – Know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink, wink – King Lear, Glyndebourne, Twickers, Blowers, my dear old thing. It’s code, almost masonic but very prevalent because that’s its purpose.
My contention is that Jerusalem is past its sell by date. We no longer need nor should want the world to think of us as ‘Downtown AbbeyLand’ We’re being held back by our antiquated class system and the extemely unmeritocratic and statistically biased selection of our ruling elite. The argument is not that it’s unfair, which it is, but that it’s ruining us. It’s not only the Royal family IQ that’s down the pan as a result of interbreeding. We need freedom for the best genes from all monkeys to come to the fore.
Sir Michael Parkinson gave a wonderful posthumous tribute to union leader Jimmy Reid. In it, he refers to the televised debate that he had with Kenneth Williams, a very entertaining popular guest on his show, despite describing Parkinson as ‘that northern nit’. Williams very much saw himelf as the articulate, well-read sage and loved to flaunt his knowledge to impress his audience. Play the clip below.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11021287
A Monkey in Manhattan 