Today...

...I'm spending an entire day putting things in boxes.

(And occasionally doing things like having a coffee or writing a blog).

In my head, I know that boxes of books are heavy.
I've moved lots of times, and I've learned this from experience.

If you fill a large cardboard box with books, it gets very heavy.

I know this.

But.

Nothing can prepare you for how shockingly heavy a box of books really is.


Books are such wussy items. They can't be super heavy, right? Wrong.
They are super heavy. Infinitely heavier than things like TVs and stereos.
But with things like TVs you're allowed to sort of go, "Oh, the TV, that'll be a big job. Let's get hold of this, one at either end. 1,2,3, hup!", even though they don't weight a great deal.
For some reason, if you bought it at Dixons, it gets a lot of "heaviness respect".
Not so with boxes of books.
With boxes of books, you have to sort of "suck it up" and "man up" and go "It's ok, I've got it" as tears stream down your face.


What I'm saying is- and I don't know whether I've been entirely clear on this - boxes of books are really heavy, and carrying them to and from a van is probably the worst thing about moving.




I wonder at what point I came to the conclusion that I needed to share that with the world?
I wonder at what point I decided that this sort of behaviour was fine?

10 Phrases I Like Hearing But Don't Hear Very Often.

1. Fur Coat No Knickers.
2. Spit And Sawdust.
3. Spit And Sawdust- Only Without The Bladdy Sawdust!
4. No Better Than I Ought To Be.
5. Do As I Say Not As I Do.
6. He/She Is All Talk No Trousers.
7. It's Not The Cough That Carries You Off, It's The Coffin They Carry You Off In.
8. He/She Is "Touched".
9. I Don't Want To Teach My Grandmother How To Suck Eggs.
10. He/She Is All Potatoes, No Pan.


The last one is a fabrication, but sounds utterly plausible.

Those phrases are, incidentally, ranked in order of how much I like them.

I'm going to sit here for a little while, drinking my Kenco, wondering how the hell "I Don't Want To Teach My Grandmother How To Suck Eggs" became a phrase.



Good afternoon? Hope so. Hope so.

What I Think About Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch seems to be getting a lot of attention lately.
I'm going to tell you what I think about him, in the hope that Paxman or someone acccidentally reads it and I eventually get to go on Newsnight as some sort of leftfield pundit.
If it occasionally comes across as serious, so be it. That's the way you have to roll on Newsnight.

Right? Right.


What with Rupert Murdoch being a big bastard and everything, it's easy to enjoy the kicking he's getting in enlightened corners of the press and internet at the moment.
He's decided he wants to start charging for all his websites, and keeps threatening to do things like "pull out of Google".
Which is, of course, mental.
If you run a website, "pulling out of Google" is surely a bit like a jellyfish "pulling out of the sea".
He has, of course, been called a mad/greedy old bastard who doesn't understand the modern world.

In a way, I feel a bit sorry for him.
Being able to charge for the fruits of your labour is, after all, fair enough. Isn't it?

Once you can get something for free, you inevitably start to feel like you deserve to get it for free. It's your right to get it for free.
So once you've read a newspaper online for nothing, you feel pretty cross with the idea that you might have to start paying for it.
The same applies with music- Lily Allen got absolutely pilloried earlier this year for suggesting that young/struggling musicians are getting ripped off by the fact that people don't pay them for their music anymore. And to be honest, I've never heard a convincing argument that against that. People splutter things like "Yeah, but, like, I go to more gigs than non-music-downloaders, so, if you think about it, err, I should be encouraged", or "Rock stars have swimming pools". But nothing very convincing*.

But what are you going to do? Scrap the internet? Burn laptops in townsquares?
Why of course not.
What you have to do is think cleverly.
Think of a new way of generating income that means people get paid for their work.

In terms of music, a service like Spotify looks like a pretty good stab at it. We'll see how that works out, but it looks like a good effort to me. Clever.
In terms of news etc, Murdoch's neck of the woods, he's got a bit of a problem.

Because when you coldly look at the facts, you come to a conclusion that Murdoch is absolutely, ideologically, maybe even pathologically opposed to.

Ahem.

In a world where advertising revenues have collapsed and are unlikely to ever fully recover, and subscription models are likely to be technologically flimsy (not to mention wildly unpopular), the obvious conclusion is this- the licence fee is a really good idea.

A reasonable fee is charged to all the users, to create a fund. This fund is used to create "content" (that's the world's worst word, I'm sorry). An independent body scrutinises this content to make sure that it's of the highest quality and is politically impartial.

What a brilliant idea!

And so the BBC glides into the brave new world of scary new media pressures like some sort of brilliant swan.
And Murdoch gets angry.

To understand why he gets so angry, you have to understand what he wants, what he considers important about the media.
Let's take a typical Murdoch whine- "The Angling Magazine Website". I think it's an example his son used in bashing the BBC.

The BBC decide it's a good idea to start an Angling Magazine website.
They use a chunk of their money to set one up- they pay knowledgable Angling journalists to write about the joys of Angling. Anglers then read these articles on their little computers, free of charge.
Awful! Splutters Murdoch (or his son or whoever). That squashes private enterprise. That stops a businessman from opening a similar website, because he can't compete. He can't pay the journalists that sort of money -advertising won't support the site, so he might have to start charging to read it (some sort of "paywall" perhaps?) and how can he do that if the BBC is giving the stuff away?

Who loses in that situation? The Angler? Nope. He can read his little articles on his little computer before heading out for an Angle. And for free! (He is, of course, a licence fee payer, but aside from that....)
The journalists? Nope. They're getting paid a decent wage for writing their niche little articles.
So...

We can see what Murdoch hates about the licence fee, and what he considers the most important thing about the media.
He's not thinking about the people who make the "content" (urgh, sorry), or the people who "consume" the "content" (urgh, urgh, sorry, sorry).
He's only thinking about the ability of businessmen- tycoons, moguls etc- to make money out of it.
That is, and always has been, his only concern.

The frightening thing is, his buddy boys are about to form a government.
And they're of the same irrational, ideological bent as he is.
And they've got their sleeves all rolled up, ready to give the BBC a punch in the adam's apple.

Brace yourselves.









*I'm not being preachy, I've downloaded music illegally too. I'm just saying that getting indignant about our right to nick things doesn't make it any more justified.

Apologies.

I've been neglecting you, haven't I?
As I say, apologies.

I'm moving, you see (did I mention that? I'm moving), and I keep getting busy/stressed/messed around, and find myself not bothering with writing the old blog.


Also this week-

The Western Mail published its list of Wales' 50 Sexiest Men.
For the twenty-eighth year running I was unplaced.
As well as being deemed less sexy than people like Jamie Roberts, Steve Jones and Nicky Wire, I am less sexy than Huw Lewis, the Welsh Assembley Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney.
Here he is talking.

I have coped with this kick in the self-esteem nuts by getting an unusually sensible haircut, and ordering thirty quid's worth of cardboard boxes off the internet.


We all react to things differently, I suppose.
Most Welshmen probably didn't even notice that they'd been snubbed, yet alone freak out and over order cardboard boxes.

Anyway. Hope your weeks have been good. I'll leave you with some wonderful slang that's been brought to my attention.

Long- adj. - Rubbish, boring. "Oh man, moving house is long". "Tsk. Lord Of The Rings is really long, man". "School is well long". "Huw Lewis AM's video biography is long".

I like that a lot.

I'm Moving...

...in just over a week.

I'm now at the stage where everything I do takes on a sentimental weight of significance.

"Ah, taking the bin bag out. How many more times will I take a bin bag out, and throw it in this big wheelie bin?"
"Oh, microwave. I think I'll miss you most of all".


I need to get through it, and move onto the ruthless "My God, I can't wait till I'm out of here and living like a Prince in Finsbury Park" stage.

Then life will be mine for the taking.

Every time I move, I hope that my new flat will somehow morph me into a hustling, on-the-make go-getter.
I'm always stunned to find, even after a few days of being at my new address, that my personality hasn't altered.

Maybe this time.
Maybe this time.

My Weekend...

...involved going to Glasgow, to go to the Scottish BAFTAs.

We didn't win of course.

Our show was a Scottish production, filmed in Scotland by Scots, but unless you were local and recognised locations I'm sure you'd never have known it. It was probably one of the least Scottish programmes ever seen. And we were up against a show about Rabbie Burns, Rab C Nesbitt, and an interview with The Big Yin. The room went very quiet when our clip was played....
(Rab C Nesbitt won. I think it's a wonderful show, so that made me happy).

The best thing about the whole affair was that it took place in the Glasgow Science Centre, which is one of those places you get these days where you can go and learn about science in a hands on way. So after we'd sat through the ceremony (long, in all honesty. There, I've said it.) we got to strut around with our little bottles of beer looking at optical illusions and having the principle behind aeroplane wings demonstrated to us with ping pong balls.

Also, I got to have an after dinner chocolate in the shape of a BAFTA.

And I got a free Tunnocks.

Tunnocks is like a Kit-Kat only nicer, not to do with Nestle, and mainly aimed at Scottish people.

Div.

That's probably my big, catch-all shortcoming.

Div.

Div-boy.

Silly little Div, much of the time.

Flapping about the place, hobbling from mini-crisis to cock-up to faux pas.

Quite good at dolling out advice, very bad at actual behaviour.



But never mind.


If this week's taught me anything, it's that shortcomings are generally no big deal.
Everybody's got them, and whilst it would be nice to iron them out, if they don't kill you or maim you then they're not causing too much trouble.


Have nice weekends. Mine is going to feature televised sport, a long train journey with my friend Stefan, and going on a Glaswegian red carpet.