Weather: Cloudy with a strong westerly breeze, though it turns sunny mid afternoon. Takes the temps up to 16.

Travel: Worst thing: the 1718 Vermin train doing its usual c-r-a-w-l behind double yellers all the way from Oldbury to Wolverhampton. It's not indefensible, but it's so annoying, especially when double yellers after Coseley behind the stopper indicate it's going to get no worse and you can bump up the speed a bit.

Country Star Of The Day: Alison Moorer meets Terry Wogan. She sounds a *lot* like Sarah MacLachlan, proving that there's not a line between New Country and Lillith Fair.

Concept of the Day: Kid A, Radiohead's new album. They hi-jack the 10th anniversary of Radio 1's "Evening Session" to launch the new album, and it really is a collection of *tunes*, just not anthemic songs like "Creep."

Karen
Do any of you know, who the driver in Madonna's "Music"-video is? I've gotten the distinct impression, that I should know who he is, but once again, I'm clueless.
A Mr Sascha Baron-Cohen, in the character of "Ali G." Mr Baron-Cohen, a self-proclaimed comedian of little standing and no good jokes, pretends to be an urban gentleman of Afro-Carribean ancestry in London. According to the British media, his act is the funniest thing since Ye Guardyenne ran an editorial about King Cnut.

It all started on "The Eleven O'Clock Show," a poor rip-off of Comedy Central's "Daily Show." Mr Baron-Cohen played a character that conducted interviews with foreign dignitaries and displayed a total lack of knowledge about their country. (So far, so Shrub.) While an interesting curiosity once, the joke wore rather thin after two series of this. The character of Ali G was spun off into its own slot, video, mass marketing, and has now reached the apotheosis of its fame by appearing in the video for Madonna's weakest single in a very long time.

The rest of us think that Channel 5's "When Wet Paint Dries" is far better viewing.

Weather: Strong southerly breeze, mainly cloudy, the odd sunny bit. 17 and feeling nice.

Travel: Not good. The 1722 from New Street is held by 15 minutes there, crawls two behind a stopper to Wolverhampton and (just to add insult to injury) heads behind the on time 1804 the rest of the way. Pathetic. Central Trains may not have direct control over Railtrack's botch job at New Street, but they are the mob that I'm contracted with, and have to take the rap. Worst part: delay was 29 minutes, so I can't claim as of right ):

Country Star Of The Day: Gretchen Peters! Yes! The Secret Of Life (The Secret Of Life, 1997) picked up an ASCAP award last night, after notching up one million performances at country radio. Quite why Gretchen's profile is so low remains a total mystery.

Unexpected Interviewee of the Day: Johnny Walker, on Radio 2 (whence Gretchen less than twelve hours earlier) talking to - and playing tracks from - the latest works by seminal British heavy metal artistes Iron Maiden. It takes all sorts...

Sara, The BBC does not carry commercials.
oh, there's not?? wow :) I always thought there were.
Rupert Giles writes: No, there are *no* commercials on the BBC.

so why dno't they just have commercials, nad get rid of the tv tax?
Commercials would beget sponsors, which would beget pressure to go for ratings. That is not the BBC's mission in life. The BBC is there to educate, entertain and inform. It is to be the glue that binds the culture together. Some of that is achieved by hugely popular shows like "EastEnders" and (er) other ratings winners. But the less popular shows, the ones that wouldn't be made or aired on commercially-funded shows, are also part of the remit.

The BBC is the reason why British tv is so polarised: when it's going well, it's the best in the world; when it's making a mistake, it's either incapable of admitting it or will remove the error quickly.

I mean, as far as I remember, they have little breaks of some kind in the middle of shows anyway....don't they?
Rupert Giles writes:
Right. Sara. A little task. Switch on BBC TWO at 6:45 this coming Thursday night. Or 11:55 on Friday night, whichever fits better. You will see an episode of "Buffy" (4:2, for those keeping score.) The episode will play out, and I urge you not to flick over for a moment, lest you miss one of these BBC commercial breaks.

If you see one, please give The Council a call - it's listed in the Yellow Pages, under "Slayers, Undead". I shall dispatch Buffy with the utmost dispatch, to exorcise the demon that has clearly entered the BBC's systems.

Weather: Sunny spells, cloudy spells, a little breeze. Only 16, but it feels good.

Travel: Good all the way.

Country Star Of The Day: Mary Chapin Carpenter. Gotta love those Passionate Kisses (Come On Come On, 1993.)

Old Videos Of The Day: 19 - Paul Hardcastle (1985) State of the art then, and *still* a great visual show today, with very few cliches. The sound remains fantastic.
Trash and Metal Mickey - Suede (Coming Up, 1996; Suede, 1993) The band oozed glamour and sex out of every pore in these promos.

Interviewee: Pierre-Yves Gerbau, speaking (and losing) to Steve Wrong on Radio 2. Never known as a hard interviewer in his Radio IQ1 days, Wrong tackles the man behind the year's biggest flop and almost manages to get him to admit that it's all been a complete waste of money. But not quite.

Ulrike, Duchess of Cool Politics
I know there are listees who experienced the fall of socialistic regimes as well. What do you feel in these days? What were your experiences? And the other listees, who saw it from the other side, how did you experience it?
With a mounting sense of disbelief. First there was Poland, where the General made the mistake of trusting his allies. Byee! Then there was Hungary and the Iron Curtain coming down. "Why do all these people want to get into *Germany*?" asked one friend, who didn't think much of the exchange students he'd seen a few months earlier. "Because it's been forbidden for their lifetimes."

Then there was the Monday nights in Leipzig, and goodbye to Eric Honneker. By the third week, the BBC was presenting its evening radio news programme from the demonstration. By the fourth or fifth week, the whole network was covering the fall of the wall over in Berlin.

Then the action shifted to Czechoslovakia, where everything progressed in a calm, orderly fashion, as it did in Bulgaria. "When will Romania go?" we thought, and held our breath for the first news of the beginning of the end. We missed it, too. It wasn't until Nikolai was booed off stage at his presidential palace that I really twigged that something big was up.

Albania went in the new year, allegedly. Yugoslavia claimed to drop the communist yoke, but merely exchanged it for Serbian nationalism, which may have been worse. And the USSR (remember that?) went [boof] in so much smoke.

It's been a long haul, but those Mondays in autumn 89 were real history.

I wrote these words on Wednesday night, little thinking what would unfold over the next twenty-four hours...

Weather: The odd sunny spell, but lots of heavy showers that drag down the temperatures. 14.

Travel: No real problems, though get the bus back from Wolverhampton as the stopper is muffed late again. Getting the Edinburgh train is a good move (:

The Revolution Won't Be Televised After All. But it *will* be on Radio 5 Live. Yugoslavia finally returns to democracy, with a popular uprising removing Slobodan Milosevic from power after twelve years.

Country Stars: Lonestar - Amazed may not have won the Song of the Year at this morning's CMAs (it went to Leann Womack's I Hope You Dance) but they can still play live, at 130 in the morning, into Terry Wogan's show.

Alchemy
here in the UK even slapping your kid is illegal now
Er, no it isn't. Assault causing grievous harm is and always has been illegal, but slapping per se is not unlawful.

The Legal Beagle For The Nations adds:
English law is not Scottish law is not law in Ulster. There is very little "UK" law, there's a lot of English law. England is not and (by definition) never will be equal to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Piffling point, granted, but if I let it stand uncorrected, it encourages dim United Stations to confuse the two.

Speaking of dim United Stations... An AOHellster writes:
OK LOOK U GUYS HOW MANY EMAILS DO U SEND ME EVERYDAY!!!!??? LIKE A MILLION PLEASE STOP IT I THOUGHT IT WAS ONE EMAIL A DAY AT THE MOST BUT I GET LIKE 11 OR 12 AND IT'S REALLY ANNNOYING HOW I LOVE MSCL BUT PLEASE EITHER TAKE ME OFF THE LIST OR STOP SENDING ME SO MANY EMAILS
Wow, where to start... Keep it to ten points.
1) Don't post entirely in capital letters, it's impossible to read.
2) Paragraph. Punctuate. Use proper sentences. All the things that you were taught in English class (assuming you turned up) still apply in email.
3) Don't use gratuitous contractions. "MSCL" is acceptable. "U" is not.
4) Don't tell bare-faced lies. "Like a million" and "11 or 12" weakens what little argument you may ever have had.
5) Newbie telling long-suffering people what to do? Dream on. I've been here since we had to inscribe messages on stones and give it to rats that scurried down the pipes to the central Netcom server, we were lucky if the message came back within a week. Don't try to come in here shouting the odds.
6) .sig file? Use the approved separator, -- (dash dash space) on a new line. And four lines or fewer if you'd be so kind.
7) If English is not your first language, please state this early. Otherwise we shall assume it is, and mock your inability to spell simple words you highlighted, such as "galaxy."
8) You want to leave? Instructions at the end of the message.
9) I've been waiting two months to come out with this line...
10) You *are* the weakest link. Goodbye.

Weather: Cold, with a couple of showers. It's the wind that seems to be the worst. 13.

Travel: Crawling from Pendeford all the way into Wolverhampton, and the London train leaves before us. The return train is "delayed" after suffering problems on the road from Nottingham; so is the 1710 stopper at New Street, enough for me to catch it.

Allan
Recently there was a TV series dedicated to "George Orwell School" where they (1) had targeted the school as failing (2) and introduced a superhead (3) - Who Failed! (4)
1) "They" = OFSTED = Office for Standards in Education, the Government-appointed inspectors for all schools, state and private.
2) "Failing" = failing, in the OFSTED opinion, to provide an acceptable education.
3) "Superhead" = head with a successful record in another problem school (not necessarily "failing"), introduced to the school with a brief to turn it around.
4) "Failed" = shown by the television company as failing, in spite of the school receiving a glowing progress report from OFSTED that term. A complaint is with the Broadcasting Standards Commission at the moment.

I was at school when it was abolished and standards fell dramatically following its removal.
I was at school when use of the cane was outlawed. No-one in my year group had had it. No-one in the year above or below had, either. This was not unusual. Good discipline does not need the threat of physical punishment.

This together with the idea that 'balancing the books' is as important as results.
Er, is this meant to be a rant or a coherant argument? It sure as heck ain't the latter; the financial situation has nothing to do with the standards of discipline and pastoral care. Except in the minds of union leaders and madmen (one being a subset of the other.)

(We have Mr Major to thank for that one!)
Nope. We have Mr Gladstone to thank for it. He's the one who decided to take education out of the hands of the church, and fund it through the county. That forced what we would now know as the discipline of the market onto schools. That was back in 1870, a bit before your time.

even though things have got no better under Mr Blair.
And you thought they would? (stifles a giggle.)

Weather: Warmer, the odd shower, kinda humid. 16.

Track of the Day: No. Let's give it justice.

Track Of The Month

Tonight And The Rest Of My Life - Nina Gordon. This is just *the* greatest. Like a massive, intricate ice sculpture that is so cold it hurts to be in the same room, yet is so beautiful that it holds the eye totally. Such is the majesty of the Verruca Salt lady's first solo single. The totally understated vocals leave so much room for interpretation - room that a lesser talent such as Mariah or Whitney would have filled with distracting warbles. There's a plaintive backing track that underpins the sparse nature of the track. It's *so* much more fulfilling as a result.

Nieske
It turned out my perfect match would be Harrison Ford...
Sounds familiar.

Anyway, my best female match would be Britney Spears!!
Sounds *very* familiar. You been looking at my answers again? (:

Well, I *do* have one of her songs on mp3, maybe I've fallen for her charms after all :)
Her charms, her red leather catsuit, the one that looks like an over-ripe tomato wrapped in clingfilm, what's the difference?

Actually I do love one particular shot of her in the Lucky video... She's wearing black clothes, and for some reason I just *really* like her in that shot. Well, yeah :)
I think this is the shot that looked awfully familiar the first time I saw the vid, a few months back now. In it, Birtney seems to look like Celine Dion. Make of which that you will what.

"I Would Stay", by a new, young Dutch band called Krezip.
I don't care that they're new. I don't mind that they're young. I'm not even bothered that they're Dutch. All that matters is that they're good, and boy are they good.

I'm really considering studying in some foreign country though! Next Tuesday I'm gonna get into it a little more, I have an appointment with someone who gives advice about stuff like that. So yeah, I'll keep you posted :)
ERASMUS will help you come to Britain or Ireland.

Maybe Dublin, London, Cambridge, or somewhere in the US. I'll keep you posted :)
Intelligence, in London? Artificial or otherwise, you'll be lucky (:

Weather: Sunny, the rain holds off. Nippy, though. 14.

Sara
I just was invited to join this English group online, and I wrote to the lady who owns it, because it says you have to be an english citizen, which I, of course, am not, and will not be for awhile.
Rupert Giles writes:
Neither is she. The last English subjects would have been born in 1707, just before the Act of Union with Scotland created the United Kingdom. So, even if Angel were English, he would be some years too young to be an English subject.

The concept of citizenship didn't arise until after the first world war, and the development of the passport. As everyone was, by then, a subject of the British crown, the citizenship was also named British, and no-one really noticed.

Cup of tea, anyone?

One would have thought that an Anne Robinson impression in English would have done the trick. But no, we must be dealing with someone whose first language is not [en]. Let's try [fr-ca] what exactly are these little things u keep sending me like parts of books or something.,.....
ooooook thaaaaanksssss byeee
1) Ces sont lettres; ils ne sont pas livres.
2) Merci pour votre utilisation de les lettres petites. Nous pouvons comprenderons votre point maintenent.
3) Du paragraphe?
4) Vous n'etes pas un teletubby; des «Laa-Laa» du notre liste ont l'entitlement exclusif d'utiliser «ooooook».
5) Si vous prendres conge de cette liste, ecrirais a « so-called-off@mail-list.com ».
6) Tout de meme, c'est vrai.
7) Vous etes le maillon le plus faible; vous laissez avec rien; au revoir.

Something I'll be running from time to time during the football season: the League Ladders. Last update. Points for a win, points deducted for a loss, and the bigger the upset, the bigger the points.

Last	This	Team	Points	Change
2	1=	Manchester United	1075	+26
3	1=	Arsenal	1075	+29
5	3	Leicester	1069	+46
9	4	Aston Villa	1040	+32
8	5	Chelsea	1029	+18
1	6	Leeds	1028	-32
7	7	Liverpool	1020	+07
4	8	Newcastle United	1017	-10
20	9	Charlton	1007	+48
10	10	Middlesborough	1004	+02
14	11	Ipswich	1000	+16
15	12	Sunderland	991	+13
11	13	Tottenham	990	-10
16	14	Southampton	978	+05
18	15	West Ham	977	+09
11	16	Everton	962	-38
6	17	Coventry City	960	-57
19	18	Manchester City	955	-11
13	19	Bradford	937	-57
17	20	Derby County	934	-36

Next update - mid November.