Sheaf Saint

Went to see the new comedy from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost The World's End the other night. Was nowhere near as funny as the two previous instalments in their jokingly-titled Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) but still a good laugh and worth watching.

I understand the situations where zero hour contracts are necessary. My partner for example works in community support with mental health patients, and is on a zero-hr contract. It makes perfect sense because her organisation really do not know when or for how long her services are required each week. The good thing is, in her case anyway, that if a service-user cancels the appointment with her at short notice, she still gets paid for however many hours it was agreed she would have been working with them. In such cases, I have no objection to such contracts as they are nothing new and tend to benefit both parties. However, where you have a company like Sports Direct essentially getting their entire workforce on 0-hr contracts, knowing full well that most of them will be doing full time hours anyway, it's just a cynical and sh*tty way of getting cheap labour and not offering the rights and benefits that full-time employees are supposed to receive.

If the government are really serious about protecting minors from inappropriate content, then they could make a start by looking at the music charts... http://rock.rapgenius.com/Robin-thicke-blurred-lines-lyrics#note-1609183 Songs have been banned from the charts for many different reasons over the years, but it seems we have now reached a point where nobody is the slightest bit bothered about a number one single which advocates brutal, violent anal sex.

Ah yes, Huawei - the Chinese company that was recently identified by the US government as a threat to its national security.

Good read that. There is an even more in-depth analysis and comment on it here... http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/uk-internet-censorship-considerations.html Essentially, what Cameron is asking us to do is voluntarily accept broad-ranging internet censorship that will not succeed in it's supposed aim of protecting children from sexually-explicit content, and will only serve to harm legitimate businesses and make it easier for the government to identify potential 'high-risk' targets for surveillance based on their filtering choices. Considering how the tories loved to berate Labour when they were in office for creating a nanny state, it is extremely hard to believe that the ultimate aim of this legislation is actually what it is being dressed up as, and if the UK population just rolls over and accepts this as law (which we always do) then we can kiss goodbye to the principle of free speech to which we are supposedly entitled.

Atoms for Peace. Took a couple of listens but the album has really grown on me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o90VsOopAws

http://www.livescience.com/38347-north-pole-ice-melt-lake.html

Done mate - £10 donation to a worthy cause. Best of luck with it. I did a 60-mile ride between Leeds and Sheffield a few years ago and was shockingly under-prepared for it. Needless to say, I will be undertaking a fair bit more training when I (hopefully) attempt the Trans-Pennine Trail coast-to-coast ride this autumn. I'll be doing it for Mind so I'll share my justgiving page when it's all confirmed.

You can always trust the Daily Mail to be right at the cutting edge with their exclusives eh?... http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?42252-To-boldly-go&highlight=boldly#.Ue5z643qlv4

Maybe it's just me but I fail to see how any of that fits with your description of 'race to the bottom'. Perhaps you could enlighten me.

Could you elaborate a little on what you mean by 'race to the bottom'?

Gove in 'basing policies on flawed and discredited data' shocker... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/utterly-wrong-flawed-academics-deride-league-tables-that-guide-michael-goves-reforms-8720956.html

Not at this time, but I am getting some sketchy reports of ursine defecation in a forested area. More to follow....

I seem to remember an incident on that road many years ago where a Porsche driver was going so fast that when he crashed he managed to flip the car over the fence onto the railway line.

I bought it on the day of release and I saw him on the live tour in Sheffield back in May. I've tried and tried to like it but I just find it very disappointing compared to his earlier work. Too much attention to the finer details of the production and not enough emphasis on the bigger picture has resulted, with one exception (Cirrus), in a collection of cleverly-produced but instantly forgettable tracks that sadly are no more than the sum of their parts. Shame really.

I have just finished watching this series (still got the movie to watch yet) after reading a few posts about it on this thread previously. I'm not sure how but it completely crept under my radar before now. I find it a strange one really. In many ways it was very good, but it was also pretty poor and cheesy in a lot of ways as well. The biggest problem I think was that it was a science-fiction series but it was seriously lacking in any actual sciencey stuff. It was basically just a western-style show about some frontier criminals that happened to be set in space. It was also poorly researched from a writing point of view. Captain Reynolds and Zoe were supposedly veterans of a war, but during the actual fighting scenes they would normally just stand out in the open with wooden looks on their faces shooting at people. It was almost as bad as the A-team was for military realism. I still don't get why the preacher was included. He showed up wanting a ticket to nowhere in the first episode and didn't make a single noteworthy contribution to the script that I can remember. He may as well not have been there at all. And the whole sexual tension thing between Mal/Inara and Simon/Caylee was very badly written and executed by the actors as well I thought. For me the only really good, believable character was Jayne. The final episode was a massive let-down. I guess they expected to get another series so nothing really got resolved and it just fizzled out. BUT... despite all the above comments making it appear I hated it, I actually really enjoyed watching it

I have just finished watching this series (still got the movie to watch yet) after reading a few posts about it on this thread previously. I'm not sure how but it completely crept under my radar before now. I find it a strange one really. In many ways it was very good, but it was also pretty poor and cheesy in a lot of ways as well. The biggest problem I think was that it was a science-fiction series but it was seriously lacking in any actual sciencey stuff. It was basically just a western-style show about some frontier criminals that happened to be set in space. It was also poorly researched from a writing point of view. Captain Reynolds and Zoe were supposedly veterans of a war, but during the actual fighting scenes they would normally just stand out in the open with wooden looks on their faces shooting at people. It was almost as bad as the A-team was for military realism. I still don't get why the preacher was included. He showed up wanting a ticket to nowhere in the first episode and didn't make a single noteworthy contribution to the script that I can remember. He may as well not have been there at all. And the whole sexual tension thing between Mal/Inara and Simon/Caylee was very badly written and executed by the actors as well I thought. For me the only really good, believable character was Jayne. The final episode was a massive let-down. I guess they expected to get another series so nothing really got resolved and it just fizzled out. BUT... despite all the above comments making it appear I hated it, I actually really enjoyed watching it

I'll be seeing them at Beat Herder festival this coming weekend. I wasn't too bothered when I heard they had been announced to play, but following the huge praise they have been getting from their Glasonbury performance, I reckon I might pop along and watch them.

Quantic - The 5th Exotic Orbital - In-Sides Portishead - Dummy Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun Bonobo - Days to Come

Thanks for bringing this to my attention Charlie, I really must watch this. I was listening recently to Chris Tarrant talking on R4 about when he worked with Kenny, and how he believes him to be the greatest radio presenter who ever lived. Alas I am too young to remember him on the radio but I do have great memories of his TV series from my childhood, although I was probably too young to appreciate a lot of the humour at the time. Like so many troubled geniuses, he was taken from us far too young.

Well I hope I still have Mick Jagger's energy by the time I get to his age. Although I couldn't help but notice that Charlie Watts looked a bit like the guy from the wonga.com advert!

As long as they don't just do another "Terminator goes back in time to kill John Connor" story then it could be good. Salvation left a lot of scope to explore the future war with the machines aspect I thought, and if it's done well (with due acknowledgement to the original timelines) then it could be very good.

Went to see Spike Island at the weekend. It's pretty cheesy, and unfortunately ends up as not much more than a will they/won't they love story by the end, but it seems to capture the spirit of Madchester quite well. Worth watching if you have fond memories of the whole indie scene during the Stone Roses' heyday, but if not then it's probably to be avoided.