The Martians And Us a BBC documentary series on the history of British science fiction.
Part 1 - 'From Apes To Aliens' (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
Part 2 - 'Trouble In Paradise' (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
Part 3 - The End Of The World As We Know It (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
[more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Jun 7, 2010 -
7 comments
The UK Government has published extracts from COINS, the
Combined Online Information System used by the Treasury to track all public spending by the Government. Together, the
files constitute about 11Gb of data in delimited text format containing consolidated financial information for each department and account type.
[more inside]
posted by Electric Dragon
on Jun 4, 2010 -
3 comments
The Guardian has
an article on Pimm's, a traditional gin-based English summer drink. Invented by one James Pimm in London in 1840, Pimm's soon became associated with upper-class institutions and the British Empire; its popularity declined somewhat in the decades following World War 2 (apart from a few revivals as part of ironic constructions of "Britishness"), though it has recently experienced a resurgence in popularity. Recipes for serving Pimm's vary, though they typically involve mixing it with lemonade and/or ginger beer in a jug and adding oranges, strawberries, sliced cucumber and mint. While the formula remains a secret, knockoffs do exist (both Sainsbury's and Aldi sell their own substitutes, though Sainsbury's
had to change the label on its to look less like the original), or you could try
making your own.
posted by acb
on May 19, 2010 -
151 comments
Cul-de-sac is a new independent film (
trailer, briefly NSFW) by London-based directors
Ramin Goudarzi Nejad & Mahshad Torkan. It tells the story of Kiana Firouz, a filmmaker, actress, and lesbian activist who fled Iran after authorities learned of her attempt to make an underground documentary about the lives of
Iranian gays and lesbians. According to
this interview, Firouz didn't write the film, but plays herself. Earlier this month, her asylum petition was allegedly
denied. The denial shouldn't have been surprising according to statistics in a
report (pdf) by the
UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, which states that the refusal rate for lesbians and gay men is as high as 98-99%. Although the Home Office claims it takes the sexual orientation of asylum seekers into consideration, laws which permit deportation of gay and lesbian asylum seekers have recently been
challenged in the supreme court.
posted by treepour
on May 13, 2010 -
10 comments
If politicians were mathematicians. "I would like to suggest two systems for parliamentary votes, one that would weaken the party system but without killing it off entirely, and one that would protect large minorities. Neither has the slightest chance of being adopted, because they are both too complicated to be taken seriously. But mathematicians wouldn’t find them complicated at all — hence the title of this post." Fields medalist Tim Gowers messes around with political axioms.
posted by escabeche
on May 12, 2010 -
18 comments
"What are you f**king playing at?” Mr Murdoch asked Mr Kelner in a loud voice and in front of dozens of bemused journalists."
This week, 300,000 copies of the UK's
Independent newspaper were distributed for free advertising the paper's claim to editorial independence stating, "Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election – you will".
According to the Financial Times, Murdoch's son James subsequently stormed
into the Independent's newsroom brandishing a copy of the edition, protesting it besmirched his father’s reputation. "
Lively times," the
Guardian observes.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Apr 22, 2010 -
62 comments
Naomi Wolf (
previously) in her essay
"Tea Time in America", wrote:
"...concentration of executive power has threatened America’s system of checks and balances and given the Federal government the authority to spy on citizens, withhold information, and aggressively arrest and even Taser protesters – or to hire private contractors to do so. In these circumstances, the Tea Party activists’ focus on supporting states’ autonomy – and even on property rights and the right to bear arms – can seem like a prescient effort to constrain overweening corporate and military power in national government."
[more inside]
posted by blue funk
on Apr 5, 2010 -
136 comments
UK Space Agency launched with
a logo that "looks uncannily like the logo for the British Rocket Group, a scientific body from Doctor Who." It's mission is
to develop British space technology, "[b]ut this will have to be done through
unmanned space activities, because for the foreseeable future the UKSA will not have enough resources to reverse the decision,
taken by the Thatcher government in the 1980s, that Britain will not pay for manned space flights... planned expeditions to the International Space Station will be funded by the country's partners in the European Space Agency."
posted by kliuless
on Mar 24, 2010 -
35 comments
In 1937, the London News Chronicle published a photograph of five boys at the gates of Lord's cricket ground; two stood aloof in top hats and tails, with their backs to a group of three working-class lads. The resulting photograph became famous as a metaphor for the class divide in Britain, appearing in newspaper stories about school reform, inequality and bourgeois guilt and on the
covers of books. The photograph appeared in the Getty Images archive as "
Toffs and Toughs", and even was printed on a jigsaw puzzle in 2004. The identities of the three working-class boys were unknown until a journalist tracked them down in 1998;
here is an article on the history of the photograph and the lives of the five boys in it.
posted by acb
on Mar 23, 2010 -
36 comments
Music! - A 1968 documentary by the National Music Council of Great Britain, featuring folk singing, The Beatles, and even early electronic music produced by tape splicing.
Part 1,
part 2,
part 3,
part 4,
part 5.
posted by Artw
on Mar 7, 2010 -
8 comments
While much is being made of
dysfunctional government [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9] and
hung parliament [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5], David Cameron's
pitches for a fairer society [
1,
2,
3],
smarter policy [
1,
2,
3] and
employee ownership [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7] have been positively, uh,
Obamanian.
* [more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Mar 5, 2010 -
26 comments
"
Half a million dirty Britons wash their bed sheets only three times a year, a survey discloses laying bare the disgusting bedroom habits of the nation. One in six people also admitted waiting at least a month before washing their bed sheets." "
Londoners have the dirtiest bed sheets in the country."
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Feb 17, 2010 -
238 comments
For quite some time, I’d wanted to make a screwball comedy. A fast-talking, wildly acclerating ensemble comedy that gets stupider and stupider. I never imagined it would be about a war, and inspired by a very recent war at that. But Simon, Jesse, Tony and I all felt that the more we found out about the dysfunction in Washington and the naivety in London leading up to the Iraq invasion, the more obvious it was that the only way to deal accurately and fairly with this topic was as a screwball comedy. - The Oscar nominated script for
In The Loop, with an introduction by writer Armando Iannucci.
posted by Artw
on Feb 13, 2010 -
33 comments
Comedian and activist,
Mark Thomas, has been touring the UK over the past year, compiling a set of policies that his audiences want to see implemented in Britain. As part of the publicity for the resulting book,
The People's Manifesto, his publishers are offering to pay one lucky applicant's £500 deposit and campaign expenses to stand for public office at the upcoming general election, on the condition that they will base their campaign on the policies gathered in
the book.
[more inside]
posted by idiomatika
on Feb 9, 2010 -
35 comments
