The sneering man

Doctor Who Capaldi series 1

The New Doctor Who series staring Peter Capaldi finished last night.
The series ended with the Doctor planning on going home to Gallifrey to start a new life there, and Clara Oswald walking away after the death of her new love Danny Pink (still a bloody silly name) the series seems to come to an end in more ways than one after twelve episodes. Theres still the Christmas special on Christmas day starring Nick Frost as Santa (frosty the santa?)
Anyway you get the feeling the series has come to an ending for real.  I don't know if the BBC are planning a rest or if they'll be big cast changes, but certainly something needs to be done.  I know the new Doctors not popular, so far I've only found one person who actually likes him, I certainly don't like the 'sneering man' as I call Capaldi.  I get the feeling he doesn't enjoy the role, it feels like his hearts not in it, the last two doctors have been really enthusiastic, Capaldi looks like he's reading the lines for the first time, theres no feeling, and please stop him sneering, he looks like a rabbit with those teeth !

Seat belts and crash helmets

Seat belts and crash helmets!  What a pain in the ass!
Now don't get me wrong, I always wear my seat belt when I'm driving, and I always wore my crash helmet on the bike when I was a public road.  And theres no doubt both save lives, no question at all about that, you'd be a fool to ride or drive without one.
That said what I object to is being forced to wear one.
You see not wearing a crash helmet never killed anyone else except the rider, it's his or her head thats on the line. And if your on your own in a car the same applies to a seat belt, it's a bit different if theres passengers, if the car rolls over you get the driver "tumble dried" around the inside of the vehicle hitting the passengers.  Believe me you wouldn't want that happening, especially if it's me!  Just the weight in my pockets could kill you without my weight landing on top.
You see the problem with seat belts is they can be awkward, you can't get in your pockets to get money out to pay the car park, stuff like that, the same with parking, sometimes you need to turn around or lean out of the door to see.
My car has a hissy fit if I try to drive it with a selt belt undone, a bleeper goes off and goes totally bonkers after about 30 seconds.  It's actually dangerious, it's so distracting and you cant hear instructions over it if your trying to do something. There really should be an option to turn it off.
The big issues is where will it end.  Why for example are we allowed to walk across a road with cars feet away at a crossing, yet if I were mending the wall on the pavement half a mile of road would be closed off by the cone police.  Why don't busses have seat belts on all the seats (coaches only have them on the front row) Why do lorry drives have to wear hi-vis jackets all the time but car drives, the most common road users don't have to?

Nik Wallenda Chicago

Well after all the hype about about Nik Wallendas Chicago high wire walk the walk itself was a total anticlimax.
Discovery Channel drove me mental with constant ad's about the event, it must have cost them a fortune to stage it, sadly the whole thing was pointless. 
You see while the high wire walk was dangerous it wasn't really anything special, yes he walked between two high rise towers over the city of Chicago, but so what,  it was a highly planned and hugely expensive set up 588 feet high with experts on hand to set it all up, and Wallenda is a famous hire wire walker, from a circus family. 
But in 1977 Philippe Petit walked a 1.368 foot high wire between the twin towers in New York (he made 8 passes back and fro) and that was an unauthorised event with the cable rigged up my himself and a few friends.
The bit that got me annoyed (it doesn't take much) is not so much the high wire walk, yes he did it fair and square, and he could have fallen and died.  No it was the fact a five minute walk followed shortly by another five minute walk took a four hour program. 
My God talk about boring!  They talked to the crowd, they talked to the local weatherman, who had more kit there than NASA have for a space launch.  They talked to Nik's dad, They talked to each other, they showed lots of pointless footage of Niks walk across the grand canyon, and even more pointless footage of Chicago with bugger all happening.  It was dire, really sad.
So whats next Nik?  something else thats been done before?  Maybe a walk between two balloons.... Nahh thats been done as well.  And I haven't got another spare four hours of my life to waste!

Strictly come time wasting!

I accidentally saw some of BBC's strictly come dancing, (or strictly come time wasting as I call it) last night.  After being violently sick for several minutes I got to thinking about the title, how can it be "strictly come dancing?".
Come dancing was a proper dance program with proper dancers, the utter garbage now masquerading as strictly come dancing, is neither of these, it's pseudo-celebrity shambles. First off three quarters of the program isn't actually dancing, it's talking to anybody who'll stand still long enough and showing what the so called celebs did yesterday, so not strictly dancing then!  Secondly about half the contestants seem to be there for light relief, theres more chance of my keyboard winning a dance competition than some of these!.
I mean come on it's called strictly come bloody dancing, so at least find people who can dance or have a fighting chance of learning to dance.  Don't these people realise they are making themselves look bloody silly on national television.... Or is it that they are so far down the celebrity food chain that any exposure is better than none?  Imagine the next casting session...  "What did you last do?"  "Oh I was the left footed twit who kept falling over on strictly come dancing"   "Next please!"  Yeah thats going to help your career then.
The funniest part is Strictly and the X factor have a huge rivalry, each accusing the other of trying to upstage and steal viewers.  Why?  Both shows are a total joke, strictly come dancing has bugger all dancing in it and the X factor insists of having an act with no talent (the standard joke act) who is kept in till the final, the joke act shouldn't get past the first auditions never mind getting in front of the panel.
Scrap them both and put something decent on... If you can remember what entertainment is.

Oh yeah a note to the BBC.   Halloween is on the 31 of October (every year), Strictly Halloween special was on the 1st on November so not Halloween then morons!   What next the Christmas queens speech in July?  And while I'm at it, why is Top gears Christmas special in bloody Easter?  Nip out and buy a bloody calendar.

Virgin Galactic crash

Virgin Galactic space ship two has suffered what they are describing as an "serious anomaly resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo".  Or in normal peoples language a crash.
Why people try and dress things up baffles me, anybody with a telly has seen it in bits scattered across the desert, calling it a loss or an anomaly isn't fooling anyone.
Getting into space actually isn't too difficult if you have an unlimited budget, NASA made a lot of trips into space with only two fatal space flights (three if you count X15 which technically went into space)
Two out of over a hundred isn't that bad, not a great accident rate it has to be admitted but space is dangerous, and the vehicles used to get there are complex and full of highly explosive stuff, so all in all not bad.
The hard part is going to be making it safe enough for Joe public.  I suspect we simply haven't reached the technological level yet to make it totally safe (it'll probably never be totally safe) 
To do what Virgin are trying to do is to be applauded, to make space affordable and realistic for the normal person, and who knows where it'll end?  Mars maybe? 
But when they get it working, if theres regular flights there will be accidents, with anything as complex as a space ship there are inevitably going to be accidents, Jumbo jets are pretty damm safe airplanes, but they still crash.
The big question is will Virgin survive the first fatal passenger crash......

Metropolitan police waste money again

Metropolitan police waste money again.  yep!,  the same force that spent huge sums of money paying people to change light bulbs for them are at it again.  This time they've spent a ton of money testing new software that studies peoples facebook posts and tries to work out who's going to commit offences in the future.
A few problems with that though.  One like all software it'll be crap and get it wrong half the time.  Two these people won't have committed any offence, so the police have no legal recourse until they do anyway (so they might as well have just waited)   Three they don't have enough police as it is, so the few that they do have will now be chasing future crimes that haven't happened yet, and may never happen.
So what have we learned?  That the police don't seem very bothered by crimes that actually happen now, get burgled and you might get a copper rushed there a week next Thursday.   However if your reporting something that happened in 1975, or 2042 then they'll be straight around your house.
Bloody barmy or what!