Phone hacking verdicts

From The Evening Standard and Harry Potter Wiki

Rebekah Brooks was today sensationally cleared of all charges in the phone hacking trial. But Andy Coulson, the former Daily Prophet editor and spin doctor, hung his head in the dock at the Old Bailey as he looks set to go to Azkaban.

He was found guilty of conspiring to hack muggle communication devices and the Wizengamot continues its deliberations on charges of him plotting to make illegal payments to Ministry of Magic officials for stories.

Coulson’s ex-lover Rebekah Brooks, a trusted protégé of Lord Voldemort, is now free to resume her career as a Death Eater. The flame haired high flyer* punched the air in the dock, hugged her lawyers and fellow defendants and then left on a broom stick.

* That phrase is straight from the Evening Standard article, they didn't dare write "The red haired witch" or say that she cackled as she left the Court.

Fun Online Polls: Harry Potter films & Plebgate

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll, on an unsurprisingly low turnout were as follows:

Which is your favourite Harry Potter film?

Philosopher's Stone 9%
Chamber of Secrets 4%
Prisoner of Azkaban 11%
Goblet of Fire 0%
Order of The Phoenix 0%
Half Blood Prince 0%
Deathly Hallows - Part 1 4%
Deathly Hallows - Part 2 5%
I've never seen any of them 68%

By a slim margin, people liked "Prisoner of Azkaban" best, which also happens to be my favourite, it's the best-made film in terms of conveying the story from the book with a lot of background colour without getting too distracted by sub-plots or random scenes.

It's also interesting that the first three films got the most votes, I suppose people got bored after that apart from a small hard core who saw it through to the bitter end and then liked those best.
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The Plebgate affair drags on, without anybody caring any more:

A transcript of the meeting showed that, while he admitted swearing, Mr Mitchell denied using the word "pleb" or insulting the police.

I'm not sure if it's possibly to swear at somebody without insulting them, I've never got away with it.

But on the basis of no information whatsoever, let's settle the matter with a Trial By Internet.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Ralph Miliband & Harry Potter films

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Did Ralph Miliband 'hate Britain'?
Yes - 33%
Oh come off it, he was just gorging at the taxpayer funded trough just like the rest of them - 25%
I'd never heard of him before David Miliband became Foreign Secretary - 18%
Depends what you mean by 'Britain' - 15%
No - 9%

So now we know. Or we know what people think, at least.
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Prompted by The Stigler's post yesterday: which is your favourite Harry Potter film?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Harry Potter Marathon

Over the last couple of weekends, I've watched all 8 Harry Potter films.

And there's a lot to like in the films. I think there's a lot of imagination in the characters, how things look and the spells and artefacts. The first film is rather dull, but after that it gets better. And towards the end when we get into the moral choices of some characters, that's quite interesting.

But I do have a couple of problems (maybe spoilers ahead)...

The main problem I have with Harry Potter is that he's really Magic Superman. The parallel being that he got his talents at birth, and is a moral good guy from the start. And at almost every point, he can do the magic he needs, much like the way that Superman kept on pulling new powers out of his arse whenever a plot point needed it. He never feels the temptation to use magic to get hot muggle chicks, or to join Voldemort, despite all the power he could get from it.

The other problem I have is how magic is used and never used again with no explanation. Something that got used to fix something doesn't get used again, with no explanation as to why.

Anyway, they're quite entertaining, the blu-ray transfers are very good and for £25 for all 8 is a bit of a bargain.

Fun Online Polls: Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes & Bongo Bongo Land

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which were the coolest/scariest of Lord Voldemort's horcruxes? Multiple votes allowed.

I have no idea what you are talking about - 58 votes
Harry Potter himself - 9 votes
Tom Riddle's diary - 8 votes
Professor Quirrel - 4 votes
Nagini the snake - 4 votes
Salazar Slytherin's locket - 3 votes
Marvolo Gaunt's ring - 1 vote
Helga Hufflepuff's cup - 1 vote
Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem - 0 votes

Thanks to the 81 people who took part, the 23 people who did know what I was talking about cast on average 1.3 votes each. I chose the locket and the ring myself, the others were neither cool nor scary. Nagini the snake? Pah! Nevile "cardigans are a sign of leadership" Longbottom chopped its head off and it died. Big deal. Not much more to say.
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And lo, to Godfrey Bloom's comments about sending aid to Bongo Bongo Land so that their dictators can buy Ferraris, flats in Paris and Ray-Ban sunglasses*, which provoked one interesting response by Justine Greening in today's Evening Standard:

Cabinet minister Justine Greening today hit back at critics of Britain’s aid spending, accusing some of them of wanting the country to “shut up shop”.

The Overseas Aid Secretary launched a staunch defence of UK aid projects including to Nigeria which has its own space programme and to Somalia where some supplies were recently seized or destroyed by terrorists.

Monkey says what?

Anyway, cut to the chase (hideous Americanism but fun to say), that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

* I take his point about Ferraris and flats in Paris, but Ray-Ban sunglasses retail for under £200 a pop, that's tuppence ha'penny compared to some expense claims submitted by our MPs, or indeed by MEPs like Mr Bloom.

Fun Online Polls: Help To SellBuy & Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Help To Buy: giving home buyers a twenty per cent low-interest loan is...

A brilliant idea (I am a banker or large land owner) - 2%
A very good idea - it will push up the value of my house - 5%
A good idea - it will help the Tories get re-elected 2%
A stupid idea - it will just inflate house prices and worsen the next crash - 24%
A really stupid idea - younger buyers will just end up deeper in debt - 22%
An insane idea - we should be taxing land values, not subsidising them - 40%
Other, please specify - 6%

I accept that people who respond to the Fun Online Polls here are not representative of the general public, but that seems pretty conclusive to me. Thank you everybody who took part.
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This week, an entirely flippant and light hearted poll, the significance of which will escape most people: "Which was the coolest/scariest of Lord Voldemort's horcruxes?"

Background here.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Real life Weasley house aka The Burrow

I can't find a decent image of the actual Weasley house from the film because it only existed as CGI anyway, and appeared to shape-shift between films, popping up next to a forest in one film and then in the middle of a flat plain a couple of films later, but here's a real life version from The Daily Mail:

"Any moment, someone's going to find out I'm a total Muggle": Hermione Granger admits feeling 'inadequate' as a working witch

From The Daily Prophet:

She's tried to establish a career away from Harry Potter with a job in the Auror Office at the Ministry of Magic and as a visting professor at Durmstrang's Academy. However with her Hogwarts days firmly behind her, Hermione Granger admits she's convinced her 'game' is up as a full-time witch.

She has tried to carve a name for herself as an adult, serious bureaucrat in the Auror Office but was forced out after trying to impose very formalised operational and report-writing procedures and admits feeling 'inadequate' about her teaching skills after Durmstrang students said she gabbled her lectures "and expected us to know everything before the lecture had even started."

In an interview with Quibbler magazine, the 23-year-old said: 'It's called the impostor syndrome. It's almost like the harder I try, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I'm just going 'Any moment, someone's going to find out I'm a total fraud, and that I don't deserve credit for what Harry achieved.' I can't possibly live up to what everyone thinks I am and what everyone's expectations of me are."

After she finally helped defeated Lord Voldemort (as re-filmed in the drama-documentary "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part II" in 2010), she had lost confidence in herself as a magician. It was only when she was appointed as assistant director of the Auror's office under director Stephen Chbosky the following year, that she began to rebuild her self-esteem, which was shattered again after many staff refused openly to take instructions from "that know-it-all bitch, er, witch".

Her confidence took a further body blow when Durmstrang's Quidditch professor Viktor Durmstrang completely blanked her at staff meetings. Hermione's on-off boyfriend, Ron Weasley, is happily working under his father in Muggle Artefacts, where he regales colleagues with ever more colourful anecdotes about how he and Harry defeated You-Know-Who.

Fun Online Polls: The Clash, R-Patz & K-Stew

How time flies when you are having fun! I've just noticed that this is the 8,000th post on this here 'blog. My thanks to BobE, The Stigler and Lola for contributing to this magnificent total.
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The results in last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which is your favourite Clash albums?

London Calling - 38%
The Clash (UK version) - 21%
Give 'em Enough Rope - 6%
Sandinista! - 4%
Cut The Crap - 2%
The Clash (US version) - 0%
Cost of Living EP - 0%
Combat Rock - 0%
None of the above - 29%

It was a low turnout for a fairly specialist topic, but thank you everybody who took part. If you are into The Clash, it's difficult to choose just one, but this were a Dessert Island Discs* type scenario where you can only take one Clash album with you, I'd choose "London Calling" as well.

* That's not a typo. Their drummer was called Topping Headon.
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To those who prefer the UK version to the US version, in the words of Prisoner Fooble:


Here's the track listing for the UK version:
Janie Jones
Remote Control
I'm So Bored With The U.S.A.
White Riot (the crap mono version)
Hate And War
What's My Name
Deny
London's Burning
Career Opportunities
Cheat
Protex Blue
Police And Thieves
48 Hours
Garageland

Here's the track listing for the US version:
Clash City Rockers
I'm So Bored With The U.S.A.
Remote Control
Complete Control
White Riot (the great stereo version with the guitar solo)
White Man In Hammersmith Palais
London's Burning
I Fought The Law
Janie Jones
Career Opportunities
What's My Name
Hate And War
Police And Thieves
Jail Guitar Doors
Garageland
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And lo, to this week's Fun Online Poll.

Click at random on the widget in the side bar.

Like a cow attack but smaller

Spotted by بول, from Softpedia:

When it comes to animal attacks, most people work on the assumption that the aggressor must necessarily be a predator, or at least an enraged dog.*

However, a paperboy from Utah recently learned (the hard way, one might add) that goats can also be pretty scary. Thus, Jaxon Gessel got attacked by an 18-month-old pet-Goat Who Must Not Be Named, which knocked him off his bike, tackled him and chased him up a tree.**

Interestingly enough, this 14-year-old boy did nothing to provoke The Dark Ruminant: he was simply riding around, making sure the Utah residents under his “jurisdiction” got their morning papers, sources explain.

* Or a cow, a bull or a calf.

** Presumably not a Whomping Willow.

"What is JK Rowling’s obsession with public transport?"

From The Daily Mail:

•Harry Potter author says writing about it "has made me much less afraid of it"

JK Rowling has admitted she is obsessed with 'buses and trains and "can't understand why they don't obsess everybody".

Her new book The Casual Vacancy starts with a character hopping on the tram and the Harry Potter author says that writing about local bus services and the rail network "has made me much less afraid of it".

Speaking last night, on the day her book was released, she answered questions from 900 assembled fans at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. Ms Rowling admitted "people took the Tube a lot in my teens" and her obsession was cemented when her mother started taking the 'bus to work when she was 25.

"Funnily enough, flying has never worried me, and neither have tunnels," she continued, "But taxis still give me the creeps. So I'll be going home via the Floo Network."

Robert Pattinson

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

We finally got round to seeing this film today, probably just in time before its run in the cinemas ends.

There's nothing I can add to all the reviews already written (and those who wanted to see it will already have seen it; those who aren't interested aren't) except to point out that with Toy Story 3 it was flagged well in advance that grown men would cry, so at least I was warned.

None of the Harry Potter reviews which I read said any such thing, and even though I re-read the second half of the book in the past couple of weeks and knew exactly what happens and when, I spent the last ten or fifteen minutes of the film blubbing and sobbing away in my quiet and manly fashion.

Damn you, Hermione and Ron for bringing the first tear to my eye! Damn you, Luna and Neville for making my nose start to run! And especially, damn you Harry. for cruelly dumping Ginny and marrying Sarah Brown instead!

"Goblin notions of ownership, payment and repayment are not the same as human ones."

From pages 417-418 of the paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

"Then I have to say this," Bill went on. "If you have struck any kind of bargain with Griphook, and most particularly if that bargain involves treasure, you must be exceptionally careful. Goblins notions of ownership, payment and repayment are not the same as human ones."

Harry felt a slight squirm of discomfort, as though a small snake had stirred inside him. [Harry has just promised to give Griphook the Sword of Gryffindor, but deliberately didn't tell him when. Griphook settles the matter later on by simply taking the sword and disapparating with it].

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"We are talking about a different of being," said Bill. "Dealings between wizards and goblins have been fraught for centuries - but you'll know all that from History of Magic. There has been fault on both sides, I would never claim that wizards have been innocent. However, there is a belief among some goblins, and those at Gringotts [Bank] are perhaps the most prone to it, that wizards cannot be trusted in matters of gold and treasure, that they have no respect for goblin ownership."

"I respect -" Harry began, but Bill shook his head.

"You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs."

"But if it was bought- '"

"- then they would consider it rented by the one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. you saw Griphook's face when the tiara passed before his eyes. He disapproves. I believe he thinks, as do the fiercest of his kind, that it ought to have been returned to the goblins once the original purchaser died. They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft."

Guess the film

Harry Potter's Home-Owner-Ist Uncle Vernon

From page 32 of the paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

"According to you", Vernon Dursley said now, resuming his pacing up and down the living room, "we -Petunia, Dudley and I - are in danger. From - from -"

"Some of 'my lot', right", said Harry.

"Well, I don't believe it, " repeated Uncle Vernon, coming to a halt in front of Harry again. "I was awake half the night thinking it all over, and I believe it's a plot to get the house."

"The house?" repeated Harry. "What house?"

"This house!" shrieked Uncle Vernon, the vein in his forehead starting to pulse. "Our house! House prices are sky-rocketing round here! You want us out of the way and then you're going to do a bit of hocus-pocus and before we know it the deeds will be in your name and- "

"Are you out of your mind?" demanded Harry. "A plot to get this house? Are you actually as stupid as you look?"

"Don't you dare-!" squealed Aunt Petunia, but again, Vernon waved her down; slights on his personal appearance were, it seemed, as nothing to the danger he had spotted.

"Just in case you'd forgotten", said Harry [playing the Home-Owner-Ist trump card], "I've already got a house. My godfather left me one. So why would I want this one? All the happy memories?"

Fun Online Polls: Harry Potter & Valentine's Day

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll. The results are:

If you were Harry Potter, with whom would you have liked to get hitched?

I have no idea who any of these people are - 52%
Hermione Grainger - 19%
Luna 'Loony' Lovegood - 13%
Parvati Patel - 5%
Ginny Weasley - 5%
Cho Chang - 4%
Other, please specify - 2%

So well done the 48% of you did have an idea, and well done to fictional characters Hermione Grainger (predictably enough) and Luna (who would be pleasantly surprised by this, if she existed).
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Seeing as today is St Valentine's Day, how about a St Valentine's Day-related Fun Online Poll?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Supermarkets and Harry Potter's love life

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll (153 is a very good turnout). The results were, superficially, as follows:

Which is your favourite supermarket? (multiple votes allowed)

Tesco - 42 votes
Waitrose - 40 votes
J Sainsbury's - 37 votes
Wm Morrison's - 29 votes
Aldi - 25 votes
ASDA - 21 votes
Marks and Spencer -19 votes
Co-operative - 9 votes
Lidl - 6 votes
Iceland - 3 votes
Spar - 1 vote
I only shop at small local independent shops - 7 votes

Now, you might expect those results to be broadly in line with supermarkets' market shares, i.e. if there's no e.g. ASDA in your area, then you probably wouldn't vote for it. So I looked up their market shares on Wiki (my original source incorrectly excluded Lidl from the top ten), and maybe it is more instructive to divide vote share by market share to give what I will refer to as 'satisfaction' rating. We can see that they divide into three clusters:

Ahead of the pack
Waitrose 4.7 (i.e. vote share 19% divided by market share 4%)
Aldi - 3.9
Lidl - 1.4 (despite not being on the ballot paper)

The middle ground
J Sainsbury's - 1.1
Wm Morrison's - 1.1

Also rans
Iceland - 0.7
Tesco - 0.6
ASDA - 0.6
Co-operative - 0.5

M&S and Spar aren't on that list because Wiki didn't say what their market share is. And whether Waitrose really is that good, or whether the readers of this 'blog are just all frightfully posh, I do not know. PS, my nearest supermarket is a Waitrose and it seems perfectly good to me, not much to complain about except they don't sell liquorice cigarette papers.

It is also interesting to note that less than one-in-twenty people chose "I only shop at small local independent shops", which is completely at odds with all the public bleating that you hear.
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Having now read all the Harry Potter books right to the end, I establish that he ends up getting married to Ginny Weasley, a character who distinguishes herself by having no personality whatsoever, she's not even properly boring, for Heaven's sake. The only mildly interesting you can say about her is that she is a ginge (so bonus points for that).

Along the way, Harry brushes aside the attentions of all sorts of far more interesting and/or attractive females, so that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "If you were Harry Potter, with whom would you have liked to get hitched?" (or should that be "to whom.."?).

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

We went to see this film tonight.

If you've read all the books and seen the other films (and read the reviews of the film itself) you'll know pretty much what to expect. it doesn't disappoint, it doesn't delight, and the ending is a classic - it just stops half way through a scene and that is that.

Highlight: the fact that the actress playing Hermione Grainger is about six inches taller than the actor playing Harry Potter in real life, but he is taller in the books (or at least we expect him to be). So there is a load of Humphrey/Lauren clever camera angle stuff going on so that you hardly notice; unless you look out for it, in which case you have to admit, it's very cleverly done.

Except for the graveyard scene* where Hermione is supposed to lay her head supportively on Harry's shoulder but she forgets to bend her knees first, so it takes her about a minute to get her head into a seemingly natural position.

* Why on earth Harry's parents are buried in a Church graveyard, despite the fact that the wizards and witches in the stories are quite patently not Christians, is not explained.

Plagiarism

JK Rowling never denied having done her homework before grinding out the Harry Potter books (which I, being a prole, enjoyed reading enormously), so it's all fantasy based on myths based on folklore, and inevitably, there will be people suing her for infringement of copyright.

However, being entirely fair about all of this, a couple of days ago, we cracked open a nice box set of books which The Lass had received for her birthday, called The Worst Witch, first published in 1974, and, pardon my French, the stories are like a first draft (and I mean that in a good way, all the important elements are there) of the Harry Potter books and/or the Harry Potter books boiled down to the level which five- to ten-year old girls would find amusing but not threatening. Only they were first published twenty years before the Harry Potter books.

I accept that there is no copyright in 'ideas', as such, and I find these copyright lawsuits a decade or more after the event rather lame, but in this case, if Jill Murphy had a pop at JK Rowling, I would be rooting for her.