James Newman, I salute you.

Bravely trotting off to the Eurovision Song Contest, knowing full well that you'd probably get nul points.

Greatest motivational speech of all time

I watched the "Black Friday" episode of Superstore* on Netflix yesterday.

The staff all succumb to food poisoning and near the end of episode, half of them have already gone home sick. The survivors decamp to the break room leaving the shoppers to fight it out. The most cynical employee (Garrett) suggests - half in jest - that they just shut up shop early and go home. The normally conscientious manager (Glenn) is off his head on anti-depressants and agrees (to everybody's surprise); his bossy assistant manager (Dina) has a minor nervous breakdown and calls the "time of death" for the shop, adding "Let's just watch it all burn".

Garrett is strangely moved by Dina's reaction and launches into the greatest motivational speech ever. I'm typing this from memory, I can't be bothered to transcribe, but here's the gist:

"Wait, I was just joking. I never thought I'd feel sorry for Dina, but there's a first for everything. Now, I don't like working here. But it's my job. I will always cut corners and 'phone it in'. But nobody will ever say that Garrett did less than the bare minimum needed to not get fired. Come on, let's get back out there!"

And they do of course, classic double-swinging door shot etc. Sums me up to a tee. I watched that segment three times with tears in my eyes. (The swinging door shot has been lampooned so many times, it's difficult to imagine it ever having been meant seriously).

* It's basically Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but set in a supermarket/department store.

Home-schooling and the digital divide

From the BBC:

Parents say they feel "deserted" having to home school during lockdown with a lack of access to computers... Bristol mother Edwina Ogu said home schooling four children with no computer during the first lockdown had been a "nightmare". The Department for Education (Dfe) has pledged to provide one million devices for schools and colleges.

Agreed. If your kids are over (say) seven years old, have a bedroom and a laptop or PC each, home-schooling is manageable. But plenty of people are not in this happy position. Halfway decent laptops or PCs cost £500 and up; internet is patchy in some areas; not all kids have their own bedroom etc.

There's actually a cheap and simple solution to this.  You can get a new TV with Freeview and internet capability for under £150. There are plenty of channels broadcasting complete crap during the day who can be taken off air until 3 in the afternoon.

For kids up to age 14, all you need is one channel for each school year broadcasting a standard curriculum from 9 until 3 with an hour for lunch. All the kids in the UK can watch whichever channel is broadcasting for their year. The TV teacher sets the homework - kids take, email or post their homework back to their actual school once a week and it gets dished out to be marked by their actual teachers.

I accept that different schools use different textbooks, but run with it. School teachers just have to keep tabs on what was covered in their subjects that day and be ready to field questions from their pupils, online, by phone or in person.

It gets a bit more complicated for age 15 to 16 when kids are doing GSCEs. But I'm sure that 99% of GSCEs are in less than twenty different subjects. If I understand the rules correctly, there will be relatively few subject clashes and it might only need another dozen channels (i.e. half a dozen per year x two years of GSCEs).

Switching channels is no more difficult (conceputally) than switching classrooms. So after maths (which appears to be compulsory, not that you'd notice) which everybody watches on the main channel, the history pupils switch to the channel which is showing the history lesson; the geography kids pupils switch to the channel which is showing the geography lesson etc. After that, they all switch back to compulsory English Language (not that you'd notice that either) on the main channel.

Inevitably, there will still be timetable clashes for pupils doing unusual combinations (what's new) but as long as there are a couple of free periods each week and kids have halfway decent internet, they can use the 'catch up' function for that. If they don't have halfway decent internet, they'll just have to choose a workable combination of subjects.

"Netflix raises UK prices to cover cost of content"

The usual slightly weird reporting from the BBC:

Netflix is raising the cost of some of its UK subscriptions from next month, its customers have been told. The streaming service said the price rises reflected money spent on content.

Netflix is a superb service and their (few) original series are pretty good. I don't like all of them, but there a couple of good ones each year (and lots of people watch 'The Crown', sigh). The price they charge reflects purely 'what they can get away with' and has little to do with what they spend on original content. I'll pay to watch something if I like it, I couldn't care if it was done on a shoestring or it costs £ millions per episode. Clearly, for the bought-in content, the IP owner holds out for a large chunk of the income, so that's probably pretty low margin.

Its standard monthly package will go up from £8.99 to £9.99 and its premium one will rise from £11.99 to £13.99, but its basic plan remains at £5.99*.

So still superb value, then?

However, comparison site Uswitch said the timing of the price rises was unfortunate with UK citizens living under new national lockdowns.

Supply and demand. The lucky majority who still have jobs are spending a heck of a lot less on other fripperies, so they have more to spend on streaming services, computer games etc. And if I get the sack and have to live on a tight budget, Netflix will be one of the last things I cut back on. So Netflix can bump up their prices a bit. So far, the business has not been particularly profitable, so good luck to them.

But Netflix faces tough competition from rivals, such as Disney+, which has also announced price rises of £2 per month up to £7.99 or £79.90 for a full year.

There's also good old fashioned terrestrial TV (yours for the price of a TV licence); Amazon Prime (about £6 a month, but which is shit); some cable/satellite TV channels (which seem to be very expensive); and there is loads of stuff on YouTube (free). So there's more 'tough competition' than you can shake a remote control at.

* I originally only subscribed to Netflix so that The Lass could watch 'Riverdale', which was all the rage in her class at school for a while, so basic package £5.99. Then the rest of the family got into it (including me) and found stuff they liked, so we're now on £9.99 for two screens. Even that's not always enough, and I sometimes have to pull rank and chuck out one of the kids.

"Who plays Diana in The Crown?" is not the interesting question

From The Radio Times:

Rising star Emma Corrin is set to play lady Diana Spencer – the future Princess of Wales – in Netflix’s The Crown.

The actor will not appear on screen until season four of the royal drama – season three is expected to be released later in 2019 – but her casting is a major step forward for the young British star.

The series has managed to cover Royal history from the 1950s to the 1990s in about four years, at this rate, they will be as far as Harry/Meghan in two or three years' time.

So the interesting question is, which actress will play Meghan Markle, who is herself an actress with a real life job of playing a Royal? If they manage to persuade Meghan to play herself, then the real and a parallel universe will overlap. If not, we'll have an actress playing an actress playing a Royal, which is also pretty self-referential.

Either way, I expect that Meghan will have strong opinions on who gets to play her part. This'll be fun.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Metro:

Government has its limits...

So Gordon in Sunderland blames the government for the decline of the high street (MetroTalk, Thu) rather than the fact that the digital age has made it cheaper and easier to purchase items online from the comfort of your own home*.

Does he also blame the government for the year-on-year drop in television viewing figures too? I suppose it should be down to the government to get the public to sit and watch television** rather than streaming services for a designated portion of each day so as to compete with the likes of Netflix?

James, Essex

* The figures are quite staggering. According to the ONS, about one-fifth of UK retail spending is online.

** This is not as far fetched as he thinks. From Variety.com: Quotas obligating Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services operating in the European Union to dedicate at least 30% of their on-demand catalogs to local content are set to become enshrined in law soon. That 'protects' domestic film makers rather than TV stations as such, who have their own minimum domestic content quotas in many countries. Unsurprisingly, France has the highest quota in Europe (minimum 60%).

So how did people manage in the days of black and white television?

From the BBC:

Sean Hargrave is a self-declared football obsessive, but when he sat down to watch the opening match of the 2018 World Cup he couldn't tell one team from the other.

He wasn't the only one struggling. Roars of frustration jumped from sitting rooms to social media as fans worldwide branded Russia v Saudi Arabia "a disgrace".

The problem? Sean, like 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women, is colour-blind...

Daily Mail on top form

Emailed in by MBK:

Love Island pays tribute to Sophie Gradon: Reality show airs 'in loving memory of' message ahead of new episode after ex-contestant, 32, was found dead at her parents' home following depression battle

* Sophie Gradon, 32, found dead at her parents' £960,000 home near Newcastle
* The model and former beauty queen appeared on the 2016 series of Love Island
* She was tweeting hours before death including loving message to her boyfriend
* The show has aired tribute to the star which was shown during tonight's episode

"... well balanced, like any other fine piece of sporting equipment... a pair of matched shotguns for instance."

Here's how they reviewed cars forty years ago, 55 second into this:

That episode of "Casualty" filmed in one take

The story was fairly typical "Casualty" fare, but on a technical level it was superb.

The son and I looked out for a reflection of the cameraman in mirrors etc, nothing. The bit where the cameraman is lowered over a banister was especially awesome.

They used to have very long shots in "ER" as well, but only three or four minutes, not a whole hour.

Wheeler Dealers - a good illustration of price setting mechanisms

We know that these programmes became more and more staged with each successive series, and the numbers don't add up etc, but there is still a lot of truth in them. Let's assume that they are true to life, the three stages are a good illustration of monopoly and competitive price setting.

Stage 1. Mike goes to see some 'classic car'. These aren't being made any more, so supply is fixed (and gradually dwindling) and prices are set purely by demand.

It's a variation of the normal supply/demand thing, the only reason why some of the cars they buy and sell are worth that much is because they are so rare. In one episode they sold a Bond Bug for £8,000, FFS. I assumed they'd jumped the shark, but if you look online, that's what the best ones sell for.

So Mike haggles quite ruthlessly. The seller only has one car to sell and wants/needs cash, Mike has cash but can walk away and buy something else instead.

(When Mike sells the car at the end of the show, it's exactly the same situation, no need to cover that one separately).

Stage 2. Mike gets the wheels refurbished and Mike or Edd get the seats reupholstered and/or the car body sprayed etc. They hardly ever haggle on the price because they know full well that if they fail to offer the market rate for labour, expertise, use of plant machinery and supplier's profit, then the work simply will not get done. Presumably they go to the supplier with the best price/quality mix, and the supplier knows it. When they make a half-hearted attempt at haggling, the supplier tells them to piss off, so they always cave in and pay asking price.

Stage 3. Finally, there are always some bits and pieces like a bumper or some trim which need to be replaced with original parts. The monopoly boot is now on the other foot with a vengeance. The stockist who happens to have an original bumper for exactly that model is in no hurry to sell, it's been on a shelf for years and could stay there indefinitely; but the stockist knows that his bumper is the only one available.

Mike sells cars to purists for top whack, but he can't sell the car to a purist without the pukka original matching bumper. Without a non-original bumper, he can sell for £10,000; with the bumper he can sell for £15,000, so the stockist who happens to have it can take a large chunk of the £5,000 uplift.

If you broke the car down into all its components and apportioned the £15,000, the bumper would be worth nowhere near £5,000 of course, more like £150, although he can easily sell it to Mike for £1,000.

That Top Gear expedition got nowhere near the North Pole.

They showed that episode again over the holidays, all great TV and so on, but if you pay attention at the end, the co-ordinates on the satnav shows latitude 78 deg.

Wikipedia's write-up says that they reached the Magnetic North Pole, which is very close to the true/geographic North Pole (which has latitude 90 deg, obviously).

Not true, they had reached the Geomagnetic North Pole, which as the map in the previous link shows is hundreds of miles further south. They set off from Resolute, which has latitude 74 deg, which is to the north of the geomagnetic North Pole, so on the outward journey they were heading south (or south-east or south-west or whatever).

So AFAICS, epic fail.

"Electricity bills expected to rise with uptake of 4K television sets"

It's Big Scary Numbers Time in the Express and Star who dutifully rehash the CEBR's press release:

Two million homes are expected to own a 4K, or ultra high definition, TV by the end of this year, with that figure soaring to nine million by 2019, the upcoming British Gas Home Energy Report 2016 says.

However, the bonus of more pixels and therefore greater picture clarity requires a third more energy than an HD TV, with UK consumers predicted to pay an extra £82 million in electricity costs by 2019, the study, based on data analysed by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), claims.

First, I don't like this "by 2019" nonsense, that's just adding together a random number of years, it is far better to express things as annual figures, and the relevant figure is the per-household (about £3) or per television one (£1?). So now we get down to it:

The report shows that the average household spent £14 in 2001 on powering its TV for a year, increasing to £20 in 2008. The cost then declined over the next seven years to £18, driven by more energy-efficient TVs.

£18 a year? I am pleasantly surprised it is that cheap. Does anybody even care about £8 a year, or £21 a year or £30 or whatever?

Beyond satire.

Exhibit One:

Tony Blair has said it would be a “very dangerous experiment” if Jeremy Corbyn or a populist politician like him were to form a government.

In an interview with the BBC, the former Labour prime minister said populist politicians, whether on the left like Corbyn or on the right, were worrying and he spent a lot of time thinking about how people in the centre should respond.

Blair famously said last summer that anyone thinking of voting for Corbyn as Labour leader because it was what their heart told them to do should “get a transplant”, but his latest comment may be his harshest yet.

Exhibit Two

An unfortunate mobile phone salesman was tied up and beaten by an angry crowd in Cixi City, China, after he was mistaken for a baby snatcher.

Exhibit Three

Channel 4 comedy Raised By Wolves is being adapted for American TV by Diablo Cody, the writer of Juno...

Now The Guardian has reported that Moran and Cody have been in contact about reworking the action from Wolverhampton to the US…

The remake is being made by Berlanti Productions, whose credits include the less down-to-earth shows Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow.

Exhibit Four

Lack of unity on the EU, UK government challenges and UKIP all contributed to the Welsh Conservatives losing seats at the assembly elections, leader Andrew RT Davies has said.

But...

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, has declared herself a “John Major”-style Conservative, after leading the party to its best election result in Scotland for almost 60 years.

I saw another good one last week but I've forgotten it.

The Daily Mash pretty much sums up my childhood.

A FAMILY that ‘banned’ television now just knows f**k all about popular culture, it has emerged.

"Family of murdered EastEnders actress demand answers over delay in finding bodies"

From The Evening Standard:

The family of murdered EastEnders star Sian Blake today asked why it took so long to discover the bodies of the actress and her two young children.

Police officers from the BBC found the remains of Ms Blake, 43, her sons Zachary, eight, and Amon, four, buried in the back garden of their bungalow in Weatherfield, yesterday, three weeks after they were reported missing.

A spokesman explained that it took time to obtain permission from the ITV to carry out a search at the location of the long-running soap opera Coronation Street.

Ms Blake’s partner Arthur Simpson-Kent, 48, is the focus of an inter-channel manhunt. He is believed to have fled to Channel 4 after he was questioned by police who visited their home and is currently filming a new series believed to be set in Ghana.

Media lawyers say the extradition proceedings will be protracted and do not expect Channel 4 to return Mr Simpson-Kent to the BBC for several months.

Daily Mail on top form

From The Daily Mail:

The Essex girl who is set to become a £6million superstar: How a builder's daughter who lives with her mum in a £250,000 terrace home became the X Factor's youngest EVER winner aged 17

The families in US family-based sit coms.

Let's compare the families in three of my household's favourites: The Simpsons, Family Guy and The Goldbergs:

Homer, Peter, Murray

Fat slobs in not very exciting or ambitious jobs. Politically disinterested and very politically incorrect and undiplomatic. Very lax approach to parenting. It is never clear why they got married and had children in the first place but they love their wives by default, by force of habit as much as anything.

Marge, Lois, Beverley

Full time housewives. Relatively attractive. Married beneath themselves but seem to love their husbands - it is never quite clear why. More politically aware: Marge is more Democrat and Beverley is more Republican. Pushy with their husbands and ambitious for their children.

Bart, Chris, Barry

The first-born son. Do badly at school, lazy around the house but adventurous or at least in their own imaginations. Bully their siblings.

Lisa, Meg, Erica

The first-born daughter. Look down on the rest of their family, are bullied by them and get their own back by scheming. Do well at school. Politically engaged, ready to take up left wing causes like the environment etc.

Maggie, Stewie, Adam

The youngest child/the baby. Maggie just an eternal baby. Stewie is an evil genius and Adam is a documentary film maker, but both have rich fantasy lives.

Might Want to Do Your Research, Polly

From the Guardian

A star was born as glorious Bake Off ended last night with the victory of Nadiya Hussain. Expect a million Nadiya baking books to sell before Christmas. Yet again, the BBC has surged ahead with an unexpected phenomenon that no commercial TV company would have bothered with in prime time. Until, that is, it became a hit – and that’s when BBC-haters pile in to say they shouldn’t be doing such popular stuff – leave it to the market.

So, a show with multiple contestants, baking cakes, with multiple different rounds, with a contestant eliminated after each stage, and a male and a female judge? That sounds totally original and not at all like Cupcake Wars on the Food Network:-

The show is similar to successful Chopped cooking show aired on the same network, in that it starts with four contestants who are eliminated one-by-one in three rounds.

The show invites cupcake bakers from all over the United States to compete. There are three judges in the series, with two of them serving as permanent judges.

All hail the BBC. Providing slightly stretched out versions of cable TV cookery shows, and funded by threats of violence.

Short List

"Numbers which became television catchphrases"

I'll give it five

One hundred and eighty! (darts commentary in the 1970s).

One, two, three, four (The Teletubbies).

Sev-en! (Len Goodman on Strictly Come Dancing).