A moment of clarity

The internet is awash with dead and dying blogs, but let me assure you that wild talents is not one of them, despite all appearances to the contrary. Why only the other day I thought a deep thought and then followed that up by thinking (yes, twice in one day!) "I should blog about that". And one day I will.

In the meantime here is a photo of my new favourite statue, A Moment Of Clarity by Marc Quinn, currently on show at Turner Contemporary in Margate as part of their excellent second exhibition Nothing In The World But Youth.

Another favourite of mine is The World Won't Listen, by Phil Collins. (Not that one.) He filmed a bunch of people singing karaoke to Smiths songs and then assembled the resulting films into a loop that reproduces the running order of the album of that name (which was a compilation so includes a number of their strongest songs). The three jolly fellows belting their way through Bigmouth Strikes Again are especially fun. It's a warm and humane project, I think, showing how people from all sorts of areas of the world, Indonesia in the case of the installation at the Turner, can share an affection for an eccentric English pop group. A neat and entertaining way of displaying how we all have a common humanity and the singers are all loveable and quite marvellous, like Morrissey himself.

Another set of exhibits that caught my attention were some early drawings and paintings by Turner which are slightly naive, but very skilfully executed. Assuming that he was in his mid to late teens at the time I was fairly impressed. Then I worked out from the accompanying caption with his birth date and the dates attributed to the works that in fact he was just 9 years old. Downright staggering.

The first exhibition at Turner Contemporary, called Revealed, was about the gallery space itself: using light and open space very generously. This second exhibition is much more densely packed with probably 200 or so exhibits crammed in, and I will definitely need to visit again to appreciate it some more. The exhibition runs for another couple of months and if you're near Margate I definitely recommend it.

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/nothing-in-the-world-but-youth

Cheese. It rocks.

The topic of today's blog is cheese. It rocks. Nothing more need be said on this topic.

Cut the BBC for all I care

One of the rites of summer, as the early signs emerge of the next financial year's outlook, is a steady flow of alarming stories about how the BBC's marvellous world-best services are under threat if the licence fee isn't raised substantially the following year. This year has been a little different in that the signs seem to be that the licence fee may be frozen next year and this - we are led to believe - will lead to a catastrophic reduction in auntie Beeb's cutting edge offerings across radio, television, the web, blah blah blah.

Surely as a lefty defender of "culture" and public services generally I am up in arms about this? Well, funnily enough, no. In fact I find myself very close to agreeing with practically every word of the following Conservative Party posting on the subject: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2010/09/mark-littlewood-the-bbcs-time-has-past.html

I would have to ask: did the BBC make any of the following series, to pluck a half dozen or so at random from the air: The Sopranos, Arrested Development, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lost...? Oddly: no. They have been spending the licence fee - as usual - on episode after episode of shitty soap operas, 40 or so more episodes of Casualty per year, the 69th series of Last Of The Summer Wine, and - of course - keeping the same old white male Oxbridge claque in their comfy generously paid risk-free management jobs.

The BBC's flagship programmes are probably perfectly capable of becoming self-sufficient: they're mostly talent contests and "reality shows" of course, just like on every other channel. But Dr Who and Top Gear for example seem to have large audiences and a well-developed line in merchandise (toys, books, even birthday cakes) and if people want to watch public schoolboys damaging the environment, heehawing about how much they hate vegetarians, and laughing at one another's scripted "witty" remarks week after week after week then good luck to them. But why should I pay for it when they could simply show adverts every 15 minutes just like all the other channels do?

The BBC licence fee is a regressive tax which penalises poor people for the one simple pleasure that goes some way towards numbing the boredom of being on society's scrapheap. And yet people end up in prison for not paying the fine for not having their telly licence. It's nothing short of shameful.