Phlegmatic

...and you were holding a concert in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, how would you make sure that only people with tickets could get in?


That's right, you'd build a big wall around the Brandenburg Gate to keep people out.

U2 and MTV.

Class.

http://philmophlegm.livejournal.com/117639.html


I think I have more work for my twelve squaddies-of-justice...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/8342191.stm

I went to see Fleetwood Mac in Birmingham last night.

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Former French president Jacques Chirac is likely to stand trial for corruption. He is accused of creating fake jobs to give to political allies and their relatives.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8333352.stm

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There are more on Facebook if you're interested.




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Video footage of the golden eagles and otters I saw on Lewis and North Uist respectively. OK, the camerawork isn't exactly BBC Natural History department, but the footage of eagles was good enough for an RSPB guy to confirm that they were golden eagles rather than white-tailed or even just buzzards.

On North Uist, I stopped to take a wide angle shot of a large herd of mute and whooper swans. Basically a big bunch of not especially uncommon white birds.

Examining the photo on the camera's own screen didn't reveal anything extraordinary. Getting the camera home and looking at the photo on a 24" monitor revealed an extra bird in the bottom-left corner... (Click on the photo to make it bigger.)




That, my friends, is a male hen harrier.

Rumours apparently of a 'Dallas: the Next Generation', all about John Ross and Christopher but with maybe JR and Sue Ellen also appearing. I'm not one to say "squee", but I wonder what the Texan equivalent is. "Squee-haw"?

Ken Livingstone is very much of the opinion that Nick Griffin should not have been allowed to appear on Question Time and be allowed to share a platform with mainstream politicians since it serves to legitimise his cause.

Consider the photograph behind the cut...

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Article in Scottish newspaper this week quoting someone called Sir Alastair Horne (I'm sure he's a bannerman to Storm's End...) suggesting that it is silly that the UK is in a different time zone to central Europe, and that the only reason the clocks go back is for the benefit of Scottish farmers.

Scottish farmers and the SNP have argued the other way. The NFU said "The start of field operations would be delayed and livestock farmers would also be inconvenienced by the longer period of morning darkness."


Hang on...

Maybe I'm missing something here, but surely changing what your clock says has precisely no impact on how much darkness there is in a given day. If we did stop putting the clocks back, couldn't the Scottish farmers achieve much the same results that they used to get simply by setting their alarms to get up an hour earlier?

Poll #1476202 Nick Griffin on Question Time
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

How will Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time this week affect support for the British National Party?

Saturday

Ever since I started work as a trainee accountant, I have always wanted to go to Campbeltown, at the southern end of Kintyre. You see, the firm I worked for then, Kidsons Impey, had an office there. I wondered quite what commerce there was in such an out of the way place to warrant a national firm of chartered accountants having an office there.

I still don't know.

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Friday

My father had told me that the Old Man of Storr, a rock pinnacle in north east Skye was worth seeing. That would also take me past Portree, where there is an RSPB exhibition about white-tailed eagles. If I wasn't going to see any (and believe me, I kept my eyes open and my roof down today), at least I could find an expert to identify which species I had filmed.

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Thursday

Still darkish when I got up, although it wasn't painfully early by any means. The man in the hotel tipped me off that there were definitely a pair of white-tailed eagles in the north-east of the island. Weather and visibility were both excellent, so that's where I went.

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No, not a comedy double act, but the northern part of the Outer Hebrides.

Wednesday

Today was a good day.

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Tuesday: Gorgeous weather as I set off early(ish) from the faded Bettyhill Hotel.

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I'm on holiday at the moment - a solo driving holiday around the more distant bits of Scotland. Bunn isn't with me on account of her having considerably less holiday allowance than me this year and not fancying a week of pretty much nothing but driving.

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Current headlines on the BBC News website:

Amy Winehouse is working on a new album

Rugby is going to be an Olympic sport

Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize


I checked the date on my computer, but it said "9th October".

Seriously, Obama? After what - nine months? Jeez, they'll be giving Al Gore an award next. (Oh, hang on...) Maybe it'll have to be David Cameron in 2010.

Comedy dramatisation of the Acorn / Sinclair feud, BBC4, tonight 9.00pm. Alexander Armstrong as Clive and Martin Freeman the Acorn guy. Thought it looked like fun and that other people might be interested.

Tonight my Manchester United team managed to repeat last year's Champions' League victory and once again defeated Manchester City in the final. City scored first and dominated the first half, but my Argentinean centre forward Federico Laurito (a fitness doubt before the game) got the equaliser. Then in the 86th minute, City's Togolese striker Emmanuel Adebayor got himself a straight red for a bad foul on Patrice Evra. Two minutes later Spanish fullback Miguel Torres crossed hard from the right and my young Italian midfielder Mascio volleyed in the winner.

Then, barely a week later, we beat Middlesbrough 1-0 to win the FA Cup too. Laurito scored the winner from the penalty spot.