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alanomaly

Listed below are comments made by alanomaly between Wednesday, 24th September 2008 and Monday, 9th February 2009.

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Stroppy stars 09:48am on 09 Feb 2009 Not quite generational divide. I'm pretty sure that, back in the day, you were all just as entertained by the antics of Oliver Reed et al, and the older generation was just as outraged and offended.

We expect actors (especially method actors like Mr Bale) to be a bit unhinged, it's part of the job, and it's always interesting to see just how far it goes.

The only big question here is where on earth was the director when this was happening? And what does that say about the likely quality of the directing?
Paradox of bank bailout 11:38am on 21 Nov 2008 Another brilliant article, thank you Mr Peston.

Only one thing that isn't clear. There's detailed arguments against the status quo, but balanced against them, I can only see one argument against full semi-nationalisation - that we don't want the whims of ministers to come before good commercial sense in negotiating loans and other deals.

Fair point, but there's two fairly obvious-looking questions to this non-expert:-

1) This is a danger if the policy was implemented badly, not an inherent problem with the idea. It'd be possible to design the system so that ministers couldn't influence decisions (or at least, couldn't do more than a little)

2) There isn't much good commercial sense at the moment anyway, so there's really not that much to lose

Sound banking decisions being distorted by political whim is clearly a bad thing, but surely, so long as care is taken when designing and monitoring the system, it's no worse than sound banking decisions being devastated by short-term lunges for bonus-friendly figures?

As for banks becoming more social in their operations and being less independent, like most other people who have commented here I can't quite understand why this is a bad thing.

Surely, in practical terms, being more social and less independent means banks being more hands-on in their dealings, having more formalised responsibilities, and being more accountable? Surely these are all good things (for everyone except corrupt executives)?
Graphic images 9:50pm on 24 Sep 2008 Go BBC!

It's not about censorship or squeamishness (though that is a seperate factor).

It's about not giving violent loonies exactly the publicity they want for free.

I was in Glasgow at the time of the Glasgow Airport 'bombings'. No-one I knew was scared - maybe shaken and surprised. Most people thought it was hillarious.

We'd been told that terrorists were terrifyingly efficient and organised. Then two middle-aged guys crash a car into wall, set themselves on fire, and get kicked in the privates like something from 'Chucklevision'. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Yet the papers all chose to spin the line that we were terrified (we weren't), that it was nearly a disaster (it wasn't, there was rock solid concrete in the way), that life can't go on as before (it did)...

International terrorism should have been humiliated, instead, the media gave it exactly what it wanted.

This guy clearly designed his video to make himself look like a cool, dangerous, fearsome tough guy, when actually he was almost certainly a sad loner. Why should we honour him by playing his video uneditted?

We shouldn't show him how he wanted to be seen. We should show him how he was - a confused creep threatening a video camera.

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