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barrylane

Listed below are comments made by barrylane between Monday, 28th July 2008 and Thursday, 22nd October 2009.

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Updated editorial guidelines 9:14pm on 22 Oct 2009 Forgive me, please, if I am in the wrong area for this kind of comment - I'm married; I usually know when I'm in the wrong - but who, if anyone, is subbing this site? Tonight's little bombshell involves the unfortunate woman who died during an alleged argument with her husband, who has been accused of her murder.

The offending line goes: "Alisdair Sinclair, 48, formerly of Georgia Lane, Amport, admitted he and his wife were involved in a knife fight in which she died but denies murder."

Well, the poor dead woman can deny all she wants, but this is just the latest example of sloppy, probably non-existent, subbing. We are talking reportage here, not folksy stuff about death.

The BBC web site is the best of its kind in the world, or should be. Is the budget really stretched so painfully thin that there isn't a writer left in the building who can spot this kind of embarrassing error?
Very murky waters indeed 4:32pm on 27 Aug 2009 Precisely how many intelligent people genuinely believe that Megrahi - surely the best known fall-guy in history - was guilty of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Cleverer folk than I have pointed fingers at Iran and even more pointedly at Syria, and perhaps with good reason. No mention in your piece about witnesses admitting after the trial that they'd lied about identifying Megrahi; nothing about the break-in at Heathrow and the two additional cases being loaded into the hold of Flight 103; what about the CIA's hired "informer" who conveniently pointed the finger at Megrahi? Little of this can be substantiated, of course, but these are better known "facts" than some of the drivel presented at court.

Interesting as it is to see the FBI's head honcho writing a nasty letter and making it public to boot, I would be fascinated to know the part that the CIA played in funding... I'm sorry, I meant "finding", the two 'witnesses' whose testimony did so much to bang Mr Megrahi up in the first place. One wonders if certain Americans are less annoyed at his release and more concerned that the truth about the conviction, or the securing of it, might leak out. In the unlikely event that Megrahi was ever actually guilty of this hideous crime, his release should serve as some indication that we here in the UK understand the difference between justice and revenge.

We're likely to learn quite soon after his death that he was as innocent as he has always maintained, and how will we all feel then? The guy is dying; why not give him the benefit of the doubt and send him home to spend the time he has left to be with his family? It's more than the bombers ever did for their 270 victims, of course, but we can at least show some scrap of compassion to a guy who will quite soon die a slow and painful death, guilty or not.
How Mosley lost F1 power battle 2:04pm on 25 Jun 2009 All we need now is for Bernie to stop taking races away from circuits because their loos aren't up to par. The clinically clean Tilke circuits are tiresome and characterless. Silverstone and Spa are classic tracks, while Donnington is going to be somehow reminiscent of Hungary, if you were to ask me; better suited to bikes or even karting rather than F1. And if F1 is to return to the USA, please don't send it back to the bland non-event that is Indianapolis. How Americans can enjoy racing round an oval baffles me.

One more thing: The soon-to-depart-but-not-quite-soon-enough Mr Mosley has spent too long emasculating F1; slowing it down, cutting technical innovation (other than the less-than-successful KERS) and of course, reducing the teams' budgets. F1 had for years been the test-bed for new technology and techniques that have benefited the motor industry and ordinary drivers like you and me. Can we get back to that pioneering way of life, please, and quit reducing F1 to just another series?

Personally, I want the premier formula to be just that: Top of the tree, not bottom of the heap. With Max gone, and Bernie temporarily on the back foot, perhaps we can make F1 great again.
Hester's Royal remuneration 11:16am on 22 Jun 2009 Absolutely staggering. And HMG approves of this on our behalf? Not on my blo*dy behalf they don't! How can anyone justify this kind of reward? I understand the "We have to pay well to get the best people" argument, but there is a world of difference between attractive remuneration and obscene overpayment.

I accept as a taxpayer that pumping cash into the banks that, as it turned out, couldn't run a temperature, let alone a business, made good sense during tough times, but paying any individual this fabulously well leaves me wondering about our collective sanity as a nation. He's a guy in a suit; he's not the next messiah (although he sure knows how to turn a prophet. Boom-boom!) and he can't do miracles, I suspect. OK, so he has to cover over the cracks left by his former colleagues and work out how to get back to 'business as usual', getting rid of HMG's less-than-probing overseers, but... Oh, that's it. I need a lie down now.

I hear that Fred Goodwin now lives in France. I wonder if he needs a gardener; I'm his for a mere £5 million.
BT and the iPlayer 12:26pm on 11 Jun 2009 BT is an embarrassment. Years back, they failed to pioneer broadband for shifting data in this country, because BT was convinced we'd mostly all want broadband to view things like movies, and the company's board failed to get their myopic investors to splash out on modernising by replacing old copper cabling with something a little more 21st Century. Then, when it dawned on them that they'd missed a boat that had long sailed elsewhere around the globe, they quickly offered so-called 'Unlimited Broadband' via those same inadequate copper lines. Now they're moaning because iPlayer - not to mention Youtube, MySpace, iTunes and all the other things so many of us have come to use daily - is whacking their disgracefully inadequate infrastructure for the antiquated junk that it is. And don't even get me started on their abysmal 'customer service' and inflated bills. Tried calling BT lately? Did you manage to speak to the people you were after or did you get transferred to the wrong department a few dozen times?

I escaped BT a year or so ago and I haven't looked back. My current ISP offers a service four times faster than BT's, and it doesn't cut out several times a day (and they didn't offer me a shiny new VOIP phone and wi-fi modem in a case that concealed 15-year-old technology, either).

Time for the BBC to embarrass BT right back and expose our 'leading' telecoms provider for the penny-pinching charlatans they are.

Right, now that's off my chest, I can go and get a cup of coffee.
BT: Self-inflicted wounds 8:55pm on 14 May 2009 BT is a national embarrassment that is too expensive for its residential and business customers, that outsources most of its customer services to India, can't get it into its corporate thick head that most broadband users want to receive and send data, not watch TV shows from curiously obscure TV companies, and sets out on ridiculous grand projects that have the words 'ill-fated' written all over them in big red letters. Apart from the recently announced 25p it intends to invest in fibre for a couple of thousand lucky souls, BT ignores its antique copper-wire-based infrastructure that is its proud legacy from the mid-20th century.

Despite this, I bet the senior execs and the shareholders always get their money.

BT will never be a 'worldwide colossus' as long as it remains a costly, short-sighted, muddle-headed, national joke.
F1 battle lines are drawn 2:24pm on 14 May 2009 Can we just get rid of Mosley now, please? He's become a terrible liability and he's risking the survival of F1. I know I'm not alone in wishing the politicking and constant rules changes would simply go away, leaving the teams to do what they do best and the fans to enjoy their efforts. To be honest, Bernie's days should be numbered too.
Mac malware - were we wrong? 4:19pm on 03 Dec 2008 I run antivirus software on my Macs because I don't want to receive bits of malware and then forward them to people who use Windows. My wife and most of my friends have switched to Macs, mind you, but there we are.
The Palin pregnancy 9:24pm on 01 Sep 2008 I enjoy Justin's blogs for their insight and their wit and I appreciate the professionalism and balance he exhibits, so when I see rabid comments such as those of someone like the otherwise anonymous Economist123 - number two in this unsurprisingly heavily moderated blog - it makes me wonder if we can trust anyone from the right to vote for the better person.

We are faced with more of the same from McCain or into new and uncharted territory with Obama. This must surely be one of those rare occasions where fear of the known should surely outweigh that of the alternative.

When the USA elected W Bush for the second time it confirmed to me that this is a nation that is deliriously happy not to learn from any of its mistakes. Heck! With their track record they'll be happy to vote for a candidate who believes in every daft idea ever conceived by the religious right wing's biggest nuts.

The world rather needs Obama, but the majority of Americans are, I fear, just weird and bitter enough to give the Republicans another few years in the rumpus room.

Anyway, Economist123 should perhaps learn the difference between appreciating good copy for its quality and whooping for it because it ties in with his own somewhat blinkered view of things. Perhaps we could have Obama for Prime Minister.
Apple's future without Steve Jobs 2:38pm on 28 Jul 2008 Regarding entry no. 33, I believe the original Doom was published in shareware form before Wolfenstein. I'm not so sure Wolfenstein didn't use the Doom engine.

Now the original version of Marathon is another matter, of course, and Halo was written on and for the Mac.

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