Dadblog

Following my puzzlement earlier in the week about the Superbrands survey, it was instructive to read in the Economist today (subscribers only) that George at Asda has now been picked up as a clothing brand by Asda’s parent, Wal-Mart, and is proving massively successful in the States. And here’s a statistic to make all you broadsheet-reading university graduates smell the real world coffee: Asda recently overtook Marks and Spencer as the biggest UK clothing retailer by volume.

All of which means that one man - one solitary human being - founded Next, George at Asda, and the women’s clothing range Per Una at Marks and Spencer. Step forward George Davies, who from a base in Leicestershire is dressing the majority of men women and children in the UK. Bet they don’t talk about him in Dazed and Confused.

So my friend Keith and I spent a fruitless half hour with the Times Atlas of the World on Monday night trying to work out why the Arctic Circle is where it is. We should have just looked in WIkipedia:

The Arctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. This is the parallel of latitude that runs 66° 33′ 38″ north of the Equator. Everything north of this circle is known as the Arctic, and the zone just to the south of this circle is the Northern Temperate Zone.

The Arctic Circle marks the southern extremity of the solar day of the summer solstice and the solar night of the winter solstice. Within the Arctic Circle, the arctic Sun is above the horizon for at least 24 continuous hours per year, in conjunction with the Arctic’s Summer Solstice. Likewise, in conjunction with the Arctic’s Winter Solstice, the Arctic sun will be below the horizon for at least 24 continuous hours.

Suggested T-shirt slogan from my brother, on reading my last post on Labour:

“And on the seventh day, Blair created Brown”

He fangs yoo.

Said it before, will carry on saying it: Labour’s achievements and plans for the future are extraordinary. So extraordinary that Britain 20 years from now will be an entirely better place to live in than Britain today. Anyone with a child in school knows this. Anyone who’s visited a GP recently knows this. And, whatever you think about Iraq, if you disagree with this list of pledges, you’re just being silly (or Tory, which amounts to the same thing):

1. Housing: Special help for first time homebuyers, and state will co-ordinate the supply of land for new housing.

2. Training: new sixth forms in high performing schools, and free training for all adults who do not already have Level 2 qualification (equivalent to 5 good GCSEs).

3. Schools: every parent will be offered a choice of good specialist schools,plans for specialist schools and 200 extra city academies by 2010.

4. Choice in health: by 2008 every patient referred to a GP for specialist treatment will be able to choose which hospital they want to be treated. By then, the government has promised that no one will wait for longer than 18 weeks for the “whole patient journey” from GP referral to hospital admission. 200 new hospitals will be built.

5. Childcare: by the end of a third term, all parents of school-aged children will be able to access affordable childcare round their local schools from 8am to 6pm all year round.

6. Pensions/benefits: planned savings from reducing numbers on incapacity benefit to be put into improving the basic state pension. Earnings link may be reinstated.

7. Science: plans for ensuring broadband is available in every home by 2008, with Patricia Hewitt, industry secretary, targeting the 3m households most likely to receive state support.

8. Crime: additional £219m a year to fund drug abuse treatment by 2007-8, to double the amount spent on the 50,000 problematic drug dealers. Passport embarkation controls will be restored and religious discrimination outlawed.

9. Fairness at work: right not to work longer than 48 hours and an entitlement for the first time for people to have four weeks of paid holiday will be introduced. The social partnership commission on women and work will produce an interim report in time for the manifesto. Also a promise to agree an EU agency directive, designed to protect agency workers from abuse.

10. Foreign policy: make the Middle East peace process a “personal priority” after the US elections and to seek consensus on a new plan for Africa, looking at conflict resolution, fighting corruption, disease and disputes over water. Mr Blair also vowed to see through elections in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I mean, what’s not to like? The schools one will be especially extraordinary, if it means what it appears to mean: that every parent in the land will be offered a choice between good schools (as opposed to being able to apply to one good school, the only one in the area, which is subsequently massively oversubscribed). Comprehensive education still seems to me to be the only sane and rational way of managing secondary education, but if there is a genuine choice, because new schools have been built, this might make sense of things.

There’s a shedload of puzzling stuff in the Guardian’s story today about the annual Superbrands survey. Yes yes yes Selfridges is cool, and Dazed & Confused tries so very hard that they deserved something, but Damien Rice, Usher and Joss Stone? Err, don’t think so. And what about this?

“Lidl [the budget supermarket chain] is absolutely one of the coolest brands around right now - you see kids wearing the T-shirts.”

Where? But most puzzling of all:

“Selfridges has turned around British retailing, while Dazed & Confused confounds people’s expectations. Agent Provocateur we desperately need and Hakkasan reinvented interiors as well as fusion food. Goldsmiths has maintained a stance of challenging students,” said Martin Raymond, futures director of the trend consultancy The Future Laboratory.

Do you need Agent Provocateur? And what would you do if you didn’t have it?

It’s all gone apocalypse-tastic over at Worth 1000, including this image which will appeal to anyone who’s ever been stuck on Tower Bridge View image. And why do all these Photoshoppers seem to have it in for London? Was it something we said?

This is genius: Alex Ross interviewed by the Morning News:

TMN: As a critic raised on classical who later discovered pop, I bet you’re an ideal guide for those of us who’ve had it the other way around. For example, are there certain great non-classical albums you see having a twin of sorts in the classical world? If pop fans like U2 (sentimental?) or Aphex Twin (austere?) or Al Green (tender?), are there composers who immediately come to mind?

AR: I marched into pop by the difficult Arctic route. I went from avant-garde compositions by Ligeti and Xenakis to Cecil Taylor’s free jazz, and onward to the post-punk noise rock of Pere Ubu and Sonic Youth. One obvious crossover is in the opposite direction. If you like the white-noisy end of rock, then you’ll almost certainly get off on Xenakis’ Metastasis or Ligeti’s Atmospheres and Requiem. Then you could move backward in time to Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra and the Rite of Spring. Then keep going back to Mahler and Strauss, the semi-dissonant late-Romantics. People who are deep into electronic, DJ, and experimental music, Warp and Rephlex Records stuff, the Eno seventies classics, etc., are already aware of Steve Reich, who kind of invented that whole thing. Music for Eighteen Musicians will take your breath away if you’ve never heard it. Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge, Cage’s Williams Mix, the pioneering electronic works are the next step. The OHM electronic compilation is an excellent introduction. From there you can climb on the same Ligeti-Schoenberg-Mahler bus as the Sonic Youth brigade, though if you fall in love with Reich you might also immediately understand the rapid hypnotic patterning of Vivaldi and Bach, or Dufay and Machaut. If you live for U2, Led Zeppelin, one of the grander rock bands, you could easily acquire a taste for Mahler, who once imagined his music being played in stadiums. The Resurrection Symphony is many people’s starting point. Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra is in the same ballpark, and, of course, Wagner, the original hammer of the gods. Emo listeners might find a kindred spirit in, I don’t know, Schubert’s gorgeously self-pitying Die schöne Müllerin cycle, or John Dowland’s Lachrimae, or John Adams’ Harmonium. This is getting risky, though. There’s so little rhyme or reason to the mechanics of taste. A Dillinger Escape Plan fan might suddenly get all tweaked out by Haydn’s string quartets, who knows. Some music simply conquers all hearts. Schubert’s String Quintet in C, for example. If that music doesn’t bring you to the edge of tears, it’s time to adjust your Wellbutrin. Ditto for Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing Bach cantatas, or Jessye Norman singing Strauss’ Four Last Songs.

Found it via Phil Gyford.

Everything I suspected about NTL customer service is true. This from a Register story about NTL’s recorded message for customers in the north-east:

The Sun managed to get a transcript of the message before it was pulled. The message said: “Hello. You are through to NTL customer services. We don’t give a f**k about you. We are never here. We just will f**k you about, basically, and we are not going to handle any of your complaints. Just f**k off and leave us alone. Get a life.”

Every now and again, one should listen to TV listings magazines. Last night I was planning to read and mooch, but Guardian Guide recommended a one-off ITV drama, Dirty Filthy Love, in glowing terms the like of which I cannot recall ever having seen in there before.

And they were right. This two-hour film about obsessive compulsive disorder was one of the most superb things I’ve seen on television for a long time - funny, sad, educating and riveting. And as for it’s being on ITV, well, that was just extraordinary. The lead, Michael Sheen, played Tony Blair in The Deal a while back, and going from that to this must have been interesting. Except of course Blair’s pretty obsessive compulsive.

If you missed it, get a copy. It’s worth the effort.

It was my daughter’s 8th birthday on Saturday, and her celebration of choice was a sleepover with five friends. I have nothing much to say on this, other than that the term “lowest common denominator” now has a whole new meaning for me. It means “when six eight-year-olds are gathered in a room, the time of going to sleep shall be determined by the child who falls to sleep last, and the time of waking up shall be determined by the child who wakes up first.” This law, called the Law of Ruined Sundays, shall apply in any circumstances. When applied as a mathematical formula, it equals seven hours.