Here's a discovery: a website that bills itself as An A-Z Guide to British and Irish Railways on Film. It tells you where the railway scenes in each film were shot, has plenty of screen captures and appears to be reasonably comprehensive. In effect, it's an online version of Horton's Guide to British Railways in Feature Films, which I keep by me when watching Talking Pictures TV. The image above (borrowed from another site) comes from the minor Ealing comedy The Magnet (1950). It shows Stephen Murray (the great uncle of Al Murray) and a very young James Fox on ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: Shortly after the local elections, I took a look at how two MRP studies did. Short version: YouGov's was pretty good at picking out the right overall stories of political movement, though struggled more at picking up how far the movement was going in specific places, especially where the movement was coming from a party bucking national trends. With Electoral Calculus, however, the basic story was wrong for the Greens, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. But there were also two pollsters ...
We used to count overnight in Harborough's local elections, but this year the powers that be waited until the next day. I think that was a shame. When I was on the council here, the officer in charge of our elections said he would like to see the parliamentary elections here count overnight too, but they were in the hands of Oadby and Wigston council who preferred to count on the Friday even then. I sense that Lord Bonkers would agree with him. Friday I can remember when every council for miles around counted its votes overnight. A chain of ...
Time for some more Frank. And there's a special reason for choosing Montana, because the backing vocals are sung by the Ikettes, including Tina Turner. Wikipedia quotes Zappa's memory of recording the song: "It was so difficult, that one part in the middle of the song "Montana", that the three girls rehearsed it for a couple of days. Just that one section. You know the part that goes "I'm pluckin' the ol' dennil floss..."? Right in the middle there. And one of the harmony singers got it first. She came out and sang her part and the other girls had ...
Ukraine The ultimate Pyrrhic victory is the best way to describe the Russian capture of Bakhmut. The town has minimal strategic victory. It has cost 20,000-plus Russian lives and 50,000 casualties. Tens of thousands of artillery shells, missiles and drones have been expended. The siege has tied up Russian forces for months and left Putin's army of a pile of rubble. While the Russians have been throwing themselves against the Bakhmut brick wall, the Ukrainians have been taking delivery of hundreds of state-of-the-art tanks, training on F-16s, building up their drone arsenal and gathering forces for their counter offensive. Exactly ...
From the Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee : On behalf of the Tayside Museums Forum, we're delighted to invite you to attend the third annual Tayside's Treasures online event, taking place on Wednesday 31st May at 3pm. What do a Pictish stone, a bus driver's badge and a design for a public urinal have in common? They're among the many thousands of unique and fascinating objects held in museums around Tayside. This special live online event features a series of short presentations from staff and volunteers in 17 different museums across the region, in which you'll ...
