Blogs, adverts, prisons, Tesco, and Worcester Street

Well I've made the jump over to the new version of Blogger, and it does have better management facilities. Dan's noted that everyone commenting is stripped of their capital letters, which is down to a change in the stylesheets. Don't know why they've done that, but I have asked. The other thing I see is that it's re-fed the articles beginning with "Behind the script" so my apologies to anyone getting this through the feeds for getting 27 articles again. Hopefully this is a one-off.


TV adverts! Now I know they exist for one purpose, but a few recent ones are simply laughable. Now I know not a moment passes that I don't ask

"What if we could live in a world of total-hydration"

well actually I don't and I doubt it's something that takes up much time in any philosophical class. I pick on this as I'm sure someone's been watching Zoolander and thought "That's a great advert" I can only expect the woman featured to turn to the camera and say

"Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty"

well done Johnson & Johnson for that.

Now as I said I know what adverts are for, but one of my quirks is that I demand internal consistency within the world they create, the Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes ad is good at this, we all know about bus lanes so an extension of the world into Crunchy Nut lanes is fine, however we do get some that breach these rules.

I'll start with the Kenco ads, the new man stops the line as he spots that the same beans for Kenco's Fine Roasted are being packed into Kenco's Instant sacks. The exceptional Don Warrington explains that Kenco use the same beans for both types... so why are they being packed into separate sacks? Why go to the expense of having two different sets of bags printed when they contain the same beans? Even if they're going to different places it's not exactly logical.

I could go on and on, but I'll end with the new Ready-Brek commercial where Food Police (robots) are disposing of all foods that are high in E-numbers, fat, sugar, etc. But they're confused by good old Ready Brek that doesn't have any of these things and so break-down. Why? Unless they're programmed to assume all foods are bad, in which case why bother checking the contents. If they're not programmed this way then they should simply ignore the stuff. Sorry this one really grates.


John Reid is in trouble again after a judge let's a sex offender go with a suspended sentence stating that he's following Home Office guidelines to cope with overcrowding in prisons. Now this is getting to be ridiculous, let's lock-up people who fail to pay their council tax or are caught with minor amounts of drugs and let sex offenders out.

Of course we could build more prisons, I mean we've got a huge site here where the old British Sugar used to be; let's build a prison there. Gods I can hear the protests already. And this is where the problem lies, we all want new prisons to be built just um not near us. Stick them out in the wilds and you'll hear complaints that we're destroying the countryside and that you're denying the inmates their <sigh> human rights by making it more difficult for visitors to get there. Put them in urban areas and everyone will complain about their house prices safety. Not do anything and you'll either get overcrowding (human-rights again) or more lenient sentencing. It's a no-win situation for anybody and so as per normal for almost all governments it appears to be a case of do nothing until they're forced to.


Tav at the WFA has already commented on this story asking what "link-up shopping" could be created, it's not as if this is the Kidderminster site where in theory people could pop over to Weavers Wharf or vice-versa. No-one is going to head into the town centre after visiting Tesco and nobody is going to park in the town-centre in order to visit them later. They're still worried about traffic, but at least

letters have been sent out to residents in Mitton Street, Severn Road and Lichfield Street inviting them to a meeting on Tuesday to discuss their fears about the potential problem of increased traffic.

Yep because changing the major route through the town is only going to affect these people isn't it. Hmm Tuesday I bet it'll be held at 2pm or such like, I'll wait and see. Oo kill two birds with one stone, compulsory purchase the land and build a prison there <snigger>

Another major story was this. Great after all the hassle over one cinema, you now what to add another - are you nuts? Seriously screws must be loose here, bowling alley - no problem, restaurants - no problem, hotel - hmm okay maybe, housing - what? Yeah I've always wanted to live next-door to a bowling alley. Sorry, but a cinema just smacks of petty pay-back against the Warehouse Cinema; especially when neither Bewdley or Stourport have even one. I'm all for developing this area and drawing people back to the top of the town, but some of the speculation as to what's going there needs to be nipped in the bud right now.