Rav Casley Gera’s Blog

plat, originally uploaded by Rav Casley Gera.

I’m getting a bit obsessed with railway platforms. It’s the geometry

31072008276.jpg, originally uploaded by Rav Casley Gera.

For all its flaws - it being a neo-fascist lie-packed hell-rag, for example - there is something vaguely marvellous about the Daily Mail’s utter refusal to enter the post-Thatcher era. This spread could literally have been designed in 1988. Look at those fonts! And that absurd stock picture. The guy is juggling a *rolodex*, for god’s sake!

Mind you, round spectacles *are* back, so…

Scrabulous has to be the stupidest short-sighted IP enforcement ever. How much goodwill was it creating for Scrabble? How many new, young players? They must be mad

July 31, 2008 in Tweets | 0 comments

tomorrow, "Peter Hain: Dennis Skinner is working class"

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Well, I'm glad that's cleared up: "David Miliband: Gordon Brown is the Labour leader | Guardian.co.uk" http://twshot.com/?1XM

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One Labour Prime Minister, two Labour Prime Minister… three….?

It is shortly after sun-rise on Wednesday morning in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Andalucia. I am in despair at the behaviour of ministers and MPs who were briefing against Gordon Brown once the Glasgow by-election result came in. Then the phone rings. It is the Today programme. Would I like to comment on David Miliband’s article in the Guardian? What article? They send it over on my Blackberry.

It is like a breath of fresh air after the stale self-indulgent solipsism from Warwick. It attacks the Tories. Hooray! It sets out Labour’s mistakes – not under Brown’s brief premiership but strategic wrong turns or failures to get out of first gear since 1997. At last! It suggests that Labour needs to do. On the record. Signed by a senior cabinet minister. About time!

So I tell Today I would like to comment and invite other ministers and MPs top attack the Tories and to discuss ideas and ideology and not personality. Big mistake. The phone goes silent as all the BBC wants from me as a Labour MP is to join in the get-Gordon dance.

pfpfpfpffff. Denis MacShane clearly has his own agenda. But I can’t help but feel there is something completely absurd about the firestorm that’s blown up about Milliband’s article in the Guardian. [Read more →]

Ten years ago ads for insurance and the like were all full of grinning youths. Now it's all families and babies. Why is middle age and family back in fashion, i wonder?

July 30, 2008 in Tweets | 0 comments

wait, originally uploaded by Rav Casley Gera.

There’s something uniquely miserable about waiting for a train on a sunny day.

The Chandra Levy series, on Page 1 for 13 days, has provoked these kinds of comments: Lurid! Appalling! A waste of time! And these: Fascinating! Totally hooked! Riveting!

No investigation in my 2 1/2 years here has provoked such sharply opposing reader comment as the series on the seven-year-old unsolved murder of the Washington intern, who was having an affair with a congressman.

All but two of the approximately 75 readers who called or wrote to me were critical of the project; by Friday, in the online comments posted with stories, critics outnumbered fans about 410 to 70.

Yet it was clear from e-mails to the reporters — Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sylvia Moreno — that many readers were engrossed. The series was phenomenally popular online, outpacing other recent investigative series. And, for the first time, Post reporters engaged with readers in an online dialogue through a daily Reporter’s Notebook; the comments (more than 500, but with many repeaters) were mostly positive.

- Washinton Post reader’s ombudsman Deborah Howell

I’ll stay out of the row over whether the 13-part epic was a wise or worthwhile move for the WaPo, largely because I can’t be bothered to trawl through the whole thing myself. But the description of the tone of the comments is instructive. From the comments on the piece itself, you’d think it was a disaster. But the comments on the reporter’s log were nicer, and those via email glowing.

The lesson? Knee-jerk comments are almost always nasty. Casual readers won’t generally bother to comment to say how much they liked a story or agreed with its view; only the enraged are engaged enough to click. Those who really like it are more likely to email in their praise. It’s sad, but most of us feel more comfortable slating something online - which makes us feel superior - than praising it, which feels a bit like weakness. If we have something nice to say, we prefer to say it in private.

Bloggers depressed at epic posts that generate nothing but sneering comments, take heart!

You can't blame Milliband for speaking out. I wonder whether Gordon has anyone telling him frankly how bad things are

July 29, 2008 in Tweets | 0 comments

The discussion about the 'wealth gap' is in danger of burying the poverty question under the separate issue of what to do about the ultra-rich

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shia update: it's all his dad's fault! phew. http://twshot.com/?1V1

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I'm in love with Ezra Klein. http://twshot.com/?1UZ

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Oh Shia! And we all leapt to your defence after the late-night shopping incident...

July 28, 2008 in Tweets | 0 comments

Dead impressed with tfl text alerts service. Assuming they work, of course.

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I can’t see the point of Mozart. Of Mozart I can’t see the point. The point of Mozart I can’t see. See I can’t of Mozart the point. Can’t I of Mozart point the see… I can’t see the point of Mozart.

That’s not a tune, that’s an algorithm. An algorithm in a powdered wig.

Before Bond: Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, 2007

Civilisation comes to late-night Farringdon at last

the new Facebook layout? It's OK. But all my applications have vanished.

July 25, 2008 in Tweets | 0 comments

“A lot of people say that the Internet is the future for newspapers. Well, I say bullshit.com.”

- Paul Dacre, Editor in Chief, Daily Mail Group, 1999

Are electronic newspapers just a load of bullshit.com? - New Statesman, 1999

Labour has done badly in previous contests between election[sic]. It even managed to meet disaster in a national election - the 1999 European Parliament election - and still win by miles the next time.

Yet what characterised these previous defeats was base Labour voters staying at home, unwilling to go out and cast a positive vote for Labour.

Glasgow East was different. In Glasgow East, voters in pretty large numbers did turn out. They rushed out to vote for anyone who could beat the Labour candidate.

In a recent discussion I had on Newsnight, my friend the former Blair adviser Peter Hyman said Labour was “sleepwalking to a massacre”.

So they are.

Daniel Finkelstein has a point, I suspect.