Saving Bradford's Odeon cinema

Lots of towns and cities around the country have suffered under the current recession, and one of the most visible manifestations of the contraction in credit is the large number of building projects that have been delayed, put on hold indefinitely or - in the most extreme cases - cancelled altogether. The city centre flat where I lived until very recently was a good example; many of the apartments in the same block were either empty or unsold, the optimistic projections made by developers back in more ostentatious times proving to have no real substance in the era of the credit crunch.

The sister cities of Leeds and Bradford are at first glance very different places, the former having reaped the benefits of investment that have turned it from another grim post-industrial town into the 'Knightsbridge of the North' whilst its neighbour to the west has lagged further and further behind, both socially and economically. But something they do have in common is the rather dubious distinction of a large empty crater right in the centre of town.

In Leeds the £650 million Trinity complex - designed to make the city the top shopping destination in the North of England ahead of rivals Manchester - has been delayed several times, and now isn't due to be open for business until the end of 2012. Over in Bradford the situation is even worse, with its Westfield development pretty much on permanent hold since the area was flattened back in 2004. Both projects constitute considerable blots on the local environment.

So you would think that the powers that be in both cities would approach with caution any more proposals to knock down buildings and replace them with commercial developments. Not so in West Yorkshire, where Bradford City Council has approved - at the second time of asking - the demolition of one of the last 1930s art deco cinemas still standing in the UK. Bradford, it should be remembered, is the UNESCO 'City of Film'.

The decision has not been without controversy. The Council had originally voted to save the building - which is in a considerable state of neglect - only to reverse that decision in light of the perceived cost of being sued by the building's owners, Leeds-based regional development agency Yorkshire Forward. The RDA - which wants to build a shopping centre where the Odeon currently stands - has subsequently stated that it would not have done so.

There has also been a vociferous local movement which has fought both online and on the streets to save the building; it has also alleged that the council has engaged in a dirty tricks campaign. There have been claims and counterclaims of missing letters of protest, of exaggeration of the risk of asbestos, and that the rejection of an application from a potential buyer was without adequate consideration.

It's a sad and sorry state of affairs that the lessons of the recession - so painfully obvious in the gaping open sores that blight West Yorkshire's biggest cities - have been so woefully ignored that a unique part of our nation's heritage is facing destruction in favour of the sort of development that has already failed so miserably in the region. If UNESCO were to strip Bradford of its prestigious Film status the local political classes would have no-one to blame but themselves.

A day at Brimham Rocks - and that SNP blogger...

Another Sunday, another day out; I really am getting spoilt at the moment. Today's itinerary took us to Brimham Rocks, a National Trust property in North Yorkshire famous for its unusual array of rock formations.

And the site really is an amateur geologist's playground; some of the weirdly-shaped piles of eroded and porous millstone grit are bigger than a house and are perfect for those ready and willing to clamber all over them. In today's health-and-safety conscious world it can be a refreshing change to be allowed to do so without fear of retribution, and if you happen to be in the area I heartily recommend a visit.

On a completely different note the one-time Scottish nationalist blogger Mark MacLachlan is to sue his former SNP employers for forcing his resignation in the wake of the Universality of Cheese fiasco. The Nats were quick to distance themselves from the site - which indulged in scurrilous gossip regarding the private lives of opposition politicians - once MacLachlan's alter ego had been exposed despite his identity apparently being common knowledge among the upper echelons of the party hierarchy. Whilst it's hard to choose sides based purely on likability - both belligerents appear equally objectionable - it'll be interesting for bloggers to see whether their anonymous online ramblings really can have real implications for their terms of employment or any other aspect of their non-virtual lives. Watch this space...

Should violent video games be banned?

A little while ago I won a computer games console in a competition run by my supermarket employer's in-house magazine shortly before I finished working there. It almost felt like a sort of leaving present, a way of saying "thank you" for having put up with the tedium of the job for so long, and since then playing on it has been immense fun.

Consoles have come on a lot since they first hit the shelves some thirty years ago; I once had a machine whose games were stored on cassettes similar in appearance to their audio counterparts, and took around half an hour at a time to load. Everything about them was basic, from the clunky graphics to the beeping sounds that masqueraded as musical accompaniment. Today's consoles are far more sophisticated, using discs that are ready to play in a fraction of the time the machines used to take.

One thing that would certainly strike today's observer, however, is that these retro games were all fairly wholesome in content, even when taking into account their graphical limitations. A little yellow Pac-man eating blobs or a boy on a bicycle delivering papers was about as nasty as they got, and those games that did incorporate some element of violence were often comic-book like in their levels of realism.

Times have certainly changed. The technological advances in graphics over the past couple of decades has brought with it far more realistic and violent games; murder, mutilation and torture are all now par for the course. As a result many game manufacturers emulate films by carrying age-restricted labels on their products, and although there is no legal obligation for them to do so the BBFC can and does occasionally ban games from being distributed in the UK. This is still something of a softly-softly approach which can contrast sharply with much tighter controls on video game content in other countries.

The issue of obligatory age ratings is an interesting case in point; in last month's Queen's Speech the government proposed making such restrictions mandatory for all games designed for those aged 12 and over. The news has been welcomed by Labour MP Keith Vaz, who has spearheaded a campaign for a total ban on violent video games ever since the death of Stefan Pakeerah five years ago. The Leicester schoolboy was fatally stabbed in broad daylight by another teenager in what police described as a botched robbery; Stefan's parents, however, blamed the controversial Manhunt, arguing that killer Warren LeBlanc was obsessed with the game. Such allegations were never proved in court.

And Manhunt is particularly notorious, even by today's ultra-violent standards. Players must locate gang members and murder them utilising a variety of objects, with points scored for particularly gruesome and gratuitous kills. The Pakeerahs were instrumental in the banning of its sequel Manhunt 2 from British shops, although the BBFC subsequently permitted the sale of a censored version of the game some time later. In a repeat of the 'video nasties' debate of the mid 1980s Giselle Pakeerah accused the gaming industry of being "morally irresponsible" for creating such violent products; in light of the most recent government announcement she has reiterated her stance that age restrictions do not go far enough but rather such games should not be released into the public domain at all.

The main problem confronting this line of thought, however, is that the vast majority of those who play such games do not attempt to replicate their virtual activities in the real world; even in extreme cases such as that of LeBlanc the notion that computer games are the sole cause of violent behaviour is undermined in light of the rarity of such instances and especially when other factors - such as mental well-being - are taken into account. By banning all such games in one fell swoop suggests that the public are not able - or at least not to be trusted - to distinguish between what is fantasy and what is reality, a patronising and unreasonable stance. And with the vagaries of digital piracy a total clampdown could easily create a unregulated black market in illegal games which would be extremely difficult to police.

Games manufacturers and stockists, on the other hand, do have a moral responsibility to ensure that adult-themed games are marketed and targeted at an appropriately mature audience. Making that responsibility a legal requirement would not only help ensure that this continues to be the case but enable public bodies to be able to examine each and every submission on its own particular merit. A knee-jerk ban is not the answer.

A trip to Spurn Head

It was my birthday yesterday. It's now twenty seven years since that fateful day in a hospital ward in South London - Camberwell to be exact - when I first came into the world. Twenty seven times I've (probably) been the grateful recipient of cards and gifts and twenty seven times (or thereabouts) I've ruminated on my failure to become King of the World for another consecutive year. I also like to do or go somewhere different for the day, and this occasion was no different; to celebrate I spent the day in - but where else? - Spurn Head in East Yorkshire.

Anyone who remembers their classroom geography will probably have heard of Spurn, and some like myself may have even studied it in some depth. It's a long thin sand spit which extends for several miles into the Humber estuary and is in some places less than fifty metres across, narrow enough on occasion for the cold North Sea to break through in rough weather. Created by a process known as long shore drift - whereby sand is deposited from further up the coast - this cycle of destruction and creation has been going on for centuries. For me the chance to visit such an important case-study of erosional marine processes was one not to be missed.

And it is - in December anyway - a pretty bleak place. On one side the frigid tempestuous sea contrasts with the calm shallow waters of the Humber on the other. At the far remote end of the spit - accessible only by a sand-covered road tarred only in places - are two Victorian lighthouses and one of the few permanently-manned lifeboat stations in the UK. It's also a protected nature reserve of national importance.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day out to a little visited corner of the country, even if it was a pretty darn chilly one. For anyone interested in seeing geography in action Spurn is well worth a visit; I'm just glad I took my hat.

Cameron rejects 'Toff Tories' tag

Blimey. Conservative leader David Cameron has accused Gordon Brown of being "petty" and "spiteful" for alluding to the privileged education he and several of his senior party colleagues received at Eton. In a television interview Cameron claimed that he is "not in the slightest bit embarrassed" about his schooling and that any attempts by Labour to engage class as an issue in the next general election are doomed to end in failure. "What people are interested in is not where you come from but where you're going to, what you've got to offer", he said.

And, indeed, Cameron may have a point; last year's loss of the former safe Labour seat of Crewe and Nantwich was marked by a woefully unsuccessful campaign fixated on the Tory candidate's moneyed background. With the volatility of that debacle no doubt still fresh in the mind Chancellor Alistair Darling was understandably quick to point out that it is Conservative party policy that his party seeks to attack, and not the school at which its members studied.

And it's here that Labour's precarious balancing act may come to fruition, for if the background of the Opposition appears to influence current Tory dogma it may prove politically expedient - not to mention morally prudent - to question it.

Take this latest spot of political handbags. The cause - the Conservative pledge to raise the threshold of inheritance tax to £1 million for individuals or £2 million for couples should they be elected - had Gordon Brown in fighting mood in the Commons;"This must be the only tax change in history where the people proposing it... will know by name almost all of the potential beneficiaries. Is this what the Conservatives mean when they say, 'We're all in this together'?" Brown - referring to Zac Goldsmith, the former Etonian and millionaire prospective Tory MP who has admitted having non-domicile tax status - also suggested that such policies had been dreamed up on "the playing fields of Eton."

Such a policy would, of course, only benefit the very rich who make up such a small percentage of the country's population and yet lay claim to a far greater proportion of the Tory leadership; around half of the shadow cabinet would benefit if such revisions were passed. And - tellingly - it appears that the Conservatives are also conscious of the class issue; their party website, after all, only lists the schools its members attended if it was state and not private. Cameron has since pledged to "sort it out".

A politician's background is, essentially, a non-sequiter and should have no bearing on a politician's commitment to his or her job. Where it can and does become an issue, however, is when party policies are formed apparently designed to serve the members of that party more than the electorate. For Cameron to reject the Eton jibe - and for Brown to make it - the apparent link between the two needs to be exposed or dismissed for what it really is.

England earn promising World Cup draw

The wait is over, and up and down the country fans of the beautiful game have let out a collective sigh of relief. The group stages for the 2010 World Cup have been drawn and for once it seems that the football gods have smiled on England; their opponents are the relatively unfavoured minnows of the United States, Algeria and Slovenia. For a draw which included the likes of - Ireland fans look away now - France and Portugal few will disagree with England coach Fabio Capello's observation that "it's not so bad." Indeed, he has a point; Group of Death it ain't, but then that's the reward for being granted seeded status. Even the most ardent anti-English fan would find it hard to argue that some of the other big names in the tournament have not got an even easier ride to the knockout stages.

There is, of course, that other perennial debate whenever England qualifies as the sole home-nation representative at a major footballing tournament; why fans from the other constituent nations of the United Kingdom, most notably Scotland, appear reluctant to lend their Southern neighbours their support - and indeed enthusiastically cheer on England's opponents - for the duration of the competition until The Three Lions are invariably relegated at the quarter final stage on penalties. I've already discussed why this might be here previously; a more recent discussion mirrors these same observations.

Ultimately whether England comes close to winning the World Cup or not there will be those who would take delight in an early English exit. Whether it's simple sporting rivalry or something far more sinister is still not entirely clear...

Drink drive limit may be lowered

The government is examining the possibility of lowering the legal drink drive limit, and has asked a legal expert to carry out the research on its behalf. Sir Peter North will submit an independent assessment sometime early next year.

The case for a reduction in the limit is a strong one; at 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood there is too much room for those tempted to consume alcohol before driving to chance the amount they can safely drink, or at the very least get away with. The problem is compounded by what is in any case an arbitrary and - for each individual -a variable figure liable to fluctuate throughout the day.

And drink driving is a real issue; last year alone around 430 people lost their lives on UK roads as a direct result of motorists under the influence. British roads - on the whole - have a good record for a country with such a high population density and penalties even for first-time offenders are tough, but many would argue the number of deaths are still far too high. Removing the ambiguity surrounding the current limit so that even one drink becomes one too many is without question the right way to proceed.

The Sun at forty

Forty years ago one of the most dominant forces in popular British journalism was spawned. Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the then-struggling broadsheet The Sun and its subsequent transformation into the tabloid behemoth that today enjoys the highest circulation of any UK newspaper marked an important development in the history of the modern press. These days the paper is so confident of its power that it believes it can swing an election in favour of whichever party it or Mr Murdoch chooses to support - again.

Naturally the Sun is delighted to be celebrating four successful decades at the top of the cut-throat media business. In a triumphant editorial the tabloid - apparently without irony - declared that "We believe it IS the people's newspaper - because you trust us to give it to you straight." I suspect a lot of people would have cause to disagree.

Among the more controversial of its headlines over the years has been the infamous 'Gotcha', on the sinking of the General Belgrano; 'The Truth' regarding the Hillsborough disaster; the self-explanatory 'Are We Being Run by a Gay Mafia?'; grovelling post-lawsuit climb downs after lambasting the likes of Elton John and Prince Harry and - truly saving the best for last - 'Straight Sex Cannot Give You Aids - Official'. How this world exclusive from 1989 has remained so exclusive is, quite frankly, a mystery.

So, ladies and gentlemen, please charge your glasses - here's to another forty years of sensationalist partisan drivel!

Thanks to the hacks at Private Eye for this one...

Another one bites the dust...

There are, some would say, two main types of blogs; those that are anonymous, and those that are not. The reasons why some people choose to withhold their name from their online scribblings is without doubt different for each and every case, but for many the reason is obvious; they do not wish to be publicly associated with what they write.

There is nothing inherently untoward or unusual about this, but for a few the desire for their identities to remain a secret stems from sensitivities surrounding the topic on which they are discussing, particularly if they are involved in said activities in a public or professional capacity.

A famous recent example was the unmasking of the author of the Orwell Prize-winning Night Jack blog earlier this year. Detective Constable Richard Horton had posted numerous entries on his blog critical of police work until his name was made public by The Times. The newspaper defended its actions by arguing that by publishing his thoughts in the public domain Horton had effectively waived his right to anonymity, a view shared by the judge who refused to grant an injunction stopping the broadsheet from doing so. Justice Eady said that blogging was "essentially a public rather than a private activity". Many bloggers - with good reason - have expressed their disappointment at the whole affair, viewing it as an attack on their freedom to criticise businesses and organisations with which they may have profound insight not afforded to the general public at large. The removal of anonymity could potentially prevent any such concerns from ever becoming public knowledge.

The main problem with this line of argument, however, is that anyone can write a blog, and anyone can say pretty much what they want. It's exceedingly difficult to draw a line between unregulated commentary and the right to say it without anyone knowing who you are.

The latest person to be exposed as the author of a somewhat controversial blog is Mark MacLachan, aide to SNP Constitution and Culture Minister Mike Russell. The blog in question - the curiously named "The Universality of Cheese" - had, apparently, not been felt to be in keeping with the professional standards demanded by his publicly-funded job. According to the report it transpired that behind the pseudonym Montague Burton "MacLachlan suggested some Labour politicians got a sexual thrill from bullying women, branded a prominent Tory 'the biggest liar in the Scottish legal system', and posted a picture of Gordon Brown in a noose with the headline 'duplicitous lying bastards'. He also alleged a married Labour MSP visited gay cruising spots, badmouthed the daughter of Lord David Steel, the former presiding officer at Holyrood, and described several opponents as 'cunts'." Sympathy in the blogosphere has been - perhaps not surprisingly - muted, even from those broadly supportive of the nationalist cause; MacLachan has since resigned.

What is most interesting about this case, however, is that many of those who support the right of bloggers to post anonymously have agreed that MacLachlan has overstepped the mark; whistleblowing is one thing, libellous and personal attacks against identifiable colleagues another category altogether.

Ultimately bloggers have a very real contribution to make to the online experience, and with the free discussion of views and ideas that they entail and propagate they form an important manifestation of the democratic process. But for such a privileged position to be maintained there needs to be certain checks and balances; avoiding abusive bile - even from behind the flimsy veil of supposed anonymity - would be a good place to start.

Your starter for ten...

I'm a bit of a quiz fan. There's something so inherently competitive in pitting one's general knowledge against another's that even the most timid of shrinking violets can turn into an unrecognisable raging know-it-all. I like to think I sit pretty much halfway on the scale with a 'winner-takes-all' attitude at one end and a strictly 'just-for-fun' basis at the other.

My own particular forté has always been geography. I even captained my school's geography quiz team for two years running; that we had such a distinctly idiosyncratic team never really struck me as being in any way unusual at the time. Even now if a vaguely geographical question crops up in a quiz I know I'll be much more confident in guessing the correct answer then if it were of a completely unrelated category.

Certain geographical questions often arise with a greater frequency then others; a well known is example is to name the only country that begins but doesn't end with the letter 'A', the answer being - obviously - Afghanistan.

Or at least, that was the answer. When the Soviet Union disintegrated at the end of 1991 a new country that also fulfilled this criteria was created. The relative obscurity of Azerbaijan, however, often results in the failure to update this particular quiz favourite. This example encapsulates the main problem with geographically-orientated trivia; that questions can be and are rendered redundant on a regular basis, such is the dynamic and fluid nature of the topic.

Now another common question needs changing. Rwanda has become only the second country to join the Commonwealth of Nations despite have no previous historical or constitutional ties to the United Kingdom. The first? You'll just have to see whether your local pub quizmaster has updated his or her questions or not...