today : for arts sake

Of course our government was going to decimate the arts. They hate the arts. But of course they would save the RSC, the ROH and the big London Ballet companies (from what I saw of the recent BBC documentary about the English National Ballet, it's run by a bunch of highly string incompetents). It's a bit like only saving Man Utd, Arsenal and Spurs. Or only supporting M&S and Tesco. The English National Opera has been spared because it has a business model 'still in development', They've only had since 1974. But they also have 'artistic ambition', which is shorthand for spending silly amounts of money on hand-beading 1000 custom made costumes for the chorus to wear for 8 performances.

I have nothing against opera or ballet. In fact I love both. What I do have a problem with is that things are still divided in terms of high and low culture. The old arts always win out, because to public schoolboys culture is ossified, backward looking and should only be consumed as a marker of status.

Tories always have a very good idea of the price of everything and the value of nothing. I doubt they have the mental capacity to appreciate art. After all, to have your soul stirred by an aria, an arpeggio or an aubade; first you have to have a soul.

Again, it is the ideological rather than the practical. What better example of unecessary state funding than money which supports something you don't understand and are suspicious of? The Arts, after all, deal in ambiguity, ideas and transformation. It's the opposite of Conservatism which panics if anything is less than simple, fixed and frightened of the future.

Local theatres closing, youth projects abandoned. These arty people, after all, should get proper jobs - like building million pound missiles so the politicians can act out their toy soldier fantasies in real life.

today : I have a first world problem or two

I was reading the other day about 'First World Problems'. If it isn't a phrase dreamt up by Douglas Coupland then it should be.

For the uninitiated, the first world problem is a topic of complaint by someone so used to having not to worry or grow angry and frustrated about the fundamentals of life, that the trivial - stuff that can only be a fleeting and pretty-much meaningless annoyance - becomes worthy of these emotions.

Example from my own life: Asda didn't have any pimento stuffed olives so I had to buy plain pitted olives instead. Three aisles later, they kept their Papua New Guinea Free Trade Premium Instant Coffee on offer at 2 jars for a fiver, but also had Nescafe Alta Rica on offer at £2 per jar. The very definition of 'the horns of a dilemma, I think you'll agree.

Or today's thought: do I fill up at this Shell Station and get some Shell points, or do I drive a little way to fill up at Morrison's and get some Morrison's points? Which points are worth more?

today : I break my own code and do a rock review

I rarely feel like writing reviews. Let's face it. The world is too full of reviews. Most critics add little or nothing to the sum total knowledge of the world and its artistic endeavours. The few that I do read or follow, it's mainly about their style than their opinions. The Kermodian rant is, in itself, simply entertaining, as is the Joe Queenan essay. Clive James reviewing books old and new is mainly about the plethora of elegant sentences rather than a recommendation or rejection. Anthony Lane reviewing films holds a similar appeal. They simply use the medium of the review to write or talk pleasingly. Charlie Brooker's intelligently acerbic analyses of TV are about his bitterly romantic worldview and persona rather than the specific shows.

Much less useful than most paid critics are amateur reviewers. In line with the old adage, everybody does have an opinion about things they've read, heard and seen. There is nothing more demoralising than people who believe that their opinion is more worthy than the opinions of others. We know who these people are. The ones who clog Amazon up with their infinite and infinitely turgid opinions, the ones who blog endlessly and pointlessly their often inelegant and under-considered responses to whatever CD they've bought or film they've seen. Mostly this is to do with the fact that their reviews are written from a standpoint of blind love or blind hatred.

Sometimes it is to do with the fact that the medium of the review is a dead easy way for people to pretend they write with legitimacy. In much the same way as blogs (including my own) contain varying levels of envy. Nuggets of jealousy that someone else somehow gets to write their opinions in a newspaper column or pronounce them on TV: amateur reviewers ( like bloggers - like me) are essentially saying 'I can do that. It's not that hard'.

But the other night I saw Elbow in concert and am inclined to review it. It was a strange event for me. Elbow are my brother's band. Unlike me, he has their albums in his collection and would declare himself a fan. Possible dates coincided with the beginning of him taking a couple of weeks off work and also my neice's Easter break from University. She and her graduate student brother decided it would be a good idea to cajole him to go and see one of the shows and roped me into the role of organiser. But on the morning of the show he was knocked off his bicycle by a lunatic driver and ended up in the hospital. Thankfully the injuries. although not superficial, were also not life threatening.

But we faced the coming evening with the stress of worry and general deflation. We were gutted for my brother, whom, despite a determination to get out of A&E in time to make the trip, was clearly in no condition to travel. Broken hands require some attention and a serious bike crash can leave a person battered, bruised and traumatised. Even if the x-rays, casts, prescriptions etc could be completed in time to set off, he would be in no physical condition to attend a show for quite some days or weeks.

With the main quarter of our party incapacitated we were disinclined to go. But my bro insisted. Being the cause of our non-attendance would be, for him, much worse than not attending himself. So off we went.

Elbow are one of those bands that exist, for me, in the quite good/quite interesting category. I own none of their records and have never seen them live. But each time I've seen them on TV or heard them on the radio I felt well-disposed towards them. Like lots of people, I watched their 2009 Glastonbury show on the telly. It's widely acknowledged as their breakthrough moment. The string laden encore of 'A Day Like This' was one of those 'Glastonbury Moments' (like Orbital playing as the sun went down in 1994, Travis playing Why Does it Always Rain as the rain fell in 2004, Pulp doing Common People in 1996 and Blur's rendition of Tender in 2008). It thrust the song into the limelight and consequently it became the soundtrack of many peoples' summer.

Unfortunately, they were a bit overplayed. I didn't need to own The Seldom Seen Kid album, as it was used in every TV show and trailer for months afterwards. The aforementioned 'A Day Like This' soundtracked antiques shows, the X factor, science shows and reality shows ad infinitum. Close behind was 'Grounds for Divorce'.

And I sometimes listen to Guy Garvey on his radio show. He seems like a nice chap, and plays an interesting palette of sounds.

A couple of weeks ago, before we'd booked any tickets, I heard the band play a session on the now late lamented Radcliffe and Maconie evening show. I was struck with how restrained and elegant the music was. When we got our tickets I wondered how they could translate this mature, reflective music into an arena.

Here is my review. I needn't have wondered. The Elbow show at Sheffield Arena on March 19th 2011 was simply quite magnificent.

I came away thinking that, even not as a fanatic fan, I had witnessed a band who knew exactly what they wanted to do and executed it perfectly. These were people who had worked hard over a long time before they achieved great success, but perhaps because of their age and experience, knew how to embrace and enjoy it. What made the show so marvellous and totally engaging was the strong impression of sheer sincerity. In amongst the technical wizardry of the light and video show and the cavernous space with its giant crowd, they managed to maintain an intimate atmosphere, devoid of pomposity. It was spectacular but never flashy. A great show that didn't need to be showy to be great.

today : both feet forward into sand

I'm inclined to think that jumping into any endeavour with both feet is unwise, unless of course you are aiming for the long or triple jump gold medal.

The recent acceleration of the 'coalition' from wait a minute to chocks away gung-ho in Libya suggests two things:

1. Either they have cobbled together a strategy on the back of an envelope or by sending faxes to each other (no emails since Wikileaks) over a few short hours and, worryingly, have engaged in a full on military action without really thinking it through.

or

2. The plan was already in place and now was the opportunity to enact it.

Either option is somewhat disturbing. There seem to be few answers emerging from the fog of war.

today : some more songs I was listening to today

today : a kind of miracle

Think about it. I was chatting to a friend from the car today. They were in their own car. You have a thing in your pocket that means you can talk to pretty much anyone, ANYWHERE in the world. It costs hardly anything. It's a kind of miracle.

And like lots of people, I have been watching the awesome footage of the Japan tsunami. The reason: many people have di-def video cameras that they carry around in their pockets. They film it even as it happens to them. Stuff from the other side of the world comes out of my telly either live or almost live. Many of us will never have actually seen a proper Tsunami up close before. Now we know what it looks like. It's a kind of miracle.

And I sold my beloved but little used J Busilacchio Reed organ to a very nice chap in Sardinia. He wrote to me in Italian; I wrote to him in English. A website automatically translated our words. The click of a mouse was how he paid me. It cost hardly more than the price of a take-away to send it from Northern England to a Mediterranean island. It was collected at my door in Leeds and delivered to his in Sassari. It got there in about two days. It's a kind of miracle.

today : a rant of sorts

I'm frustrated. Indeed by having a government whose policies i entirely disagree with in almost every way you could think of. but also by the seeming inevitability of it all.

but what makes me really frustrated is that the conduit of our grievances - the opposition, are apparently so lily-livered and meek. they appear to have no fight.

i wonder if the general election of last year financially cleaned out the labour party completely. these things tend to happen, and it takes time to rebuild the war chest. but what frustrates me more and more is that it looks like the labour party wanted to be in opposition. were happy and relieved to go back to policy reviews and standing in the background.

i was sceptical from the start with their strategy leading up the election. from moment one of brown's tenure they just got it wrong. they tried selling brown as blair pt2. it was a bit like they only knew one template for success so thought they'd repeat it. only brown wasn't blair and was clearly never comfortable being the friendly pm. but they didn't have the guts to alter the strategy. brown clearly didn't have the tv charisma of blair. what's more, cameron had moved onto blair's ground.

the whole 'bigoted woman' thing during the election sprang from the notion that they should truck brown round the country meeting voters in a effort to cuddlify his image. what they should have done is let him come across as tough, impatient and brusque but talked up his competence, especially during the financial collapse when cameron and the tories stood on the sidelines dithering.

they also played perfectly into the hands of the press, who embarked on a two year long character assassination of brown. each time he attempted an uncomfortable tv smile or tried and failed to come across as soft and approachable it shored up the press's version of him as some kind of incompetent by giving them things to point and laugh at.

then they made it worse by apologising for him. the so called spin gurus, mandelson and campbell, came off as if they didn't actually believe in what they were selling, or only had one strategy that was outdated and tailored for another time. in fact it looks as if they were desperate to get it finished with so they could write their memoirs and become pundits rather than players.

at the same time labour resignedly marshalled themselves for opposition. the milibands set up for a leadership contest and some excellent senior figures began organising their political retirement into documentary making and non-executive directorships. they shrugged and accepted that their generational tranche of ministers were finished. darling, for example, should still be at the top. he'd make mincemeat out of osborne.

even after all this surrendering, they still managed not to lose outright. even with all the press backing and the momentum the country was still unsure about the tories.

but labour were resigned to losing and this meant leadership changes, policy reviews, public soul-searching and self-flagellation. following the model the tories set after 1997. too many good experienced people got out. what's more the wrong guy was elected leader. this is david miliband's fault. he bottled it at the last minute. but maybe he wasn't the right guy after all, because rather than face defeat with some backbone he took his bat home.

so when the coalition turned out to be a nightmarish blend of ultra-right wing ideology and blundering incompetence labour was this morass of jelly-spined mewling apology addicts.

last week i heard mandelson give an interview and, whilst praising cameron, he continued apologising. also last week i watched miliband give a speech in which he was still self-flagellating and positing a re-appraisal of values and policy initiatives. what happened to the ones that were already there? are these things so moveable that an election reverse can undermine them completely?

in short, a year on, they are still stuck on the back foot. word of advice: counterpunching can work, being Audley Harrison can never work.

nothing could illustrate their stance more than when miliband appointed alan johnson as shadow chancellor. johnson was a nice guy, but as lightweight as they come. he proved when in the cabinet that he was intellectually incapable of being a real threat. what Miliband needed was what he ended up with by default, someone with heft. but even ed balls seems to be being kept on a leesh. the strategy seems to be to wait until the cuts really bite and then cash in on the tory unpopularity.

but what kind of strategy is that? like waiting for AC milan to score an own goal. my only conclusion is that the labour party has convinced itself that it can no longer exist on principals - defending the poor, standing up for workers. it can now only play the game along with the others. -changing policy and presentation to try and cynically woo the few who swing elections. if you don't move forward then there is no chance of momentum, if you don't have a solid stance you will only be knocked over.

so where do we turn? for example, it seems that labour supports the alternative vote and will be generally supporting clegg and co in the referendum. but if you are going to play the game, voting against the alternative vote is the thing to do. there's a big chunk of libdems who are holding their noses in order to get to electoral reform. in fact, this is their only mission; the only reason they went into coalition. vote it down and they have no reason to shore up tory policies. the basis for coalition begins to crumble.

surely the thing about a coalition is that it is fundamentally weak. why aren't opposition politicians chipping away at vince cable, why aren't they driving every wedge they can to bring the government down?

is it that the labour party is actually culturally embarrassed about being in charge and (the current crop of senior figures at least) unable to break out of a long held habit: that the tories are the natural party of government and the best labour can do is be an intermittent interloper?

if this is the case, where do we go to register our protest and dissatisfaction? if the referendum succeeds then it will potentially be a nightmare. get ready for ukip and other bonkers idiots to put people in parliament.

but if you're a labour politician, don't come complaining to me about it. it will be your own fault for lacking the cojones to fight.

today : life imitating art

today : some songs

Some songs I was listening to today:

today : brrrm, brrrm, I got a new car

today : the habit of empire

I'm wondering why are we interfering in Libya? I say this because somehow everyone is now talking about no-fly zones with attendant air-attacks (to take out air defence capabilities). Some people are even positing a ground war to enact regime change. Of course, it's about the oil and the money, but our governments will never admit that. The same went for the recent appeasemant of Gadaffi. But now Gadaffi is losing power it seems obvious that the EU and the USA want to use the chance to turn Libya and its oil our way. Or more precisely, they want to see that it doesn't turn someone else's way. But I also think we are getting involved out of habit. Libya, after all, is yet another country that was artifically created under European colonial control. We have a long history of meddling in the regional and local politics of much of the world. And I suspect that habit plays a part. The formerly colonial powers of Europe, like Britain, just can't bring themselves to stand aside when the chance of a bit of meddling comes along. Viz Afghanistan. And it's not out some post-colonial guilt or responsibility. Look at the way the Belgians washed their hands of Rwanda, and the way the French and British helped arm the genocide.

today : phew!/help!

It's okay. I may wake up any minute to find that it's all just a recurring nightmare. Phew! Alternatively, it is all too real and will only get worse. Like Thatcherism, but turned up to el-ev-en, with a snort of Angel Dust. Help!

today : The curse of the black dye

Ok, t'would be hard for Mugabe to look the same as the others, but look at the dictators (another caveat - Berlusconi isn't really a dictator but you know what I mean). They have the same stylist (apart from Gadaffi, whose stylist clearly also does ex-members of Motley Crue and current members of Aerosmith). Chavez's hair, I swear, is crocheted, the rest co-opted from the residents of Legoland.

If you live in a country run by someone who is well over 70 but with a jet black syrup and an Amanda Holden-level of botox, then here's your chance. Get out on the streets now.

today : women of the revolution

Interestingly, even in the midst of chaos and revolution, news producers still behave much the same. Noticeably, three women have cropped up again and again on our screens.

Why have some fusty academics, greying news anchors or earnest bearded male activists on screen when you can have three rather photogenic young women instead?

Hence, doe-eyed perfect teethed activist ( I've invented a new word to describe her - she's not just an activist, but an 'Attractivist') Gigi Ibrahim must have appeared on the news about 100 times in the past week. The BBC, especially, loves her.

Would Shahira Amin have been such a big story had she been a grey, sober middle-aged man? I suspect not. I am not thinking that she will find it hard to get another job.

And CNN have spotted that Hala Gorani gives quality screen. She speaks Arabic and got pushed around by some pro-Mubarak protesters and this got her shifted from the relative backwaters of her slot on CNN World into co-anchoring alongside heavyweights Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper. Good for her, she's no bimbo, but easily the equal of them as a journalist, as well as being far easier on the eye.

I'm not suggesting that any of these women are not worthy - quite the opposite. Ibrahim speaks with intelligence and sense - even after several days clearly without any sleep. Shahira Amin genuinely put her reputation and safety on the line to do what she thought was right.

If they can make progress by looking good on the TV then good for them.

today : A wizard deal for Osborne's chums

So, using my magical mystical (even wizard-like) powers, I managed to predict what would happen with 'Project Merlin'

If the Daily Mail says stuff like this about a Tory government, then maybe there's a problem Independent You kind of expect the Indie to be unbiased towards the Tories

But the FT tends to just tell it like it is. "The accord effectively saw Mr Osborne give a green light to banks to pay multibillion-pound bonuses in exchange for a promise to increase lending to small companies by 15 per cent from £66bn to £76bn.

Reuters summed it up for the rest of the world to report

The Guardian well, they would say that wouldn't they?

Wall Street Journal "But the truce—the product of more than two months of negotiations between government and industry leaders amid heated debate over the role of banks in society—doesn't require the banks to do much beyond what they're already doing."

FT again on Cameron's multiculturalism stance.

Is David Cameron not a PR specialist?

today : David Cameron ruins my weekend

Please. Just once. Just one weekend, or even one day, when I turn on the TV and don't find some politician, obsessed with controlling the news cycle. There they are day in and day out. Announcing new initiatives, promoting policy directions, trumpeting their every action (or inaction for that matter) as an achievement. Forever feeding the feral beast its ration of topics to discuss and proposals to dissect.

Much of the time I can kind of ignore it. Most of what they feed the beast is just white sugar: empty calories. The here today, gone tomorrow news-cycle stop-gaps. The increasingly fake-looking and annoying Clegg restates some minor aspect of policy, some junior housing minister says something about houses, things that might go in a green paper maybe possibly or not.

But I can't ignore things that I think are just wrong. Things that are not just ruining my day or my weekend, but ruining peoples' lives. And my fate in the past months has been to be bombarded with stuff which is, however empty sometimes, just plain wrong. And it keeps on coming.

This weekend I was forced into a response. Like an unannounced visitor or a stalker, I couldn't ignore it and switch over to the footie. Cameron went on TV to peddle his utter nonsense about Islam and British identity.

I can't even make the time to explain how mind-bendingly wrong the content of his speech was. It was staggeringly wrong on every single level.

But the question remains why? Why now?

Is it something to do with Bob Diamond's 9 million quid bonus, or the fact that the IFS criticised Osborne's policies? Is it the fact that the inflation and employment figures are pretty poor? Is it the fact that MPs were complaining about their expenses during the week? What is in the air that is even worse bad news? Is there something buried on page 12 that shows the government in a bad light. Is one of the Sunday papers sitting on some phone-hacking gold. What flatlining figures are announced on Monday?

Or is the fact that, when the Daily Mail, Express and Telegraph are starting to fill their pages with critical, questioning headlines and stories only 9 months into a government term, there is a real danger that the strategy is crumbling at the edges.

And one sure fire way to get the Mail, Express and Telegraph back on side is to pander to their basest of impulses. Get them on about immigration, Muslims, terrorism. Feed their racism and xenophobia. Big up their rose-tinted misty eyed, almost entirely false vision of some mythical lost white Britain/England. A couple of months out from the local elections and Clegg's big electoral reform vote, start to wind up the old retrenched Tory rhetoric.

And ruin my weekend.

today : keep an eye on this name

Chuka Umunna. You'll be seeing it & hearing it a lot more in the future.

today: bread, freedom and social justice

When I called, in my recent Christmas message to the world, for people to take action, little did I know that the citizens of North Africa would take me so directly at my word. Actually, I do realise that some anonymous person on a little read blog did not cause the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. At any given moment there are always revolutions in train, or ready to take place. Many of them are little reported. People die for principle every day and are never commemorated. You also don't need to be Mystic Meg to see that things are reaching a tipping point in many areas of the world.

Bread, freedom and social justice. It's always about these things. The best thing any dictator can do to maintain power and is to give their people these three simple things. If they did, they might not be overthrown, put on trial or shot against a wall. I guess most dictators are so blinkered and stupid that they don't see it.

today: four aeroplanes

The Harrier Jump Jet

Even though I can picture it in my mind, I suspect that one of my earliest memories is not actually mine. I think it's probably a collective family memory - something that was oft repeated and supported by things I've seen on TV.

I am very young and we are all sitting on the roof the car looking across other cars parked in neat rows, and a crowd of people downwards into a green idyllic valley. We are at an air show. Suddenly, from behind a line of trees a noise begins. It's a whining roar that swells in volume until it is almost deafening. And then a blue aeroplane appears. It rises - miraculously - vertically from behind the trees and continues lifting straight up into the sunny sky, as if on a fishing line or attached to a crane. The crowd gasp in delight and excitement. Some people begin applauding. Then it stops. It just sits there in the sky. The noise is too loud for my sensitive young ears and I think I might have started to cry. The plane, standing still in the air, wavers a little and then suddenly zooms, nose first, away.

It was, of course, a Harrier jump jet. And the thing was, even if this time I wasn't actually there, or was too young to remember, I've seen Harriers do the same thing many times since. Each time it is miraculous and exciting. It is, after all, a plane that can rise vertically from the ground into the sunny sky. Another time I remember seeing a Harrier fly horizontally towards where the air-show crowd was gathered and then just stop in mid-air as if it had hit an invisible wall. I've seen a pair of Harrier's circling each other, nose facing nose, as if they were dancing a chaste kind of tango, or as if they were Judo players waiting for the moment of attack.

The Harrier was so exciting because you can't believe your eyes. You know that, like proverbial sharks, aeroplanes need speed and forward motion to stay alive. When a helicopter hovers you can see the blades whirring away and make the connection in your mind that it is the rotor that is holding it in the air. But a Harrier just sits there above the ground with no visible means of support. It can even fly backwards, and whether young or old, it kind of does your head in.

And always accompanied by the noise. That whining, roaring sound that blasts your ears and rumbles your insides.

Late last year government cuts scrapped the UK's Harriers. I watched the live coverage as the pilots, in formation, climbed out of their planes for the last time, leaving them static on the runway as they walked together towards a final parade. None of the pilots looked back. I imagine they got an order from command to remain stoic, but I also guess none of them could bear to turn their heads.


Concorde

Leeds/Bradford airport was always part of my world. It was about 5 miles from our house growing up and it is still only about 6 miles from where I live today. In our old house we could hear the planes taking off and their flight path went directly over the valley our house overlooked. Out of my childhood bedroom window we could watch as they climbed across the sky before slowly turning away into the distance.

It's an odd airport - small and provincial. I have taken connecting flights from there in recent years and had to walk to prop a driven aircraft before climbing a short staircase onto the plane. It felt like the 1930s. Big airports always feel like places that stand outside of real geography. They are the portals of globalisation. Places like Atlanta, O'Hare, or Heathrow or CDG or Schipol are big, exciting, intimidating places. Sprawling towns occupied by excited transients from all corners of the globe. LBA doesn't feel like that. It's like a lego version. A little underused, a little windswept. Every half an hour fifty or a hundred people roll up to or emerge from its low doorways. If you collect or drop off a friend or relative you can almost drive up to the door, as if you were collecting them from their house.

Some years ago the airport had its runway extended. The road along the west side of the airport now goes underneath the runway extension and I drive through this short tunnel often. Sometimes, approaching the tunnel you can watch a 747 land and then immediately drive underneath it, knowing that you are maybe 30 feet from the wheels as they rumble above your head.

The main benefit of having an extended runway was that for a while, LBA was one of the rare provincial airports that could handle Concorde. A few times a year a Concorde would come along. Sometimes they toured provincial airports and people could book a short flight - a half-hour Concorde joyride. It was always prohibitively expensive. When we were young we could tell when it was taking off, as it made a noise unlike any other plane. It was fabulously loud. We'd get up and rush to the window or outside into the garden to watch it as it climbed above the valley.

I think most people in the UK love Concorde. It is genuinely iconic - hence the generic name that defines it as unique and special. I don't think we were alone in rushing out to watch it soar across the sky. I remember being at Wimbledon in the 1980s to watch the tennis. Sitting out on court 2, with its open banks of seating, the familiar unique roar emanated from the direction of Heathrow. As an ascending Concorde appeared above SW19 I noticed almost everyone in the crowd avert their eyes from watching Hanna Mandlikova play someone like Catherine Tanvier for a few seconds to watch Concorde as it rose across the skyline.

My most vivid memory of Concorde was from an air show. It was, I think, a last minute addition to the programme - probably on its way to somewhere else and able to fit in a fly-past. We were sitting on top of the car and could see it in the distance to our left. Excitement grew as it approached. As it did it dipped down lower and lower to the ground, until it was flying at only three or four hundred feet. As it reached the airfield where the crowd was gathered it slowly rolled, so as it flew in front of the crowd it tilted away, underside exposed to the onlookers. It was magic. There was Concorde (CONCORDE!) only yards away, flying sideways with one wing almost touching the ground. As it rolled back onto its belly and flew off the crowd cheered.

About 15 minutes later it had turned around and came in again from the other side, repeating the manoeuvre, only this time with it's top-side facing the crowd. And then it was gone.

The A-10 Warthog

I'm lucky. I grew up and still live in a beautiful part of the world. The Yorkshire Dales are literally on my doorstep and the Lake District is only about an hour away. When we were kids we'd all pile in the car and drive into the country for days out or camping holidays. Imagine that. Going on holiday to places that are only only 20 or 30 miles from home.

Days in the country were somehow not complete without the summer idyll of picturesque villages being suddenly and violently shattered by the screaming noise of low-flying jets. The Lightnings, Buccaneers and Tornadoes used the Dales and the Lakes as perfect practice grounds for low flying. There you were, sitting eating an ice-cream or sipping tea outside a country tea shop and the sky would suddenly, thrillingly, be split apart by the racket from low-flying jets speeding across the countryside, just feet above the ground.

It doesn't happen as much these days. It's easy to forget that The Cold War was a pretty militarised time in our history.

I might be conflating a series of memories. It could have been Nidderdale, where the road snakes from the valley-head village of Lofthouse and the hidden limestone gorge at How Stean, along the edge of Gouthwaite reservoir and into Pateley Bridge, but I am sure it was the Lake District.

In the Summer of 1979, we stayed in a cottage on the shores of Bassenthwaite Lake, one of the quietest and least populated lake-shores in Cumbria. Perhaps we'd hiked up the fell above our cottage, or maybe we took the narrow tunnel under the road that led us to the stony shore and were standing at water level. The cottage was one of the very few buildings along the 4 mile length of the lake and the path through the tunnel down to the water was more or less private access to the water. We spent a few afternoons fishing or playing in the water in our inflatable dinghy.

Such details are a little fuzzy, but not the memory of a pair of A-10 jets that suddenly appeared at one end of the lake, flying no more than 30 feet from the surface of the water. They skimmed at enormous speed along the length of the lake before arcing upwards towards the hill that rises about 700 feet and marks the Southern end of the lake. Their engines growled and screamed as they split apart. One jet swooped to the left and one to the right of the hill.

A year or two later, at the same air-show that hosted the Concorde, there was an A-10 parked in the static display. My Dad and I climbed the steps up to a platform to look into the cock-pit. The pilot - a clean cut midwestern-looking American who looked like he was called Chip or Brad, told us all about the history of the plane, including the fact that the pilots referred to it as The 'Warthog'. The A-10 had none of the elegance of a Concorde, but instead was a pretty ugly looking machine. It's uniqueness was the twin jet engines mounted in front of a U-shaped tail, and a short stubby nose. It did indeed look not unlike a Warthog. Squat, powerful and pig-like.

I thought it was great. Having Chip give us a guided tour made me instantly develop a fondness for it. I don't think I'd ever met a proper American before and this made the tour even more memorable.

After that, in the last years of the Cold War, I'd look out for the A10s blasting low across the Dales and the Lakes and felt an affinity for them. It was personal cult plane, unloved by many, but adored by me.

The Vulcan Bomber

I hate war, which amuses me when I think of how much I am smitten with war planes. I never harboured the desire to become a pilot, although I did know a guy at University who was training as a fighter pilot and went on to fly Tornadoes in the first Gulf War. I talked to him a couple of times about planes, but I think he was stunned. I was a goth-looking literature student with a strange haircut and a range of adolescent affectations. He was the complete opposite. Clean-cut, clean living. Organised, disciplined and responsible. I imagine he couldn't believe I was really interested in planes. And in some ways I'm not interested in them. I don't care about the technical specifications and would never risk being thrown into a foreign gaol by ogling or photographing them. I don't aspire to tick them off on a list, or look them up in books. I don't even know much about them apart from some of the names and shapes. But certain planes do for me is what certain cars seem to do for other people. They inspire an emotional response. I am in love with them.

What enchants me is the aesthetics and the visceral excitement. I just love to see these big, noisy, aggressive, impressive machines close up. Even more than that I love the noise.

And nothing sounds like a Vulcan bomber.

Climbing into the sky the Vulcan made a hellish basso roar. When the afterburners went on, the engines glowed a deep fiery orange and a low malevolent crackle ripped through the air. It shifted your diaphragm and resonated in your visceral cavity. It was frightening and thrilling and somehow primeval.

Vulcans are beautiful. They have delta wings like Concorde, but a Vulcan's wings are broad and as wide as the body is long. In flight they look like a soaring eagle, the curve of their wings has an almost organic grace.

But their beauty is matched by an indefinable quality. Power. When a Vulcan takes off, despite it's elegant design, there is no mistaking the fact that this is basically a 40 ton block of very solid, very heavy metal. You can tangibly feel the physics involved in getting this huge 100 foot machine to lift off and fly. And of course, the power is mind-boggling. It's something like the equivalent of having 150,000 horse power.

Here's why it's my favourite plane: the Vulcan somehow transmits all of this when you see it flying up close. Lots of planes seem to be effortless as they dive around the skies. The Vulcan appears to wheeze and sweat, like a superheavyweight weight-lifter straining every bone and sinew to put the weights over his head and you can see that the weight is so great that the metal bar is actually bending under the strain.

The paradox is that the take-off is rather serene. Like a kite a Vulcan suddenly catches the air under its giant wings and lifts gently off the ground. But then it can't go any higher without the supreme effort of those massive engines. They slowly grind into life, producing an oily looking trail of what can only be grimy, caustic smoke that reminds me of the belching chimneys of Victorian dark satanic mills. And that's when the great roaring, hulking machine soars into the sky.

They scrapped the Vulcan fleet in the mid-1980s, and only recently a bunch of nutty enthusiasts have restored one until it can again fly. They take it round air-shows. The thing is, they're not really nutty at all, just besotted.

today : two deaths reported

In a world where people like David Kato are murdered just for being different it's hard to know what to do to influence things. One thing not to do is to randomly slash the budget of the BBC World Service, which - despite its beginnings as the Empire Service and over the years has received criticism - is one sure way of providing an influential and impartial voice to people who don't have local access to unbiased information.

Sean Rossington was different too. This time he wasn't in a country under the influence of bigoted evangelicals, poor educational standards and with retrogressive social attitudes. He was from Lincoln. But he was still killed. They thought his Aspergers made him an easy mark for exploitation, but when it turned out he had no money they stanped him to death.