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Colin Shelbourn »
MPs. Expenses. Whatever.
Posted on 7:00am Monday 18th May 2009
I really didn’t want to blog about this. It looked like too much hard work getting the facts right, doing the research, checking the spelling. But two of the blog’s three regular readers are campaigning for it, so I am going to bow to the will of the majority. You’ll be familiar with the subject. MP’s outrageous expenses claims and the effect it is having on voter confidence. It is predicted that at the next elections we’ll be so disgusted with politicians that no one will vote. Which could lumber me with a ton of extra work.
Colin Shelbourn »
Option Shock
Posted on 11:50am Friday 15th May 2009
I blame the Trimphone. Before this trilling, anorexic nuisance arrived, telephones were made of Bakelite and came in black or grey. That was the sum total of choice available. The Trimphone changed all that, seducing us with a bewildering range of alluring colours.
Colin Shelbourn »
A Dog Blog
Posted on 12:00pm Friday 8th May 2009
The Radio 4 programme Heresy recently considered the question of why a dog doesn’t make a good pet. It was an interesting topic but as the panel consisted of various urban media pundits I got bored half way through and took the dog for a walk. Feel free to do the same but here are ten reasons why I think they do make good pets. (Dogs, that is, not media pundits which would be terribly inconvenient around the house.)
Colin Shelbourn »
Clichés off the Starboard Bow
Posted on 3:42pm Friday 24th April 2009
2009 is a landmark year for anniversaries. There’s a certain cartoon which is 25 years old, which I may have mentioned before. It’s 200 years since Darwin’s birth. 400 years since Galileo invented science (discuss). 40 years since Neil Armstrong set boot on the moon. And, back in the summer of ‘69, another little event occurred which has resonated down the years. Star Trek first appeared on British TV.
Colin Shelbourn »
1300 Cartoons
Posted on 1:25pm Friday 17th April 2009
1984 was an interesting year. Spandau Ballet was the biggest band in the UK. Big Brother was still 16 years away. I had been freelance for six months and was surprised to find I could still afford to eat. And a small, single column cartoon appeared on the front page of The Westmorland Gazette, the UK's top regional weekly newspaper. Okay, I exaggerate. Madonna was much bigger than the Kemp brothers. But the cartoon was a new departure and I'm mildly astonished to find it continuing to sit on the front page, twenty five years later.
Colin Shelbourn »
License to Bill
Posted on 12:00pm Friday 10th April 2009
The joy of writing a blog is the feedback. In recent weeks I’ve written about giving your favourite book to a friend, with the result that an old school chum is threatening to send me his favourite book on cricket. An exploration of the paranormal prompted an invitation to a reincarnation weekend, which I declined on the grounds that I’d attended one in a past life. The record was last week’s blog about digital television. It wasn’t the technology that got my correspondents excited, it was the idea of ditching the TV license. “You can’t do that!” they all cried, which translates as: “If you do that we’ll all be jealous and upset!” Well, noisy readers, you can relax. After further research, it looks like the only way to avoid the BBC tax is to join the Amish or go live in a cave.
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