Brett-Butler

Great to see Public Service Broadcasting at #2, and with decent sales meaning that they are likely to hold on to that position by the end of the week. The band have been encouraging their fans to buy the album in week 1, although have not gone down the usual "discount everything to £4.99 route" so far to stay there, and given they're signed to a minor label, I can't see them doing that. What were the 1st week sales of their previous albums like? I have it in my head that "Every Valley" got to 5 figures, but not 100% on that.

Exactly what everyone else has said. What he's been involved with has been shocking, and deserves to go away for life for what he did Spotify & other streaming services still have his music on the service, as well as Lostprophets & Gary Glitter, other artists who have been involved in reprehensive activities, so I can't imagine his music will be taken off - even worse, if the case of Lostprophets is to go by, his sales will probably have a slight boost as a result of the press surrounding the case. Although now there is absolutely no excuse for his music to be included on editorially edited services, such as Spotify's own playlists.

oqxAJKy0ii4 Just finished watching "Squid Game" on Netflix, a drama set in Korea which follows a group of 456 people with crippling debts who take part in a competition to win a multi-million dollar prize, which involves playing deadly versions of playground games, like Red Light Green Light, marbles, and the titular Squid Game (which was a popular Korean children's game which is a somewhat more physical and oppositional version of hopscotch). It's a fairly violent and shocking series, and it does have its antecedents in things like "Saw", "Escape Room" and last year's popular Japanese Netflix series "Alice in Borderland", but it is an absolutely thrilling & twisting series. It's interesting that it's one of the few "death game" shows that actually shows you how the games themselves are put together, looking into how they are constructed and the lives of those in the background who help to make them so. It's become something of a hit in the US, and also has been in the top 10 shows in the UK, so it could get a 2nd series.

and *whisper* I actually don't mind Mrs Brown's Boys. Although I can understand why it irks so many.

Laura, Ben & Him - an ITV2 sketch show from 2008 that was so unfunny it's rubbishness is forever etched in my brain. One of the "sketches" was one of the cast saying to the camera: "You know where is s***? The Isle of Wight. It was so bad I actually ate tissues". When a sketch is so bad you remember every word, despite only watching it once, it's either comedy genius or the worst thing you've ever seen. This is the latter.

This news appears to have got buried in the talk about the reshuffle - the government are to introduce First Past the Post in elections for Police & Crime Commissioners, metro mayors, and most notably, for the Mayor of London elections. It wouldn’t have made a difference in previous Mayor of London elections, although could make a difference in future ones if they are particularly tight.

Looks like Gavin Williamson’s being punished by being sent to Northern Ireland.

The biggest fight between Steps and Manic Street Preachers since the latter were accused of ripping off “Stomp” - Jz2gvAApY2A

The world went downhill when they stopped the sheet music chart. Take us back to the era of real music.

Petition to move it to News & Politics for this season. Could use a little perking up in there.

Slight pedantry, but it went up to 17.5% by the time the Tories left in 1997. Labour then temporarily reduced it to 15% during the credit crunch , then when the Tories re-took power in 2010 they increased it to 20% the next year.

Absolutely incredible. I put her run in Wimbledon down to having the home crowd on her side and thought it would be about 2 years before she would be a regular contender at other Grand Slams, so fantastic to see her do as well as this, especially given she had to qualify to reach this stage. This should see her firmly into the top 100, with automatic qualification into Grand Slams for the next year.

Voted.

Went to see "The Courier" starring Benedict Cumberbatch last night. I really enjoyed it, especially given that I had no expectations going into it. A really great and tense Cold War espionage thriller. 1) Nomadland 2) The Father 3) The Courier

The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), the repository of film information on the internet, has a list of the top rated 250 films on its system which has gained the most high ratings over the years. It is a dynamic list, which means that the listing can change over time, with new films being added if they're popular on release, with older films either dropping out if they fall out of favour, or start climbing up if they gain a cult following years following its release. There are some rules involved to make sure that really obscure films only a handful of people see don't make the list (only films that have been giving a rating more than 25,000 times can be included), and only the votes of "regular" voters are counted to make sure than those people who do troll voting don't have their ratings counted (although how they determine that with their algorithm is somewhat unknown). It's not perfect - someone giving a film a 10 rating in 1997 carries the same weight as a 10 vote in 2021 for example), and there's been controversies over whole countries worth of films being excluded from the list (for a long time Indian films were excluded from the list and given their own stand-alone list, although now they've been integrated into the top 250, there's about 10 there at the moment), and it's a lot more superhero-y in some places, but by and large it's a decent barometer of what is judged to be some of the greatest films of all time. Since my university days, I've made it my goal to "complete" the IMDb top 250 films, or to get as close to completing it as possible, as by the time I started studying Film I'd only seen about 70 of the 250 films that made the list at the time, knowing that it would be a long term project and may take me over a decade to get there, especially given the dynamic nature of the rating service. more than 10 years on, I've hit a major milestone in that I've now watched 150 of the films on the list, and I've only got 100 more left to watch - at least until some of the films I've seen drop out and are replaced by new ones (although hopefully not for a while - the lowest ranked film that I have seen is currently "The Princess Bride" at #243, which should hopefully be safe from the drop in the short term). So, how many films in the IMDb top 250 have you seen, and what are the highest rated films you are yet to see? I thought it would be nice to keep track of this for the cinephiles among us. You can track your own watched films directly on the IMDb's website HERE. Date - 29/8/21 Films in the IMDb Top 250 Seen - 150 Films in the IMDb Top 250 Yet To See - 100 Top 5 ranked films still to see: Seven Samural (19)Saving Private Ryan (26)The Green Mile (29)Parasite (30)Leon: The Professional (31)

Woo. Will need to get an entry in for this - amazing that it's been over 10 years since the first Unknown Pleasures.

I've enjoyed the first two series of this. Since Watchdog was folded into The One Show it's the leading stand-alone Consumer Rights programme left on national TV.

The reason he didn’t call it “Minus” is because if you put two copies of the album together it becomes a copy of “Plus”.

People thinking that Minus sounds too negative seem to have forgotten he released an album called Divide. Disappointed he didn’t go for Parenthesis, but that would probably have annoyed the Sigur Ros fans.

They're leaning into the disco-rock sound they had elements of on their last album. I approve.

I was wondering if BBC iPlayer would be showing a match from each round of the FA Cup starting with the Prelims this year, and thankfully they are - it's Sheffield FC against Sherwood Colliery on Saturday (the former laying claim to being the oldest football team in the world, an honour I'd always assumed went to Notts County).

Aspire is the latest party from Lutfar Rahman, the former Labour council leader who became the first mayor of Tower Hamlets (first as an Independent, then as Tower Hamlets First), until being disbarred for electoral fraud (the wonderful Britain Elects has a good rundown of this corruption both in the mayoralty and at council level in their weekly by-election rundown). Rahman-affiliated politicos had dominated Tower Hamlets local politics for the past decade, although in recent years they've declined to the point that after this by-election, they have 2 sitting councilors under his current banner, Aspire. He's apparently allowed to run for office again from this year, so will probably try another crack at elected politics, although any results will be viewed with expected suspicion. Surprisingly given his apparent "success" locally, we haven't seen this transfer over to national politics, with both the constituencies Tower Hamlets finds itself in being firm Labour strongholds - it doesn't look like any Lutfar affiliates have stood there in the past 10 years. Although it's worth noting that one of them, Bethnal Green & Bow, is the former constituency of George Galloway when he ran as a Respect candidate. Whether either him or Aspire-ites would try to unseat the Labour candidates there remains to be seen, but it would take quite a swing to unseat either of Labour's MPs.

Definitely in for this again!

Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has resigned the week after a damning report was published alleging that he sexually harassed multiple women. The news comes a day after the leader of the Time's Up campaign, a group set up to fight for gender equality in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandals, resigned after she allegedly used her position to discredit one of the women who made allegations against Cuomo. He was already under pressure before that when it was revealed that despite his apparent success of tackling Covid in New York (even being awarded an Emmy for it), he signed an order that "nursing homes should readmit residents who had tested positive for the coronavirus, in order to free up hospital space" which led to increased deaths in that setting, and undercounted the number of deaths.

Like so many female pop stars, people have a tendency to see Peppa Pig as nothing more than a piece of meat.