Brett-Butler

Great stuff, it will keep the riff-raff away from BBC4.

That's grand, wouldn't think that would be the case. Whilst I can't speak on behalf of Great Britain, I've no problem with Northern Ireland pursuing a different strategy to the rest of the UK. Given its unique space within the union, and given that it's both on a different island and much more rural and densely populated than the rest of the UK (even in the bigger cities like Belfast or Derry), it makes more sense for us to take a different approach. Interestingly, although we've opened up much quicker than a lot of the rest of the UK, we've opened up a little bit slower than in the Republic of Ireland (complete harmonisation on an all-Ireland approach would have been a political hot-potato), but are closer to its approach than to GB at the moment.

A few more restrictions have been eased in Northern Ireland. Groups of up to 6 people can now meet up outside (although still within social distancing guidelines), places of worship can open for private prayer, and golf & tennis can resume. Drive-in cinemas are also allowed, but I'm not aware of such a thing here, so is a bit of a moot point.

Entered. Presuming someone hasn't beaten me to the punch, I think it might do not too bad.

From the BBC: Whilst I can understand laws against banning the desecration of your own country's flag (even if I don't necessarily agree with it myself), making it illegal to burn other country's flags seems taking things a bit too far. And it seems quite odd that it's illegal to defile a song - does that mean if you sing "Ode To Joy" with parody lyrics, you could be found guilty and jailed? There's probably more to the law than in the new article, but even so it seems quite extreme. Do you think that flag burning should be a criminal offense?

They also announced at the same time that they would ease restrictions to allow weddings where at least one of the people has a terminal illness from Monday. As for regular weddings, I wouldn't bet on it this summer, although by autumn it should be on the cards. I'm due to go to a wedding in Donegal in September, so I hoping that things have eased off by then.

Pretty stoked to see Bicep playlisted. They've been playlisted on 6music with their 1st album stuff, but didn't think it would cross over to Radio 1 for the next release.

Northern Ireland will be taking its first steps towards easing the lockdown, allowing garden centres & recycling centres to reopen from Monday. Given that I have no need to use either of those (although I could've used the latter during the month where the council refused to pick up my recycling bins), it will still be business as usual for me.

Northern Ireland announced its plans in the past hour. No immediate changes for now, and a timetable for reopening has been announced, although with no firm dates for when this is to happen.

Some of the countries that had eased its restrictions have had to reverse course following a fresh batch of infections, notably South Korea, which has had to shut down over 2000 clubs that re-opened after a COVID-19 positive club-goer was almost single-handedly responsible for every new case in the country the next week.

Fabulous to see "In The Mood" by Glenn Miller in the Top 40, it remains a bop even now.

After it was pointed out that Britney Spears has had 5 #2 albums in the UK chart without a #1 album (including her Greatest Hits collections), is she the artist who's had the most albums to chart at this position without ever hitting the top spot?

I've never worked out why rappers name drop "Murder She Wrote" in their songs. It doesn't seem like the sort of programme that would be popular among rap artists.

Who would have thought that The Streets would be playlisted on Radio 1 in the Year of Our Lord 2020. This is one weird year.

I think we can tell that Scott isn't a fan of the "Flowers" cover, given that he insists on playing the much superior original as bed music whenever he can.

"Dance Monkey" remains surprisingly enjoyable for me. It's starting to become my go-to "song that people wouldn't think I'd like, but I do indeed" track.

Ooh, ACR was killer for "Physical". Is anyone else reminded of "We Are Your Friends" by Justice vs Simian in the chorus of this?

This is the first time I've heard this Ava Max. Has she lifted the melody from "You Give Love A Bad Name" by Bon Jovi?

Whilst the dial hasn't moved much in terms of the main parties, the polling for Keir Starmer himself should give something for Labour to cheer about. His net favourability after one month in the job is +18, which is much better than the -51 that Jeremy Corbyn finished off with (and whose net favourability rarely went above 0). It is worth pointing out that the same poll gave Boris Johnson's net approval rating of +20, so he's within touching distance of being the most popular politician by this scale.

Ooh, fabulous. Will have to get my thinking hat on.

Interestingly, this current anime season marks 10 years since I started watching anime on a week-by-week basis as it came out in Japan. I'd watched anime before that, but usually it was an entire series at a time - it was this point that it ended up becoming a habit where I would watch it as soon as it was subbed. Looking back, the series that I watched that season in 2010 were Giant Killing (a football series about a Japanese manager who returns from successfully leading a non-league club to the FA Cup 5th round to manage a struggling Japanese Premier League team), Kaichou Maid-Sama (a shojo series about an uptight student body president who tries to hide her secret job working in a maid cafe), and Working!!!, a slice-of-life comedy that I've continued to enjoy as well as its two subsequent series & spin-offs, even if its main character comes off a lot more creepy the more I think about him. A few other series from that cour I ended up watching later on - I watched the off-beat comedy Arakawa Under The Bridge at the end of the year alongside its summer season once its 2nd half was released, and earlier this year I finally got around to watching Angel Beats, whose original concept put me off when I first heard of it, but watching it now it wasn't too bad. As for spring 2020, I'm watching the 2nd season of the revived Fruits Basket, alongside the 2nd season of Kaguya-sama (Chika is still best girl. Sorry, Iz). And one newbie: Wave, Listen To Me! - this one appealed to me, mainly because it revolves around characters closer to my age than the usual anime, and because it's set around a radio station. It's about an aimless woman in her late 20s, who after getting drunk in a night out, finds out that her drunken ramblings have been broadcast on a local radio station, which leads to an offer of her own show when it becomes inexplicably popular. It's tonally similar to "Recovery of an MMO Junkie" in terms of its protagonist whose trying to find purpose in life at that point in her life, although the protagonist in this one is more of a realist and a cynic than MMO.

Just finished the "Stardust Crusaders" series, and that series in itself has earned the very rare 10 out of 10 for me. There were a few things that I wasn't too keen on, such as a few characters whose presence didn't add anything to the plot I've started on "Diamond Is Unbreakable", which I don't think I'm going to enjoy as much. It left a sour taste in the 1st episode,

That "yay" was very much for The Tears.

Obligatory "yay" for this one. Last time both of them had a top 10 single as artists. Also didn't realise how close Snoop Dogg was to #1 that week.

I auditioned for this show - the guy from NI who was on the first show was at the same audition as me. Given the sort of the people who've been selected as contestants, I can see why I didn't make the cut. The ratings for this has been above 5 million for the first two episodes, so it's been a big hit. The gameplay gets repetitive (if it gets a second series I think there'll be some tweaks to the format), but it's forgiven given how well Bradley Walsh holds it together - I don't think he's usually as funny on the regular version of The Chase.