notes.husk.org. tagged uk.

2011-12-22

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photo 19:21:00

Lenticular clouds over West Yorkshire by Brian Middleton, from a gallery at BBC News (thanks Chris).

2011-12-12

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photo 22:25:09

toffeemilkshake:

The UKs most played Xmas songs are quite different (2008 list from here) 40s - 1, 70s - 3, 80s - 5, 90s - 1

Last Christmas - Wham!

Do They Know It’s Christmas? (original 1984 recording) - Band Aid

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl

All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - Bruce Springsteen

Stop The Cavalry - Jona Lewie

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard

Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade

Lonely This Christmas - Mud

White Christmas - Bing Crosby

Aha. I was meaning to look this up, but soemone’s saved me the effort. I am a little surprised Imagine’s not on that list, though; the bloody song seemed to be very popular. Also, Slade and Wizzard feel far lower on that list than they deserve.

On the deeper “what does this say about the UK” subject, perhaps it’s the fact that the Christmas edition of Top of the Pops - just before the tradition of the Queen’s Christmas Message - and the attention paid to the number one that would be showed there encouraged a tradition of novelty pop singles (cf the top of the list, Wham’s Last Christmas) that wasn’t paralleled in the United States.

(An updated chart, covering the same period as XKCD, has a very similar list, with no songs before 1970 on it.)

See also: Timoni on the original XKCD thesis.

(Source: marathonpacks)

2011-08-24

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quote 19:16:08

“ Tseëlon, a social psychologist specialising in visual appearance, says the British devotion to uniform reflects “a general etiquette towards children” defined by power, control and a lack of trust. ”

Patrick Barkham: School skirt ban is just the latest battle in the uniform wars, at the Guardian.

2011-07-21

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photo 22:33:00

New direction for National Railway Museum at Creative Review’s blog.

2011-07-15

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photo 13:40:06

Reaction to meeting Yuri Gagarin by The National Archives UK on Flickr.

From Bonn to Foreign Office: the (West) Germans being grumpy at Yuri Gagarin’s visit to the UK in July 1961.

2011-07-11

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quote 17:30:00

“ A ticket does not exist to tell you where to go. A ticket exists purely as proof of purchase of a journey to the staff and the ticket barriers. By squeezing all the important stuff that lets it do that into tiny font and removing some of it it totally defeats the object. ”

“Eagle” commenting on the spate of speculative UK rail ticket redesigns at the RailUK Forums.

2011-07-06

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quote 23:14:00

“ Colin Myler, the current editor of the News of the World, yesterday told journalists that the paper faced an “extremely painful period ahead”. ”

The Telegraph: Phone hacking: families of war dead ‘targeted’ by News of the World.

Am I allowed to hope that the “painful period” is as painful as possible? Please?

2011-07-03

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quote 23:19:06

“ Finally, years after being first elected, Bradlaugh was at last allowed to take his seat thanks to a cool and masterly coup by the speaker, Arthur Wellesley Peel, Sir Robert’s youngest son. No sooner had Peel been re-elected speaker on 12 January 1885 than he got up and said: ‘I have come clearly and without hesitation to the conclusion that it would neither be my duty to prohibit the honourable gentleman from coming nor to permit a motion to be made standing between him and his taking of the oath.’ The leader of the House, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, rose to object. The speaker silenced him, reminding him that Hicks-Beach had himself not yet taken the oath. And that was the end of it. ”

Ferdinand Mount in the subscriber-only LRB article Get off your knees, a review of a biography of Charles Bradlaugh, noted Victorian atheist, campaigner and politician.

As an atheist, he wasn’t allowed to take the oath of office in the Houses of Parliament, to which he as elected in 1880, for six years. The passage above describes the legal manoerver (well, I’d use the word “hack”) that the new Speaker used to finally let him take his seat.

2011-06-16

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photo 22:56:01

The 1975-2005 BBC weather cloud symbol. Remind you of anything?

More: On the history of the icons, including the tidbit that their designer was a student at the time. A BBC news story about their demise. A page about the symbols and their replacements.

2011-06-07

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quote 01:40:47

“ Of the 11 films the BBFC has banned, eight have since been passed uncut, among them Tod Browning’s Freaks and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. ”

Catherine Shoard in the Guardian: The Human Centipede sequel just too horrible to show, says BBFC. The horror film has become the latest of those eleven.

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notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.