40 posts tagged “british”

In the new movie Harry Brown, Michael Caine (you may remember him from Return to the Poseidon Adventure, The Swarm, Jaws 3-D, The Hand and a couple of other movies) is a retired Marine who gives a bunch of yobs on a housing estate what they deserve after a mate of his is killed. The smart-arse at The Times thinks they should have killed him off, probably because Times readers would have preferred he prevailed if he talked like he did in Zulu. Me: I like a bit of escapism and this sounds like a modern-day Death Wish. (Pity that by the time Sir Maurice got to work with Michael Winner, the director had lost his marbles and they made Bullesye.) Go Michael! Blow them bloody doors off!

   Seriously, Sir Maurice had more personal reasons for starring in this film, being a Korean War veteran, and seeing how youth in these areas (it was filmed at the Elephant and Castle) have been let down by their elders, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Here’s an interview for the new ABC show, Flash Forward (yes, not being silly this time) with two of the leads, Sonya Walger and Joseph Fiennes. They, and Jack Davenport, are all Brits. While Davenport plays a Brit in the show, Walger and Fiennes play Americans and adopt pretty convincing American accents (Walger in particular, sounds “more American” to me). But here they are speaking in their normal voices.

I am not up with the play but I understand German actor Dominic Monaghan (Berlin-born and raised) has joined the cast.
   In this globalized world, nationality counts for less and less when it comes to arts and commerce.

I don’t know why but I got interested in putting in a few English cars into Autocade. How about these for oddities that few, except for their fans, remember?

Austin 3-Litre (ADO61). 1967–71 (prod. 9,992). 4-door saloon. F/R, 2,912 cm³ (6 cyl. OHV). Ill thought-out big Austin, using centre section from smaller 1800 and out of step with new executive saloons from Rover and Triumph. Excellent ride and sumptuous interior, but thirsty and underpowered. Shown at London Motor Show 1967 and enjoyed a “soft” launch; full launch in 1968 with four round headlamps and, after the first 1,000 units or so, front quarterlights in the windows. Buyers stayed away and the model was cancelled in 1971, having sold far worse than its predecessor.

MG MGC/MG MGC GT (ADO52). 1967–9 (prod. 9,002, incl. 4,458 GT). 2-door convertible, 3-door coupé. F/R, 2912 cm³ (6 cyl. OHV). Replacement for Austin–Healey 3000 with MGB bodies and three-litre C-series engine from Austin 3-Litre. Poorly sorted, with fronts too heavy (engine 209 lb heavier than the B’s unit), spoiling the handling. Identified by the bonnet bulge; at the time, a market failure.

Jensen GT. 1975–6 (prod. 509). 3-door coupé. F/R, 1973 cm³ (4 cyl. DOHC). Fastback 2+2 version of Jensen–Healey, hurriedly put into production as Jensen sales collapsed due to the oil crisis. Jensen went into receivership in 1976, killing this model. No Healey tag, as Donald Healey had left the Jensen board and refused to grant permission to use his name. Mechanically identical to Jensen–Healey, but due to extra weight, slower.

Lotus Élite (Type 83). 1980–3 (prod. 133). 3-door coupé. F/R, 2174 cm³ (4 cyl. DOHC). Élite for the 1980s, with larger Type 912 engine. Better torque, and Getrag five-speed gearbox. Some minor changes, including new spoiler and rear lights. However, the shape was more dated than Éclat and Esprit by now, and sold relatively poorly in this decade.

[Cross-posted] I have finished the basic variants of my next type family, JY Alia, and MyFonts.com should have it ready for retailing shortly. I’ve already uploaded the archives there.
   It’s been interesting to get back into a retail release, rather than the private ones we’ve been doing for a while. Our designers will tell you I neglected things at JY&A Fonts a couple of years back and in some respects we are still playing catch-up. The font website, finally, got a nip–tuck today, and we’re continuing to work on it and updating the links.
   In 2005–6 we did receive some offers to update the website and we asked for proposals but nothing panned out. But that is another story—the main reason for writing is to show off the specimen pages and some shameless self-promotion.

New Zealand’s leading font foundry announces “workhorse” serif family, JY Alia

JY&A Fonts, one of Australasia’s most experienced typefoundries, has added an aldine to its extensive range

Wellington, February 16 (JY&A Media) JY&A Fonts, founded by Jack Yan in 1987, has announced a brand-new typeface family, JY Alia.
   The New Zealand-based foundry was the first to branch into digital type in its country, and has spent the last several years working on private commissions only. JY Alia marks its return to releasing retail fonts.
   Initially in four variants only, with extra weights, more complex OpenType versions and a second subfamily to emerge in 2009, JY Alia is described by its designer, Jack Yan, as a workhorse serif typeface, based on an aldine model.
   It is meant to complement his 1994–5 release, JY Ætna, which was based around the original Bembo design. JY Ætna was a successful family for the foundry and helped establish its reputation as a source of dependable, traditional designs.
   ‘The problem with JY Ætna, as I saw it, was that it wasn’t robust enough for text usage,’ says Mr Yan.
   He sees JY Alia, which is stronger but still approachable as a design, as a rival for other workhorse typeface families such as Adobe Garamond or Monotype Bembo.
   In technical aspects, JY Alia has between 3,200 and 3,300 kerning pairs and a full complement of eastern European and extended Latin characters in its OpenType and TrueType versions.
   Mr Yan cites both his own JY Ætna, based on designs by Francesco Griffo and Giovantonio Tagliente, and Plantin, by Robert Granjon, as his inspirations. However, he says JY Alia does not slavishly follow any historical model and merely has an aldine skeleton.
   The name originates from a role once played by American actress Alicia Witt.
   A PDF specimen for JY Alia can be downloaded from the JY&A Fonts website, currently being revamped, at <http://jyanet.com/fonts/font145.htm>.
   Mr Yan expects JY Alia to be available for licensing at MyFonts.com shortly, then at other retailers.

[Cross-posted] As if Britain wasn’t already sufficiently heading down the V for Vendetta path (remember how last year, Mr Brown seized Icelandic funds on the grounds of terrorism—anyone know an Icelandic terrorist?), along comes amendments to the big catch-all Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 where people could be arrested and imprisoned if they take a photograph of officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’, says the British Journal of Photography.
   Anything could really qualify, couldn’t it? A journalist taking a photograph for a newspaper might fall foul of the provision. One time I photographed two French policemen hassling a street vendor. I never published it but it struck me that the gentleman was being hassled because he was black.
   Could this be helpful to a terrorist? Probably. While my motives were to document possible racism, a terrorist could use this image to show the prejudice against non-whites in the west and encourage attacks on the occident. Lucky I didn’t take the photo in Britain then.
   Equally a photograph of Big Ben with a police officer in front could be helpful to terrorists in figuring out just where policemen walked on their beat. Tourists beware. You could become a crook after taking pics of HM Life Guards (no, not the Baywatch–Alerte à Malibu sort).
   ‘Set to become law on 16 February, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 amends the Terrorism Act 2000 regarding offences relating to information about members of armed forces, a member of the intelligence services, or a police officer,’ says the Journal.
   ‘The new set of rules, under section 76 of the 2008 Act and section 58A of the 2000 Act, will target anyone who “elicits or attempts to elicit information about (members of armed forces) … which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.’
   Someone found guilty could be liable for 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine.
   This goes to the heart of civil liberties in the United Kingdom, something already eroded over the years by the European Union and now, under the guise of anti-terrorism. If it were proposed in the United States, some would label it as ‘un-American’, striking at the heart of their First Amendment. Well, this is un-British. Forgive me for having a memory, but when Britain was a regular terror target during the Troubles—when Britons were being blown up by the IRA—no such laws were required and the country muddled through.
   Policies regarded as anathema when I was a child, such as a UK identity card, are now accepted; this is merely another in a long line of Labour policies of late that leave me unsurprised at the number of UK immigrants to New Zealand. Many are documented regularly at Alfred the Ordinary’s blog, which actually has a V for Vendetta (movie) line in its header. It is becoming more appropriate by the day unless the British public stands up—and recent events have shown that, in the words of Bob the Builder (in Neil Morrissey’s finest hour?), ‘Yes we can.’

I entered Hong Kong as many of us old colonials would: with a British passport (air hair lair, what) and a falling-apart Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card (PIC).
   I did have a few problems with the latter, because it was issued in 1995, and it did not have much of the information that the new ones now contain, like your thumbprint, a photograph without a Melrose Place hairstyle and samples of my DNA contained in hermetically sealed vials of sweat, or whatever these newfangled things they have nowadays on identity cards.
   (In fact, I had problems with my British passport, notably at Waterloo Station where the passport controller insisted I was not British and had to queue up with foreigners. It was ironic that she was black and was herself practising apartheid. I had been British for longer than she had, thank you very much. The matter was ultimately raised with the PM after correspondence with the British High Commissioner, the Foreign Secretary, and the Shadow Foreign Secretary was ignored. I was going to expose all this and had some Fleet Street friends willing to aid and abet in the cause of true patriotism, but then HRH Princess Margaret went and inconveniently died on us.
   Since then, armed with this correspondence, I have not had any problems entering the United Kingdom on a British passport. I was under the impression we overseas British had the same Queen whose ‘Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance’. Funnily enough, this is respected in France and Germany, even the US where we are allies on the War on Terror, but not Britain herself. But I digress.)
   I was still let through because the PIC number matched what was noted on my passport, though the controller, a very charming lady by the name of Y. T. Chan, advised I should get the PIC changed ASAP.
   Fast forward to today. We are very law-abiding, we British, so I began checking. There’s nothing at the British High Commission site about the PIC, but the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region website does have an application form and some notes.
   The problem, as I discovered, is that Britons like me cannot get a new PIC without applying for a HKSAR passport at the same time, which entails becoming a Communist.
   And I know from experience that my definition of ‘Chinese citizen’ somehow differs from that of the Politburo politician and the Beijing bureaucrat.
   My father did not escape from the Commies in 1949 just so his son could get into bed with the Reds.
   My mother did not insist on emigrating in 1976 to avoid the perceived peril of 1997 just so her son could get into bed with the Reds.
   I am proudly Chinese. I am proud of my culture. I am proud of my heritage. But I do not believe that the chaps who came to occupy my family’s land in ’49 have much of a right to it.
   Or the chaps that overran Beijing.
   Not while the Chinese people lack self-determination, a basic requirement under the UN Charter if China wishes to call itself a state.
   Some of my family members are technically, if not willingly, communists, but it doesn’t mean I have to join them.
   All I want is to retain my nationality as a British subject and get a PIC to which I believe I am rightly entitled by my domicil of origin.
   Back in 1995, this was perfectly feasible and I was under the assumption that the Reds would continue respecting the status quo ante when it came to administrative matters like this for an uninterrupted 50 years. And since when have Hong Kongers gone and pissed off Beijing? Well, apart from every June 4?
   We have contributed quite nicely to the Pekingese capitalist public purse, and the sayings of the old Chinese profit.
   I do hope, one day, there will be a united China, possibly a commonwealth of independent states. I also hope to see self-determination by the Chinese people exercised in my lifetime. But I have zero affinity with communist régimes, anywhere in the world, and certainly won’t be looking at changing my allegiance from HM the Queen, even if modern Britain is in a mess and it gave us Gary Glitter and selected nonces. There are some of us who are proud to be old colonials, who remember what it used to mean to be British, even if it is couched in some idealist, double-decker-bus-and-cobbled-street world where John Steed could poke a baddie with his brolley—and without us colonials kowtowing to any body, thank you very much.
   And quite simply, I agree more even with a faded modern Blairbrown-shaded Britain subservient to some Brussels Bonaparte than with a totalitarian régime that did its best to try to knock some of my family off, or shove them into jail on no charge.
   There is quite a price to be paid for loyalty to Her Britannic Majesty, but there you have it. It is a choice I quite publicly make.
   Tomorrow: a visit to the High Commission to see what HM Government can do. If they even care. Let’s hope they do, more so than after the Waterloo incident.

My name is Sam Tyler. I had an accident and woke up in the 1980s as a career criminal, paired with an overweight, over-the-hill, tobacco-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with an inferiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding. Det Supt Harry Woolf is after us. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time?

   Official site at www.tuesdaythemovie.com.

This was a nice surprise as I came up the escalator at the (former) BNZ Centre: a near-new Lotus Elise, very rare in these parts. As you can see, Nissan Cefiros (sold as the Maxima here) and Opel Astra Gs (Holden here) are on our streets and are more commonplace.

   And as New Zealand does not salt its roads in the winter, there are some surprising survivors, such as this reminder that Britain once had a great, indigenous motor industry:

   I remember my father had a colleague, Colin MacKintosh, who owned a blue Wolseley 1300. On a trip to Palmerston North I threw up in it. Ah, childhood memories. This ADO16 is a mere 1100. I was six at the time and that was the story about how I got my yellow tracksuit … in another city, needing new clothes that didn’t smell of vomit.
   It was the usual carsickness, but I feel sure that the smell of heated British vinyl had a part to play in triggering it. Despite these cars’ popularity, I don’t think I ever sat in the back of an ADO16 ever since!

At the Seoul Olympics, they started with a guy hitting a gong (the Olympics were a J. Arthur Rank production) and showed off Korean history. At the Beijing Olympics, they showed off Chinese history, just not the stuff the Communists did after 1949, like tanks running over students. Dad asked what London would show in 2012 as the only accomplishment he immediately associated the British with was high-seas piracy. This would mean a bunch of fellows dressed up in pirate costume for the opening ceremony. I added the Austin Allegro and Mr Bean as the next British achievements, which will mean a field day for Rowan Atkinson impressions. Anything else that must be shown at the 2012 ceremony?

Another brilliant Eggtoon from Andy Wyatt: this time about Labour’s politics during the Blair era, in the style of South Park. I think it’s funnier than the Windsors one I posted earlier tonight, though the death of Robin Cook in the cartoon might be considered bad taste given that the man has passed away.