15 posts tagged “london”

[Cross-posted] A very established New Zealand designer, Margarita Robertson of Nom D, and a newer label, Fly Guys, are profiled on the Lucire site this week. Sam Mitchell’s Q&A with Margi is probably the most in-depth that has ever been published. And we’re running another ex-print piece: my interview with Design Museum senior curator Donna Loveday, who curated When Philip Met Isabella, the exhibition about milliner Philip Treacy and his designs for the late Tatler editor Isabella Blow. That was one of those interviews that went very smoothly, since Donna and I share tastes in modernism and music. Beyond Treacy and Blow, she has rubbed shoulders with designers such as Pablo Ferro and the daughter of Robert Brownjohn, Eliza—and, on a more trivial note, she banks at the same place as Ashes to Ashes’ Philip Glenister—TV’s Gene Hunt. I hope you enjoy this trio of articles.

Medinge certificate

Thanks to the hard work of my fellow director Patrick Harris, the Medinge Foundation Ltd. has been incorporated in England and Wales. Through this we hope to continue the work of the Medinge Group and, in particular, its commercial arm in brand consulting. More official news from CEO Stanley Moss in time.

I saw this movie, Sexy Beast, years ago and again last year when staying with my friends Amanda and Paul in Christchurch. It stars Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley. If you are used to Ben Kingsley playing rather dignified roles, this will be a surprise. He plays a psychotic East End hood.
   I was trying to find his ‘No no no no no no no’ line only, but this is the closest YouTube has. Excessive swearing: be warned, and don’t play this around your kids (if you have any).

From the Murdoch Press, not a good start for London mayor-elect Boris Johnson:

Boris Johnson got off on the wrong foot with staff at the Conservative Party’s headquarters after barring them from his victory party. …
   Only MPs, donors and a tiny number of political strategists were said to have been allowed to attend. One source said: “It is a kick in the teeth for all the workers. The party chiefs deserve a good hiding for it.”

   But it certainly was a good day for the Tories in the local elections. Daniel Finkelstein, in the same newspaper, wrote:

Gordon Brown is hardly the first to experience a bad night of results. Most leaders have had one of those. And there is a standard procedure. You pass round to your people in the studios a list of your triumphs and the failures of the other party. Every time the presenter mentions your terrible results in, say, Wales, you can say “but David Cameron has failed to break through in the North/cities/rural areas (delete as applicable) and only did a little bit better than Iain Duncan Smith in 2002.” …
   But as for reading out their own triumphs and the failures of others, this was made difficult by the fact that, er, there weren’t any. That much became clear at about 2am when it emerged that Cameron’s Tories had taken Bury.

   Labour is blaming its leader, says Mary Ann Sieghart, though I do not agree with her headline:

They may not always have liked what Tony Blair did, but at least they knew why he was doing it. Nobody ever complained of his weak leadership. With Mr Brown, they don’t understand why he does what he does—why abolish the 10p tax band if it was intended to help the poor?—and he is notably bad at either listening to their concerns or using charm and persuasiveness to win them and the voters over. Instead, he barks at his critics, denies the facts and even makes up some of his own. Yesterday, on the Today programme, he claimed to have taken a million children out of poverty, when the actual figure is 600,000. Inflation is hitting not only food and oil these days.

   No prizes for predicting the next General Election outcome.

[Cross-posted] The Office of Government Commerce, part of HM Treasury in the UK, unveiled its new logo, which cost British taxpayers £14,000.

And it didn’t take long after the unveiling for employees to see the problem:

   I am sure it is possible for all of us to be caught out from time to time, because we didn’t study all the angles (ahem) to a problem.
   But one principle I do abide by in logo development is internal review—not just to see if the client can identify problems, but to cover our own rear ends.
   The Daily Telegraph reports that staff have removed items with the logo and expects a rush on to Ebay.
   It states, ‘The logo … was intended to signify a bold commitment to the body’s aim of “improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement”.’
   That sounds like a bunch of wank, even if I didn’t see the logo—though one branding professional thinks, as quoted in the Telegraph, ‘They’re going to get more column inches than they could ever have expected before. If I were them, I would be pretty pleased.’
   Please, let’s not bring inches into this.

Harry Mount’s column in The Daily Telegraph was a great laugh:

I once saw [Heather Mills] walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and was staggered by the height of her cheekbones and the depth of the groove beneath them.
   But when she opens her mouth—and keeps it open for 11 minutes, as she did outside the High Court—the spell is broken. You forget the cheekbones and drown in the ocean of self-pity pouring out of that pretty mouth.
   During the French state visit, clever Carla Bruni rarely broke the spell by talking. She realised, like the old pro supermodel she is, that all she has to do is look good and say nothing. …
   The real difference between them, though, is in what they say—or don’t say. The answer for Heather Mills in future is to do what John Galliano did with Carla Bruni's cinched Dior outfit—belt up.

   Thinking that was all that Mr Mount had to offer, I was pleasantly surprised by the final segment in his column:

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry claims that mobile phone addiction is a mental illness.
   I’m afraid the illness is incurable; it’s related to an addiction that's been around for ever—the addiction to self.
   People aren’t addicted to the phones themselves. They’re addicted to the attention they get from other people via their phones. Obsessive phoners send texts purely in the hope that they’ll get one back. They don’t ring people from the train to find anything out; only to get other people to listen to them saying nothing of any importance. Why is it that the person on the train is always doing the talking, and never the listening?

   I knew there was a reason I didn’t use cellphones.

This video, from the Élysée, was taken yesterday when the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the First Lady arrived in London to meet HM Queen Elizabeth II and HH the Duke of Edinburgh. I wrote in a comment on Timothy’s Vox blog, after reading an article about it, that Mme Sarkozy did not know where to stand and tried to follow her husband and the Queen on the inspection. I was wrong: looking at this video, the First Lady knew exactly where to go and accompanied Prince Philip in her meet-and-greet. The Jacqueline Kennedy comparisons aren’t invalid.
   And it seems the newly hyphenated Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is on her way to being the most photographed woman of 2008: her image sells political, fashion (she’s wearing Dior by John Galliano) and gossip media.

During a visit by then-PM Robert Muldoon at New Zealand House, the following were present, as noted in one of his memoirs:

British prime ministers Callaghan, Wilson, Heath and MacMillan
Governors-General Porritt, Ballantrae, Cobham
The son of former Governor-General Freyberg
Gordon Jackson

   Spot the odd one out. Gordon Jackson, the actor.
   Perhaps he was doing research for his role as the head of CI5 in The Professionals? He always did seem rather chummy with the Home Secretary in the series, and it was mentioned that the PM thought highly of him.

So, was anyone bored waiting for something good to happen on Ashes to Ashes on Thursday night?
   I don’t think I have memories of Life on Mars that are filtered-out versions, without all the dull moments on that show. It just held my attention better: the whole mystery element about where Sam was, the romance with him and Annie, the fond memories I had of 1970s cop shows. All these are missing in the 1981 context of Ashes.
   Here we have DCI Gene Hunt a pale shadow of his former self. He may have had a few memorable lines (referring to the consummation of the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to HRH Prince Charles as the ‘twanging of the royal hymen’) but none that I wanted to learn. Where were the moments such as raising the fingers to children from an ice-cream van or politically incorrect racist or homophobic terms?
   I know he is meant to have mellowed out in a post-Sam Tyler world, and that makes some sense, but I’m just not as entertained.
   The only character that seems to have developed better is DC Chris Skelton, who gets more lines and more humour.
   We have more scenes now that do not take place when Alex is present, which is another clue that her experiences are different from those of Sam.
   Which brings me to Alex Drake. I liked her in episode 1, when she proved to be a capable modern-day copper, thrown initially into 1981 and understandably confused by her new world. In episode 2, she seems more relaxed by her surroundings, no surprise—but goes around like a smart-arsed know-it-all. It’s not a clever self-awareness as Danny had in The Last Action Hero. I didn’t have fun like I did there.
   The scenes with Alex’s mother were not great as I doubt I would be such a cow toward someone I hadn’t seen in 27 years.
   I know there are all these meanings about our creating our own reality in this show, and obviously Alex has a few childhood problems, but at least Sam never crossed swords with his parents—with the exception of the confrontation leading up to letting his Dad go in episode 8.
   I realize that Alex Drake is not the regeneration of Sam Tyler à la Doctor Who, but I am not warming to her.
   And I really, really didn’t want to join the negative reviewers in the pre-début phase, but it seems I must.
   I will keep watching as there is still nothing better, and self-parody is part of this postmodern world, but please give us stronger and more realistic characters.
   Summary: Gene Lite is just not as fun.

I know the writers’ strike in the US is almost resolved, probably because the Oscars are looming, but if it isn’t remedied in time, there are always the British Academy Awards (BAFTAs) in the UK. The nominees were announced last week.