This is another deeply predictable book by Dan Brown. At least when I read The Da Vinci Code the plot seemed original. Unfortunately, this time it didn’t. These two books have virtually identical plots, just using people in place of objects. You could see the ‘surprising’ ending a mile off, and some passages were extremely frustrating to read.

Let me provide you with an example…

‘My father could argue two sides of a Mobius Strip.’

Quite funny, a fairly astute and witty comment.

Langdon laughed, picturing the artful crafting of a Mobius Strip

A little flowery, what with all the ‘artful crafting’ poop. It’s hardly difficult to ‘craft’ a Mobius strip, school kids across the globe do it regularly.

a twisted ring of paper, which technically possessed only one side.

Yes, we know what a Mobius strip is. You’d have to be pretty slow not to know. And I particularly like the italics, just to emphasise what an amazing point he’s making.

Langdon has first seen the single-sided shape in the artwork of M. C. Escher.

No, Langdon would first have seen it when he was in short pants at school.

Why does Mr Brown insist on making a meal of the smallest points? He does a similar thing later on, taking two paragraphs to explain what a relief is (the artform, that is, not the relief you get when reaching the end of one of these tedious passages) – eventually explaining it in terms of the picture on the back of a penny.

One point at which I actually laughed out loud was this:

Glick’s first monthly review had come back filled with superlatives – resourceful, sharp, dependable.

If it was so filled with superlatives, why is it that the author cannot list even one. Or doesn’t he know what a superlative is?

The storyline is good, and it’s an entertaining book, but don’t expect anything deep and meaningful (and try not to cringe when he tries to include philosphical comments) and try not to get too frustrated with some of the more tedious, unnecessary explanations.

I watched the DVD of Chicago tonight, and I really wasn’t very impressed, and I certainly don’t even begin to comprehend why it got six Oscars. It was marginally than the stage version, but that’s not a particularly difficult achievement. Some of the acting was so wooden that I almost expected to catch glances of strings from the hands, and some of the miming was equally appalling. I’ve never been a fan of the music in Chicago either, which didn’t really help.

People have compared this with Moulin Rouge – it doesn’t even come close. Moulin Rouge was cinema at its best, reminding us all that cinema can be a true artform, and that it’s only made mundane by the manufactured poop that normally comes out of Hollywood. Chicago was just terrible. The way that the story was integrated with the stage songs-and-dances was clever, and worked well, but that’s about the only good thing I can think of from the whole film.

Not really worth spending a couple of hours of your life with, much less worth buying.

The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner also said many critics of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill were “naive” about the threat faced.

The opposition have wanted to tell the Government what they would do for some time, in the appropriate place and in the appropriate manner – that is, in a House of Commons debate. The Government have consistently denied them this opportunity by ramming this legislation through like there’s no tomorrow. So for the Government to come out and make demands and accusations like these is misleading and dishonest. And it also lets us see who’s really playing politics with terror.

Tony Blair admits today his personal standing has become ‘an issue’ in Labour’s election campaign, but warns his party no other leader would fare better.

So says The Grauniad, who had forty-eight hours with the PM. But why is Mr Blair, king of polling data, refusing to accept what the polls are telling Labour – they’d fair much better under Gordon Brown? I suspect it’s because Mr Blair only hears what he wants to hear, and the last thing he wants to hear right now is that his major political rival is more popular than him. Some would call that arrogance, but they must be wrong, because we all know that Mr Blair had a Spring Conference epiphany, and is now a marvellous person.

This is Downing Street’s vaunted ‘masochism strategy’ in action: tackling political apathy by pitching Blair into direct combat with grumpy voters. It has, he says, given him a new perspective on Westminster.

‘What it has done is reinforce how much there are just two different worlds going on.

‘One is very basic things that people want help with in pressured and difficult lives, and that’s their concern – and they really don’t have a lot of interest in things about which I am continually forced to answer questions.’

In other words, ‘Please tell those mean newspaper boys to stop asking me nasty questions’. Of course, this is the first election Blair’s had to fight with the popular media against him, and I don’t think he’s enjoying it. I think that he thought he’d walk this election, just like the last two, and now the pressure’s on and he’s not prepared for it. He looks like he’s floundering, every time he tries his old techniques of fake emotion, people know he’s faking. He desperate, and needing a lot of help right now. He sounds weak. And it’s not making him look good.

It made me laugh…

And lo, the battle was joined. Well, not quite – the election date still hasn’t been announced, but the Lib Dems have entered the election fray and joined the party, bringing their own slogan along for laughs:

The Real Opposition

Not the best slogan, I suggest, for a party who claim to have their sights set on Number Ten, but a decent one for a party who think they have a chance of becoming the official opposition. Or, at least, holding the balance of power. But heck, it’s an awful lot better “Britain forward not back” (I still don’t know what that means), and “Less talk, more action” (our problem is that Tony Blair’s gone too far and taken too much action, like invading Iraq).

But there’s nothing in his speech that I can disagree with. I’m not a massive fan of his tax policies, but at least he’s honest about raising the top rate, and at least he has rational, good reasons for doing so.

The problem with the Liberal Democrats is that their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness:

For us politics isn’t about gimmicky pledge cards with vacuous statements. It’s about real solutions to real problems. It’s about being straightforward about how you will deliver. And it’s about being straightforward also about how much it will all cost.

In this world of instant news, people need hooks and quick, meaningless soundbites, slogans, and pledges. That’s the nature of the country we live in. Politics should be about much more, but people aren’t interested enough to sit and listen to a reasoned argument – they want to be drip-fed what they want to hear. But once a party starts to subscribe to this form of argument, they lose all credibility.

The Lib Dems are still looking like the party I’m most likely to vote for, not least because we have similar opinions, but also because the other two main parties are just unsupportable in my view: Labour, because they are dishonest and spin to the point of lying in order to massage their egos, and The Conservatives because I can’t support their dispicable asylum policies, which border on racist.

I don’t think the Lib Dems have a hope of winning the next election, but that shouldn’t stop anybody voting for them. The bigger their majority, the louder their voice of reason. And if there’s one thing we need in the House of Commons, its more reasonable, moral people.

Censorship of TV programmes around the world is always interesting to read about. But this seems a little harsh:

The Swedes can settle down with Helga And Heidi Do The Vacuuming Inexplicably Naked III safe in the knowledge that they are unlikely to be put off their stroke by a commercial for My Little Pony – all television advertising aimed at children under 12 is banned in Sweden (except if the programme is on so late that no children are likely to be watching).

At the other end of the scale:

A country as repressive as Saudi Arabia has to do something pretty special in the censorship department to attract attention, and they cracked it in 2001 by banning all manifestations of the Pokémon craze, including the television programme, on the grounds that the symbols used by the mono-dimensional creatures included the Star of David… The mind boggles at what they must have made of Teletubbies.

I didn’t expect much from G4. And I didn’t get much.

Bizarrely, the sound levels on the tracks are set so that the music is far too loud, so that the loudest notes sound no more impressive than any other pop singer mumbling along to some trashy hit. And their version of Nessun Dorma, possibly my favourite aria of all time, is horrendous. It’s awful. It has about as much feeling as an anaesthetised slug.

The highest this album ever soars is to the dizzy heights of mediocrity. The group sound deeply uncomfortable with some of the stuff they’ve had to sing, and it seems like it’s an attempt to please a very wide range of people. And they succeed in impressing no-one. At least, not me.

Though
Plough
Through
Thorough
Enough
Cough
Lough
Middlesbrough

You have to feel sorry for people trying to learn English.

I’ve received an email this afternoon from Mr Tony Blair’s Labour party – a mass mail jobby, as you’d expect. And I permitted myself a small smile…

Dear Labour supporter

Not off to a great start on the accuracy front, then, but never mind.

The Tories opposed the setting up of the NHS. They have opposed the investment and reforms of this Labour Government.

Unfortunately, he has failed to tell me exactly what Labour are going to do. The Tories might be terrible, but nothing here says Labour’s better.

Yesterday Michael Howard highlighted one case, that of a patient who had her operation cancelled several times… for Mr Howard to take one case and use it to undermine the whole of the NHS is typical and wrong.

Agreed. It does seem absurd to extrapolate individual cases to comment on the health service as a whole. It’s not logically sound.

When we launched our Proud of Britain campaign, and asked people what made them proud of Britain, the NHS came up again and again. Today we are putting just a sample of these “Proud of the NHS” testimonies on our website and we’re asking for new comments too.

But, erm, it’s absurd to extrapolate individual cases to comment on the health service as a whole. It’s not logically sound. Remember? You’ve just been telling me that… so why are you trying to pull that one on me?

The coming election will be a fight for the future of the NHS.

Obviously, much better for Labour to fight on the future than the eight years of government they’ve just had. Surely they should be proudly trumpeting their acheivements, not shying away saying ‘we’ll do better next time’.

Yours sincerely

The day Tony Blair says anything truly sincere in the run up to an election, I’ll dance a merry jig in Stockton town centre.

So, in summary, this hastily put together rebuttal of Michael Howard’s stinging attacks just makes Labour look more than a little bit silly.