My Blue Bicycle

We are in the midst of bike week as heavily promoted by Boris, Chief Bicyclist Czar. If Bozza was that serious about more people cycling in the city, he would be better off focusing on initiatives and promo events and consider ways to make cycling safer. Since there's no more zealous convert than a new convert, I unveil:

My Ten Point Plan for Safer Roads

 

1. Cycle lanes to be accessible at all times, i.e. cars forbidden to park in them on Sundays. Cycle lanes to be meaningful (more than a few metres long). Cycle lanes to be distinctly separate from pavements and painted regularly. Cycle lanes or areas for cycling not to end in a high kerb!

2. Bus drivers to be specifically trained not to stop in the cycle section at the front of traffic lights. Car drivers to be fined for driving or parking in cycle lanes as they are fined for driving in the bus lane.

3. Cyclists allowed to go the wrong way up one way streets (on cycle lanes) and to be able to turn left on a red light at specific junctions (clearly signposted).

4. Police to take cycle theft seriously, including checking serial numbers on bikes sold at local markets against those reported stolen.

5. Car drivers, motorcyclists, lorry drivers and police cars to be prosecuted when they hospitalise cyclists through dangerous driving. Using mobile phones whilst driving to be treated as seriously as drink-driving.

6. Police to do regular SUS checks on drivers to ascertain whether they have driving licences.

7. 20 mph speed limit on all urban non-A roads.

8. More cycle racks, especially at tube and train stations (watched over by CCTV cameras).

9. Motorcyclists injuring cyclists whilst driving in bus lanes to get points on licence.

10. Cycling on pavements to be against the law for the over 14s and treated as seriously as running red lights.

My Blue Bicycle

We are in the midst of bike week as heavily promoted by Boris, Chief Bicyclist Czar. If Bozza was that serious about more people cycling in the city, he would be better off focusing on initiatives and promo events and consider ways to make cycling safer. Since there's no more zealous convert than a new convert, I unveil:

My Ten Point Plan for Safer Roads

 

1. Cycle lanes to be accessible at all times, i.e. cars forbidden to park in them on Sundays. Cycle lanes to be meaningful (more than a few metres long). Cycle lanes to be distinctly separate from pavements and painted regularly. Cycle lanes or areas for cycling not to end in a high kerb!

2. Bus drivers to be specifically trained not to stop in the cycle section at the front of traffic lights. Car drivers to be fined for driving or parking in cycle lanes as they are fined for driving in the bus lane.

3. Cyclists allowed to go the wrong way up one way streets (on cycle lanes) and to be able to turn left on a red light at specific junctions (clearly signposted).

4. Police to take cycle theft seriously, including checking serial numbers on bikes sold at local markets against those reported stolen.

5. Car drivers, motorcyclists, lorry drivers and police cars to be prosecuted when they hospitalise cyclists through dangerous driving. Using mobile phones whilst driving to be treated as seriously as drink-driving.

6. Police to do regular SUS checks on drivers to ascertain whether they have driving licences.

7. 20 mph speed limit on all urban non-A roads.

8. More cycle racks, especially at tube and train stations (watched over by CCTV cameras).

9. Motorcyclists injuring cyclists whilst driving in bus lanes to get points on licence.

10. Cycling on pavements to be against the law for the over 14s and treated as seriously as running red lights.

About Four Inches, I'd Say

About Four Inches, I'd Say

The Afternoon Film

Fahrenheit 451

I've read the book so I already know what it will be like to live in a literature-free dystopia. The film stays reasonably faithful to the novel, although the next door neighbour character is fleshed out and older; played by a Jean Seburg styled Julie Christie. Christie is also cast as the wife of the fireman Montag who is played by Oskar Werner in a sexy leather cap. I've never found Teutonic accents attractive before but his is delightful. What beautiful Aryan children Oskar and Julie would have had.

Public transport looks a lot better in a totalitarian state.

Another Country

This is a beautifully shot film with beautiful boys, starring the most lovely of all, Rupert Everett in, I think, a career defining role (before he became Hollywood's gay sidekick for hire). Had say, Hugh Grant, taken the leading role, it would have ruined the film.

The film is about the class system in the microcosm of a public school and one boy's attempts to subvert that system to his own ends. The film is influenced by If.... but it is not about revolution, it is about the crushing nature of the system. Each strata of society is portrayed – the Gods (senior prefects) are the aristocracy and businessmen who run things, the Masters are the politicians (“The Masters,” says one God when discussing house affairs, “should mind their own business.”, the prefects are the middle classes and the the lower school, the lower orders. We see the younger boys doing working class work, bringing water for baths, cleaning shoes, making tea, polishing trophies, all the time accepting their role, gossiping “under stairs” about the older boys. One of the Gods, is upset with Guy Bennett (Rupert) for making comments about his love in front of one of the fags – one shouldn't corrupt the lower orders.

Bennett thinks he can cheat the system. When he wants to persuade his communist friend, Judd, (played by Colin Firth, acting for a change) to become a prefect, he, instead of pleading or reasoning with him, impresses his friend by losing the army parade for the house by dressing sloppily. Judd doesn't want to take part in the system, he wants it overthrown, he doesn't want to take his rightful place in the upper echelons of society by being a prefect, but he is prepared to compromise for the common good, to stop the (fascistic) Fowler becoming Head of House.

Guy doesn't believe in either the capitalist system or the communist one, but his rejection of the former leads to his embracing of the latter and his becoming a spy for the Soviet Union. The personal becomes political as he realises that what he is will stop him from succeeding. He has had sex with most of his compatriots but when he falls in love with Cary Elwes, he just wants to spend the night with him. He doesn't stand up to the system but he's not prepared to be the closet

Bennett suffers Oscar Wilde style hubris – he has escaped a beating, spent the night with Cary, persuaded Judd to become a prefect, defeated Fowler, and then he becomes careless. Like Oscar, like Marian Maudsley, he is brought down by a note, which is intercepted and he is punished. He can no longer escape punitive measures by blackmail because in doing so he would implicate his lover. His principles aren't political, they're filial and in accepting the beating, we see that his ethics are more sound than Judd's and that it's love, not sex that drives him. Judd thinks Bennett's homosexuality is a passing phase, but Guy equates it with political engagement, an innate thing that one cannot change. He isn't gay because he loves Cary, he loves Cary because he is gay, just as Judd reads Lenin because he is a communist and not the other way about. Unfortunately, Judd's wrestling with his principles and agreeing to become a prefect leads to nothing and we later learn that he died in the Spanish Civil War, his sacrifice there was redundant as well.

Guy is beaten not by the boys but by the system, they have to thrash him in order to keep the system, whilst admitting that the system is corrupt: “I doubt if such thing as a clean house exists,” one of them notes early on in the film. It's not so much that Guy is treated badly by the system but that he realises he can't cheat it, that he won't become a God because of his sexuality, that he won't get the top diplomatic jobs because of who he is. He can't beat the system, but he can cheat it by becoming a spy, he will not lie about who he is, but he will be mendacious in a different way The moment when the insolent, arrogant, narcissist has his epiphany is one of the most moving in film.

The Reckless Moment

The cool and competent Joan Bennett tries to save her art school daughter from a murder rap, and blackmail by the worst criminal in the world, James Mason (doing a rather terrible Irish accent), who ends up carrying her shopping, paying for her phone calls, trying to get her to cut down smoking, and then falling for her, quite literally. Despite dumping the body and lying to all involved, sympathy remains with Joan as she is forced to deal with things without the protection of a man (he is an engineer in post war Germany) - she can't get a loan without her husband's signature and when James suggests she go to LA to obtain some cash she says: “It's quite impossible for me to get away on my own”. James retorts: “You're quite the prisoner aren't you?” Her mind never seems to be on getting the money, more focussed on getting home to make the meals for, and look after, her father and children. “Family life crowds.” she comments.

Kissing Jessica Stein

Girl meets girl, so what?

Young Man with a Horn

A slightly miscast Kirk Douglas (a bit too too white bread to play the blues, looking, as he does, like a cross between Ricky Ross from Deacon Blue and Adrian Pasdar) is a trumpet player who yearns to play the jazz of the black man but can only get paying jobs playing in white, Glenn Miller-esque dance bands. Daringly inter-racial (for 1949), Kirk is taught everything he know by a Southern bluesman, although his liberality doesn't stretch to homosexuals as he tells his wife, languorous lesbian Lauren Bacall, to see a Doctor to cure her of her evil ways. I would have thought someone playing in the juke joints of Greenwich Village would be at least on speaking terms with gay people. The film also stars Doris Day as the good girl Kirk ends up with who, as well as being hetero, is supportive and wifely, everything his unwomanly wife isn't. Dozza plays to her strengths (singing).

The Afternoon Film

Fahrenheit 451

I've read the book so I already know what it will be like to live in a literature-free dystopia. The film stays reasonably faithful to the novel, although the next door neighbour character is fleshed out and older; played by a Jean Seburg styled Julie Christie. Christie is also cast as the wife of the fireman Montag who is played by Oskar Werner in a sexy leather cap. I've never found Teutonic accents attractive before but his is delightful. What beautiful Aryan children Oskar and Julie would have had.

Public transport looks a lot better in a totalitarian state.

Another Country

This is a beautifully shot film with beautiful boys, starring the most lovely of all, Rupert Everett in, I think, a career defining role (before he became Hollywood's gay sidekick for hire). Had say, Hugh Grant, taken the leading role, it would have ruined the film.

The film is about the class system in the microcosm of a public school and one boy's attempts to subvert that system to his own ends. The film is influenced by If.... but it is not about revolution, it is about the crushing nature of the system. Each strata of society is portrayed – the Gods (senior prefects) are the aristocracy and businessmen who run things, the Masters are the politicians (“The Masters,” says one God when discussing house affairs, “should mind their own business.”, the prefects are the middle classes and the the lower school, the lower orders. We see the younger boys doing working class work, bringing water for baths, cleaning shoes, making tea, polishing trophies, all the time accepting their role, gossiping “under stairs” about the older boys. One of the Gods, is upset with Guy Bennett (Rupert) for making comments about his love in front of one of the fags – one shouldn't corrupt the lower orders.

Bennett thinks he can cheat the system. When he wants to persuade his communist friend, Judd, (played by Colin Firth, acting for a change) to become a prefect, he, instead of pleading or reasoning with him, impresses his friend by losing the army parade for the house by dressing sloppily. Judd doesn't want to take part in the system, he wants it overthrown, he doesn't want to take his rightful place in the upper echelons of society by being a prefect, but he is prepared to compromise for the common good, to stop the (fascistic) Fowler becoming Head of House.

Guy doesn't believe in either the capitalist system or the communist one, but his rejection of the former leads to his embracing of the latter and his becoming a spy for the Soviet Union. The personal becomes political as he realises that what he is will stop him from succeeding. He has had sex with most of his compatriots but when he falls in love with Cary Elwes, he just wants to spend the night with him. He doesn't stand up to the system but he's not prepared to be the closet

Bennett suffers Oscar Wilde style hubris – he has escaped a beating, spent the night with Cary, persuaded Judd to become a prefect, defeated Fowler, and then he becomes careless. Like Oscar, like Marian Maudsley, he is brought down by a note, which is intercepted and he is punished. He can no longer escape punitive measures by blackmail because in doing so he would implicate his lover. His principles aren't political, they're filial and in accepting the beating, we see that his ethics are more sound than Judd's and that it's love, not sex that drives him. Judd thinks Bennett's homosexuality is a passing phase, but Guy equates it with political engagement, an innate thing that one cannot change. He isn't gay because he loves Cary, he loves Cary because he is gay, just as Judd reads Lenin because he is a communist and not the other way about. Unfortunately, Judd's wrestling with his principles and agreeing to become a prefect leads to nothing and we later learn that he died in the Spanish Civil War, his sacrifice there was redundant as well.

Guy is beaten not by the boys but by the system, they have to thrash him in order to keep the system, whilst admitting that the system is corrupt: “I doubt if such thing as a clean house exists,” one of them notes early on in the film. It's not so much that Guy is treated badly by the system but that he realises he can't cheat it, that he won't become a God because of his sexuality, that he won't get the top diplomatic jobs because of who he is. He can't beat the system, but he can cheat it by becoming a spy, he will not lie about who he is, but he will be mendacious in a different way The moment when the insolent, arrogant, narcissist has his epiphany is one of the most moving in film.

The Reckless Moment

The cool and competent Joan Bennett tries to save her art school daughter from a murder rap, and blackmail by the worst criminal in the world, James Mason (doing a rather terrible Irish accent), who ends up carrying her shopping, paying for her phone calls, trying to get her to cut down smoking, and then falling for her, quite literally. Despite dumping the body and lying to all involved, sympathy remains with Joan as she is forced to deal with things without the protection of a man (he is an engineer in post war Germany) - she can't get a loan without her husband's signature and when James suggests she go to LA to obtain some cash she says: “It's quite impossible for me to get away on my own”. James retorts: “You're quite the prisoner aren't you?” Her mind never seems to be on getting the money, more focussed on getting home to make the meals for, and look after, her father and children. “Family life crowds.” she comments.

Kissing Jessica Stein

Girl meets girl, so what?

Young Man with a Horn

A slightly miscast Kirk Douglas (a bit too too white bread to play the blues, looking, as he does, like a cross between Ricky Ross from Deacon Blue and Adrian Pasdar) is a trumpet player who yearns to play the jazz of the black man but can only get paying jobs playing in white, Glenn Miller-esque dance bands. Daringly inter-racial (for 1949), Kirk is taught everything he know by a Southern bluesman, although his liberality doesn't stretch to homosexuals as he tells his wife, languorous lesbian Lauren Bacall, to see a Doctor to cure her of her evil ways. I would have thought someone playing in the juke joints of Greenwich Village would be at least on speaking terms with gay people. The film also stars Doris Day as the good girl Kirk ends up with who, as well as being hetero, is supportive and wifely, everything his unwomanly wife isn't. Dozza plays to her strengths (singing).