Ah, the Royal Yacht Britannia may have reached the end of her sailing days and the QE2 be nearing her dotage, but another legendary royal ship still sails! The "Queen Elizabeth", a Japanese love hotel, rises majestically beside the motorway leading from the Shonan coast to Yokohama. It made me swell with patriotic pride just to see her. Must go there one day for a monarchical bonk.
Earlier this week a Labour MP called for the Union flag to be redesigned to include the Welsh. Well, the Japanese internet chatroom 2Channel (a phenomenon in itself) has come to the aid of the cause. The music adds to it.
The Real News Network is an interesting project to create an international English-language television network which is funded by its viewers, instead of by advertising. I should add, from a British perspective, that it obviously also not licence fee funded.
I think this is important because it allows a much more sharp edged and analytical coverage of world news. I think we need more than the bland consensual broadcast news of the type that comes, in different ways, with advertising and the licence fee. The problems electorates are confronting will not be addressed by uncritical understandings of the world.
I think projects like this are likely to proliferate as the internet and TV merge. Of course, I will disagree with many of the services that will spring up and there is a risk of Balkanisation. But, anyway, it is nice that one of the first in this line is so gloriously radical and right up my street.
The trailer:
The reports:
Although, I have to say, on that last one, that the tenor of the report shares the same inability to interact in a respectful way with Muslim countries that seems to bedevil us. The assumption seems to be that we must make countries "secular" or face disaster. I think, by trying to make countries "secular", we are inviting disaster.
