Video of the Year

Daniel Hannan, directly addressing Gordon Brown at the EU Parliament, which became famous in early 2010...

Your Croque, Monsieur

My evening meal, actually, which was something called Croque Monsieurs, which I had served on a bed of mixed young leaf and crunchy salads.

These croques are pieces of bread filled with béchamel sauce, ham and mature cheddar cheese and are served hot. They are Sainsbury's own brand.

They are a little expensive at £4 for a pack of twelve of these little things, but Sainsbury has a BOGOF (Buy One, Get One Free) offer on them at the moment, and they can be frozen.

I therefore bought two packs this afternoon, partly as a celebration at being able to get out again after the snow and ice finally thawed a day or so ago. I had been effectively housebound for almost two weeks! The wash-down for my meal was a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon called Urban.

Bargain Basement Bottles, Part 1

This might become an occasional feature here: I don't yet know, it depends on what other bargains I discover.

Today's discovery is called Angels Bay. It's from South East Australia, but produced for First Cape (South Africa) and comes in white and red. It's the customary non-vintage stuff with no grapes identified, but is very palatable, especially the red.

The "Ocean White" is (perhaps ironically) reminiscent of Rouwke's Drift Cape White, and the "Sunset Red" is medium-bodied and is very good for a cheap everyday wine.

Like the Canti Merlot-Sangiovese I have mentioned before, it is much better than its price suggests.

The Premier local mini-mart shops currently have both of these at just £3.99 each, and have done for a few weeks now. As they are still going at that price (I bought some more today) it seems worth mentioning them here.

Fisking Wham!

Now, first things first: I fully realise that my understanding of the matters covered in nearly all popular songs is sketchy at best, and I am happy for it to remain that way on the whole

Occasionally, though, something just doesn't seem to make sense and it plays on my mind.

Therefore, today I am going to fisk the chorus to Wham's Last Christmas and invite readers to help me understand it. Here goes:

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart

Now, this obviously isn't literal, otherwise the singer(s) wouldn't still be alive with this year's song. Okay then, this is a metaphorical heart.

But the very next day, you gave it away

Eh? 'You' gave away 'my' heart? How does that work? I'd have thought that the complaint would have been that the recipient of 'my' heart gave away his/her own heart. What have I missed here?

This year, to save me from tears

There's the proof that it really was a year ago that the above happened...

I'll give it to someone special.

Ah! So it's back again (how? when?) and can be given away a second time. Why make the same mistake twice, though? Wasn't last year's gift to 'someone special'? If not, it was a very casual act with something as important as one's heart! Are these people (Andrew Ridgely and George Michael) stupid or something?

Answers either on a postcard or in the comments thread!

Bah, Humburger!

Or Humberger, if you prefer, as in the image (below) from engrish.com...

Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas Sermon 2010

As with the Queen's Christmas message that I featured in my previous post, the political Left and their allies have been trying to portray the Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas sermon as somehow having a go at the Coalition Government's policies and supporting their stance.

I can't yet find the whole sermon on video, though I did notice that the Press Association earlier claimed that the Archbishop:

"is to speak of the importance of mutual dependence, fellowship and loyalty during the current economic situation."

...which can  obviously be interpreted in any of a number of ways, and has the convenient get-out of not being a report on what actually happened. Despite that, it hardly seems to suggest that he is taking Labour's point of view on the matter. I do however have access to what appears to be the relevant two-minute extract from the sermon, courtesy of ITN:

Note how he very clearly refers to the crisis of "the last couple of years", and not "since last May"; and there are a number of other clues that anyone actually listening to Rowan Williams would realise is in reality very much for the Big Society concept, and not at any point in this excerpt against the Coalition Government in any way.

Perhaps there is something elsewhere in the sermon: it's possible, though it doesn't really matter as it doesn't change reality, only the Archbishop's perception of reality would be tainted if so.

I am sure that Cranmer will provide his own scrupulously analytical take on the sermon any time now; but in the meantime I trust that my readers at least won't be taken in by the Jeremy Corbyn/Paul Flynn skewed interpretation that suggests something obviously completely different from what the Archbishop has said.

UPDATE 27 December: Yes, as expected, Cranmer has (just today) provided his typically insightful look at this sermon. It's well worth a read, and bears out my own reading of what the Archbishop was really saying.

I have had to deal with misrepresentation of Dr Williams before, and shall remain alert to any attempt to treat him unfairly by any and all comers, even though I am not a great fan of the fellow, finding him to be too much a product of the Establishment who appointed him but basically a decent man.

I'm Walking in the Air

The original, wonderful, "Walking in the air" sequence from The Snowman. Christmas wouldn't be the same without it...

The Queen's Christmas Message 2010

This year, from Hampton Court Palace, focussing on sport and games. The Left see this as a rebuke to the Coalition Government; but try as I might, I couldn't find that message within this broadcast.

On the contrary, while none of the claims by the Left is (as far as I can spot) actually in the following, there was reference to at least one aspect (and I think there are two) of what David Cameron's 'Big Society' is really about...

Christmas Dinner 2010

This year I started with a smoked salmon mousse wrapped in actual smoked salmon, followed by a minted lamb steak with roast potatoes and parsnips, broccoli and sprouts, both these courses washed down with a rather nice Colombard-Chardonnay.

All this was finished off with Camembert and water biscuits, switching to red (St Emilion) as wash-down. Here's a photo of the main course...

Joy to the World!

The Lord has come! Anthony Gaynor, founder and CEO of the Black Pearl Entertainment Group, performs the body of this along with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and it is just right for today...

Christmas Eve

So it is; but this year I can't embed that wonderful Trans-Siberian Orchestra video with the child, the scraggy kitten and the TSO performing in the snow-scape outside, as the only copy I can find currently on-line has embedding disabled, so here's a direct link to that instead.

Do watch it in full-screen mode with the sound cranked up a decent way but not too high: you'll be glad you did!

After that, for a real treat, here again are those angelic Sarajevo kids with the TSO and Christmas Canon, based on Pachelbel's famous work. It wouldn't be a complete Christmas without them...

And as if that wasn't already enough, here are the TSO and the Sarajevo youngsters again, this time with our own Michael Crawford, and the very beautiful O Holy Night...

Slow Down, Dear! It's Only a Lottery...

So Michael Winner might say, if he were to advertise this brilliant idea, the Speed Camera Lottery...



Hat-tip: Paul Scully

Jingle Bone Swing

Here is a rather splendid light show that includes the instruments playing the tune. It's somewhat reminiscent of Spontaneous in the Innes Book of Records TV series which was also in the 'swing' style and had cartoon musicians being conducted by the real conductor on the show, John Altman.

Red and Redder

There is an important post for all Londoners, at CyberBoris, where AngelNeptuneStar has put together some hard facts that, when seen in that light, tell of much that those voting in the 2012 London mayoral election will need to know.

Here are her three crucial facts about Ken Livingstone and his 'running mate' Val Shawcross, and I've also 'borrowed' her picture (Val is at the far left - where else?!) to illustrate the point:

1. On 7 December Ken Livingstone selected Val Shawcross as his “Deputy Mayoral Running Mate” against Boris Johnson.
2. Just eight days later on 15 December Val Shawcross was “caught on camera” picketing with Tube Unions the RMT and TSSA in support of the wave of tube strikes that have caused so much misery to Londoners.
3. Until just days ago, Ken Livingstone ran his campaign to be the Labour candidate for Mayor of London from the HQ of the Tube Union TSSA.

Do follow the link and keep reading what Angel has written, as it is now obvious what the plan is and why; and it certainly won't be fun for commuting Londoners next year!

Twelve Days of Christmas

Performed (in sound only) by the Muppets. Guess who got the Five Gold Rings section? Yes, I suppose it just had to be...

Taking the Wrong Turn

This seems to be what even the most promising of local Labour candidates here can be found doing at the moment.

Specifically, Tristan Osborne has gone completely wonky on some local issues that, to be fair to him, were explored in detail while he was away at university. He has clearly been fed the party line since, and as that is distinctly at variance with the truth in many respects, and highly selective in others, he was perhaps bound to put out an incorrect message.

Fortunately, I was there, on the Council, when these issues arose, and know the true reasons behind them. As (almost) always, there are public documents and other official records that anyone can independently check and verify for themselves the truths about which I have so often written.

Today I'm looking at Tristan's assertions regarding Watts Meadow and related issues. I have been keeping an eye on what he has been writing, and there have been so many myths I could easily blow out of the water. However, I'm not really politically blogging in earnest these days, and I am dealing with this topic today only because I can see dishonest Labour types trying to tar me with the brush they wish to deploy, if I don't counter it first, stopping that idea dead. It has been tried before, and failed then as well...

So, what's (or "Watts") it all about? It is Tristan's attempt to suggest that Watts Meadow is under some kind of threat from the "evil" Conservative-run Medway Council, and of course also re-visits the Copperfield issue elsewhere in Rochester.

Let's first of all remind ourselves why these two sites were allowed for housing development. It was John Prescott's changes to the housing quotas, densities and parking standards that precipitated so much of this sort of thing in the affected parts of the country ever since his revised PPG-3 document came out in December 2002. Go and check the versions before and after if you want to see to what I am referring in specific detail: it's all there (I have copies on file, of course).

That was why the scrub-land (which is all it was) behind Compass Close (not to be confused with the Copperfield open space, though Labour councillors and activists always call it by the same name in order to scare people into thinking the open space is under threat) was sold for development after the revised "guidance" from Prescott's office hit us.

Note that what are known as "Parliamentary Planning Guidance" (PPG) documents are in fact instructions, because appeals against local planning decisions would be overturned if they did not comply with Das Fuhrer's diktats. All Local Authorities were well aware of that, from bitter experience (often with substantial costs awarded against them)! Thus it was driven by that, and had nothing to do with the local elections, as Tristan implies (I know what the Group policy actually was, going into those elections).

When looking around for the least appealing site to retain, the overgrown and publicly-visible tattiness of the land behind Compass Close was obviously a better choice than the others, in the need to make up the shortfall in development sites now presented as a result of Prescott's instructions. The following photos are actually quite kind, as the state of the place was far worse at times, but I just didn't have a camera with me at those times. Anyone who saw it back then will well recall just how bad it was...

Similarly, the Priestfields Nursery land (which, if left, would itself have become scrub-land) is separate from Watts Meadow, yet again Labour folk treat them as one so that their traditional scare tactics will worry local residents that the Meadow is under threat. It never has been, and with Ted Baker as the local councillor it is hardly credible that it ever would be, as anyone who knows Ted (which seems to be virtually everyone in Rochester and well beyond!) already realises.

Okay, I am aware that there are current building control issues with the Nursery site development, but I know Ted has been working on that ever since it began. There's no-one else I know, from any party, who would do any better, and almost certainly not as well, in protecting residents even when extant legislation (mostly from the Labour years) has a negative impact.

These two sites could have been protected from development (as was the original intention, specifically with regard to Compass Close which went to Full Council) if it had not been for the game-changing impositions of the then Deputy Prime Minister Prescott. That was it: once the full implications of the revised PPG-3 were known, and after discussions with ODPM to try to alleviate some of the worst excesses finally failed to achieve any respite, the decisions on such sites had to be revisited.

Note that you won't have read any of this from any Labour blogger or councillor around these parts; but it's all easy enough to check. I could provide a whole batch of links, but I might then be accused of leading people by the nose so I am leaving it for those sufficiently interested in the truth (and yes, the whole truth and nothing but) to verify the facts for themselves. It's not that difficult...

I could Fisk Tristan's 'blog post line by line; but I don't think that's necessary on this occasion. My reputation for knowledge, truth and accuracy on any council policy has never been seriously questioned, and I have always been able to conclusively demonstrate the truth. If any reader of this wants more, though, I can easily provide it in a follow-up post (this one's getting a bit long y'see).

The conclusion is that, as usual, it isn't the "wicked baby-eating Tories" who are responsible for most of the problems and issues around Medway (they do get a few things wrong, but not all that many). It's nearly always Labour who have been the real cause, even if they were at pains to make it appear otherwise. That, though, is their usual diversionary dishonesty at work, which have all seen so many times before that it can hardly be a surprise to any of us. Can it, now?

Crazy Frog Rescues Santa

"Ring, ding, ding-ding, ding!"

Wizards in Winter

I wasn't going to miss out my usual light show featuring the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's superb Wizards in Winter, especially with Harry Potter films being shown on TV this week (the connection is "wizard"), so here's a different light show from the ones I have featured in previous years. It isn't the very best of them, but it is still quite good I think...

Amazing Grace, Amazing Lights

I haven't done a lights spectacular so far this year, so here's a techno version (would you believe?) of Amazing Grace, with a very well done light show. It's only two minutes long and is well deserving of a place here...


Amazing Grace Techno - Computer Controlled Christmas Lights

Pata Pata

Decades ago (1969 I think it was) Polydor produced a ten-track LP vinyl compilation record of various instrumental tracks especially for the Audio Fair of that year. It was a particularly good demonstration disc for audio manufacturers as it featured a lot of clear, bright sounds along with good bass and general warmth and richness.

It started with that (at the time) recent Eurovision song contest winner "La La La" performed by the then unknown in Britain orchestra of Augusto Alguero, whose bright and sparkly arrangement made it compelling listening. You couldn't walk past a stand or room while that was playing. Trust me: I was there!

It was obvious to those of us who were recordists ourselves and knew something of how studios record and mix-down such tracks, and this one was bordering on having been overdone by Polydor. Nevertheless, after a few months I did get the album (I had already bought the special "sampler" at the show itself) and was pleased to have done so. I intend to feature a few tracks here, and am starting with Pata Pata from that first Alguero album...



...and here's the somewhat light-hearted Road to Marbella...

New Monitor

Recently an old Dell CRT monitor here failed with internal arcing, so it was obviously serious enough not to bother having repaired. It had the advantage of managing the 1600 x 1200 pixel desktop I had configured on my oldest Acorn RiscPC. That's the two-slice one that I bought back in August 1995, and still going strong, left switched on nearly all the time, though I'd always switch the monitor off overnight and when I was out.

Nowadays, though, it is hard to find a monitor with higher than 1080 pixels vertical resolution.

Why is that? It's to do with the high definition wide-screen television standard, which in turn is dictated by technical specifications laid down, first and foremost a two Mega-pixel display. This isn't exactly two million px, it's actually the binary approximation of millions; what are known in the business as Mebi-pixels (similarly Mebi-bytes of memory and drives) which are two to the power of twenty, or 2²⁰. Thus the new displays can have a maximum of 2,097,152 px in total.

Now, the other specification is the aspect ration of width-to-height of 16:9. The easiest way to work out the X and Y pixels (bearing in mind that the displays are made up of 8 by 8 LCD elements or LEDs) is to imagine the display made up of 16 by 9 large squares. That makes 144 such squares. Dividing that 2 Mebi-pixel number by 144 gives us the slightly awkward figure of 14,563·555 (recurring), so it'll need to be rounded down in a moment.

First, let's find out how many pixels on a side of these squares that figure would represent. The square root of that number is 120·6795, which gives us the obvious answer of 120 in practice. This is also a multiple of eight, so can be built up from standard pixel "blocks".

Okay: we know that the display is to be 16 by 9 of these squares, so multiplying each of those figures by 120 gives us 1920 x 1080, which is the current wide-screen standard.

Ah well, I'll just have to reduce my configured Y resolution setting (oh, and widen the X setting) accordingly, and reposition those icons at the very top of my Pinboard (actually, I've just shifted the whole lot down a bit) to fit and still in the layout I want. Easily done!

Now, what am I going to do with the extra width...?

Labour in 'Strod'

No, that's not an error, or at least it isn't my error. I was interested to see whom Medway Labour had lined up for Strood at next May's council elections, so visited their appropriate web-page, of which I have taken a complete copy for reference.

The group photographs are interesting. The Strod (sic) North team of candidates-to-be looks like a schoolboy (Liam Curran, a recent replacement for Alex Paterson), a lady (former mayor Linda Robson) and a bit of a bruiser (Stephen Hubbard, one of the dirtiest players in Medway).

The Strood (ah, they got it right this time!) South team, photographed skulking around in a back alley, has a black fellow (Isaac Igwe) almost invisible against a dark background (sloppy composition!), another bruiser type on the right (Robert Heathfield, who lives near me in Chatham), and Mark Jones (who lives in Rochester East) in the middle. Now, I quite like Mark, though he can be a very naughty boy when he wants, as I witnessed several times during his 2003-2007 stint on Medway Council.

That's it: there's no team for Strood Rural, probably as Chris Fribbins went independent a few years ago and they had no-one and nothing else going on out that way. Indeed, back in 2007 the three Labour candidates fro Strood Rural all lived outside the ward, scattered from near Walderslade (in Chatham, nowhere near Strood, or even 'Strod' for that matter) to half-way from the river out to Borstal. All the other candidates lived within Strood Rural ward itself. If they could do it...

Technically, Peninsula ward falls within what one might call "Greater Strood", but Labour's omission of a team for that ward isn't really of great import, and we can let that one go.

Anyway, it was interesting to see what they are planning, and I shall no doubt do the same kind of thing with the other wards and other parties, though not necessarily reporting my findings here unless they are of broader interest. So far, I have their candidates listed for just ten of Medway's 22 wards, so it might be a while before I can complete that exercise..

White Whisker-mas

The Jingle Cats (and a dog) sing White Christmas for us. With all the snow around at the moment, it seems to be a dream come true, though not for local reporter and columnist Alan Watkins. Bah, humbug!

Anyway, over to the Jingle Cats...

The Jingle Cats - White Christmas

Holiday for Bells

A now quite old, but still delightful, Christmas tune written by and performed in the easily-recognised style of the excellent Bert Kaempfert...

Cardcaptor Sakura Christmas

I'm not a hundred percent taken with the sound track, but see how it has been possible to fit the Sakura images around it, so this does work quite well overall...

A Proper Task Manager

I recently wrote about the garbage that is Microsoft and touched on their so-called Task Manager.

They have absolutely no idea about such matters, as they demonstrate all the time.

Well, this is our version (or the top part of it) from my Iyonix, which we've had on Acorn and other RISC OS computers since the very beginning (i.e. 1988).

Now that's something that is actually very useful, unlike having loads of 'svchost.exe' entries and other equally obscure stuff without sensible IDs.

Bearing in mind how much else was copied by Microsoft from RISC OS to produce Win95 and its derivatives (glaringly obvious when you put the two side by side, along with Win 3.1 to show what changed), it seems to be yet another of those numerous things they just didn't understand sufficiently well to be up to making a worthwhile and user-friendly utility themselves...

Incidentally, in common with most other Microsoft users, I tend to operate that one such computer here in what might be called "singular-tasking mode". That is, I generally have one application in view, full screen, and background activities are the only other tasks and I am ignoring them for the duration. Of course, things do sometimes pop up, which can lose me some typing if I'm reading from or otherwise referring to a source elsewhere at the time.

By contrast, I have always operated my RISC OS computers as true multi-taskers, which anyone watching me at work will quickly realise. Most visitors find it amazing what I am doing, and how fast and effectively. Once upon a time it was because of greater familiarity than with the Microsoft system, but for several years that has not been the case. It's simply what does and what doesn't work well, so I switch between two hugely different methods of working.

It's a bit like schizophrenia, I suppose(!)

Christmas Medley

By James Last and his band, from the Midnight in December album...

Winter Wonderland

This is the Johnny Mathis version of the classic Leroy Anderson seasonal song, along with a variety of snow scenes...

Now, I have to admit that the scenery here in Chatham isn't quite as dramatic as some of the views included in that compilation; but I've taken a couple of photographs from the kitchen here and it has its own picturesque quality (click on the images to display larger versions).

These were taken on an Olympus E-410 digital SLR, with appropriate exposure compensation to allow for the snow's reflectivity.

Cats on a Not-Tin Roof

Talking of cats...
Two years ago today I took these photos of two curious moggies who were peering in at me in the kitchen from the shed roof. I thought they would be worth putting up here. Note that there was no snow...

Carol of the Meows

Just one week to go to Christmas 2010!

Let's start this short season of interesting and unusual videos with Guster's song based on the Ukrainian Carol of the Bells, with animation by Kevin O'Shea...


Carol of the Meows from Kevin O Shea on Vimeo.

The Best Gift of the Year

Five seconds of joy to the world, and especially to Britain, courtesy of Ollie Cromwell at the Red Rag Online...

Simple can be Best

Sometimes the simplest of musical themes can work well. Often they can be built up, say every four or eight bars, in the manner of Jean-Michel Jarre or Bert Kaempfert (who made this device almost his trademark, including the reverse process at the end of a track).

Occasionally a catchy theme needs no elaboration, such as the opening and closing themes for the children's short-story series Missy Milly, here with the words in the original German...



Quick quiz: who can name all the characters without looking it up?



It's interesting, isn't it? The temptation can be, when composing, to over-elaborate what one is writing. It isn't always the right or best approach!

Strange Lady

That's Sarah Strange, the actress who played the character who we found out was actually the ascended being known as Morgana le Fay in several of the later Stargate episodes, including one Atlantis episode and in the Ark of Truth movie.

I didn't pay all that close attention at first, but after seeing her restrained, controlled and quietly compelling performances a second time I am quite impressed. Her look is memorable too.

I shall certainly be keeping an eye out for the Strange lady in future...

The Digital Nativity

How this historic story might have been played out in today's digital age...



(This video is going viral)

Medway Council Budget 2011/2012

Medway Council's Cabinet recently started its formal consideration of its budget proposals for the next financial year, starting on 1 April 2011.

This is going to be a real challenge, as the spending splurge by the previous Labour national government meant that "there's no money left", as Labour's Liam Byrne admitted in a note he left behind at the Treasury.

This has obviously meant a drastic cutting back in all sorts of areas including grant funding of local authorities, and in this specific case it has required very strict prioritisation. Local government funding – even just the (substantial) chunk coming from Whitehall – is an extremely complex business. Trust me on this: I have seen both ends of it and worked with our end for a number of years.

Because of the (well documented) extreme gerrymandering of this funding during the Labour years, some redressing of the imbalance needed to be started now. The consequence is that, until there is more money in the kitty, even those councils who fared badly (but not the very worst) under Labour will have to take their share of the load for the time being, so that the poorest and hardest-hit communities can cope.

Medway is one of the in-between councils.

The grant funding for next year is to be cut by a staggering £13 million. Now, that would significantly impact front-line services here if it hadn't been for the removal of all that target monitoring and incessant inspections, all of which cost well into seven figures. Inspection and audit charges alone rocketed from less than £31,000 in 1998/1999 to £136,000 by 2002/2003, and so on (obviously I don't  internal access to recent years' figures, though I could ask for an update one day).

Along with a lot of senior (i.e. costly) staff time dealing with the target and inspection régime, realistically we are looking at quite a lot more than just the inspection fees. This is just one set of savings that can be made without having the slightest effect on front-line services, by taking those activities back down to their (perfectly adequate) 1998 levels.

Another area of wasteful expenditure is on non-jobs such as Diversity Co-ordinators and Climate Change Officers. Medway doesn't have many of those identified by the Tax-Payers' Alliance as dispensable, but I asked a question at Council on this very point as the ones we do have here in Medway cost around a sixth of a million pounds each year. Undoubtedly there are other posts that could go, not covered in the TPA's initial research. Perhaps there'll be a "part two" appear any week now...

Overall, I believe that there will still have to be some services that will need to be reduced, passed out to other organisations or discontinued, but nothing crucial. Indeed, a fair chunk of what many councils do isn't really their line of business anyway, and shouldn't even have been council functions. There are dozens of those.

Predictably the local Labour folk are trying to spin the funding reductions as the fault of the present government. Clearly it is not, and it will take years to get this country's funding back to any kind of normality – something we haven't actually had for over a decade (despite clever camouflaging and a lot of secrecy and dishonesty, mainly by Gordon Brown, and now well understood by many of the public).

Don't be taken in: all of this – all of it! – has been caused by their people in national government. The rest of us have been left to pick up the pieces. Remember this at next May's local elections, and who is being honest and who is not.

Christmas is Coming...

I expect to do my usual video selection during the week before Christmas, but in the meantime local Medway blogger Alan W Collins has started his own twelve-days countdown. As always there is a good variety of material over there already, with plenty more to come, so do follow the link for a stolen snowman, a donkey and plenty more besides.

For myself, it's a little early for my more intensive several-per-day posts, but in the meantime here's Jingle Bells with a variety of greetings card-style snow scenes and indoors, some with animations, just to get us in the mood...

Drawing a Blank

A book with 204 blank pages has just been published by the Conservatives as an ideal stocking-filler.

It costs just £5 and is titled Ed Miliband's Policies for Britain.

Well, at least it makes a handy A6-size scribble pad I suppose...

Newham, New offices

Very expensive new offices at that! The BBC (perhaps surprisingly) has today reported on Newham Borough Council's vast expenditure on its own offices, to the tune of some £111 million.

This was one of those rationalisations that, by housing council services in one place, would produce annual savings. That's all fine and dandy, in principle, but why should it cost so much? Partly on ridiculously expensive "designer" light fittings, apparently; but the whole exercise reeks of squandering public money for their own pet projects, and in particular for self-benefit.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the elected Newham Council comprises Labour councillors alone, plus a Labour executive mayor. Equally unsurprising in their mayor's fortnightly propaganda "magazine" distributed to every home in the borough.

Here in Medway we went through a similar exercise just a few years ago; and it was interesting to attend a "concept briefing" of at least one senior council officer's idea of what we could do here to bring most of our (then somewhat scattered) office services under one roof. This was to be the creation of a £40 million "monument to local democracy" (I kid you not: that's what it was being called) incorporating all sorts of Lefty arty-crafty ideas at vast public expense.

I know: I was at that briefing event!

Fortunately we here in Medway have a more rational and pragmatic Conservative council leadership, and we wasted no time in rejection that sort of idiocy. Gun Wharf is a far, far better alternative, as practice has shown since the move there over two years ago, and was cost-neutral as a move while producing annual seven-figure cost savings.

It is therefore interesting to read of a Labour-run council that has done exactly what we rejected, and even more so than was being encouraged to be (mostly) wasted on the Medway "monument". While it is of course right and proper that councils make their own decisions without interference from national government, the London Mayor or anyone else, the voters of that particular London borough might not return exclusively Labour councillors at their next local elections, knowing the casual and self-serving attitude the present incumbents have towards their Council Tax money and the rest...

In Case Anyone Wondered...

I did try to locate and join in Guido's PMQs Live Chat as usual, but there semed to be a technical problem that I could not overcomes.

As often happens, it was invisible from Guido's website front page anyway, and it took devious tactics for me to even find it. The Cover-It-Live system wouldn't load, though, so I had to miss contributing to this last-of-the-year event.

Of course, my absence was no big deal, as there were plenty of good contributors as always. Here is the link to what transpired in what was a relatively bland session this week.

Short of Letters?

I was surprised to find in the latest YourMedway (which appears online just after midnight on a Wednesday morning) that a comment I wrote online to an article on Medway MPs' expenses has been included on the Letters page (on page 32).

At least they mention that it was an "online comment", rather than a letter intended for publication in the full edition(!)

The original article, with my comment, is here, and (unlike the letters page version) includes a link to my analysis. That comment reads as follows:

Useful article!

I have done a comparison of staffing costs (which are much the same need for all MPs) between the current MPs, normalised to a year, and their predecessors in the middle year of the last parliamentary term.

The results are very interesting, showing a six-to-one ratio from then to now. I could do the same for other items of expenses, but that'll suffice for now...

Not that I mind having it published, of course; but if I had known that might happen I'd have worded it more appropriately for the letters section...

Own Goal

Most TV channels these days are so bogged down with adverts, trailers, house ads and the dreaded "sponsorship" messages that there is now a good five minutes between sections of actual programming. This is now long enough to make a cup of tea including brewing time. All one needs to do is mute the sound as soon as it all starts, and watch for the return of the programme, finger poised over the sound mute button on the remote control.

(Why "sponsorship" anyway? Advertising revenue pays for the programming, and if not, then whoever's running the channel isn't doing a good enough job.)

There is now enough time to make that drink, pay a visit to the bathroom, or any one of a number of jobs that it is now worth taking the time out to do but wouldn't have fitted into the old three-minute breaks of yesteryear.

Anyway, the nett result is that probably next to no-one watches the adverts any more so it is becoming a less attractive medium for advertisers. If the TV companies wish to survive, then they'll have to start understanding basic human psychology and get rid of as much of the dross as possible. That also includes annoyances such as animations over programming and yakking over closing credits.

With Sky now having typically three house adverts/trailers in a row, at the end of every single break, the whole business is just one huge narcissistic self-promotion and admiration game, and people don't like that. This isn't the USA, and our outlook and demeanour are different here. Many of us, I gather, squirm at all the self-promotional guff, and even those who do put up with it soon soon get bored with exactly the same stuff being flogged repeatedly.

We in Britain have always known that a good product more-or-less sells itself, and if it has to be heavily promoted then it probably isn't much good.

So, what will happen? With more and more satellite/cable channels appearing all the time, the viewing market will become stretched even more thinly across them. Yes, many belong to one or another conglomerate so their incomes can be pooled, and each channel is comparatively cheap to set up in this digital age; but a tipping-point is probably not far off.

With the austerity coming in this country from next year onward, subscription services, especially those plagued with annoyances, will become one of those non-essentials that can be ditched. The bubble is about to burst, and it the behaviour of the TV companies that will have been to blame.

They'll be the ones killing their own businesses off!

Mobile Internet Device

The neat little hand-held unit featured in the video below is essentially a BeagleBoard (pictured at the right) with a touch-screen interface added (and some other custom stuff via the board's "expansion" connection).

Although it is running a Microsoft (yuk!) operating system in the video, it can also run Linux as another photo of the same device indicates, Android is planned, and I also know that the BeagleBoard is fully capable of running the only OS ever designed to specifically fit its core processor's architecture and instruction set, RISC OS.

Indeed, the ARM processor was invented to run RISC OS, and the BeagleBoard has an ARM Cortex A8 at its heart. Today there are now a scattering of BeagleBoard-based RISC OS units in everyday use.

The prototype Mobile Internet Device (MID) shown here was designed for functionality rather than visual appeal; but a mass-produced version would of course have a more stylistic design...

Coping with Microsoft

It is no secret that I detest Microsoft and near-enough all it produces. It's a rubbish system that is so messy, huge, sprawling and intertwined in a tangled mess that takes huge resources just to get going, that no-one who has any kind of clue how to design systems in general, and computer Operating Systems in particular, can possibly suggest there is any merit in how Microsoft's products are designed and hope to retain any credibility.

It's like taking an old, clanky lorry out just to carry the shopping, and one where it's impossible to work out what's going on under the bonnet or how to fix problems.

Mine runs slow nearly all the time, often simply because there are "temporary files" (that reappear every time, especially language binary files) on the system; and this ghastly Registry needs frequent attention, as do browser cookies and a range of other matters that just don't apply to my other (non-Microsoft) computers.

Having worked with a Task Manager for over twenty years, I was looking forward to seeing how the Microsoft variety of the same concept operated. Well, it doesn't even identify most of the tasks, many of which I cannot work out what they are from their obscure names, and there are multiple instances of processes such as SVCHost.exe (I have six of 'em currently running on the portable here) any of which it could be dangerous to kill off. The performance graph is quite nice, though...

Not that I am in the business of stopping tasks this way: I have probably done so only three or four times on all of my proper (RISC OS) computers put together during the past two decades.

It's just that, after having cleaned everything using a whole collection of tools (all kept fully up to date) and finding the machine still stops responding for several seconds at a time, every few seconds, I am running out of options to try to get the residual (and well-hidden) garbage out of this garbage system known as XP (shorthand for "exasperating", no doubt!) so at least have a look at the list of processes. That is after clearing out any tracking cookies by hand, most of which seem to come from national newspaper and other mainstream websites.

Interestingly, the pauses don't usually correspond to any peaks in CPU usage, though it does happen that way sometimes. I have monitors for malware and suchlike, and perform scheduled overnight checks, but they rarely show up anything apart from occasional registry errors.

Of course, on my trusty RISC OS computers (all five of 'em) there is never any such issue, and never has been. A hard drive might need replacing every few years, and an ancient CRT monitor blew up on me on the weekend, as it happens; but the computers themselves tend to just keep going. Indeed, my two-slice RiscPC has now been running almost non-stop for over fifteen years. Fortunately, most of my serious work is done on that machine and the Iyonix: no Microsoft or Intel/AMD-style processors in sight...

Flight over Rochester

Actually a virtual flight, using the aerial imagery of Google Earth along with some visual enhancements and a soundtrack, produced by Fantastic Planet GB...

Krull

This fantasy movie seemed to come out of nowhere, with a lot of originality (though based on fantastic elements and ideas that had been around for a long time) and appearing in 1983 when there was no obvious reason to think the public were really in the mood for such a story on the big screen.

Indeed, it didn't seem to be all that successful at that time, but with a couple of exceptions it was actually very good. It appears on one or another TV channel from time to time, and is today being shown on SyFy, as I write this. .

It has a great cast of British actors, including the wonderful Lysette Anthony as probably the most princessy princess I can recall in any movie.

It was probably her tiny waist, big blue eyes, high quality acting talent and an excellent costume that swung it for me(!)

One of the "exceptions" I mentioned just now, though, was the strange decision to dub over her speaking parts with an American voice (Lindsay Crouse), for some unaccountable reason. That was just weird!

The other demerit was the casting of a weak player as the male lead, one Ken Marshall (who?) when there were plenty of better choices in the acting market at the time and surely one or more of those would have been available.

Even so, the excellent British supporting cast of (among others) Francesca Annis, Alun Armstrong, Bernard Archard, David Battley, Bernard Bresslaw and Freddie Jones, along with Lysette herself (despite the voice-dubbing), more than made up for the negatives. Oh, and look out for Dicken Ashworth, Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane! I'm such a geek that I recognised all of them the first time I saw Krull, before knowing who was in it...

By the way, the music by James Horner is so similar in style to his work for the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, that it is a dead give-away that it was Horner also writing this film's music. The special effects are by no less a personage than Derek Meddings himself, one of the very best in the business.

Overall opinion: recommended viewing!

Chatham Rap

Actually quite good, and just right for a Saturday evening (as it is now) in Cha'am, where the birds wear scrunchies...

Tuition Fees – How Medway MPs Voted

Briefly, Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) voted FOR, Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) voted AGAINST, and Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) ABSTAINED.

Frankly, it was a no-win scenario whatever the outcome, as Gordon Brown had fully intended it would be when he set out to use students (always a useful bunch in such situations) as the pawns in this particular game of his.

Remember: it was Labour who introduced tuition fees in the first place (after claiming they would not do so) as well as top-up fees. It was later revealed that they had deliberately set those fees low, to help them win the May election, and would then put them up. It also needs to be remembered that under Labour's schemes, current and planned (e.g. the so-called "Graduate Tax" that Ed Miliband has been suggesting), students pay sooner, at a lower income threshold, and the Graduate Tax would be a commitment for life!

Each of the three Medway MPs has a reason for his or her stance; and both Tracey and Mark have explained their specific positions, while Rehman's view is covered in tomorrow's Kent on Saturday (page 10). Of course, the bottom line on all this is that the country shouldn't be in a position where it has to even consider such moves; but the public are showing how gullible they are if they fail to realise who was behind it all and why. All that will do is encourage more of the same when Labour get back into power, as no doubt they will one day.

For now, we are stuck with Labour's legacy on all fronts, including tuition fees, and at the new higher level (though implemented far more fairly than under the current system). Let's get through the next few years, and then – once the country is back on its feet – revisit this whole subject and see whether it might by then be possible to reduce or even eliminate these charges. Until then, we'll just have to live with Brown's legacy, even though actually implemented (but far better than the Gorgon would have done!) by a different flavour of government.

That Question at Council

I have today received the official record of the answers to my question and supplementary that I asked at the Council meeting on 25 November. For the public record, here are the questions and answers as they will appear in the official minutes when they are published:

For the Portfolio Holder for Finance, Councillor Jarrett:

Although we share a dislike of in-year budget cuts, most people now realise that this was unavoidable.


Medway Council's Conservative Administration has stated all along that front-line services would be the last to be considered for cuts, so would the Portfolio Holder kindly place on public record the items of unnecessary expenditure that have been removed in order that front-line services can be maintained?

Councillor Jarrett responded by agreeing that in-year cuts were unavoidable as a result of the shambles that the last government had made of the economy but he did agree that the scale and depth of the cuts which had to be endured in Medway were unavoidable but he had placed that on record before and he would do so again.

Councillor Jarrett stated that the regular monitoring reports to Cabinet identified in some detail the savings that the Council had agreed in response to the in-year funding reductions. Those reports also showed how the Council was performing in achieving the savings although there would inevitably be some shortfall given the need to consult staff and the costs associated with some staff redundancies and retirements.

He reported that the Council had sought to minimise the impact of the reductions in terms of front-line services but where the funding was quite specific to activity then it had taken a view that the activity will cease together with the funding stream. He made particular reference to time limited funding for extended schools activities and the national strategy support for schools.

Mr Ward then asked a supplementary question. He stated that Medway Council currently employed several types of jobs identified as unnecessary by the Tax Payers' Alliance including Diversity Officers, Climate Change Officers, European Officers and Political Assistants. There were 85 other councils that did not have these posts at all, and as they cost Medway tax payers a sixth of a million pounds a year, he asked when those particular jobs would be scrapped.

Councillor Jarrett responded that fortunately, elected representatives ran Medway Council and not the Tax Payers' Alliance. All posts were under scrutiny at the present time during the construction of the budget for 2011/2012. However Councillor Jarrett stated that this administration fully supported the posts of Political Assistants, as that add a great deal of value to the Council's democratic process, as well as the support that they gave to the political groups across the Council. Councillor Jarrett stated that there would not be, in the 2011/2012 proposals made in February 2011, any proposal to reduce the number of Political Assistants. What had happened over the last year was to ensure that those posts are balanced and filled on a pro-rata basis.

These were very good answers from Cllr Jarrett, though the second answer does mean that the Medway public will have the right to expect a suitably firm and robust defence of the Political Assistant positions with Medway as so many others cope perfectly well without them. Indeed, the Conservative Group didn't have one itself until the Cabinet system was imposed upon the Council, back in 2001, whereas the Labour and Lib Dem groups had had one each for years.

All this time after the introduction of the Cabinet structure, it would be hard to produce a real justification for retaining the posts, though as Cllr Jarrett said their number had been reduced (the smaller groups now having only a part-time post each) during the past year, which is at least a step in the right direction.

Overall, I think the response that my.question generated will be useful to Medway residents in understanding what the Council leadership and Administration is doing and how, which they would have known before unless they were particularly avid readers of Cabinet documents and understood them fully.

Therefore I do believe that I have (again!) performed a useful public service, as has Councillor Jarrett; and I do hope that the exercise will serve to aid local people's understanding of what is currently going on within their council and why. I have also (yet again) shown that I will watch what is going on, especially Medway-wide matters, impartially and with no party allegiance.

As with my previous question (PDF, see question No. 45), a year and a half ago, I continue to act on behalf of the community, first and foremost, in a way and to an extent that possibly no other questioner at Medway ever does.

Opinion Polls Update – Mid-December 2010

Although I still don't really wish to get fully back into the political blogging arena until the Medway Council elections are nearer, it has been quite a long time since I last covered the opinion polls here and I need to put down a marker of how they are now, ready for the future.

In other words, it will be difficult to make comparisons and draw useful conclusions unless I publish my usual graph around this time; so here it is.

This has been an awkward year for this exercise in one way, because seven weeks into 2010 YouGov started their daily polls for The Sun.

Now, the feeling was that this would cease after the General Election (and I have reason to think that was the original plan) but it has carried on ever since.

Therefore there are well over 300 points on each of those four lines in the graph! This year has also shown that YouGov's results are generally out of step with the other pollsters, though it is hard to know who is right and who is wrong.

What I have therefore decided is to separate out the YouGov daily polls for 2011 and plot them on a separate graph from the other pollsters, whose polls tend to be between once a week and one per two months (or more). Starting from the end of January, I plan to revert to monthly summaries as I did before (more or less) but with two graphs instead of the combined one as at present.

I am also thinking of plotting leader satisfaction ratings, as these have proven to be valuable in other countries and are now being treated more seriously as a strong indicator of the public mood. They will have to go on a separate graph, or (again) possibly two, though the YouGov/Others split might not prove to be necessary for this measure. We shall see...

As for the year-to-date graph above: the key story is the ongoing symmetry of the Labour and Liberal Democrat lines. The voting intention (i.e. support) they share remains more-or-less constant, a dip in one being reflected in a rise in the other. Because of the Lib Dems' perception as being the minor partner in the Coalition Government, and their more left-leaning supporters shifting to Labour, this has inevitably (and predictably) resulted in a sever drop-off for the yellows and a corresponding boost for the reds.

That trend, established months ago, has almost stabilised though the Lib Dems are still losing support though at a much reduced rate. Then again, there isn't much support left for them so it was bound to slow.

The real message from this, though, is that Labour isn't really earning any Brownie points for themselves, they have been merely gaining support as the only place to go for disenchanted former Lib Dem supporters. Okay, a few will go to one of the minor parties; but the Others line shows that all those other parties combined are now back to receiving typically nine or ten percent. That's still higher than it has been at times, but back in January it was 12% or higher in most polls, and dipped below 10% only once in February and on one other occasion in March.

Of course, the other big story this year has been the post-election boost for the Conservatives, especially after the Emergency Budget when their polling went up from the high thirties to the low forties and have stayed there near enough permanently ever since, though with a very slow tailing-off from their peak of 44%

Only recently have we started to see some high thirties again for the blues; but that was to be expected after the realisations of the necessary public spending curbs started to sink in, and the Coalition parties were to be punished even though it wasn't their fault. That was how Gordon Brown had planned it, of course, as was discovered later...

Once the actual cut-backs and slowing of spending increases starts to bite, I and others fully expect the blue team's support to diminish more sharply than we have seen so far. That will be necessary; and no doubt Ed Miliband and his brothers in Labour (though not necessarily his actual brother!) will be crowing and making a lot of hay while the sun seems to be shining for them.

Let them! The valid test of the Coalition Government will come after their nation-saving policies bring us back toward a more normal position, just as Mrs Thatcher achieved during her first term, solidifying it during her second four-year period at Number Ten. By 2013 or 2014 at the latest, the polls ought to be roughly where by rights they should be, with Labour well down and possibly even in third place, consistently behind the Lib Dems in second place. The Conservatives are likely to be in the upper forties by then, and Labour in the high teens or lower twenties, Others will probably have shrunk to around six percent, and the yellows will have the rest.

If Labour don't change their leader before then (and the odds are that they won't) then that polling scenario seems very likely unless something else drastic happens in the meantime, depending on what that is, how it's handled and how the public perceive it to have been handled. Remember that governments generally lose elections rather than oppositions winning them. Okay, it's not quite as black-and-white as that, but broadly it's usually not far off what happens in many (perhaps most) instances of a change of governing party.

Tweet of the Day – 9 December 2010

From my local MP Tracey Crouch, in reponse to local Labour candidate and blogger Tristan Osborne's assertion that "students are struggling to get into [her] diary today"...

"RT @tristanosborne: @Tracey_crouch Students are struggling to get into your diary today. <- no-one has contacted my office!"

This is consistent with information I have gleaned from all over, regarding other Coalition MPs: no-one has booked an appointment to speak to them or otherwise made any kind of formal (or other) approach, apart from one MP (in Pendle) who reserved the time as requested and then the students didn't bother to turn up anyway!

Medway MPs' Expenses

I thought this was worth covering as I have records of both the current Medway MPs' expenses and those of their immediate predecessors, which I suspect other local bloggers either do not have or would prefer not to publish on their own 'blog (especially any direct comparison).

With a useful article in YourMedway on the subject this week, it now needs to be put on the record just how much less our three new Conservative MPs are costing us taxpayers than the Labour members they replaced last May.

Although the new MPs' claims to date will include one-off setting up costs, let's just look at staffing costs for the moment, for the sake of easy calculation, and multiply their initial 3-month claims by four to get an annual figure. Then, let us take the middle year of the previous parliamentary term (April 2007 to March 2008) for comparison. Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless hasn't yet submitted any claims at all, so that one will have to be left blank for now.

Chatham and Aylesford

Tracey Crouch: (£3,877·50 x 4 =) £15,510.

Jonathon Shaw: £92,201.

Gillingham and Rainham

Rehman Chishti: (£3,877·50 x 4 =) £15,510 (yes, the same as Tracey's: it's not a mistake).

Paul Clark: £84,890.

Rochester and Strood

Robert Marshall-Andrews: £79,192.


I could do the same with any of a selection of other expenses categories; though some of those might be unfair owing to the ministerial responsibilities of two of the former Labour MPs which could skew the figure and be misleading. At least with constituency office staffing, every MP has much the same need, which is why I have concentrated on that item of expenditure here.

Office running costs and stationery are counted separately, though, and I can do the same exercise for those if anyone wants me to. I just didn't want to present a mass of figures all at once, which can be bewildering and make it difficult to see the wood for all those pesky trees...

Overall, it is to be noted, the current year's MPs' expenses look like they will total somewhere around £9 million, which is barely a tenth of the previous year's total of some £96 million. That's quite some saving, and does beg the question of why it was so high before.

Play Areas in Medway

Checking Friston Fields play area

I am very pleased that another nine of Medway's approx 90 play areas are to be renovated, via funding coming from the Government's central pot under the Playbuilder scheme.

This is the second year of a programme that has been planned for some time, and this latest news will be welcomed by the communities accessing these play facilities.

The first batch was completed earlier this year. Their locations are, in alphabetical order:

• Beechings Way
• Capstone Park Main
• Capstone Park Woodland
• Cherry Trees
• Cliffe
• Cliffe Woods
• Darnley Road
• High Halstow
• Parkwood Green
• Rainham Recreation Ground
• Rookery Fields.
  

The nine new ones, now approved to go ahead, are at:

• Allhallows
• Barnfield
• Bayswater Drive
• Borstal Recreation Ground
• Broomhill Park
• Cliffe Road
• Cuxton (Bush Road)
• Gillingham Park
• Luton Recreation Ground

This is good news, especially at a time of cut-backs, though of course the scheme was already in train and there would have been no sense in scrapping it as the funds are still available.

Incidentally, when I was on the Council I was working towards having much the same done at Vale Drive (a few Mums spotted me taking photos and making notes when they were leaving, so it was no secret) but we had a vandalism issue there and that had to be resolved first. The positioning of the youth shelter there was one one step toward that end, and there were more to come...

Those without an understanding of how (and why) these things work they way they do might be tempted to suggest that central government funding, no longer being ring-fenced for specific purposes, might be better deployed elsewhere within the council's spending to offset reductions in grant funding elsewhere. Local newspapers have fallen into this trap, for example YourMedway.

I don't think that would have been sensible, and indeed it might not have been possible with this scheme's funds this year. Even if it were, though, there is sense in not going wild with public money and switching it around willy-nilly. The local funding components (as wil be needed in some cases) were already programmed in as well, from previous years' budget-setting.

Quite apart from that, this is capital funding which by law (and proper accountancy practice) must be kept separate from revenue costs, which is where year-on-year spending reductions will have ongoing impact. There are the two completely separate accounts, as one can see by looking at Cabinet and Council reports and proposals at budget-setting time.

Especially for the first year of this new freedoms from (some of!) the centralised diktats, it is wise to keep existing planned projects on-track wherever possible. As with everything: one step at a time...

Overall, this will be a good news story for many, and will not take anything away from any revenue spending demand.

The Big Society comes to Chatham

After the snowfall, before the shovelling!

A team of four fellows, including a teenager, has been shovelling snow here in the quiet Close where I live, clearing the road (which is rather steep coming into the Close) and thus dealing with something that the council could hardly be expected to tackle when their emphasis is rightly on first clearing primary and then secondary routes.

This is a relatively simple example of David Cameron's Big Society in action, and is very welcome. They are all just residents here, not paid for this work. It's good: I might even be able to go shopping safely now...

No doubt the local Labour councillors for this area will hate this, as it takes away from the hold of officialdom on people's lives when they take responsibility for some aspects of life for themselves. It also, in this specific instance, removes a complaint they could have manufactured about the council "failing to act" for us poor defenceless people, mired in the snow here in the heart of Chatham (well, close to the heart, anyway).

Those Labour councillors must be cheesed-off with the enterprise of ordinary people, though in public they will compliment the residents and still (I expect) try to have a go at the "Tory administration": it would be far from the first time they have tried that approach, as I have witnessed many times over the years. While they are gritting their teeth as they do so, the council has been gritting and clearing main and secondary roads.

Everybody wins!  Oh, apart from local Labour, that is...

Favourite TV Character

I have to admit to a sneaking liking for the character of "Todd" the Wraith in Stargate Atlantis, brilliantly portrayed by the excellent (and somewhat imposing!) figure of Christopher Heyerdahl, who also plays the Athosian community leader in a few episodes.

Of course, the end result depends hugely on good writing, skillful direction and convincing prosthetics; but in the end it is the performance of the actor that brings a character to life.

Christopher Heyerdahl is always good in every part he plays, but here he has managed to bring humour and a degree of humanity to a distinctly non-human character.

One big clue is the Anthony Hopkins-like effect that just seeing him standing there has: it's very much like that first scene with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs: his sheer 'presence' is that powerful, without his even having to move or speak.

"Todd" (as the humans name him) is a fascinating and compelling character, almost likeable at times despite his origins: pragmatic, intelligent, to be trusted only as far as (and while) his own ends are being furthered.

It's an intelligently-written part, superbly executed, and demonstrates perfect casting with Heyerdahl in the part.