It sounds good until you read it

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No, not this blog (more on that tomorrow, by the way).

No: This BBC Press Release:

That sounds great. What’s not to like?

Well, that would be the small matter of the small print halfway through the thing:

As part of this launch, the BBC will also be making BBC Sounds available exclusively to UK audiences and ending access to the service for international users beginning Spring 2025.

u wot m8?

Yep. They’re taking 6Music (and everything else) away from anyone not in the UK.

This is sad, because I’ve been a loyal listener there and here since the very beginning of the channel, and I listen for literally hours every day. Of course, there might be ways around the geofencing, which I am obviously completely unaware of, but even if I had an inkling of how to get round it, that surely just means an extra step, extra expense and more not to work.

A quick note here that the BBC makes it quite difficult to access their visual stuff via a VPN.

Or so I am told.

And sure, I get it. I don’t pay my BBC Licence Fee, I know (not that there is a Licence Fee for radio), but this isn’t really costing the BBC anything to share. The programme is made and broadcast anyway, I just pick it up somewhere else via the internet (a reminder here that 6Music is a digital only station anyway).

Except of course, it does, because music rights or something or other. No-one (including this radio expert) really seems to understand how these work, but the upshot of their messy implementation is that the BBC aren’t going to let people overseas access their content any more.

Although I’m not quite sure why, given that that side of their business is doing rather well:

The main commercial arm of BBC Commercial Ltd, BBC Studios generated revenues in the last year of £1.8 billion and a third consecutive year of profits of over £200 million.

It’s weird, because I would imagine that there’s a good percentage of 6Music listeners who aren’t in the UK. Calls and messages to shows come from expats all over the world, and the presenters read them out almost as a badge of honour. It’s going to hurt all the stations, but 6Music might notice the biggest drop, given that it has one of the smallest audiences (although it’s not clear what the UK/non-UK split is here).

Either way, I have to make a plan, because the other day, having left my phone at home, I listened to a local radio station on a short journey. It was more horrific than I had remembered.
I cannot do that again.
Let alone every day.

Germany does it again

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After this post and this post, both describing the obvious difference between East and West Germany (Germanies?), the Germans have gone out of their way to do it again in their recent elections.

Incidentally, I love the irony that I have the choice of how I want that image to display:

OK. Let’s play it safe and go centre. I mean, I don’t want it on the left, but Jesus – obviously not as far right as East Germany!

Interestingly, Elon’s darlings, the AfD, won a couple of places in West Germany this time around as well, namely Gelsenkirchen and Kaiserslautern. It turns out that those are both poorly-run cities with high unemployment and high levels (for Western Europe at least) of poverty.

And when there is a vacuum of power (or even a perceived vacuum of power) in a place with disgruntled, lower-educated voters, well, the populist parties with no real policies except “blame the immigrants*” will happily step in and take power with 25%, and the rest of the vote split between the “real” parties.

Tight.

But the more concerning issue is that – even aside from these two outliers – the AfD was able to garner around 20% of the vote in many constituencies right across Germany, and was only kept out by stronger performances of one or other of the CDU/CSU or the SPD.

Worrying times. Unless you’re a Nazi.

.

* or whites, blacks, Mexicans etc etc etc.

An odd morning

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Woke up to news of Stage 6 (six) loadshedding and the sound of a spotter plane and fire helicopters overhead.

This isn’t good.

The Stage 6 loadshedding is “retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech”, according to some online pundits. But this seems a little silly to me. The Budget speech was postponed four days ago. Why wait until 1am on a Sunday morning if you are a vindictive ruling party wanting to make a point? Who – apart from the most weird of tinfoil hat wearers (see above) – is going to put those two and two together to make four? Far more likely is that the power grid – held together with vinegar and brown paper borrowed from Jack of the famous nursery rhyme – fell over when someone forgot to tie the string properly.

Others online suggested that the loadshedding was somehow the City of Cape Town’s fault, arguing that “Cape Independence can’t come soon enough”, while conveniently forgetting that a massive 0.26% of the 58.64% of voters who turned out, actually supported that idea in last year’s election.

Either way, any way, whatever: it’s a shlep being without power for 12 hours a day. Again.

The fire is on Table Mountain, probably about 4km from our place, but it’s heading up and away from us at the moment. “African prayer groups” was the wildest conspiracy theory I saw for this one, but why not “retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech”? Cyril’s place is literally 1km from where it mysteriously started in the early hours of the morning.

Either way, it’s far from sorted yet, and the spotter plane is still circling overhead, endlessly spotting.

The best way to get around these problems is to try and ignore the drone of the plane and the lack of electricity, and go to the gym. And so that’s what I did. And it was as I left the gym that I thought I saw the silhouette of a woodpecker in a tree in the back garden.

As you do.

But no, woodpeckers do have a rather distinctive shape. So I wandered closer to investigate and yes:

The old bird proof/ID photography policy thing worked well here. Get any photo first, no matter how bad, and then try to work from there. That’s what this is: the first bit. I gave up on the work from there bit, as I was knackered from the gym.

And that’s a female Olive Woodpecker (Dendropicos grisocephalus). Not uncommon, apparently, but a first for me, and certainly a first for me in our garden. The male was there too, but he didn’t hang around for a hastily taken photo like his missus. She was also gone pretty soon afterwards (probably as retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech), but a nice spot and one to watch out for again.

I’m looking forward to an afternoon of napping and football watching, now that the odd morning is done.

A kak afternoon at the races

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None of the horses that we wanted to win, won.

And that was quite annoying.

At first, it was just a bit annoying, but then, as the sequence continued, it got more and more annoying.

Not even this guy could relieve the gloom, as he was squeezed out just as it looked like he was about to break for the line.

Thankfully, there was good beer and good company, because the rest was – as I may already have pointed out – rather kak.

Uh-oh. It’s Top Gear Classic.

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Goodbye, productivity.

I’ve discovered the Top Great Classic channel on YouTube.

https://youtube.com/@topgearclassic

Live, ongoing 24/7 repeats of the best bits of Top Gear from back when it was the real Top Gear.

Yes, with those three.

There’s been something missing from our lives ever since the team moved over to The Grand Tour which, let’s face it, also had some brilliant moments, but was a real pain to access (well, from SA, at least).

But now even that has gone, so thank goodness the BBC’s commercial arm has decided to plonk this onto the internet.

I could happily spend a whole day (or more) watching these highlights.

And I probably will.