The Big Society

The Torries' Big Society scheme has been all over the news. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first.

Sure, it seems like in any society, it would make sense that everyone pitch in during hard times. Pensioners are told to do more with less, they are re-examining the benefits for the handicapped ... There has even been talk of taking away the bus passes that are given to the elderly so they can visit the high-street shops each day.

Fair enough, I guess. Time to tighten the belt.

Bad time for the royals to be planning a royal wedding, however. I've never really had a strong opinion about the current monarchs. But the timing of this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure, I've heard all the arguments that the tens of millions of pounds that Prince William Wales and Kate Middelton's wedding will cost the British taxpayer will be more than returned in the form of tourism dollars. My answer? "Okay, but still ..."

Believe me, I wish the couple all health and happiness. And I'm not calling for the abolition of the monarchy. But come on. Financing a lavish wedding with the same money that's meant to pay for Aunt Penelope's bus pass? My message to the Windsors: "Sell something." They should pay for the whole thing, including security, themselves.

Bloody Fantastic

I love folks who claim to be able to "do a British accent." Generally, they either adopt a posh accent or a lame cockney one. Some bust out a Ringo Starr circa 1963. As my linguistics professor pointed out to me so long ago, years ago, Londoners could peg what block in one lived on by the way one pronounced certain words. There are dozens of accents in the UK. And this kids pretty much nails them. In this little YouTube piece, he takes on 24 accents, about half of which are from the isles -- from different English ones (ranked by class, etc.) to Welch to Scottish.

I also recommend reading the comments about this on HuffPo. Very interesting theory put forward, claiming that it is exactly because Brits are exposed to so many accents, nearly from birth, that they are so good at imitations. I like the idea, but I'm not sure about it. Yes, they have Tilda Swinton, but the US have Meryl Streep, and nearly every Aussie actor I can think of can do a passable American. But the proportions do seem to be out of whack ... it seems like per capita, the UK wins the prize in this department. How many times have you heard an actor speaking in his or her own voice and said, "I had no idea they were British!"

I've written before about the mirror effect of Anglophilia -- Brits who are obsessed with America. In just the last couple days, the media came out with two fascinating interviews touching on this. On NPR, Robert Plant spoke about his love of the American south, which he continues to explore. Like Jagger and so many others, they knew they owed everything to the geniuses in Memphis, the Delta, etc. and payed homage when they could. The fascinating part is that my generation heard their take, assumed they invented it and became obsessed with life in Manchester, Leeds, etc. And thought rock and roll had to be sung with an British accent. In thgis weekend's Times Mag, Deborah Solomon interviewed Phil Collins, who turns out to be Motown fanatic and a collector of objects from the American frontier, including stuff from the Alamo and Davy Crockett. Funny world.

Photo of Robert Plant from Ella Mullins

Screw the Phone Hacking Thing

For weeks, I've been trying to compose a post about the phone hacking scandal, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it interesting. Yawn -- it has something to do with accessing people's voicemail and covering it up and then stopping and restarting and investigation about said offence. Yawn.

Then I saw this one Facebook. It depicts my friend, Billy Cometti, meeting Chuckie himself!!!!!!!!

Wow, Billy, wow. You've come a long way from the Cameron Diaz Biography we did together, my friend.

Russell Brand in the Chokie

I was alerted to the tragic news after the Jewish holiday by a tweet from Wossie: "Good morning everyone. I am currently baking a cake with a file and hack saw in it for my dear friend Russell."

Seems the comic bad boy was involved with some typical celebrity bad-boy antics. While attempting to approach the terminal at LAX, he and domestic partner Katie Perry were completely surrounded and harrased by paparazzi (notice I didn't use the double plural ... that drive me crazy). I guess the yoga master suffered one humiliation too much -- according to Perry, the photog tried to shoot up her skirt. Well, I don't have to describe it to you. Here is it. These are paparazzi after all, so it was bound to get caught recorded for all to see.

Ill Papa!

As everyone knows, the Catholic Church and the Church of England have been at odds for -- well, since King Henry VIII.

Thirty years ago JPII visited the the UK in a grand gesture of reconciliation, even as the Troubles continued in Ireland, and other disagreements brewed. Now, even with the RCs turning to the right and the Anglicans turning to the left, who knew that Rome's biggest bone to pick would not be with the Archbishop of Canterbury, but with the British people themselves!

The row escalated when one of the former German cardinal's top aides, another German cardinal (I point this out because it's not like the Germans and the Brits have had an easy time of it over the last 100 years or so) responded positively when asked if Christians were discriminated against in the country his boss was about to visit. He railed against the UK's "aggressive secularism," calling it [gasp] a "third-world country." Ouch. And quite pot-calling-the kettle. I mean, which one is more of a dictatorship?

Cardinal Kasper's comment comes as a letter signed by 50 top Britons -- people like Dawkins, Fry, and others -- hit the news. It says that the Pope is leader of a religion, not a head of state and is therefore not entitled to the "honour" of a state visit.

So, again: Interesting times -- the churches are playing nice but the people are snipping. Progress? I'm not sure but according to Guardian, the pontiff was barely off the plane when he started with the anti-secularism talk.

BBC America have been maintaining a blog called Anglophenia, even longer -- and with far, far more regularity -- than Phonybrit.

I like it, I suppose. It does have excellent entertainment news, especially stuff related to TV content. And the clips are great -- all what you would expect from the Beeb. After all, their first priority is going to be making sure people watch BBCA.

I'm just starting to plow through stuff and I'm happy to say that you can still enjoy both this blog and theirs without too much overlap. I don't see much personal writing and almost no politics, for instance, in the cursory read I've given it so far.

But it is an excellent resource and I'm happy to tell you about it. No Britain-junkie should have to do without it.

Oh, Tony!

I'm writing a longer post at the moment on a different topic, but in case you missed it, you must read about Tony Blair's new autobiography. It's just out now and near as I can tell, it is taking Britain by storm.

The Guardian is the best place to get the highlights.

They Had Me at Who

As mentioned ad infinitum, my cable provider does not carry BBC America. There are a lot of reasons why this shows that they know f**k-all about what people want, and it causes me a lot of personal grief. It meant that I had no idea how the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant, met his demise. And I had never seen anything other than stills of the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith,

But in celebration of my getting a brand new Roku box, I decided to download the final David Tennant specials and Series 5, the first featuring number 11.

The new Doctor Who does not disappoint. (BTW, be careful here -- when referring to this show, the character is called "The Doctor" and the show is referred to as Doctor Who. I slip up all the time, but that's the rule. I also think the Doctor's new companion, Amy Pond is brilliant. Amy is played by Karen Gillan and looks just like my friend Mariah Wilson. (That's neither here nor there, but I did want to sneak in a plug since her film, Revealing Hate, is now available on DVD.)

Matt Smith is great and although I've just seen the first episode and some coming attractions, I can report that he completely embodies the spirit of the Doctor. It is too bad that they didn't go with a Black Doctor, as was rumored, but again Smith does a fine job. And although I will miss the show's head writer, Russel T Davies, we are in good hands with Stephen Moffat, who many of you know from his show, Coupling. As you may remember, Coupling, had a lot of clever playing with time and space -- good practice for Doctor Who indeed.

Photos by alun.vega. Thank you!

@Wossy, i < 3 u

While Phonybrit does have a Twitter account, I have not ramped up for tweeting. But thank goodness, Jonathan Ross has.

It kind of hit me like a ton of bricks when I was listening to the podcast of Wossy's Radio 2 show and he started saying his goodbyes. Somehow I missed his announcement earlier this year that he would be leaving the BBC entirely in July. Apparently, he was still a little irked by the Sachsgate business and there have been reports over negotiations over money not going well either. So no more Friday night chat show, no Saturday radio show, and no film round-ups on the Beeb.

Whatever the reasons were, I was happy to find out that he will be starting the chat show again on ITV ... but I'm not to optimistic about that being transferred to this side of the pond.

In the meantime, we will content ourselves with his very good Twitter stream, which he seems to update very regularly. It's no podcast, but it's something.