Posts Tagged ‘mistake’
In Defence Of Nick Griffin
I am not a supporter of the BNP but I defend their right to campaign for their policies, especially those individuals who have been elected to office.
Despite his crass, discourteous behaviour, it was a mistake to have Nick Griffin barred from the Queen’s garden party. He was invited there as an elected MEP and he should have been welcomed in accordance with his office.
A bad mistake. Far too clumsy to have been made by any member of the Royal Family itself.
Wenlock Mandeville Disaster
The most obvious explanation is that someone at the Olympics Committee has been horizontal jogging with someone at the design company.
What else?
There has to be a rational explanation for one of most ridiculous, badly-judged communications campaigns I have ever seen. The Wenlock and Mandeville mascot idea is third-rate, junior (bad) art school nonsense.
I first worked on ideas like this more than 30 years ago. I stake all my experience on this, I stand by every ounce of this assertion – it is NONSENSE, shocking NONSENSE and I am dismayed to see it. If it gains any traction then it will only be because of the money spent on it. Almost anything else would be better!
Lord Coe and other talented individuals on the Olympics Committee have made a mistake here. This is a serious error of judgement.
The Pacific
Until more than three-quarters of the way through, I was so, so disappointed in “The Pacific”. Of course, it had an awful lot to live up to. “Band Of Brothers”, its forerunner, although produced as a TV series, has to be one of the very best war movies of all time. “The Pacific” doesn’t even come close. That’s not to say that it isn’t excellent in its own right because it is but it isn’t in the same league, battalion or regiment as “Band Of Brothers”.
It’s a ten part series and until epsiode five I was bored. That’s not just because there’s a lack of action – there is – but there’s also very little characterisation or story. In “Band Of Brothers” you feel like you’re part of the platoon yourself. You grow to know and love each individual and you experience fear, grief, tension, terror alongside all of them. It wasn’t until epsiode eight of “The Pacific” when Sergeant Basilone falls in love with Lena, marries her and is then shipped to Iwo Jima that I felt the same searing emotional intensity. I remember when I first watched “Band Of Brothers”, each epsiode was like experiencing an intense personal tragedy. I would feel drained, exhausted and traumatised. It was almost too much but although it finishes well, “The Pacific” is not quite enough. Perhaps the most moving scene of all is in epsiode nine when Eugene comforts a dying Japanese woman. This is magnificent film making.
I think war is the ultimate movie genre. It describes the human condition at the very edge. Like all men, I am fascinated with horror, doubt and uncertainty about how I would behave in combat. I deplore violent films but when the story requires it, realism is essential. A war movie should make you understand the reality in detail, explicitly and make you turn away from violence.
My old friend Bruce won an Emmy and a Golden Globe working as a producer on “Band Of Brothers” and I remember talking to him about the sound of gunfire. He explained the effort involved in achieving a more realistic sound than ever before. You can hear how in every movie thereafter it’s been picked up and enhanced.
“The Pacific” does take realism even further. The spray of blood that bursts from a soldier’s body as he is hit, the red mist that appears around a group of soldiers as shrapnel lacerates them is horrifying. The graphic dismemberment and vile, grotesque injury that nowadays we see soldiers survive is beyond words. At times the cast is wading through a sea of body parts, of arms, legs, hands, feet. I think we now accept the shocking reality of this because today we see the survivors of such injury. At last, in the battle for Iwo Jima, “The Pacific” begins to communicate the deeply distressing heroism, the humbling, horrifying courage that these young men, our forefathers, summoned up to free the world from tyranny and allow us to enjoy the freedom that we do today.
There is a real mistake in some of the earlier episodes when many of the scenes are just too dark. There isn’t even the excuse of it being made for the big screen. It’s just wrong. Also some of the CGI, particularly in wide shots of amphibious landings for instance, doesn’t work. It’s not as convincing as the more primitive, model based effects in “Band Of Brothers”
There is one part of “The Pacific” that deserves the very highest praise. The titles are quite simply one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on television or at the cinema. They consist of extreme close ups of an artist drawing battle scenes with charcoal. As the charcoal disintegrates into dust and splinters on the page it mixes through to become the detritus of battle, the dirt, dust and shrapnel of combat. The backgrounds merge with finely textured, laid paper, with live action, graphics and animation. It really is quite breathtakingly, achingly beautiful. All the more so so because its subject is precisely the opposite. The wonderful, haunting theme music is the same as “Band Of Brothers”. At least that’s the way I hear it. If it isn’t then it’s been composed to be so similar that they might as well have stuck with the original.
All in all, I did, eventually, greatly enjoy “The Pacific”. Most of all though it shows just how bloody marvellous “Band Of Brothers” is.
Khamenei Defiles Islam
When you see an old man like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei talking such absolute drivel it is tempting to think that he is either senile or mad. Clearly though, the truth is he is simply bad. His conduct will do more to set back the cause of Islam than almost anything else. This is why the name of Islam is shamed throughout the world. If followers of the Prophet can not find some honest, intelligent and sincere spokesmen then their religion and the culture that surrounds it will be forever condemned as a medieval anachronism.
His speech today is a catastrophic mistake and misjudgment but it will lead to a better future. I believe it will enrage the educated and intelligent people of Iran. He obviously believes that the people are stupid and that they can be bullied or terrorised into accepting that the elections were fair and that there is no corruption. It would be easier to claim that he is deluded but no, I think this man is simply evil and it would be in the best interest of all mankind, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, non-believer if he were gone.
Who will rid us of this turbulent priest?
A Fundamental Problem At The BBC
with 3 comments
I am very close to being the BBC’s biggest fan. It is a remarkable and entirely unique institution. Somehow it occupies a place between the state and the people which I can find no comparison for. It would be easy to define it as some sort of socialist idea but it is genuinely independent from the state. I do, however, have some concerns about its accountability. I am very concerned about the way it handles complaints.
No Complaints Accepted Here
I have grown up with the BBC and I trust it. In fact, I think that it’s done a better job of maintaining Britishness and values of integrity, tolerance, fairness and justice than any UK government of any political complexion. That’s why the curmudgeons in all political parties turn against it. I think Jeremy Hunt’s recent attacks and comments were particularly poorly judged. He hasn’t a had a good start in government at all has he?
I made a complaint to the BBC recently and I am very, very unhappy about the way it has been handled. The subject is not relevant here. I shall write about it in future but for now it would distract from my point. I am horrified to discover that the BBC does not handle complaints itself. They are outsourced to Capita in Belfast which describes itself as “the UK’s leading outsourcing company…at the leading edge of redefining and transforming services to the public.” For me that needs a huge pinch of salt, a mountain in fact and even then I’m choking on it.
Handling complaints should be at the very heart of an organisation. It is the essence of your brand. There is no more important management function. Contracting them out is an abdication of responsibility. More than that, it is a complete failure of integrity, a massive mistake. If an organisation is truly committed to meeting its customers’ needs it must be as close to them as possible. This irresponsibility strikes at the very heart of everything I value about the BBC. I am deeply disillusioned.
If this disastrous decision had resulted in a well administered service then that might be some consolation but not a bit of it. It is dreadful. Every bit as bad as any horror story you’ve heard about British Gas, BT or yes, even a bank. This is the British consumer experience at its very worst.
Not What It Used To Be
In sharp contrast to the rest of the BBC’s websites, try making a complaint online. It’s like something from the very early days of the internet with clumsy, badly aligned fields and an archaic feel. I almost expect to hear a modem whistling away in the background. From a complainant’s point of view it’s quite useless. You don’t get any option to save a copy of your complaint or email it to yourself. You don’t even get an acknowledgement once you’ve completed it so you’re left with a completely unsatisfactory feeling of uncertainty. Did they get it or not? Will I get a reply? When?
It gets worse. Complaints are lost. They don’t get answered at all. They certainly don’t get answered within the 10 working days promised. One answer I received was just laughable in its anodyne, crass simplicity. It was nothing more than an patronising acknowledgement of what I was “unhappy about”.
Useless
I could go on even further but I won’t. It does get even worse and it becomes embarrassingly so when Capita start to trot out the oldest excuse of all about “system problems”. It is an excruciatingly bad, defining example of appalling customer service. I’d say it takes the biscuit.
All this is the inevitable result of outsourcing your complaints procedure. That aspect of business that should be one of your most important tools. What’s worse is that Capita are absolutely useless at doing the job.
It is no exaggeration to say that, for me, this rocks the very foundations of everything I believed about the BBC to the very core. It is not the organisation I thought it was. I feel betrayed. I am “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”. In fact, I am very, very, very disgusted of Weymouth, Dorset.
Written by Peter Reynolds
August 12, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Posted in Business, Consumerism, Politics, technology, television, The Media
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