There I was, solving some bog – standard quests on Morrowind listening to BBC Radio 6 and thinking ‘Bloody Hell, the new Cure single is pretty darn spiffing!”, when the bloke presenting the show mumbled something about this being the new single of an outfit called ‘Black Kids‘. Well, I may be not your typical BBC 6 listener, but I can tell a bloody ‘The Cure’ rip off if I hear one: the chap singing certainly went to the same ‘yodel school of singing’ that Robert Smith went to, and the arrangement sounds like vintage early eighties Cure. This is of course a compliment, and their single I’m not gonna to teach your boyfriend how to dance with you should be celebrated as the best bloody single of the year.

I smell platinum.

While the invasion of North Korea by the New York Philharmonics might have been a naive attempt at cultural diplomacy, it left us nevertheless with two wonderful new corners of the internet:

• The Economist’s correspondent’s diary of his 4 days in Pyongyang, while accompanying the orchestra, and
• a free (as in beer) flash movie of the whole concert, featuring Wagner’s Lohengrin Prelude and an absolutely stunning rendition of Dvorak’s Symphony Nr 9 (‘From the New World’. The one with the most beautiful English Horn solo ever). Good cinematography, great music, and all for free.

Thanks, Lorin.

If Kevin of Grand Designs makes one more stupid joke about German lederhosen, ‘clinical pieces of architecture’, ‘unyielding German style’, precision, organisation, accent, or the language, I’ll call the European court of Human Rights myself.

Witness it.

So, a Scottish prime minister wants the nation’s pupils (Great Britain’s, that is), to swear an oath of allegiance to Ellie, their rather lovely Queen. This is completely and utterly contra-productive. Britain has been thriving over the centuries (and especially the last decades) by being able to assimilate different ethnicities through a non-confrontational attitude: people would move to Britain, work, and their children would learn the lingo, go to university and – hey presto – be a member of the house of lords. With a funny name.

Swearing allegiance to Ellie or Charlie won’t change a thing. Integration into a society is a multi-generational chore. You can’t make somebody English (and that’s really what it’s about, as the other homenations won’t have anything to do with the plan)by standing up and saying a silly oath. You learn the langage, meet the neighbours, invite them for dinner and get to know and admire their culture.

Coercion is contraproductive.