You may know that for some time I have considered separating the Formula 1 content from this blog and posting it in a separate blog. I know that a lot of readers here are not very interested in Formula 1. And at times — particularly towards the end of an exciting season — this place becomes almost exclusively an F1 blog.

In the end I have decided that it would do no harm to set up a new blog. So I have gone ahead and launched it at vee8. Check out the introductory post here for a full explanation of my plans for the blog.

You won’t find me mentioning Formula 1 here very often from now on. So for the F1 fans among you, I encourage you to keep on reading here — but check out vee8 for my Formula 1 posts from now on.

There is an amusing video on YouTube of a couple of people giving a running commentary over BBC News wondering why they haven’t mentioned the earthquake (via Media Monkey).

The people in the video make some amusing comments, although they do exhibit the worst of the victim mentality that a lot of people in this country have. An inch of snow has fallen and it is the end of the bloody world. A train is five minutes late and it is an abomination that would never have happened under British Rail. An earthquake has hit us, woe is me. Etc, etc.

Maybe the guys in the video were being ironic when they kept on shrieking, “There’s been an earthquake! Hellooo? BBC? There’s been an earthquake!” But it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people genuinely were enraged when the BBC didn’t cover the only interesting that has happened in their dull little lives. I have heard that Radio 5 Live has had a record number of text messages. That doesn’t surprise me, 5 Live being as it is the country’s premier forum for self-important people with anal passages in place of their mouths, wanting to phone in and describe how the world revolves around them.

Victoria Derbyshire’s programme in the morning was even worse than usual, amazingly enough. The callers I heard all said much the same thing. “My house was shaking! I thought a lorry had crashed into my house!” “I was lying in my bed and I was woken up. At first I thought it was a burglar. Little did I know that it was something even more serious!” YAWN

So parts of England got the shakes. Big deal. The stories about it on the BBC News website are a parade of mediocrity.

“The room just started shaking” Shaking?! How will you ever recover? “The quiet market town at the epicentre of the earthquake recovers”. Yeah, recovers from a few toppled chimneys!

The only casualty from the whole episode appears to be one poor man with a broken pelvis. While I certainly would not like a chimney stack to fall on top of my pelvis, it isn’t exactly September 11 in terms of casualties.

So I am not surprised that BBC News decided not to give it so much coverage. It is worth bearing in mind that after 0100 BBC News 24 ceases to be a UK service. What we get in the UK is essentially a simulcast of BBC World. As such, it reflects a global news agenda.

This is the way it should be really. UK news seldom breaks during the night, and there are few people in the UK watching at that time of night anyway. News channels are notoriously expensive to run anyway. I know certainly that Sky News makes a loss.

It would be difficult for the BBC to justify spending license payers’ money on a near-useless overnight UK service that would be watched by very few people. The BBC has a 24 hour UK news service anyway — it’s called BBC Radio 5 Live. From what I heard of their coverage, they did a pretty good job — as you would expect from the Up All Night crew.

If BBC News 24 / BBC World were to slavishly cover the earthquake like Sky News did, the majority of the BBC’s viewers scattered across the globe would have been equally indignant as the people in the UK complaining about the lack of earthquake coverage. I can just imagine people around the world uploading their commentary onto YouTube. “5 on the Richter scale? I have taken naps through that!”

People across the world look to the BBC as a source of authoritative world news. A piddly wee earthquake in Lincolnshire just doesn’t cut it. If it was an exclusively UK service like Sky News then you would indeed expect them to cover it. But it isn’t, so you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t).

I did actually watch a bit of Sky News’s overnight earthquake coverage and it was indeed execrable. In fact, the video I have embedded above highlights the completely different approaches of the two channels and why Sky News falls flat on its face so often.

BBC News might have been late to mention the story, but notably they got it right. They did not spend longer than required on the story, and they got the important details such as the epicentre correct. Meanwhile, Sky News were showing a map with Birmingham and Manchester pinpointed. Why? We don’t know. Sky don’t care about getting it right, as long as they can convey that something is happening — NOW!

In fact, Sky News’s coverage of the earthquake highlights everything that is wrong with 24 hour news. Media Monkey highlights their typically insightful coverage:

Sky News interviewer Faye Barker: “So, what were you doing when the quake shook?” Eyewitness, or should that be earwitness, from Lincolnshire: “I was in bed.” Barker: “Oh… [Pause]. And would you say it felt more like a juggernaut or a freight train going past?” Woman: “Er… a freight train.”

Sky News is also rightly being criticised today for a truly disgusting interview conducted by the diabolical Kay Burley. She was previously famous for her measured response on September 11: “If you’re just joining us, the entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been decimated by a terrorist attack.” This week she asked the wife of recently convicted serial killer Steve Wright the following question:

Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?

What a vile question to ask. Not surprisingly, the interviewee burst into tears upon being asked that question. Imagine having that thought running through your head — “If only I had sex with my husband a bit more, those five prostitutes wouldn’t have been murdered.”

Unity, Jennie and Mitch Benn say all that needs to be said.

If BBC News lost respect for its slow response to the earthquake, goodness knows what Sky News must have lost.

Oh dear. SNP MSP Christopher Harvie has found himself in a spot of bother for comments he has made about Lockerbie and the Scottish yoof.

On getting to Lockerbie, I discovered that the place is a dump - it was Tescotown. It should really have a certain attraction of a rather sombre kind as a place where something terrible happened; there are, after all, places on the western front and that sort of thing that have such an attraction for families who have lost people there.

There are a few things about this paragraph that are a bit off for me. I might be completely right to say that Lockerbie is a dump. I have never been, but frankly it wouldn’t surprise me. There are plenty of dumps around the place, and Lockerbie isn’t exactly known for its beautiful beaches or rolling hills.

Jeff is right when he says that if Lockerbie is a dump, Christopher Harvie should be able to say so. It should not be exempt from analysis because of the fact that it is the scene of the country’s worst terrorist atrocity.

But here is the thing. Christopher Harvie seems to be saying that Lockerbie should be positioning itself as a potential tourist attraction to help rake in the money from fans of disasters. As Mushkush implies, the idea leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth.

Following that he turns his guns on the much maligned youth of the country. They cannot get a second of peace from the establishment’s whining about the yoof.

They are a demographic that literally cannot win. If they spend too long indoors playing their Xboxes they are criticised for not getting enough exercise and causing an “OBESITY EPIDEMIC“.

If they do the opposite and dare to go outside to get some fresh air and happen to commit the heinous crime of wearing warm clothing they get called names like “hoodie” and “yob”. And everyone points at them and says, “Why are you standing on the street corner? It is so intimidating.” As though just standing around is intimidating.

If they are not on the corner but are standing in the vicinity of a shop some ridiculous person comes along and installs a discriminatory device that is deliberately designed to cause youths pain. And people wonder why today’s young people are disaffected.

Anyway, Mr Harvie has added himself to the long list of poshy snooty types criticising yoof fashions. You know, fair enough on that front. Some people do wear horrendous clothing. But why is he attacking Tom Hunter for it? I thought the SNP were meant to be aligning themselves as a pro-business party. But Christopher Harvie’s comments are about as anti-business as it gets.

It must also be said that the most immense fortune that has been made in Scotland in the past few years - that of Tom Hunter - has arisen from selling people what must be the ugliest clothes worn by anyone on the entire continent.

Tom Hunter is one of Scotland’s most successful businessmen. If Mr Harvie’s theory is true, then Mr Hunter has done the country’s people a great service–selling people clothes that they want. He spotted a gap in the market. It is what great businessmen do best. It should be celebrated. But Christopher Harvie just looks down his nose at it.

There are also echoes of this anti-business sentiment with his dismissal of Lockerbie as “Tescotown”. It is the most successful business in Britain, which makes it the butt of ill thought out jibes like this. What does it even mean to be a Tescotown anyway? My town has a Tesco as well–does that mean I should just go and top myself now?

Anyway, back to fashion. What clothing would Christopher Harvie prefer people to wear? Knickerbockers. Goodness me. Apparently his personal preference is for plus fours. And look at that awful check jacket. Holyrood Watcher rightly takes him to task.

For me, this whole issue highlights a problem with the electoral system currently in use for Scottish Parliament elections.

Christopher Harvie was the SNP’s candidate where I live in Kirkcaldy. During the campaign he began to get a bit of a reputation as a “mad professor” among some locals. From today’s comments it looks as though he earned that reputation.

Even Brian Taylor has used slightly colourful language on his blog to call Mr Harvie ‘The Nutty Professor‘. And according to Kezia Dugdale, “Rumour has it the SNP were waiting for an episode like this but were surprised it has taken so long.” In addition to Christine Grahame, it looks like the SNP has its second major loose cannon.

Prior to Mr Harvie’s campaign, I was considering voting for the SNP as an anti-Labour tactical vote (not that it would have done much good anyway). But I did not want to vote for Christopher Harvie. He lost in Kirkcaldy. Yet, today he is an MSP. He got in through the back door on the list vote.

No-one voted for him to win his seat. People only voted for the SNP as a party–or Alex Salmond For First Minister, as they were known on the ballot papers. What a shock those voters will have got, thinking they were voting for Alex Salmond and instead getting Christopher Harvie!

The problem with the list system is that it gives voters the minimum amount of power possible. Voters have no control over the candidates. Positions on the are determined internally within the parties. This makes the MSPs accountable not to the voters, but to internal party structures. This allows too many poor candidates become MSPs and fills the Parliament with lackeys. The Scottish Parliament needs a heavy dose of Single Transferable Vote to weed out these people.

One last thing. I really don’t get this quote from Jackie Baillie on Christopher Harvie’s comments.

“He represents a supposedly pro-European party but displays the worst kind of euro-phobia.”

He singled out Scotland’s youths for criticism, and said they were the worst in Europe! How this is supposed to be a display of Euro-phobia beats me.

Unfortunately, this does not tie in with my theory about the inadequate list MSPs. I have to conclude that Dumbarton is one of Scotland’s many Labour rotten boroughs.

I’m taking a brief break from my break because I think I can afford to now.

When I last wrote about the racism issue in F1, it was to bemoan the media’s role in fuelling the fire. If you have been reading for a while you might know of the distaste I have for some of the coverage found in F1 Racing over the past year or so.

I am not the only person to have noticed a decline in the standard of the journalism in F1 Racing. For instance, Clive has spoken about “the abandonment by the magazines of the high ground.” Alvin in the comments here has said he is currently boycotting F1 Racing.

Craig at craigblog has posted at least twice on the subject of cancelling his subscription to F1 Racing. And there are a few people in the comments saying the same thing time and again — “I have been buying F1 Racing for around ten years, but now I have to stop”.

Speaking as someone who is sitting just yards in front of a huge pile of eleven years’ worth of issues of F1 Racing, I have to say I am in the same position. This is not the result of some kind of mass internet campaign against the magazine. But I can’t help but notice for a lot of people that at some point in the past year came a few straws that broke some camels’ backs.

One particularly low point came when the editor Matt Bishop wrote a poisonous piece about Ralf Schumacher. It was little more than an excuse for “The Bish” (as no-one but Mr Bishop himself calls him) to use up four or five pages to explain how he told Ralf Schumacher to “off you fuck!”

Now, Ralf Schumacher was not the most popular driver in the paddock and you would struggle to find many fans of his. But for me, Matt Bishop’s piece was highly unprofessional, particularly for an editor as experienced as him. It was just so childish. “Ooh! Look at me! I told Ralf Schumacher to fuck off!” It’s like a small child saying, “Hahaha! I called the teacher a fanny!”

Last year there was also a heavy dose of unbearable Hamilton hype (or should that be “Lewis hype”, seeing as the whole British media is apparently on first name terms with him?). Then of course there is the fact that it is much more convenient and quicker to get all of the news on the internet rather than waiting every month for a dead tree to pop through the letter box. By the end of last year, it is fair to say that quite a lot of us were bashing The Bish.

And then The Bish left. In retrospect, that is probably why he felt free to write that terrible Ralf Schumacher article. His new job is as an apologist for Lewis Hamilton–no change there then.

But it begged the question–would F1 Racing improve again with someone else at the helm? The first couple of issues sans-Bish did not promise much. But what a pleasant surprise I had when I read this month’s editorial, written by the magazine’s deputy editor Stuart Codling.

I sorely want to quote it in full, but out of respect for the publishers I will summarise it. Mr Codling writes about how the phone was ringing off the hook after the racism story broke as radio producers went on the hunt for “experts” (those are Stuart Codling’s scare quotes, not mine). He writes about this poisonous era of 24 hour radio and television which is making coverage of anything increasingly confrontational and shrill. “Complex issues become a shouty amalgam of ‘Us’ vs Them’.”

He continues, racism does not solely exist in Spain. The aggravation that Lewis Hamilton faced was as a result of his rivalry with Fernando Alonso. As I wrote a couple of weeks back, we all know that the racists would be out in force no matter what country was involved, and British people especially are not in a position to lecture others countries on how their sport fans should behave.

Mr Codling’s next sentence is such a breath of fresh air–it actually felt like a relief to read it.

But who stoked up this grudge that has so publicly become a vehicle for xenophobia and racism? Well, we all did — both writers and readers, supply and demand.

He goes on to bemoan the goading that Alonso received from a British press eager to get an anti-Hamilton comment from the Spaniard. It has to be said, that Alonso’s behaviour in the media has been absolutely faultless, and you seldom hear him commenting on Hamilton in negative terms, and certainly not on anything other than his on-track actions. This is certainly a great deal more than can be said for Lewis Hamilton, who cannot seem to resist constantly making snide comments about Alonso.

Stuart Codling clearly has his head screwed on. He has a sense of morals, unlike most in the media. The way his editorial ends basically sums it up. Hearing that Mr Codling speaks with a modicum of balance, the radio producer ended the call “to find someone ‘better’.”

Three cheers for Stuart Codling. His behaviour was certainly much better than that of Matt Bishop. Mr Bishop had no qualms appearing on Radio 5 Live to say one of the most ridiculously overblown things I have ever heard someone say about Formula 1:

Lewis Hamilton is in the same chapter only as Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher. And that’s it.

This was made after Lewis Hamilton had completed his third race. No-one has a career after three races. Not even Michael Schumacher was Michael Schumacher after his third race. To compare Lewis Hamilton with names like Ayrton Senna after just three races does justice neither to Hamilton’s talent nor Senna’s legacy. If that needs explaining, as it did for one commenter* on this blog, please read this.

So I will not be cancelling my subscription to F1 Racing just yet. Unfortunately, this month’s issue is the last of Stuart Codling’s short tenure at the helm of the magazine as Matt Bishop’s replacement has been hired. For those who are worried about the increasing tabloidisation of F1 Racing it could be bad news. The new editor is Hans Seeberg. Is that the same Hans Seeberg who has recently been deputy editor of Nuts And / Or Zoo Magazine? Oh dear…

*Quite ironic when you look back on that actually. Lawrence says that Hamilton deserves comparisons to Fangio and Senna on the basis of his drive in Fuji. Hamilton was later to be investigated for dangerously bad driving during that grand prix.

Am I the only one who thinks that the logo for The Economist’s audio edition looks like a bomb made out of Economists?

(NB. Posts will remain at this low standard until around the 25^th. I am currently writing my dissertation, and it is these little things that keep me sane. Yesterday I got really excited when the author of one of the journal articles I was reading was named Orley.)

Update: I happened to notice just then that the 5,000^th legitimate comment on this blog was recently published! Jose takes the honours. No prizes unfortunately!

A lack of father figures is creating a “Jeremy Kyle generation” of men with little chance of work and a high rate of criminality, the Tories have warned.

I always knew that Kyle bloke was a bit shifty…

Anyone who has read this blog for long might get the impression that I am anti-mainstream media or anti-journalism. I don’t blame you for thinking this because I am always blaming this, that and the other on the media. I’ve done it twice this week alone, even in this period of “light blogging”.

I must come across one of those awful people who always manages to blame everything on the media. But while occasionally I have a beef with certain aspects of the mainstream media, I know that it would be grossly unfair to tar all journalists with the same brush.

Look in the comments section on any major website, and you will find loons aplenty. I used to be a big advocate of letting people comment on MSM news articles. I thought the BBC’s terrible Have Your Say was just a one-off accident due to the fact that it was among the first major attempts at allowing comments on MSM websites. Now that comments are commonplace, it is clear that it was a mistake to believe that it would enhance accountability or improve debate.

The first time I truly realised that comments on MSM sites were almost universally awful was when Scotsman.com introduced them. I wrote about it at the time. The comment box obviously just attracts loudmouths and morons. Anyone looking for good debate would be sorely disappointed.

This isn’t just a problem with the media. Anyone who has read the comments on huge websites like Digg or YouTube will have probably found their inner misanthrope jumping out and despairing about the state of humankind. It seems as though the bigger the website is, the worse the comments are.

Anseo at North to Leith has written a brilliant post about the comment sections of both Scotsman.com and The Herald’s website.

I`m getting more than a wee bit pissed off at some of the bloody loonies who leave comments on the Scotsman and the Herald’s websites. I`m know a great many of the Scottish Press Corp and on the whole they have my respect. Are there those who are members of the Labour party? Yes, but there are also members of the SNP – and party membership generally among the press corp is very very low…

Some so-called cyber-nats (if they actually are nats and not simply flamers or stirrers) seem to take any story which has any criticism of the SNP as evidence that the journalist behind the piece is some form of Labour ‘fellow traveller’.

Which, in short, is total pish.

Anseo’s description is sadly true. Visit the Scotsman or Herald comments sections and all you will find is a bunch of shouty SNP / independence supporters whining about the great unionist conspiracy and generally making themselves look a bit stupid.

I have sometimes wondered if there is some kind of Ron Paul-style alert system telling SNP activists whenever a relevant story is published. But if this was the case, they would surely have stopped by now, because they will have realised that anyone reading the comments will just get the impression that SNP supporters are a bunch of morons — which isn’t the case.

The likely explanation is that there really is an army of people waking up and visiting the Scotsman first thing in the morning to fire off a few diatribes. I would say they are people who have too much time on their hands, but that’s not necessarily the case because they obviously don’t spend very much time constructing these sledgehammers.

I highly doubt there is any institutional political bias in the Scottish media. My guess is that there are fair few Labour supporters working in the Scottish media, but this is surely a reflection of the huge base of support Labour has in Scotland anyway. In fact, I am surprised that the SNP haven’t been given a rougher ride in the media as a whole since they won last year’s election.

It can be a fun game to guess which parties the major journalists support. But it’s just that — a game. Readers of Brian Taylor’s excellent blog will be aware that he leans to the orange side — but only in football. In politics? Who knows. He is very even-handed. It would be like knowing who David Dimbleby votes for.

These accusations of bias can affect more than just politics. Sport is a prime example. Just look at the many people who (either with their tongues in their cheeks or not) accuse various football pundits of secretly supporting Glasgow Rangers. Chick Young doesn’t really support St Mirren, they say. It’s all a smokescreen as part of the great Rangers conspiracy.

As Anseo points out, the reality is almost certainly that the main political commentators are not aligned to any particular party at all. After all, that is the case with most people. Indeed, I am rather suspicious of anyone who identifies too closely with a political party.

Anseo’s conclusion is neat, and brings us back to the subject at hand:

So to all those supposed cyber-nats out there if you fancy putting your own brand of loony views on the internet…get a blog (like the rest of us loonies)…and try and at least engage in debates rather than simply abuse.

I couldn’t agree more. Increasingly it looks as though introducing comment facilities on media websites are a mistake. They add either no value or negative value to the website. I am not the only one to have come to this conclusion.

A couple of months back a story caught my eye where an expert in online discussion said that some newspapers have made a bit of a hash of introducing comments to their websites. Robert Marcus reckons the problem is the lack of community:

News sites should be wary of comment areas being dominated by campaigners or those seeking ‘their name in lights’, a phenomenon that can occur because of a lack of ‘friendliness’ and community between readers and journalists in this area, he added.

I personally think it might be to do with the size of websites. If a website has a large audience (and therefore a large number of contributors), then the only way to attract attention is to use attention-seeking tactics. Nuanced debate will inevitably fall by the wayside.

I agree with Anseo that people who want to scratch the commenting itch should start up a blog. Despite my bleak outlook on user generated content on the MSM, I still believe that bloggers have inherent qualities that lead to good debate.

Okay, so some blogs are not all that great, and we can probably all think of some big blogs that have bad debate. Cassilis wrote about this last week:

Can there be any more dispiriting a sight than the phrase ‘Comments (86) - Add your own’ - you just know there aren’t 86 insightful observations there (you’ll be lucky to find 6) and the exchanges no more deserve the term dialogue than a rowdy pub brawl does. The invitation to ‘Add a Comment’ feels like being tapped on the shoulder at a football match and asked why you’re not shouting with the other 40,000….

This is the same problem that faces all other websites — the bigger the website, the worse the debate. But for the likes of medium sized blogs like this, and upstarts, blogging is a breath of fresh air and the comment sections are generally good.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, blogging is a skill; it’s difficult. How many of us have seen upstart bloggers give up after a couple of weeks? Secondly, bloggers are held to account in the comments section and by other bloggers. You have to be prepared to defend what you say. As such, what you say has to be robust and sensible enough in the first place. Thirdly, trolls get ignored on their own blogs — it’s only when they go elsewhere that they can get any attention.

I admit that this is a rather elitist approach. But if you want good debate you have to set the barrier at an appropriate level.

The loons who dispose of their verbal diarrhoea on popular websites are polluters. Websites like Scotsman.com and The Herald should perhaps consider removing the comments facilities.

But that needn’t mean there should be no discussion about their stories. In its place they could — and should — have a system like pingbacks or a Technorati widget so that readers can see what bloggers have to say about the story. The standard of debate would surely rise.

I was going to to a track-by-track review of Quaristice. Pinksy asked what it sounds like, which is quite a tough question to answer. I was tempted to give it a shot though.

But I think I will give the track-by-track review a miss — in case I end up sounding like this.

It already has its own parodies.

Like a bad Plaid track really. Is it ‘played’ or ‘plahd’?

In fairness, it is difficult to describe Autechre, and I defy anyone to pronounce most of Autechre’s track titles. But these parodies are too funny! Love the piss-take fake Autechre music in this one as well.

Well something big happened last night because for around an hour last night if you visited this blog you will have got a 500 Internal Server Error. Then it was fixed, but there was a problem. The blog looked the way it did seven days ago — and everything that has happened since has gone. (Incidentally, this has also affected Scottish Roundup.)

I should be able to get everything back up more or less as it was — certainly the posts anyway, and probably the comments as well. But at the moment a few things are not quite working the way I expect them to, so I’m trying to get to the bottom of it all.

By the way, thanks to Chris for letting me know about the original problem.

Update: I’ve managed to get all of the posts and most of the comments back up. I had to manually re-submit everything, so a few comments might be missing.

Incidentally, the way I got everything back was by looking in Google Reader. It’s a good technique!

On Sunday when I wrote about the racist crowd members at the Barcelona test, I said that part of the problem was the media’s debased, distorted coverage of Formula 1. Sadly, their coverage of the racism issue itself does not make me confident that the situation will get any better. The News International stable in particular should be hanging its head in shame — although of course it won’t be.

The Sun has taken the opportunity to drive traffic to its website by buying Google Ads on Formula 1 websites — including this one. As I pointed out in the comments yesterday, the language used is rather inflammatory:

Lewis Hamilton in racism storm. Spanish yobs vile attack on F1 ace

Granted, subtlety has never been a strong suit of The Sun, being as it is a bastion of demagoguery. Read the article itself and things don’t get much better. There are some rather thinly-veiled racist comments in here as well including:

Spanish fans — notorious for racism at football matches…

Not a word of course about English football fans who have been notorious for their hooliganism, as peterg pointed out in the comments.

Too many people have been trying to make it out as though Spain in particular has a problem with racism. One person commenting on The Sun’s website called the racism incident “Typical Spanish attitude” without a hint of irony.

As Pink Peril said in the comments yesterday, wherever you go, sooner or later racism will rear its ugly head. The only reason this has become a “Spanish” problem is because Hamilton happens to have a rivalry with someone who happens to be Spanish.

If Hamilton had had a rivalry with a driver of a different nationality, he would still be at the receiving end of racist taunts. And even if a British driver had a rivalry with a non-British black driver, British racists would soon enough be out in force.

Besides, the last place anyone should go to learn about issues surrounding race is The Sun. This is the paper that once ran a spoof Mr Men strip featuring such culturally-sensitive characters as “Mr Asylum Seeker” who wants everything for free, “Mr Albanian Gangster” who invites people to visit his friends’ sisters and “Mr Yardie”, a gun-wielding, joint-smoking Rastafarian.

When did The Sun run this insightful story? The 1970s? The 1980s? No, it was 2003.

We all know that the only reason The Sun is even paying attention to this story is because Lewis Hamilton is British. They wouldn’t give two hoots if the racism was directed at somebody else.

And this is the thing. The Sun’s nationalism is a symptom of the same problem that the racists in the Barcelona grandstands have. The media here bases its entire Formula 1 coverage on the notion that you should support Lewis Hamilton because he is British and vilify Fernando Alonso because he isn’t British.

The Sun says you should support drivers on the basis of where they come from. Racists taunt drivers on the basis of where they come from. They are both the same thing.

Meanwhile, The Sun’s sister paper, The Times, has written a story today blasting, “Spanish media chose to overlook latest incident” (via F1Fanatic). This is despite the fact that we probably wouldn’t even be aware of many of the incidents were it not for the reporting of Spanish newspapers such as Marca. In addition, El País, El Mundo and ABC have all reported on the issue (via Samuel at F1Fanatic).

The distorted perspectives from gutter newspapers like The Sun and The Times will do nothing to prevent racism. In fact, I am convinced that these newspapers are using the opportunity to tap into the racist attitudes of their readers by making yet more anti-Spanish comments and telling yet more lies about the situation.

I have written before about the dangerously partisan, disgracefully nationalistic coverage of Formula 1. There is only one logical conclusion to taking a nationalistic angle in coverage of sports that have nothing to do with nationality.

Some British media outlets are guilty of putting an anti-Spanish angle into elements of their F1 coverage last year. It reached an all-time low when some papers insinuated that McLaren’s Spanish drivers Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa were “at the centre” of the Stepneygate scandal. This completely ignored the fact that the real protagonists of the scandal — Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan — are both British!

Now Pitpass is reporting that the partisan crowd during testing in Spain has taken a nastier turn:

Yesterday, according [to] the Spanish newspaper Marca, shouts of “puto negro” (fucking black) and “negro de mierda” (black shit) were clearly heard, and that large sections of the crowd were involved.

Pitpass also has photographs of a group of people tastelessly “blacking up”, wearing t-shirts bearing the words “Hamilton’s Familly [sic]”. This is absolutely disgusting. A lot of people find it far too easy to pluck out an accusation of racism whenever it is suggested that Hamilton might not be the messiah, but there can be no doubt about the nature of these people’s demonstrations.

The article also notes that “such insidious behaviour has never been part of Formula One” — although a cynic could say that this was because of the paucity of nonwhite drivers in F1 historically.

There have been growing concerns about the nature of the “supporters” who have been turning up to test sessions in Valencia, Barcelona and Jerez. For instance, yesterday Keith Collantine wrote:

But what I do find odd is that there are some Alonso fans who got up this morning, and decided to make a banner because they were going to an F1 test. But instead of making a banner supporting Alonso, they made one attacking Hamilton.

There are a billion reasons to like F1. I don’t like the thought that some people who buy Grand Prix tickets are in it for the hate.

There have also been reports that some people have been throwing missiles at the McLaren cars. This is totally unacceptable in Formula 1 for obvious reasons.

I don’t necessarily mind some of the more humorous anti-Hamilton banners that have been on display. My personal favourite read “Lewis, have you learnt to pee by yourself, or does daddy still help you?” — mocking the overbearing presence of Lewis Hamilton’s father which has seen Anthony Hamilton become a minor celebrity in his own right.

But there is a difference between this kind of teasing and the kind of outright racism that is beginning to be reported. Pitpass calls on Fernando Alonso “to publicly distance himself from these so-called fans”. But this isn’t Fernando Alonso’s fault. He has nothing to do with these racists, and has never spoken about Hamilton in terms of his race.

But the media should immediately stop its disgustingly debased coverage of Formula 1 — in the UK as well as in Spain.

Yesterday I promised that I would finally get round to posting my top three albums of 2007 today. I almost forgot about it because I was having so much fun writing my dissertation (true story). But a promise is a promise, so I am staying up extra late. I’m sure it won’t take long…

3. Shining — Grindstone

This must be the most overlooked album of the year. I should point out, in case you were confused, that I am talking about the Norwegian electro-jazz-prog metal band, not the Swedish suicide-themed death metal band.

I discovered Shining because some of their members used to be in Jaga Jazzist, another Norwegian band that I love. But while Jaga Jazzist are known for their quirky electo-jazz stylings, Shining have increasingly forged a path into the altogether darker territory of progressive metal.

But it’s not just that — it’s a cartoon version of metal. Jazz instruments play as big a role as guitars, and the whole lot is backed by whacked out singing and interspersed with ambient interludes. In short, expect the unexpected.

If it all sounds a little bit overwhelming, as though they have over-egged the pudding, do not fear. Although light moments are mixed with the darkness of metal, it is far from a scatter-gun approach. Everything is meticulously arranged. In fact, it is the multi-layered nature of the tracks and musicianship of the band members that impresses me the most about Grindstone.

I think it is an utter travesty that Shining are not more well-known.

Listen to the album in full at Last.fm

Video: ‘Winterreise’ — not an official video, but it has kind of been endorsed by the band.

2. Radiohead — In Rainbows

So much has been made of this album, but not much of it has been about the music itself. I am a serial offender here as well.

I was disappointed at first. If you have been reading this blog for long, you will know that I quite like exploratory electronic music. I am much more of the Kid A stripe of Radiohead fan than The Bends kind. So I initially found In Rainbows to be a let down. It seemed too safe for a band as good as Radiohead.

It sounded little different to Hail to the Thief. It rather does suggest that Radiohead have found their equilibrium. The post-OK Computer explorations were just that: explorations. Now they have found a happy medium, and every future Radiohead album will pitch its flag in this middle ground.

But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is strange to hear Radiohead sounding so comfortable — but over time I have come to see that as one of the greatest strengths of In Rainbows. Probably for the first time in several years — the first time ever? — Radiohead don’t sound tetchy or fed up or lost. They are at ease. They are just making great music.

In Rainbows makes Kid A sound immature and Hail to the Thief sound downright shambolic. Not that I am announcing that I now dislike Kid A — it is probably still my favourite album. But In Rainbows has a craftsmanship to it. It has been constructed, not thrown together. Kid A had ideas. In Rainbows has songs.

So the experimentation has gone. Or at least it is taking a back seat. So there is nothing aurally exciting like ‘Everything in its Right Place’ or ‘Pulk’. But there is now pure beauty: ‘Nude’, ‘Videotape’ and ‘Reckoner’ are now among my very favourite Radiohead songs.

What makes In Rainbows stand out as a great album is Phil Selway’s drumming. Time and again he has been the essential element in a Radiohead song, most notably in ‘Pyramid Song’. Today he is at the top of his game, providing unusual but immediate drumbeats. He’s obviously had to up his game since the rest of the band started using drum machines!

If I have a complaint, it is about ‘Arpeggi/Weird Fishes’. Not that it’s a bad song, but I much prefer the original ‘Arpeggi’. It doesn’t sound as powerful as the original live version, as the guitars make the arpeggios sound rather muddied.

And great albums don’t have songs as weak as ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Bodysnatchers’. The latter also has a line that has been stolen straight out of Pulp’s ‘The Fear’, right down to the way it’s sung. Not a high crime, but rather off-putting.

Discbox purchasers got a second CD, and amazingly the music is pretty much at the same high standard as on CD1. ‘Bangers + Mash’ in particular is a great, fun song. It should have been on CD1 in place of ‘Bodysnatchers’.

Videos: lots — mostly live performances

1. Battles — Mirrored

I have been going on all year about how great Battles are, and truth be told I don’t think there’s much else I can really say about Mirrored. Suffice it to say that it is great to hear someone genuinely pushing the boundaries and showing everyone what really can be done with technology when you put your mind to it.

Video: ‘Tonto’

My original review of Mirrored

At last! I have got round to the top ten. Was it worth it? Probably not. Next (i.e. this) year, I am only doing the top 20, I swear…

10. Hanne Hukkelberg — Rykestrasse 68

A neat album of playfully experimental jazzy folky songs. The interesting but subtle use of found sounds makes Rykestrasse 68 an unconventional album, but one that never forces the fact down your throat.

At the heart of this album is good songwriting and a wonderful singing voice. I just love the quirkiness of the vocals in ‘Fourteen’.

Video: ‘A Cheater’s Armoury’

9. The Future Sound of London — From the Archives Vol. 1–3

Technically, this isn’t from 2007 (or is it? I dunno), which is the only reason why this doesn’t appear any higher on the list. But bear with me.

The Future Sound of London are (a little bit) before my time. But they are still among my very favourite electronic music groups, despite the fact that electronic music normally dates really badly. Sadly, little has been heard of FSOL since the release of Dead Cities in 1996 (not counting that Amorphous Androgynous stuff). I don’t suppose we can be too upset — they were stunningly prolific in the few years leading up to that moment.

I often yearned for the return of FSOL. A best of here and a compilation there has come, mostly reminding people that maybe FSOL just belonged in the 1990s. Would their music still seem so vital today? I wondered.

Well in 2007 FSOL seem to have begun a huge clearout of some sort, releasing several CDs worth of archive material from the 1980s and 1990s. So far only From the Archives vol. 1–3 seem to have come out on CD. I’m biding my time to see if the rest gets a CD release, but it doesn’t look like it.

Anyway, the point is that From the Archives is amazing. It is hard to believe that all of these tracks are rejects. It is clear that the technology available to them was not what it would be today. But this just means that it sounds like classic FSOL in their prime. To think that they had all of this awesome music just sitting around doing nothing for all those years!

Plenty of tracks contain familiar elements and samples from more well-known FSOL material. So it is useful to think of it as a historical document as much as a collection of albums.

The artwork takes a similar tack. Well-known elements of old FSOL artwork have been remixed into a form that is rather deferential to the peak period of activity. All in all, it’s quite a refreshing approach because normally bands seem keen to distance themselves from the past.

Because it sounds dated, and consists of music that didn’t make the cut, it is perhaps best to recommend it only to people who are already fans of FSOL. But for those people, what a treat this is! I couldn’t believe my luck when I read about it.

For those not so keen on getting the lot, there is a digest 2× vinyl edition. And Bleep are selling what appears to be an alternative digest version on MP3 and Flac.

8. Simian Mobile Disco — Attack Decay Sustain Release

Simian Mobile Disco is the phoenix that has risen from the ashes of the early-noughties indie-electro band Simian. Slaving away for years only to have your shtick stolen by the much more successful Hot Chip as soon as you disband. It must hurt.

A change of tack was in order for the Simian lads then, and Attack Decay Sustain Release is the result. Unashamedly danceable to an almost cheesy extent, don’t expect much in the way of experimental explorations. Do expect to be grinning ear to ear.

Video: ‘It’s the Beat’

7. Björk — Volta

The pre-release hype had it that this was Björk’s most accessible and poppy album for around a decade. There is a modicum of truth in that. But fans of Björk’s wonderful explorations won’t be disappointed.

Okay, so if you compare the Timbaland-produced lead single, ‘Earth Intruders’, with one of the more guttural offerings from her last album, the almost a cappella Medúlla, then it does look like a change to a poppier direction. But there is more to Volta than that.

In reality, it is just as exploratory as other Björk releases. Any preconception that Volta is a pop album is encouraged by the fact that ‘Earth Intruders’ opens the album, but the balloon is popped when the song fizzles out and ends with a cacophony of foghorn sounds that last over a minute.

There are a few other fun moments. ‘Innocence’, the second single, is a particularly interesting song. It is fun and catchy, but if it is commercial then it is a delightfully skewed version of pop. For me, though, the best moment is Vertebrae by Vertebrae. I love those dissonant horns.

Video: ‘Earth Intruders’

6. The Fiery Furnaces — Widow City

It is a sign of how strong 2007 was for music that The Fiery Furnaces are so low on this year’s list. Possibly the most prolific band around, they often churn out more than one album per year and quality never seems to drop.

Okay, so Widow City isn’t quite up there with Blueberry Boat or Rehearsing My Choir. But this is still a stunningly awesome album. Fans of Matthew Friedberger’s double solo album will be particularly pleased — Widow City is similar in style in a lot of ways.

The album begins with a lush, slow, Eno-esque guitar solo. A fine curtain raiser to the normal Fiery Furnaces diet of playful alliterative lyrics, Mellotrons and other vintage synths, and delightfully wonky prog.

Unusually, there are some weak moments in this album. Some tracks towards the end of the album are particularly forgettable, but ‘Clear Signal From Cairo’ takes the wooden spoon — it just hasn’t clicked with me at all.

Video: ‘Ex-Guru’

5. Justice — †

It’s easy to get bored of electronic music. In dry patches you listen to one techno album after another, none particularly improving on what has come before. Then a group like Justice comes along to provide a breath of fresh air and remind you why you love electronic music.

What’s good about this album is that it is really immediate. It is clearly designed for the dancefloor. But there is still a good deal of sonic experimentation going on there to keep it interesting for the chin-strokers like me. And of course Justice have that infectious sound that only Parisian groups seem to have (hence the number of times you see Justice compared to Daft Punk).

My favourite track is ‘Tthhee Ppaarrttyy’. It’s not a banger as you might expect from the title — not at first anyway. Instead, it sets the scene of a person preparing for a party against an introspective-sounding melody. Can’t forget the other highlights though — ‘DVNO’ and, of course, the monumental ‘D.A.N.C.E.’

Video: ‘D.A.N.C.E.’

4. Underworld — Oblivion With Bells

I have been a fan of Underworld for quite a while, but I was still floored by the quality of this album. It has been a while since Underworld have released a studio album, so I was wondering if they were running out of steam. On the contrary, they have raised the bar.

It takes a while for the album to get going. I thought lead single and opening track ‘Crocodile’ was so-so. After that things star to get better. Before you know it, every track is a winner.

Particular highlights include ‘Ring Road’ which has an infections driving beat and hypnotically rhythmic vocals. It’s impossible not to nod your head or tap your foot along. Meanwhile, ‘Boy, Boy, Boy’ sounds like the past future of pop music that sadly never happened.

What amazes me is the fact that after all of these years Underworld are still going strong. Okay, it’s been five years since their last album, but this is top quality stuff. Most electronic acts tend to fizzle out after a few years. But Underworld’s history can be traced back to the 1970s, and they’re still going strong. I might even go as far as to say that Oblivion With Bells is Underworld’s best album. Karl Hyde must be the coolest fifty-something around. Except for Brian Eno.

Video: ‘Boy, Boy, Boy’

The top 3 is coming tomorrow. I promise.