First things first. I have upgraded to WordPress 2.5. The new admin panel takes a bit of getting used to, and it is a little bit buggy for my liking. But then again that is probably because I am using so many plugins.

For the first time I upgraded using the astonishing WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. I’ve been meaning to use it for a while, but forgot about it until James O’Malley reminded me. So thanks for that James. Upgrading vee8 and doctorvee was flawless, although something funny happened to Scottish Roundup. Fixed it in the end (I hope), but it did make me scratch my head, especially as the other two upgrades went so smoothly.

Another thing to point out is that I have finally got that OpenID plugin installed. It doesn’t work exactly how I’d like it to, but it will do. Don’t be freaked out by it if you leave a comment and you don’t know what OpenID is. You can leave the OpenID field blank.

You might be wondering if it was even worth me upgrading this blog. It is rather shit of me to have posted next to nothing for the past three weeks and come back with a dull admin post. Well here’s what’s happening.

Last week in the comments of this increasingly quiet blog, a very public sociologist wrote:

Looks like F1 has stolen you away from us.

It’s kind of true. When I launched vee8, originally I had every intention of posting here (almost) as often as before.

What I was forgetting was that because of my mad hectic busy important 24/7 lifestyle and / or laziness, I was blogging less and less here anyway. In all seriousness, I am in my final year at university. And while I still have luxuries such as not having to get up before lunchtime, it does mean that I get shards of guilt searing through my conscience every time I write a blog post or open Google Reader. After all, I should be studying.

For around — ooh, let’s see — the past year, I have had hardly any time to blog, or indeed read blogs. Google Reader always has 1000+ items for me to read. I think I’ve only got it down to zero about twice in the past year.

Plainly, even pretending that I can keep on top of all my RSS feeds is a nonsense. I have come to realise that I don’t have the time to read blogs in the same way as I used to. I have probably gone for weeks without even reading blogs actually (excepting Scottish blogs which I have to read for the Roundup). And the thing is that I don’t really miss the blogosphere — especially the politics blogs. (My years at university studying politics have ironically made me deeply apathetic.)

“Boo, hiss,” I hear you cry. But that’s the way it is. Once I got fed up with Guido et al, it was just the start of the ball rolling and reading hundreds of posts like this is no longer my idea of fun.

This is not to say that I will retreat from politics or political blogging — and definitely not blogging as a whole — altogether. But I have to face up to the fact that as a student I have increasingly found that I do not have enough time to engage in it properly.

So many of the posts I have written over the past few months have been about topics that were lingering in my head for weeks or even months. For instance, the one about road tolls was written in my head in December as a response to Calum Cashley. I didn’t get the chance to actually write it until March. See if you can spot more (a fun game for long journeys, I’m sure)!

And that’s what it’s like when I am a lazy student bum! So what on earth is it going to be like when I actually get a proper job?!

At the same time, last month I launched vee8, a dedicated Formula 1 blog. The original intention was to spare the many readers here who do not like F1 from having to read what can at some points during the year become a blog almost exclusively about F1.

But in its first month I think vee8 has quite unexpectedly taken a life of its own. I am enjoying every minute of it. It is such a refreshing feeling to be blogging about something that actually matters rather than that politics nonsense! Seriously though, I have been staggered by how much fun I am having with it and how successful it has been.

I try to avoid talking about stats because inevitably someone takes offence at the showing off. So I’ll say this up-front. The following may be a reflection of how bad this blog is. Readership here has, after all, stagnated over the past 2 or 3 years which shouldn’t really happen (as someone once told me, telling me off for showing off my stats, “it’s a viral thing”).

But at vee8 — which, I remind you, is little over a month old — I am already getting as more “returning visitors” than I am on this blog. As I say, that is probably partly down to the fact that I post here far less often than I used to, while there is usually daily content at vee8. But I’m still amazed at how quickly it has got a solid readership. Obviously it helps that I had plenty of F1 fans reading here originally, but boy — if only I found it this easy to get readers the first time round!

Long story short. I am now running three major blogs. Scottish Roundup has to have a new post every Sunday, so a lot of my Fridays and Saturdays are spent making sure that happens. vee8 is fresh, new and exciting and this season looks like it’s going to be a corker, so a lot of my attention is now focussed there. This one is my personal blog, so I don’t feel like I owe it much attention.

Just two years ago this was my only blog. Now it is just part of my wider blogging activity. With that fact along with impending adulthood, I am having to steer a new path for this blog.

I am probably being melodramatic (it is 4am), so I will say that probably not much will change. In fact, the changes have already happened and I just need to adapt to it.

I stopped being part of the conversation in the wider blogosphere a long time ago without ever meaning that to happen. I just don’t have the time to follow it. So that probably means writing fewer, more in depth posts on a miscellany of subjects.

You might well have noticed that already. The previous five posts here were about coffee, Autechre, income tax, Freeview and Radio 5 Live — quite a mixture. And that takes us practically to the beginning of March. To think that I used to write an average of six pithy posts per day about the day’s current subjects!

It won’t pick up any time soon. Those shards of guilt will be extra painful as it’s exam time. But I have just three exams, and then it will all be over! The difficult part comes after that — looking for a job. (My status as a person, incidentally, is another thing that it making me more reluctant to blog here… Google and all.)

I just remembered that almost a year ago I hilariously joked about giving up blogging. Now I am looking back on the past year thinking it was actually quite prescient.

Anyway, please forgive the navel gazing. I am planning to return tomorrow with another post here, but whether it will interest you is a different matter.

I like to think that it is a function of my age rather than my popularity that I got only one birthday present this year! If I stretch the concept a bit, it was announced on my birthday that Formula 1 coverage was moving back to the BBC. But not even I am egotistical enough to believe that Bernie Ecclestone would arrange such things for my birthday.

Anyway, the present I got was from my brother. He got the hints I dropped (before Christmas, mind you) and bought me an AeroPress coffee and espresso maker. (Apparently he almost bought me a Stylophone, which would have been even cooler.)

I first heard of it on Boing Boing TV.

As much as anything else, I thought the mechanism was just ingenious. It would be great enough as a toy. The amazing thing, though, is that the reviews are right — it makes a great cup of coffee. It has a very smooth taste — probably the best coffee I’ve been able to make at home.

I normally use one of these mugs that act as their own little cafetière. This is an improvement over instant, but sometimes coffee granules escape through, leading to a mouthful of grit. It can also sometimes taste quite bitter.

The other method I use is an automatic drip-brew coffee maker. The cool thing about this is that it has an alarm timer on it, so if I have an early start I can be really lazy and lie in for five more minutes while the coffee is made for me. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t taste all that great, although it’s difficult to put my finger on what is wrong with it. Also, these things are not labour saving in the slightest in the long run. Preparing them beforehand and cleaning them afterwards is a faff I could really do without.

I am not a coffee geek. I think if I started to research coffee too much I would become like one of those audiophiles who get fleeced into buying expensive snake oil in the fruitless search for perfect audio. Nevertheless, I take note of anything that promises a better coffee, especially if it is gimmicky.

It did take me a couple of goes to get the hang of the AeroPress, but in the end it has turned out to be quite a fuss-free method. The best part is that the clean-up process is so quick and easy it just feels wrong. You just push the plunger all the way out, and out plops the coffee in one clean ‘puck’. You just need to give the bottom of the plunger a little rinse and that’s it, all set for the next time you want to make coffee.

There are a couple of downsides. One is that it needs a filter. The AeroPress comes with 350 filters, but you can re-use them several times. Some have even reported re-using them up to 20 times, which would make the package good enough for 7000 uses. Not bad.

Another thing is that it seems, from my perspective, to use up an awful lot of coffee. The scoop that comes with it is rather large compared to other scoops I have used, yet the coffee that is produced still tastes about the right strength (once the espresso produced is diluted to make an Americano).

I imagine if I used the AeroPress more than my other methods of making coffee, I would soon find myself spending a lot more money on coffee. On the other hand, the taste is worth it. Maybe it would be best for me to use it as a kind of luxury, like having an occasional glass of wine or something. Sundays, special occasions, tough days and so on. It also looks like it would be excellent if you are travelling.

If you like coffee, I’d definitely give the AeroPress a shot. It only costs around £25.

I have already posted this, but I am mentioning it again as it’s the start of the new season and a lot of people may have missed the original post.

If you are coming here looking for posts about Formula 1, then I should let you know that I have set up a separate F1 blog at vee8.

The same goes for Twitter and Delicious — F1 stuff is now completely separate.

For those of you who were using the non-F1 RSS feed for this blog, you can now go back to the normal feed if you want because this place is now an F1-free zone.

I’m quite quiet on this blog at the moment because it’s the start of the season so there is a lot of focus on the F1 stuff at the moment.

I have now had well over a month to digest the MP3s, and I have had the CD (and what a lovely object that is) for a week. High time for me to review Quaristice, Autechre’s first album for three years.

Pinksy encouraged me to write a track-by-track review, but I will not do that in case I make an arse of myself like that other guy. That, and because I can’t think of enough things to say about each track. And I know nothing about electronic music production so I really would be making an arse of myself.

Anyway, onward!

The album starts off with a real surprise. ‘Altibzz’ is perhaps Autechre’s most luscious track since the days of Amber or Tri Repetae. It is not often that Autechre stray into making these beatless soundscapes any more, but it is a real treat when they do.

Paradoxically, for what is perhaps Autechre’s most immediately accessible track in a long time, for this very reason it was disorientating to listen to for the first time. It is an unsettling beginning to the album, because it leaves no preparation for what is to follow, namely the kind of brain-rattling beat bombardment associated with their post-LP5 work.

‘Altibzz’ is immediately followed by ‘The Plc’, a rather more dizzying track. It starts of with a kind of slippery-sounding beat, backed up with a dense synthy soundscape, like a darker ‘Altibzz’. The track progresses, in typical Autechre style, into something quite different yet the same. I love the vocals towards the end.

Autechre aficionados will immediately recognise some parts of Quaristice from the leaked recording of their 2005 gig in Glasgow as part of the Untilted tour. ‘IO’ brings us the first recognisable moment. However, I find this version disappointingly superficial compared to the live one. This had a lot more power live.

The other recognisable moment is ‘chenc9′. For me, this track succeeds much more on the album. It is a real high point towards the end of the album — upbeat, accessible and danceable, but as uncompromisingly intricate as any Autechre track.

However, my favourite track from the album is ‘Simmm’. This is not one of Autechre’s most intricate tracks. It’s rather immediate actually, with a funky melody and a groovy array of electronic percussive sounds. Another top track is ‘Perlence’. It sounds like ‘Popcorn’ by Hot Butter fucked with big time. Despite the ‘popcorn’ connotations in the sounds in this track, it’s a great listen. I also absolutely love ‘fwzE’. It reminds me of ‘The Trees’ but groovier.

A lot has been made about the immediacy of Quaristice in many of the reviews that I have read. I have to say that, in general, I did not feel this at all. I “got” Untilted straight away, and even Draft 7.30 was more immediate for me.

But listening to Quaristice gave me that stereotypical reaction to new Autechre music. I didn’t know what to think, I couldn’t possibly take in what I had listened to. I was quite confused really. I suppose I fell into the trap of wanting to hear Autechre’s last album rather than anything new. I was really looking forward to an Untilted II, which of course isn’t really the point of Autechre.

The initial alienation I felt was particularly exacerbated by the fact that, to me, Quaristice doesn’t feel much like an album. It skips from styles and moods with seemingly little thought to the overall flow of the album. With the additional fact that these tracks are much shorter than those on your standard Autechre album (20 tracks around 3–4 minutes long as opposed to 9 tracks around 7–8 minutes long), I was reminded most of Gescom’s MiniDisc.

Perhaps the fact that the tracks are relatively short by Autechre’s standards is one reason why some people found this album accessible. I just didn’t get that easy door in. After Untilted I smugly believed that I had learned to “read” Autechre as much as I needed to. Quaristice has certainly put me in my place!

It is interesting to point out here that in one of their recent interviews (in Wire magazine, not available online), Autechre have explained that the idea of Quaristice is to get to the meat of the track straight away, without any of the “language lessons” as they called the build-up of the track. I understand exactly what they mean, but for me the build-up was a lot of the fun of Autechre, and that has been taken away here.

If Quaristice has an overall sound, I would have to say that I think this is Autechre’s darkest album to date. One track in Untilted made me feel uneasy — ‘Pro Radii’. My first impression of Quaristice was as though I was listening to ‘Pro Radii’ for the first time, several times over.

A huge period of darkness comes towards the middle of the album. This period begins with ‘paralel Suns’, where, incidentally, the weaknesses of the MP3 format are shown up the most. This is followed by ‘Steels’, perhaps (along with ‘90101-5l-l’) the track that most reminds me of ‘Pro Radii’.

Next comes ‘Tankakern’, which at first I felt was reminiscent of ‘777′, one of my least favourite Autechre tracks. This, however, has been the typical Autechre grower. Now I think it approaches the brilliance of Confield, which I consider to be the pinnacle of electronic music. This track particularly reminds me of ‘Bine’ from that excellent album. Bonus marks go to ‘Tankakern’ for the inclusion of birdsong.

‘rale’ is where things start to become groovy again. A simple but addictively enjoyable beat accompanied by a rather immediate syncopated melody, though towards the end there are some rather unsettling sounds that remind me a bit of the creepy psuedo-subliminal messages in Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children.

We only truly emerge from the dark patch with ‘bnc Castl’. The track starts off ominously enough. But within seconds it becomes some madcap shiny, sparkly tune with tinsel flying all over the place. It sounds a bit like an ice cream van having a fight — a really rhythmic fight — with an ambulance.

It transpires that ‘bnc Castl’ is only a surreal interlude, as it is followed by ‘Theswere’. This sounds like it actually could be from a horror film soundtrack, albeit one where the monster is a draining sink. To be honest, this track is a bit cheesy by Autechre’s standards.

‘WNSN’ is not so intimidating, although it still has a very other-worldly quality to it. This track is very reminiscent of EP7-era material, particularly ‘Zeiss Contarex’.

Towards the end of the album we see a return to the more ambient sound found at the beginning. However, these closing two tracks do not succeed as much as ‘Altibzz’ for me. ‘Notwo’ would be quite pleasant, but the melody seems a bit ham-fisted and it’s not the most polished-sounding of tracks. Perhaps that was the intention, but I’m afraid I don’t like it.

The final track, ‘Outh9X’ is more like it, but not quite the triumphant climax it could have been. I know that Autechre are quite challenging, but even though initially many of their tracks sound very odd they tend to make most sense if you switch off your brain and just let it all wash over you; allow it to appeal on an innate, subconscious level.

This is not allowed to happen on ‘Outh9X’. I just don’t get the strange plinky-plonky melody that fades in and out towards the beginning and middle of this track. It seems completely out of place. It is quite off-putting and is enough to ruin the whole track for me.

Overall, I have to say that I find Quaristice to be quite an odd album. By any normal standards, it is brilliant. I don’t mean to come across as fanboyish (although I am a bit of an Autechre fanboy), but I can’t help thinking to myself, why is there no-one in the world who can hold a candle to Autechre? I mean really, why are they so good? There are plenty of imitators, and lots of people making music in the IDM tradition. But why are none of them anything like this good?

On the other hand, by Autechre’s standards, Quaristice is, for me, quite a weak album. It is probably their weakest since Chiastic Slide.

It is true, however, that Autechre material needs a very long time to be digested. The music grows on you and you are forever seeing the music in new and interesting lights. By the time Autechre’s tenth album comes out, I will be craving more material in the vein if Quaristice, just as I was hungry for more music in the style of Untilted.

Even so, I can’t help feeling that this is Autechre’s least ambitious offering for a very long time. For me, the interesting thing about Quaristice is that it covers a lot of old ground. There are elements here of almost all of their previous albums.

I should point out that I have read the interviews, and I am aware of the circumstances under which this album was recorded. Even so, on a purely sonic level — from what my ears feel — Quaristice is retreading a lot of old ground.

I suppose in a way it is a bit too simplistic to think of Autechre’s music as becoming increasingly complex over time. In their earliest albums, this is certainly true. But since LP5 or EP7 Autechre’s music, although changing in style and mood from album to album, has zipped around within the same boundaries as far as the intricacy of their music goes. Perhaps they always wanted to sound like this, but were limited by technology in the early 1990s.

Anyway, I do feel like a right Crispy Godber now because I have certainly analysed this too much. The best way to approach Autechre is not the chin-strokey way celebrating needless complexity. While it’s certainly interesting to consider, the real reason I like Autechre, as I suspect is the real reason why anyone likes any music — or anything, for that matter: instinct. As I said somewhere above, let it wash over you and it will make sense on an innate level anyway.

I will return to Quaristice soon with a review of the limited edition second CD, Quaristice (Versions).

A mini debate was launched in the blogosphere earlier this week when the fledgling (Devil’s Kitchen-guided) Libertarian Party’s first policy was unveiled: abolish income tax.

Mr Eugenides modestly claims that he inspired the policy. He also notes Iain Dale’s hostile, seemingly hypocritical, reaction.

Iain Dale is right that the probability of doing away with income tax is roughly on a par with that of hell freezing over, and other similar clichés. But it is still interesting to think about. If it is true that you could do away with income tax while still leaving enough money to fund the Government’s 2001/02 budget, it is very interesting.

It is obvious why those who favour low taxes in general would be in favour of doing away with income tax. But I have wondered if it would really be in the interests of the left to abolish income tax as well. When I say left, I am talking about redistribution — good old fashioned soak the rich stuff. Those on the left typically believe that this should be done via a progressive income tax.

I might be missing something really obvious. I am not an expert when it comes to finance. But I’ll throw it out there anyway.

Surely an income tax is the easiest tax for rich people to avoid. I’m not just talking about the possibility that rich people will move abroad when tax increases, although that is probably true.

But if I was rich, I doubt that earning income would be among my top priorities. Maybe I would spend all day playing Xbox. Perhaps my whole life would be spent hopping from one skiing holiday to the next. If I got really bored, I would start sorting out my many fivers in order of tattiness.

I would be doing anything but working.

Rich people don’t earn income (except interest on their savings, which I wouldn’t have thought amounts to that much in the grand scheme of things). For this reason, I think the argument about making income tax more progressive in order to soak the rich and redistribute wealth is a bit of a red herring.

A long time ago — perhaps a year ago — my Freeview box flashed up a little notice that appears from time to time. It notifies me that new software is available to download, and it assures me that this will definitely result in an improvement in the service. Or words to that effect.

Normally, that is more or less true. But this one time the software was downloaded, and my Freeview box has not quite been the same since.

The software was for the Teletext Extra service. In essence, Teletext Extra is just a really elaborate, annoying EPG. Quite why this was required when I already had a perfectly functioning 7 day EPG is unclear.

What is clear is that I have been unable to use my Freeview box in the same way since that day. Every time the box is switched on it defaults to Teletext Extra. You then have to wrestle with the remote control just to switch this blasted EPG off. It’s as though they thought I would want to switch me television on to do something other than watch television.

Mercifully, the old default EPG is still available, so you can choose never to see the Teletext Extra service. Don’t think this gets rid of all the bloat bullshit though.

If, for instance, I dare to switch it off at the mains, the next time I want to watch television I am harassed by a new message telling me that I might as well have thrown my television off a cliff. It then switches into some kind of spooky mode in between standby and full power which makes the red light flash.

It remains in this mode for several minutes, sometimes around half an hour by my estimation, downloading crap for this rubbish EPG. The EPG that I don’t use, and have actively switched off.

In these energy-conscious times, it seems like an anachronism to actually be forced to leave my Freeview box on standby permanently. And just why does it take half an hour to download this programme information when the old default EPG managed it with no bother, with no time-consuming downloads?

Even worse, should I be committing the heinous crime of watching television at either 3am or 5am, the Freeview box displays yet another message warning me that I have 30 seconds to press the ‘quit’ button on my remote control or else it will go into the aforementioned spooky mode. Worst of all, sometimes for whatever reason it ignores my button presses, and I have mashed the quit button so much in my attempts to avoid spooky mode that it is now partially broken.

I mean, is this not just immensely stupid? Is there not a way for the box to say to itself, “Oh, it looks like my owner is watching television. I guess I had better not bombard him with messages obscuring the programme, and I had definitely better not switch myself off automatically.” Seemingly not!

The worst bit comes, though, when you want to watch television when it has already entered spooky mode. You can press the power button all you want, but there is only a small chance that it will ever bring itself out of spooky mode to allow you to watch television. You know watching television. It’s that thing that I bought the blasted box for in the first place! Even if you manage to get it to stop its spooky behaviour, chances are you will be greeted by a blank screen, so you will have to try again.

Now this is becoming big news. It seems as though I am not the only person to have experienced trouble with this Teletext Extra service. In fact, several people have reported a variety of different complaints ever since Teletext Extra began to pollute the DTT service.

Given the immensely important role DTT and Freeview has to play in the impending analogue switch off, the fact that Teletext have rolled out a service that has crippled so many boxes is rather concerning. Particularly given that I never use the Teletext Extra service, nor do I ever intend to use it in the future as I already have a completely fine EPG on my Freeview box, I do regret letting the download happen.

Having said that, I can’t even remember if I had the opportunity to refuse it. I certainly was not made aware of the nature of the download — what it was for, and the implications it would have on the functionality of my Freeview box. No doubt if I did refuse the download, I would still to this day be getting the notifications every time I switched on my Freeview box.

Radio 5 Live has a new controller, Adrian van Klaveren. This is of interest to me because pretty much whenever I listen to the radio it is Radio 5 Live.

No doubt he will want to make his presence felt and will be making changes soon enough. So it’s a good opportunity to have a look at where 5 Live has gone wrong and where it remains as good as ever. Scott’s post on the same topic last week is also worth a look.

I discovered Radio 5 Live in early 2001 when I began to outgrow the local music stations. The brash presenters and samey music began to grate to the extreme, and there was nothing for me to listen to. Scanning around the radio looking for something to listen to overnight, I discovered the amazing Up All Night and stuck with 5 Live permanently.

Before I start blasting right in, I should point out one thing that is so important that I will say it in bold red letters. Don’t touch Up All Night!

I can’t understand why the best programme on radio is shoved away at the arse end of the day. The programme is a fine mixture of laid-back but intelligent analysis of the day’s events and a number of excellent regular features.

Pods and Blogs, Dr Karl’s science phone-in, the etymology phone-in, Cash Peters (worth it just for all the awesome banter) and more are all practically must-listen material. Even stuff I am not usually interested in — world football, films, even Bollywood news — is perfectly enjoyable on Up All Night.

The advantage of Up All Night is that it was there on the first night of 5 Live and has been on for the best part of a decade and a half. Over the years, it has gathered up great features like a glittery tumble weed, experimenting now and again with new ideas and ways of approaching the slot. For instance, I remember the days when the hugely successful, 90 minute long world football phone-in was just a small five or ten minute slot about Brazilian football. It has evolved beautifully.

It’s difficult to imagine any of the other programmes on 5 Live, apart from perhaps Simon Mayo, managing this. I can understand why you can’t have a 90 minute long slot about Brazilian football in the middle of the day. The fact that news is happening all the time means that the daytime shows have to be more flexible. But that isn’t an excuse for them to be utter shit.

When I began listening to 5 Live I was really happy at first. I couldn’t stand Nicky Campbell, but given that I was still at school back in those days he was really easy to avoid. When he moved to breakfast I had to start looking yet again for a new station to listen to, at least between 6am and 9am.

I remember his first show on the breakfast slot. Ego-boy Campbell thought the whole show was his and kept on talking over his co-host. The frosty relationship between Nicky Campbell, Victoria Derbyshire and Fi Glover made for really embarrassing broadcasting and unbearable listening.

I have avoided the breakfast slot like the plague ever since. Inexplicably, the awful Nicky Campbell is still in the breakfast slot, still making a total arse of himself.

The rot began to spread over to the other slots. Once the excellent Fi Glover fled the station, allegedly unable to take Campbell’s bravado any longer, the morning phone-in slot went to Victoria Derbyshire. Derby-shite more like!

The decision was seemingly at attempt for the station to shed its “Radio Bloke” reputation. The fact that every single one of her stand-ins has done a much better job than Derbyshire ever could says it all. John Pienaar, Phil Williams and especially Matthew Bannister were a joy to listen to in the morning. But Victoria Derbyshire is just awful.

She so often sounds completely out of her depth. It is particularly cringe-worthy when she has to deal with a sensitive topic. It sounds like she read in a book somewhere that staying silent a lot is a good way to deal with a sensitive situation. But obviously you can’t just stay quiet on the radio. You have to say something as well. And she says the most banal things. “…It must be awful…,” she says trying to fake a quiver in her voice. No shit Sherlock.

A recent interview with Kenny Richey was one of the worst examples. Lots of silences and lots of “it must have been so difficult” interspersed with strange probing questions about the crimes of his fellow inmates, as if that had anything to do with it.

The very premise of the show doesn’t help. It is the stereotypical “Speak Your Brains” phone-in for knuckle-heads. It’s not much different to this video. There is a poll out today saying that no-one speaks for thick white working-class people.

The people who answered that poll can’t have listened to Victoria Derbyshire. And the irony of unemployed people complaining about immigrants getting so many benefits. At that time of the morning, you can safely hazard a guess that many of the callers are on the dole, and are also thick as pigshit. If this is what a BBC phone-in is like, I shudder to imagine what a station like TalkSport or LBC would be saying.

Thankfully, the rest of the day on 5 Live is okay. Simon Mayo is really good. I was never so keen in the past, but given that so many of 5 Live’s other great presenters have jumped ship he is like a shining beacon. Drive has changed little and remains as good and bad as it always has been. If anything, it has improved since Anita Anand became one of the presenters.

Sport on 5 is not my thing, but it will be there until 5 Live shuts up shop, so there’s no point complaining about it. I don’t mind Richard Bacon as much as some people, but when you look at the roll call of the slot’s previous few presenters — Anita Anand, Matthew Bannister, Fi Glover — you can’t help but think we have gone down a rung.

Weekends are just one long disaster zone, with sirens wailing and smoke pouring out of the windows. Is Homer Simpson at the controls? I don’t mind the sport. That’s part of 5 Live so you have to live with it. Besides, they do Formula 1 as well so I can’t complain.

But what about all of the programmes around it? Saturday morning was one slot I was always iffy about. Even when the quite excellent Adrian Chiles was presenting that slot, the programme was inexplicably dull. It seemed to be aimed at boring sport fans who fancied themselves as amateur Stattos.

It hasn’t got much better under the control of Eamonn Holmes. Luckily Adam and Joe are on 6 Music on Saturday mornings these days, otherwise I would still be sleeping through until 1pm avoiding all of the dross.

And just what on earth has happened to Sunday mornings over the past few months? I hope there is a good reason for Julian Worricker’s disappearance, because his replacement Gabby Logan is terrible. Logan is yet another one of those stars that the BBC has poached from another channel at great expense without even knowing what to do with her (see also Johnny Vaughan, Graham Norton, Richard Blackwood). Is she qualified to broadcast about subjects other than sport? It doesn’t sound like it.

Then in the evening there is smooth, calm Stephen Nolan. That was sarcasm there. This loud mouth just approaches every topic from the most controversial and inflammatory angle. His treatment of sensitive subjects has all the tact and subtlety of a bulldozer knocking over a child’s sandcastle. When you factor in the fact that Stephen Nolan is from Northern Ireland, I should think it is a miracle that this audio arsonist is still alive.

To be honest, the only thing that keeps me listening to 5 Live so much is Up All Night — and the fact that all the other radio stations are even worse.

You know, I really don’t mind the SNP all that much. I mean, in the sense that they are better than Labour then I am pleased they won the election. And I think that, on the whole, they have done a very competent job in charge.

But what have they done since gaining power? ASwaS notes:

The first Act of the SNP Government was to abolish tolls in and out of Fife. The second Act has been to remove university fees. As a St Andrews graduate I feel like I am in a privileged subset of the population.

So there have been two acts, both of which I oppose. This is a bit paradoxical because I am a student living in Fife. Received wisdom has it that I’m supposed to be in favour of these policies. But only the myopic think this. People see the headlines — “free this” and “free that” — without thinking about the full consequences. The policies are unashamedly populist, but unsustainable. This makes the SNP demagogues in my book.

Both of these policies are completely counter productive to a Fife-based student. I have already covered free university education before, so I won’t bore you again. But I have been meaning to write about road tolls for a long while now. So here is why road tolls should not be scrapped.

Roads are a scarce resource. There are only so many roads that can be built with the resources we have (not least space). And it is well known that no matter how many roads you build, drivers will literally be queuing up to use them.

Roads are a particularly scarce resource if you are trying to leave Fife (and who would blame you?). Geographically isolated, Fife is a peninsula. The River Tay lies to the north, the North Sea to the east, and the Firth of Forth is on the south. On the west, the Ochil Hills act as fourth barrier to entering Fife. It is almost as though the Flying Spaghetti Monster was trying to tell us something about Fife.

Anyway, the point is that if you want to travel to Edinburgh from Fife by road you don’t have many options. Basically you can cross the ageing Forth Road Bridge and deal with some horrendous traffic jams. Or you can spend even more time (and use up more petrol) going via Kincardine.

So roads out of Fife are a very scarce resource. When a resource is scarce it has to be rationed somehow. Clearly, no everyone who would like to use the Forth Road Bridge, or indeed any road, would be able to use it because there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. There needs to be some way of finding out who needs to use the road the most.

There are two ways to do it. One way is to make people spend time. This is the way most roads work, and of course the Forth Road Bridge has recently become one of those roads. The other way is to make people spend money. Evil, evil money. Yes? No.

Evan Davis has explained why queuing does a really bad job at rationing a scarce resource. When you make people queue, you are making everyone spend a lot of time. Time is the scarcest resource of them all. You can’t bring back the past, and you can’t transfer your spare time to someone else who doesn’t have enough time. Once time is spent, it’s gone forever.

If, on the other hand, you use money, it might still be costly to you as a person. But at least the money doesn’t just disappear. It has simply changed hands. The money can be re-spent again. Now, society is better off than it would have been had everyone been made to queue.

So to use the Forth Road Bridge as an example, the government could choose to whack up the price of crossing. This money could then be used to build more hospitals, or even — shock horror — a second Forth road bridge or tunnel. Or they could use it to reduce taxes.

Instead, the SNP have chosen to make not only drivers crossing the bridge, but also society as a whole, pay through the nose just so that they can say that they have removed road tolls. It’s a pretty pyrrhic victory if you ask me.

A couple of months back Calum Cashley was sceptical that the removal of the tolls would lead to greater congestion. His argument was that as the charge was only £1, removing it would not make crossing the bridge much cheaper in the eyes of many. But if anything, this is an argument that the charge was not high enough in the first place!

Instead, the SNP have taken it in the opposite direction. Common sense dictates that it would increase congestion. And evidence suggests that it has — by half an hour every morning. The rush hour is now a rush hour and a half.

The situation starts to look even worse when you consider the environmental impact of this situation. If road tolls were in use then think of the carbon emissions that would be cut. Instead, the SNP have removed the one toll road left, meaning that even more drivers are just standing still on the road with their engines running and emitting carbon dioxide. And the SNP are supposed to be a green party!

So road tolls make sense from an economic and environmental point of view. Does that mean we should dive head first into a full-on road charging scheme? Possibly not.

I seem to remember that when Evan Davis wrote that post, it was on the back of a debate about the possibility of people being charged to use roads by the mile (or something similar). This involves having a little box in your car that enables you to be tracked wherever you go. It might be economically efficient, but there is a serious problem with civil liberties there.

Also, it is perhaps worth pointing out that queuing is probably not always the worse option. Even though people grumble about NHS waiting lists, it seems preferable to a charge-based system where doctors could make up your illnesses in order to extract more money from you.

Nevertheless, the principle of road charging (if not the method as it currently stands) is perfectly sound. The tollbooth system on the Forth Road Bridge did not suffer from this civil liberties issue, so there was no good reason to abolish them. It was all the more farcical when the Scottish Government decided to pull them down at a cost of £2m, when they had only just been erected at a cost of £4m!

Prince Harry returning to the UK:

I generally don’t like England