It’s liveblog time again, courtesy of F1Fanatic. The liveblog appears below, or click here to open it in your own browser window.
Don’t forget to keep up with my Twitter updates as well.
Archive: 2008 April
In case you were wondering, this is an even more quiet place than usual just now because I have exams at the moment. Sorry I’ve not been more active at replying to comments in recent weeks. I found the first exam more stressful than I should have, so I decided to take today off to relax. So it’s a good opportunity to stick a lazy post up here.
I’ve been tagged by a meme twice in recent weeks. One of them will be more exciting for you readers, and I have been meaning to write a post like that for about a year anyway. But I will do this one first because the other one will take a bit of preparation. Because I need to preserve all that brain power for the exams.
This is from Angry Steve. I can’t actually see what the common theme that runs through this is. Still, if you have been tagged in a meme and you don’t take part the punishment is fifty lashes in the blogospheric dungeon. So here goes.
1. The rules of the game get posted on the beginning.
2. Each player answers the rules about himself [or indeed herself].
3. At the end of the post, the player tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they’ve been tagged and asking them to read his [or her] blog.
What I was doing ten years ago:
According to my excellent maths skills, I was 12 years old. So I was probably being exceptionally annoying at primary school. I was probably preparing myself mentally for arriving at the big school with all the big bullies.
Five things on my To-Do list today:
Well, I am posting this last thing on Saturday. So here is my to-do list for Sunday.
- Watch the GP2 race
- Go for a walk round the park
- Watch the Spanish Grand Prix
- Begin revising for my next exam
- Uh, go to bed
Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Given that I would be financially secure, I would ditch all of my formal commitments and get round to all of those leisure activities that have been building up. The pile of CDs that I bought way back in October and still haven’t had the time to listen to. The DVDs. The books I bought for my summer reading in 2006 and the books that have been added to that pile since. The issues of The Economist which I unwisely purchased a three year subscription to before realising that I didn’t have the time to read a single bloody issue.
Three of my bad habits:
- Weighing up the possibilities for so long that the opportunity completely passes by
- Eating too quickly
- Fingernail biting
Five places I’ve lived:
- Glenrothes
- Kirkcaldy
Uhh… and that’s it.
Five jobs I’ve had:
- Lifting furniture about for an antiques shop run by a family friend
- Sales assistant at Woolworths
Uhh… and that’s it.
Five books I’ve recently read:
Hmm difficult one. I don’t often get a chance to read a full book (I think my pace is about two per year). But I have read most of a few books at university so I’ll put the details here.
- The Economic Development of Modern Scotland, 1950-1980, Richard Saville (ed.) — Skim-read many chapters for my exam on the Scottish Economy. It’s not very “modern” any more though — it was published in 1985 (no modern perspective on oil, little if anything about electronics, poll tax what poll tax?). Good chapters on the Highlands and Islands Development Agency and the Scottish Development Agency though. Shame they never came up in the exam!
- The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan — Food for thought for proponents of “more democracy”. I thought it would be really useful for my dissertation. It was kind of, but I enjoyed the read more for the bits that weren’t much to do with my dissertation.
- A Logic of Expressive Choice, Alexander A. Schuessler — A theory on voting behaviour and things like that (cases which should be collective action problems but aren’t). It gets a bit technical towards the end, but the early chapters are fascinating to read. If you want to know why the US President is just like a can of Dr Pepper, this is the book for you!
- Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner — Finally something I read in my spare time. Quite fun to read.
- The Worldly Philosophers, Robert L. Heilbroner — I found this book very boring; it took me over a year to read. It’s okay when it’s talking about people you’ve heard of. But in the chapters about people I’ve never heard of, it was a real struggle to read.
Five people or communities I’m going to tag:
Well first of all, bollocks to leaving a comment as per rule 3 at the top. It’s bad enough tagging someone as it is. I will tag five people here and if they notice it they can carry on the meme if they wish.
It’s the race weekend and that means it’s time again to participate in F1Fanatic’s liveblogs. Sadly there were no liveblogs for Friday practice because Keith from F1Fanatic was working. And I wouldn’t have made it anyway because I had an exam! Thankfully, though, my weekend is unusually clear and I’m looking forward to a top weekend of F1 — and GP2 — action!
Unfortunately, though, Saturday practice isn’t streamed by ITV. That won’t stop us from trying to follow it though!
Click below to join the Saturday practice liveblog, or click here to open it in its own browser window. The liveblog begins at 10am British time, when the session starts.
Comments closed
ITV F1 have won their second Baftas in two years. For the many non-British readers of this blog, the Baftas are the most prestigious television awards in the country — our equivalent of the Emmys.
Can you guess which race they won it for?
*drum roll*
The Canadian Grand Prix
The most dire F1 broadcast of last year. The programme was so bad that ITV were inundated with complaints and even offered an “apology”, although it was more of a “lame excuse” if you ask me. Strangely, however, the apology has completely disappeared from the ITV-F1 website, Stalin-style. In its place is a mysterious article entitled ‘How BMW turned its form around’ that contains no text. Were ITV worried in case the Bafta academy saw it? (The original article lives on in the Web Archive.)
But F1 fans are not fools. We know a bad broadcast when we see one and we don’t have fish-like memories. Here is Keith Collantine’s post about it. You can also read mine.
Even if you are a Lewis Hamilton fan, ITV’s coverage of the Canadian Grand Prix was less than fitting of the Brit’s maiden win. The coverage was abruptly cut short immediately after the podium ceremony. There was no press conference and not even a sniff of analysis — just a rushed wrap-up.
Even James Allen’s usually awful commentary reached a pretty low nadir as he messed up Hamilton’s chequered flag moment. He started his “winning yelp” far too early which just made him sound a bit silly: “LEWIS HAMILTOOOOON……… … … … [checks watch]… … [reads newspaper] ……WIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNS!” (Check the audio here.)
Furthermore, no other Grand Prix last year was littered so much with adverts. 17 minutes and 15 seconds of race action was missed by British viewers because of ITV. That is over 16% of the race. It is also around three minutes more than even the next most advert-interrupted race. If this happened during a football match there would be nothing short of outrage, and you can bet your bottom dollar it wouldn’t win a Bafta.
ITV won a Bafta last year for its coverage of the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix. This also “happened” to be another maiden win for a Brit, Jenson Button. But that was also if anything a sub-standard ITV broadcast as Martin Brundle, the only decent person on the ITV F1 team, was not present.
As with Craig from Craigblog, I am spotting a pattern here. No matter how bad their coverage is, ITV F1 will win a Bafta as long a Brit wins a Grand Prix for the first time. We all know that no matter how good their coverage was, ITV would not have won that Bafta unless Lewis Hamilton had won. In which case, the Bafta should go to Lewis Hamilton, not ITV / North One. And last year’s should be handed to Jenson Button.
Bafta are an absolute disgrace. If academy members had carried out even a cursory web search they would have found out that ITV’s coverage of the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix attracted several complaints. Moreover, they would have found out that the vast majority of F1 fans are less than enamoured about ITV’s approach towards F1.
I wrote about ITV winning their Bafta last year. Today, it is one of the most popular posts on the blog (908 visits in the last week alone, compared to 520 for the 2nd most popular post and 255 for the third most popular).
Let us not also forget that no less an authority than Ross Brawn has criticised ITV’s coverage of Formula 1. And I haven’t even touched on the overwhelming Hammy-hype. We F1 fans really have got a bum deal from ITV, and the fact that they are showered with praise in MSM backslapping events just rubs salt into the wound. It widens the ever-growing divide between we fans on the ground and our overlords in the mainstream media.
All I can say is, thank goodness F1 coverage is moving back to the BBC next year. I don’t think I can stand much more of this.
Now where’s the sick bucket?
Comments closed