Vanity Fair Screening

Was a blast. Our eternal thanks to the wonderful Henry Porter for hosting the occasion. Some real movers and shakers turned out in force, including Malcolm Macdowell, Shami Chakrabarti and Tony Benn. Fantastic response, and the wine flowed very freely afterwards. And some of it managed not to get drunk by the film makers.

The next step is to get people to actually pay to go and see it, but with the help of the fine people at Revolver Entertainment, there should be a few bums on seats. Apparently it's rather important that people go and see it on the opening weekend as this will dictate how long it plays for, so keep June 8th free. We're up against Ocean's 13, which has the edge on us when it comes to marketing budgets, but we have the edge over them by not being marketing led hollywood drivel.

Microchips in children

You really can't make this stuff up any more. Public hysteria over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has inevitably come round to the conclusion that if we had a microchip in every child then it wouldn't have happened. This is of course utter twaddle, but still doesn't stop various companies and individuals making a load of cash from kiddie surveillance gizmos. Along with microchips in your tots arm (that need recharging once a year - just wave your bundle of joy near a gigantic electromagnet) the surveillance industry is using the fear of paedophilia to flog you:

-Sim card tracking services so you know where your child is 24/7.
-An easy to throw away tagged badge.
-A cuddly device called the Teddy-fone which enables parents to listen to everything the child says and does.

Apart from being absurdly expensive, and detrimental to the child's upbringing, all of the above will be completely hackable so any budding paedophile just needs to go on a few IT courses, and these devices will actually assist them in their ghastly antics.

BBC documentary on CCTV

Apparently Jamie Theakstone thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread. Strange that a man who's career collapsed (and later rose again) because of slightly unorthodox goings on in his private life should want cameras recording our every last move. Presumably if he had been filmed enjoying vast quantities of coke in the company of several prostitutes he would have been sacked as a kids TV presenter much sooner. More on this at Tim's Blog.

Libetry Blogging

Starting to get the hang of this Blog thing. Published our first photo above which was so exciting I had to go and lie down for a while.

Absolutely Brilliant promotional idea for film at Beau Bo D'Or. Where can you get 10,000 stickers printed?

Heavyweight political discourse at Open Democracy

Yes the whole written constitution debate has been a pleasant surprise in terms of timing. Yes we'd all be a lot happier if we had a Bill of Rights that put the core Civil Liberties out of the hands of meddling politicians. Only question is who's going to write it? If his first name is Gordon and he's good with numbers we might as well not bother...

And the netherworld has some nice things to say as well.