Off the cuff beats off the autocue

Improvisation

The best baked beans you’ll ever taste are those heated up over a little gas stove, and eaten straight from the tin, with the fork you used to stir them. Some of the best nights out are those that just happen, without any planning. Some of the best nights in are when the power cut has you around the kitchen table, playing candle-lit poker.

I love the complete…sessions jazz collections. Not because any of the alternative takes are better than those finally issued on the original album, but because it’s fascinating to hear those other versions, and imagine the processes that have resulted in the final album. Thanks to whoever did or does the archiving at Capitol or Blue Note or wherever, there’s so much lovingly preserved material.

That bit in the first Indiana Jones film was improvised. Body builder super-swordsman bloke approaches Harrison Ford twirling his blades like a blender connected directly to the national grid. Apparently a long fight sequence was scripted, but Ford wasn’t feeling very well, so he did that “yeah, whatever, got one of these?” look and shot twirly-features. Same end result, much less effort.

Think Tanks and why we don’t need them

Reform (an independent think) have published The Case for Private Prisons. Their business partners include G4S, Serco and Sodexo.

Policy Exchange is part funded by Deliotte, who bang on about the Police reforms and the need for a (yep) right-wing think tank to do just that. For loads of wonga.

Policy Exchange is founded by Nick Boyles, Michael Nice-But-Dim Gove, and Francis Maude and Gove wrote: “Policy Exchange were a tiny band of guerrillas, partisans in the hillside fighting a lonely campaign, but now, that tiny guerrilla band has turned into the most formidable regular army on the thinktank battlefield.”

What an idiot. If ‘the thinktank [sic] battlefield’ isn’t enough to have you rubbing you chin and reaching for the ammunition, there’s that ‘partisans in the hillside’ garbage. These are not people who would, like Orwell, go off to fight in the Spanish civil war on principle, but career politicians who would sell their family members for wealth and power.

Centre for Social Justice. Ian Duncan Smith and some fellow god-bothers, they get paid for assisting with social policy. Which, as a taxpayer, I already pay Smith for. Sponsored by Manpower, a shareholder in Working Links, involved in the DWP’s shenanigans, and accused of systematic fraud.

The Centre of Crime Prevention. Do you know what? I’ve lost the will. Isn’t that the local nick?

Fox watch

D the Dog has taken up residence in the sentry box that is our back step, with occasional chases to the bottom of the garden should an intrusion occur.