Chindie

This is **** disgraceful.

Apparently Asa Butterfield is the front runner to be the be Spiderman. Hes pretty young, and can certainly play younger if Marvel/Sony really gun for the high school angle.

The company that comes up with a cure to cancer will become one of the most powerful businesses on Earth. They'll have effectively worked out how to turn off an inbuilt kill switch in our being, the entire planet is thusly their market, and very compelling reason for everyone to buy it someday. Unfortunately it's not likely to be a disease that is ever going to have a few pills that will cure it. It's a flaw in our cell reproduction at heart. That will take genetic modification to fix, on such a scale that it may never be possible.

Blomkamp's films after District 9 have had the glimpses of that movie in them, bit don't seem to have the conviction or the nuance. Elysium felt like District 9 made by a Hollywood director who had none of the subtlety of the theme it wanted to discuss. Chappie flirts with a deeper discussion of AI and life, but shys away. I think he's fundamentally still a good director, but he needs some help at the writing stage. He comes close to good, thoughtful sci fi, and then falls short. I hope his Alien film has someone advising and guiding him, or it'll be another false dawn for that series (and let's be honest, the cars are stacked against it anyway).

Well unfortunately I've only had close experience of cancer. I thought it was horrible, watching my father struggle to breathe taking long slow shallow snatched breaths and look distinctly like he was having a fit for 10 hours with his eyes starring at the ceiling through me, his head shaking on his neck and body trembling constantly, having lost control of every facet of his being. I'll have to reconsider it as mildly unpleasant, because it could have been Ebola.

I lost my father to cancer this year. And it had more than a small part in my mother's death last year. With my dad, the family has a genetic disorder that is literally a coin toss - heads you WILL get cancer, tails you only risk your children getting it. My dad was diagnosed about 14 years ago originally. He was very unwell, had some fairly major things done, and was never quite the same. My sister was diagnosed at the same time. We got those extra years with him, but it won out this year and withered him quickly away. It spread throughout him, eventually getting to his brain. If nothing else it took him quickly and he was at home until about 5 days before - we has no idea what was specifically wrong until it was too late. It's a horrible disease. All the more horrible that it is a fault of our own makeup that makes it such a problem. It isn't some foreign organism to us that we can fight. It's a betrayal of the very fibre of our beings, and if we are lucky to live long enough, all of us will fight it some day. I just wish I hadn't seen in such powerful detail exactly what it'll do one day, perhaps.

Normal screen. No idea what 3d would do for it, but Imax might well be incredible. It's a great looking film and and has a lot of scenes shot and arranged to be particularly visually arresting, which Imax will make pop even more.

Mad Max: Fury Road is an incredible slice of chaos. The action movie distilled to it's purest and most visceral form. A plot that can be described in a sentence. Characters narry a piece of development in sight. Barely any dialogue. Beautifully bleak vistas of endless sand. Grotesque in every frame. It's glorious.

Tuesday. Theres some copies out there already and more by the weekend, though.

Strange, I've thought it was pretty poor throughout really. The villain and overall plotline this series pales in comparison to series 2 - but then Deathstroke really was a magnificent bastard. Ra's in this has been hopeless, more relationship counsellor than evil mastermind.

Day one. I liked Witcher 2 despite it's flaws, and this looks like they took that, mashed it into RDR, and tinkered with the problems. Day one, without question. Conveniently just finished Dragon Age Inquisition too.

I originally wanted the Nikes in a different colour way, burnished brown, but they sold out in seconds. So settled for the black, which has grown on me. Have a quilted lining, and spectacularly comfortable.

Not the actual shoes I wear but same style (notably because the second pair are £200...)

In America the phrase has become more well known in the (incorrect, as you you rightly say, of you want to recall Chamberlain) 'peace in our time' version due to it's incorrect usage by various public figures, notably a bunch of presidents. I think that's what Whedon was chasing, the American pop-culture take, however wrong it is. He's not stupid so I think he'll know it's wrong but works for his purposes.

Whilst to an extent I somewhat agree, the media will gun for and ridicule them increasingly underhandedly...

Labour did so well controlling corrupt bankers though didn't they... 'Those lot were a bunch of words removed so it doesn't matter if this lot are as well'

Labour haven't done so badly because of their policies. I'd wager they could have swerved noticeably to the left and returned to their traditional policies wholesale and still done as badly. The policies don't really matter. The history, the image, the message, that wins elections. Labour are still tainted by 2010, rightly and wrongly, they have come across as a bumbling, nervous parade headed by an unfortunate naive man, with a message that couldn't beat down the line peddled by the Tories and UKIP. They were not overcoming that. It works both ways. The Tories policies verge from daft to sinister and quite worrying. But nobody cares.

I fell on hard times twice under the last Labour government. I was unemployed for 6 months in the late 90s, and got something like £55 a week to live on. I also got a contribution of roughly £30 a week towards my £50 a week rent in the shape of housing benefit. So roughly £220 in unemployment benefit, of which £80 went toward my rent shortfall. I then worked for nothing other than my benefits (so was effectively still unemployed) in a small accountancy practice for 6 months in an attempt to learn some new skills and make myself employable. I fail to see how that was any better than what happens these days. A few years later when I was working as an accountant, my costs of living weren't matched by wage rises and we as a family found things very tough indeed. Due to the out of control financial markets, we had a 0% deposit, 125% loan to value mortgage. Labour were an absolute train wreck and I for one hope we've seen the back of them for a good while. Hard times will always be hard for anyone under any government. But I think there's been a considerable squeeze under the Coalition on this demographic, and the Tories will only continue that. Its been framed as attacking scroungers, sticking up for 'hard working families' but will attack indiscriminately. I believe that had you fallen on the same hard times 15 years later, you will have suffered more. I don't support Labour, to be clear. I don't support any of them, they're all charlatans and none share my views particularly. I think Mikes post on the last page, however, gives a good outline of traditional Labour values I could back. Unfortunately they abandoned those years ago. The Tories haven't changed that much, fundamentally, however, and those values wouldn't enter their mind. Hence the worries of what an unfettered Tory government would do now.

I think it's particularly galling about this Tory party getting in, is that for all that they are the Nasty Party still (and I hope no-one falls on hard times of any sort in the coming 5 years), you look at the likes of Thatcher and you see a powerfully competent politician. This lot are verging on jokes. It's a terrible mark against the Labour party to add to the rest. They got trounced by the Tories class of dunces.

They take a sample of people leaving 140 polling stations. They're increasingly on the money. So no point waiting up then? I wouldn't, unless you suffer from insomnia or are a masochist. They have been completely wrong previously, but even if they're wrong it's going to be a hung parliament, so there's not going to be a definitive answer anyway.

They take a sample of people leaving 140 polling stations. They're increasingly on the money.

It's close enough that the Tories could try a minority government on their tod. Probably not though.

Polls don't close for another hour and a quarter, we wing have much idea of the result in real terms until early hours of the morning. And even then by most reckoning it'll be a hung parliament in which case there's going to be a load of games being played behind the scenes to work out exactly what'll be the makeup of the next government. So basically, if we know for sure in the morning it'll be a **** miracle.

I'll be spoiling my ballot on the way home from work. A colleague suggested I spoil it by drawing the old school cock and balls. Another then piped up with 'That'll be counted as a vote for the Tories though?'.