Former Foreign Minister of Germany Comments [on] Moldova’s Perspectives
Actually I know Meckel personally, and while he was indeed foreign minister for four and a half months, it was in the post-Communist government of East Germany, not of Germany as a whole!
(But I suppose any part of Germany is still Germany.)
12 October 1965: birth of Dan Abnett, author of among others Big Finish audios The Harvest (2004) and Nocturne (2007), Tenth Doctor audio stories The Forever Trap (2008) and The Last Voyage (2010), Torchwood audio Everyone Says Hello (2008), most of the Tenth Doctor book The Story of Martha (2008), and Torchwood novel Border Princes (2007) plus various other comics and short stories.
12 October 1968: broadcast of episode 5 of The Mind Robber. A grand battle of fictional characters allied to either the Doctor or the Master ends with the destruction of the Land of Fiction and the restoration of the Tardis.
12 October 1987: broadcast of episode 2 of Paradise Towers. The Doctor escapes the caretakers, seeks the Great Architect and is captured by the Red Kangs; meanwhile Mel is captured by Tibby and Tabby.
12 October 1988: broadcast of episode 2 of Remembrance of the Daleks. The Doctor retrieves the Hand of Omega; Ace finds herself surrounded by Daleks.
12 October 2010: broadcast of episode 2 of The Nightmare Man (SJA). I can’t wait.
12 October 1979: Beep the Meep pursues the Eighth Doctor to the BBC Television Centre in an alternate universe where they encounter an actor called Tom Baker who is starring in this show… (in “TV Action!” by Alan Barnes, published in DWM in 1999)
12 October 1998: birth of Thomas Hector Schofield, later to become known as the Seventh Doctor audio companion Hex; he shares a birthday with his creator Dan Abnett (see above).
12 October 2021: Hex’s 23rd birthday celebrations are interrupted by Cybermen in The Harvest (2004).
12 October 2025: Hex returns home in Project: Destiny (2010).
11 October 1962: birth of Nicola Bryant, who played Peri (Perpugilliam Brown) from 1984 to 1986 and continues to appear in (and also direct) Big Finish audios.
11 October 1975: broadcast of episode 3 of Planet of Evil. The Morestran ship cannot escape from Zeta Minor; Salamar prepares to eject the Doctor and Sarah into space…
11 October 1980: broadcast of episode 3 of Meglos. Much confusion of identity, and the Doctor is prepared for sacrifice to the Dodecahedron…
11 October 1986: broadcast of episode 2 of Mindwarp (ToaTL 6). Confusing stuff about Peri being captured by the Mentors; the Doctor thinks it is not true.
11 October 1989: broadcast of episode 2 of Ghost Light. The Doctor finds Control; Control releases Light.
11 October 2010: broadcast of episode 1 of The Nightmare Man (SJA). No summary available yet, obviously.
I decided to try B on something a bit different on our Sunday outing today; just the other side of where she lives is a significant concentration of Gallo-Roman tumuli, and I thought it would be nice to see if I could explore them with her, armed with the GPS coordinates from Francophone Wikipedia.
At least one of these was constructed as the tomb for the second-century nobleman Marcus Probius Burrus, of whom the only thing that is known is that he was buried here. The shadows of the trees behind me make an attractive foreground to the mounds (third one dimly visible on the right):
Then I struck out east with B, towards the neighbouring town of Landen whose outskirts include no fewer than four tumuli, all of which I hoped to find. This takes us immediately through the village of Neerwinden, site of horrible battles in July 1693 and March 1793, which seems awfully bad luck.
The locals don’t seem to have made much of the historical circumstances, which I guess may be partly that it wasn’t really their war in either case; the 1693 battle was between William of Orange (recently King of England, three years after the Boyne) and the French, who beat him though Sarsfield was killed, and the 1794 battle between the French, who lost this time, and the Austrians, who won despite being numerically the smaller force.
In the 1793 battle the tumulus of nearby Middelwinden, also thought to date from the second century and excavated in 1864 and 1873, was used as both fortification and target, for obvious reasons:
B is not really one for history but did show an interest in local agriculture:
Not very much further down that road you come to the Tumulus of Pippin of Landen, who was Charlemagne’s great-grandfather apparently, set in a nice little park which we are told was the heart of the family estate:
We had actually visited here in March. Perhaps remembering the brambles, B declined to get out of the car but I got a decent enough picture of the mound itself:
Bear in mind of course the that actual mound isn’t defined by the treeline but by the earth that the trees are growing from.
Once again the little museum was closed but I got a shot through the window, here enhanced to show the foundations of the basilica of St Gertrude:
Next up was the Bortom of Walsbets, also supposedly from the second century, but used as an artillery emplacement by the Belgian army in the period between the two World Wars (for all the good it did them). I didn’t realise (due to GPS inadequacy) that there is actually a road running right past it, so took this picture from some distance away and drove on:
And turning round the next corner encountered a gathering of model aeroplane enthusiasts:
Our final stop for the day was the Plattetombe of Waasmont, which is way bigger than the others – 77 metres by 59, and 11 metres high. It has never been excavated, but I think it is significant that even today it is within a hundred metres of the provincial border between Flemish Brabant and Hainault. B condescended to walk towards it with me, and seemed to have enjoyed the outing, a pleasure in her own secret world:
And so home after a longer and more varied excursion than usual.
Very pleased with how the light falls on her, and the bubble is visibly emerging as she concentrates.
Next in the New Adventures series, reuniting the Doctor and Benny with a confident and sexy Ace, for whom a couple of years have passed, and bringing in as a guest character none other than Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer, from the old Dalek annuals, along with a fake medieval planet and a pool of disembodied brains. It’s a decent novel, but is particularly interesting for the author’s afterward, where he reflects on i) writing a book in a range for which you are also the editor and ii) the reception and future of the New Adventures at that point – perhaps Virgin might start doing “Missing Adventures” featuring pre-Seventh Doctors, though Darvill-Evans was not yet convinced of this. An interesting case of a statement of intent from the person who at the time (April 1993) had the main responsibility for keeping Who going.
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When I read
Paul Magrs was upset by this review when he read it, and said so on Twitter, describing it as “shitty” and “miserable”.
Magrs may just have been in a bad mood on Friday night, or he may also feel at some level that Find and Replace is not among his best work and was upset by the review because he fears that it may be right. I think he was unwise to react as he did in what is effectively a public space (though not as unwise as, say, Rob Schneider). I suspect also that he possibly hasn’t thought through his own coping strategy for negative reviews, because one of his more embittered comments reads:
Am I alone in thinking we shouldn’t pay as much attention to reviewers who’ve never written anything themselves?
To which none other than Mark Clapham, whose work I frankly have not enjoyed as much as I have Magrs’, responded:
@paulmagrs er, yes? Some reviews are shitty, but they should still be from the readers’ perspective, not an authorial love-in.
And I think Clapham nails it. One does not need to be a carpenter to judge whether a chair is well made; one does not have to be a TV executive to decide whether or not one likes a television show; one does not need to be a writer to make informed judgements about a book. And if I think something sucks, I will normally say so, even if I risk spoiling the author’s weekend.
Peter Robinson’s proposal that the Northern Ireland Assembly should be cut from 108 to 75 members has run into trouble, with criticism both from the UUP and from Sinn Féin. Of course, speculation on how this might change the political landscape is premature, but that won’t stop me.
I went into this assuming that a cut in the number of seats would hit small parties worst. As I ground through the numbers, it became apparent that that is not necessarily the case, for two reasons. The first is what one might call the ‘tallest poppy’ effect. In a constituency where one party is dominant over the others, its last seat may well be vulnerable, particularly if was rather narrowly gained – if you are defending two seats, you need transfers to take you to 33.3% instead of 28.6%; if you are defending three seats, you need 50% instead of 42.9%; if you are defending four seats, you need 66.7% instead of 57.1%; if, like Sinn Féin in West Belfast, you are defending five seats, you need 83.3% instead of 71.4%. On that basis it’s fairly clear that five-seat constituencies would indeed have penalised Sinn Féin in West Belfast, but also the DUP in East Belfast, East Londonderry, and Strangford, and the SDLP in South Belfast and Foyle.
But the more important effect is what happens to the mathematical positioning of the communal divide. In Fermanagh and South Tyrone, for instance, the total Unionist vote in 2007 was 46% – 3.22 quotas, if there are six seats – and the total Nationalist vote was 53% – 3.71 quotas. Not surprisingly, Nationalists won three seats and so did Unionists. But had there been only five seats at play, the Unionist vote would have been 2.66 quotas and the Nationalist vote 3.18 – Unionist parties as a whole (and the DUP in particular) would have lost a seat. I would therefore add Fermanagh-South Tyrone, West Tyrone and, narrowly, Newry and Armagh to the DUP’s losses (where the the DUP were the smaller Unionist party) and on the same basis would call East Antrim, North Down, Upper Bann and probably South Down as losses for the UUP. Similarly on the Nationalist side, North Belfast, North Antrim, and South Antrim would have seen the SDLP lose their seats.
There are two remaining constituencies. The situation in Lagan Valley is the only one drastically affected for this debate by the new boundaries, used for this year’s Westminster election but not for the 2007 Assembly; on the 2007 votes as cast, Alliance would probably have lost their seat, but on the new boundaries, Alliance would certainly hang on at the expense of Sinn Féin. And in Mid Ulster, where both in 2007 and in 2010 the total Unionist vote was 33% and the total Nationalist vote 66% – just under two and four quotas respectively for a five-seat constituency – it is really impossible to call which side would lose the sixth seat; it is easier to state that the loser would either be Sinn Féin, as tallest poppies, or the UUP as junior Unionist party.
I’ve also looked at the 2010 Westminster election results, where there is considerable blurring due to obvious tactical voting and withdrawal of particular parties’ candidates which presumably will not be repeated in the Assembly elections next year. The only seat where the 2010 votes give a clearly different outcome is Newry and Armagh, where a swing towards the Unionists (comparing 2010 votes with 2007) would mean the SDLP rather than the DUP losing out in a five-seat contest.
So, if the 2007 Assembly election had been run on five-seat rather than six-seat constituencies, I make the difference as follows:
| DUP | SF | UUP | SDLP | Alliance | Oth | |
| Seats really won in 2007 | 36 | 28 | 18 | 16 | 7 | 3 |
| Notional 5-seat constituency seats | 30 or 31 | 25/26/27 | 13 or 14 | 10 or 11 | 6 or 7 | 3 |
| Change | -6 | -1/-2/-3 | -4 or -5 | -5 or -6 | 0 or -1 | 0 |
| % seats really won in 2007 | 33.3% | 25.9% | 16.7% | 14.8% | 6.5% | 2.8% |
| % seats notionally won | 33.3% or 34.4% | 27.8%/28.9%/30.0% | 14.4% or 15.6% | 11.1% or 12.2% | 6.7% or 7.8% | 3.3% |
| difference | 0 or +1.1% | +1.9%/+3.0%/+4.1% | -2.2% or -1.1% | -3.7% or -2.6% | +0.2% or +1.3% | +0.6% |
Of course, all of this is more than a little theoretical. The votes cast in next year’s Assembly election, never mind the first election under the proposed new arrangements in 2015, will be different from those cast in 2007 or 2010. And in any case we will be in a totally different ball game with respect to the constituency boundaries; the shift from the current 18 Westminster seats to 15 is pretty certain, but any shift from six-seaters to five-seaters from the Assembly is highly theoretical, and would require at least the DUP and SF to agree on it and probably at least grudging acquiescence from the other parties. But I think the basic lines set out above – that such changes will affect either the tallest poppies, or the more vulnerable party in the smaller bloc – are sound, and so it seems to me a fair conclusion that Peter Robinson’s proposals will do the DUP no relative harm, will be bad news for the UUP and SDLP, and ironically may actually benefit Sinn Féin most.
I greatly enjoyed the first edition of this book when I read it two years ago, and the second edition is even better. To the penetrating insights and lucid descriptions of the earlier version, there are added a couple of extra chapters at the beginning looking at the relationship of the Old English nobles of Ireland to the Yorkist v Lancaster/Tudor struggles in the other parts of the realm – I had not really grasped it, but the Fitzgeralds (earls of Kildare and Desmond) were basically Yorkist (Lambert Simnel was crowned as King Richard IV in Christ Church cathedral in Dublin) while the Butler easrls of Ormond were basically Lancastrians and then Tudor supporters. This balance was upset by Henry VII’s partnership with the Earl of Kildare once the Simnel unpleasantness was over, but their sons fell out in 1534. The rivalry between the two families continues through to Elizabeth’s court, where the Fitzgeralds were aligned with the Duke of Norfolk and the Butlers with Essex.
Ellis sticks to his original conclusion, that the “surrender and regrant” policy probably could have worked given time, but Henry VIII lost interest, and from then on the question became one of how much money and how many soldiers to throw at the Irish wars. (In the course of the 1590s, for instance, 3% of the total population of Wales had been conscripted to fight in Ireland.) Lots more interesting background also on the perpetual lack of money of the Irish government institutions, and on the court system (though that was not quite as clear as I needed it to be), and many more tips for future and wider reading.
9 October 2009: death of Barry Letts, producer of Who from Doctor Who and the Silurians (1970) to Robot (1974-75), director of Enemy of the World (1967-68) and The Android Invasion (1975), writer of The Dæmons (1972).
9 October 1963: filming starts on the eventually broadcast version of the first ever episode, “An Unearthly Child”.
9 October 1965: broadcast of Mission to the Unknown, the only episode of Who where no member of the regular cast appears; Marc Cory discovers the Daleks’ plan and tries to send a message back to Earth before he is killed.
9 October 1976: broadcast of episode 2 of The Hand of Fear. Sarah is rescued from the nuclear reactor, but the mysterious stone hand has other people it can control…
8 October 1966: broadcast of first episode of The Tenth Planet. The Tardis lands at the South Pole and the Doctor, Ben and Polly are apprehended by the staff of the base; and the Cybermen arrive.
8 October 1977: broadcast of second episode of The Invisible Enemy. First appearance of K-9!!! The Doctor and Leela travel to the Bi-Al research centre in the asteroid belt, get themselves cloned, miniaturised and injected into the Doctor’s brain.
8 October 2007: broadcast of second episode of Eye of the Gorgon. Much running around with secret corridors and finally using a mirror to turn the Gorgon’s power on itself, and transform Maria’s father back to his usual self.
broadcast anniversaries
7 October 1967: broadcast of second episode of The Abominable Snowmen. The Doctor persuades the monks and Travers that he does not control the Yeti; but the control sphere that they have acquired comes to life…
7 October 1978: broadcast of second episode of The Pirate Planet. The Doctor and Romana realise the true nature of Xanak, ie that it is in fact a pirate planet.
i) births and deaths
6 October 1997: death of Adrienne Hill, who played the short-lived Katarina, a companion of the First Doctor, in the last episode of The Myth Makers and the first few episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan in 1965.
ii) broadcast and publication anniversaries
6 October 1979: broadcast of second episode of City of Death. ‘What a wonderful butler! He’s so violent! … You’re a very beautiful woman, probably.’ Kerensky’s time machine and the fake Mona Lisas.
6 October 1994: publication of The Age of Chaos, a Sixth Doctor graphic novel. I don’t usually mark publication dates of any kind here, but this one is particularly noteworthy in that it was actually written by Colin Baker. I reviewed it here.
6 October 2008: broadcast of part 1 of Day of the Clown. Sarah and Luke’s new neighbour Rani Chandra is being stalked by sinister clowns; and it turns out that the real Pied Piper is responsible…
Excellent novel of the Vietnam War, with gruelling descriptions of the violence and despair of the ordinary soldiers put in harm’s way by their officers and their government (especially if they were not white). Not much about the Vietnamese though.
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5 October 1916: birth of of Ronald Leigh-Hunt, who played Commander Julian Radnor in The Seeds of Death (1969) and Commander Stevenson in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975).
5 October 1968: broadcast of fourth episode of The Mind Robber. This is the one with the glorious fight between Zoe and the Karkus. Then the Tardis crew meet the Master of the Land of fiction, and Jamie and Zoe are threatened with being squashed inside a giant book…
5 October 1987: broadcast of first episode of Paradise Towers. Mel is looking for the swimming pool, and the Doctor is hailed as the Great Architect just before Richard Briers decides to have him killed.
5 October 1988: broadcast of first episode of Remembrance of the Daleks, the start of Season 25. Back at Coal Hill School in 1963, the Doctor and Ace are looking for the Hand of Omega, and Daleks can go up stairs!
4 October 1987: birth of Daniel Anthony, who plays Clyde Langer in the Sarah Jane Adventures (since 2007)
4 October 1975: broadcast of second episode of Planet of Evil. The Doctor finds the pool which is the interface between the universes of matter and anti-matter; and falls into it.
4 October 1976: broadcast of a Doctor Who segment of the children’s radio programme Exploration Earth, starring Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith exploring the geological history of Earth and defeating the Megron.
4 October 1980: broadcast of second episode of Meglos. The cactus now looks like the Doctor and steals the mystic Dodecahedron.
4 October 1986: broadcast of first episode of Mindwarp (ToaTL #5). On Thoros Beta, the Doctor and Peri encounter their old enemy Sil and the shouty shouty King Yrcanos. Yet again, the Doctor’s brain is under threat.
4 October 1989: broadcast of first episode of Ghost Light. The Doctor brings Ace to the house known as Gabriel Chase, several decades before she burns it down. Its inhabitants are very strange.
4 October 1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, as witnessed by the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny in the New Adventure First Frontier (1994)
A decent enough novel taking the Sixth Doctor and Peri to the phone phreaking and computer hacking culture of mid-80s America, the story told in first person by a transsexual Australian journalist. Ages ago I read Underground: Tales of hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier by Suzette Dreyfus which covers some of the same ground from an Australian perspective, which was really all I knew about it; Orman’s novel seems a fair reflection of what happens when aliens appear and semi-accidentally start to hack the human race. (The ‘Blue Box’ of the title is a hacking tool, not the Tardis.) Interesting characterisation of Peri, less so of the Doctor.
There are plenty of books that I’ve read for a second time; there are rather fewer that I’ve read more often. Apart from the inevitable Tolkien, here are half a dozen which I have returned to in the last two years:
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
This Immortal by Roger Zelazny
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Why yes, five of those six are SF classics. Are you surprised?
Day 02 – A book that you wish more people had read
Day 03 – Your favorite recent book
Day 04 – Your favorite book ever
Day 05 – A book you hate
Day 06 – Your favourite writer
Day 07 – A writer you don’t like
Day 08 – Your favourite work in translation
Day 09 – Best scene ever
Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 11 – A book that disappointed you
Day 12 – An book you’ve read more than twice
Day 13 – Favorite childhood book
Day 14 – Favorite male character
Day 15 – Favorite female character
Day 16 – Your guilty pleasure book
Day 17 – Favorite trilogy or tetralogy
Day 18 – Favorite book cover
Day 19 – Best ensemble of characters in a book
Day 20 – Favorite kiss or love scene
Day 21 – Favorite fictional romantic relationship
Day 22 – Favorite ending/climax
Day 23 – Most annoying character
Day 24 – Best quote
Day 25 – A book you plan on reading
Day 26 – OMG WTF? plot
Day 27 – Favourite non-mainstream writer
Day 28 – First book obsession
Day 29 – Current book obsession
Day 30 – Saddest character death
On the spur of the moment we have decided to watch an episode from each Doctor’s era until we decide it is bedtime. F has stipulated that it should be first episodes, apart from The Keys of Marinus #3 which is next in his personal sequence. I in turn will specify The Mind Robber #1 for Troughton. But I am agnostic about good first episodes for later Doctors to show an eleven-year-old who is a keen reader of Doctor Who Magazine but hasn’t seen that much Old Who. So, what do you think?
2 October 1932: birth of Gabriel Woolf, who played Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars (1975) and voiced the Beast in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit (2006). He also voiced Rossiter in the Big Finish Sixth Doctor audios Arrangements for War (2004) and Thicker Than Water (2005).
2 October 1965: broadcast of “The Exploding Planet”, fourth episode of the story we now call Galaxy 4. The Doctor and friends manage to repair the Rills’ spaceship and escape the Drahvins, who are left behind on the planet as it explodes.
2 October 1976: broadcast of first episode of The Hand of Fear. The Tardis lands in a quaryy which is playing a quarry. Sarah and the Doctor are caught in an explosion and Sarah picks up this mysterious hand that starts to take over her mind…
There will be no Whoniversaries tomorrow, at least not from me – couldn’t find anything interesting enough.
