Month: October 2004

We headed along to the Brighton Bloggers meet up last night and caught up with Jeremy, Jonathan and Andrew. Jeremy and his band Salter Cane were playing at the Hanbury Ballroom as part of Brighton Live week.

It was a free event organised by the Gilded Palace of Sin and was a really good evening. The first band on were Homescience – “An unashamed pop band of maximum jangle”, the second were Threewheeler – “a quartet making a totally unorthodox, utterly unique music” and finishing with Salter Cane – “an amalgam of NICK CAVE in gospel mode, WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY at their most dramatic, SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER’s lyrical darkness and the heaviness of JOY DIVISION”.

While Liverpool are getting on with it, we’re still talking about it: the latest survey in Brighton say 80% favour a smoking ban in the city (n=3700).

The government have pretty much ruled out a national ban for now, so this means Liverpool (and other councils) will need to ask Parliament to implement local laws. In the case of Liverpool, it’s the Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work Bill. I’ve not yet found the text of the bill, but it’ll probably be introduced as a Private Member’s Bill by the end of November.

According to the Times “many of England’s biggest cities and nearly 50 councils are lining up behind Liverpool to back a ban on smoking”. In fact, a join bill from the London boroughs will also be presented this year to allow any London borough to put in place a similar ban. With this sort of pressure surely there will eventually be national legislation.

For now, it’ll still take 12-18 months for the local laws to be passed. This might be one of those fax your mp moments.

It seems that there won’t be any European Brighton Bears games this season after a sponsor pulled out. Shame, I was looking forward to the odd Tuesday evening euro league match.

We went to see the Bears v Sharks match the other weekend at the Triangle, taking our 8 year old nephew with us – he seemed to really enjoy the whole occasion, so I suspect we’ll end up taking him to another game this season.

We went to see the Perrier Comedy Awards show in Brighton last night. It was compared by Adam Hills, and starred Will Hodgson (winner of the 2004 Best newcomer), Sarah Kendall (a nominee), Jackson’s Way (winner of the 2004 Perrier Comedy Award) and finished off with non-perrier nominee Marcus Brigstocke (who was filling in for Reginald D Hunter).

Jackson’s Way and Marcus Brigstocke were excellent, the other two didn’t seem to have the experience to cope with a gig in the Brighton Dome in front of 1000 people. Yet again, I found myself leaving a comedy show feeling that I don’t see half as much live comedy as I should.

Persuading people to vote seems to be a big thing in the US at the moment. First Michael Moore does his noodles for votes offer, and now votergasm are using sex pledges to boost voter turnout among young people, as well as promoting safe, consensual sex.

Last night we went to the Brighton Cafe Scientifique at Terraces Bar and Grill. Simon Singh was the guest speaker, all about the Big Bang. Despite there being a lot of people there, and the acoustics/lack of microphone making it hard to hear at times it was a very good talk, explaining the facts and theories in a really accessible manner – the way I wish I’d been taught science at school (rather than my physics teacher at senior school announcing that “as far as I’m concerned women are only here to give pleasure to me and give birth to my children and I don’t see why I should teach them physics”).

Overheard on the radio this morning, in relation to the meaning of life: “What if the hokey cokey really is all it’s about?”

BBC News have their Photographer of the Year: The Final going on at the moment. They received over 30,000 entries and there are now just 12 to vote on.

Brighton booze: The council have OKed 24-hour drinking, while the headline of the Argus is that the Sussex Police chief attacks 24-hour drinking.

The Argus headline is a little misleading, because the Sussex chief constable is actually against the sale of cheap alcohol, and would rather have tax income to help pay for the policing of binge drinking. That’s the same binge drinking that the council is hoping to control with the new 24-hour licensing.

The first licenses will come into effect late in 2005, so it looks like we’re in for an interesting, experimental, summer in 2006…