Sunday 22 June 2008

Writing a review

How to Write a Review


by , Jun 21, 2008

Are you mad about movies? Do you love to read the latest books? Do you have a season ticket for concerts or the ballet?

Do your market research. Study the publications you want to write for, which reviews they include, and the style, tone, and format of the reviews.

Make sure you have all the relevant pieces of information to identify what you are reviewing. Mention them at the beginning e.g. if it is a play, you will need the name of the play, the playwright, the theatre where it is being performed, and the dates that it is on. (But sometimes some of this information is given at the foot of the review.)
If it is a television programme, you will need the title, the television channel it was shown on, and the date and time of transmission. Tailor this information to the conventions normally used by your target publication.
How to Write Your Review
Begin by mentioning what you are reviewing without making it sound like the introduction to a school presentation: “I am reviewing Coronation Street which was on ITV on Friday 29th February at 7.30 p.m.”
See what sort of techniques the usual reviewers use. Try to incorporate the information in an attention-grabbing hook.
Adopt a tone that's suited to the publication you are aiming for - serious, flippant, humorous, witty - and make your review a similar length to ones which the publication usually prints.
Make Your Review Readable
Give enough detail to give your reader a brief idea of the content, without reproducing the entire show/play/book/ exhibition.
Give the review an angle - let the reader see why you chose to review this particular thing. Is it because it was terrible, shocking, exciting, original, unforgettable or exceptionally good? Give as much of your own personal response as the publication normally allows.
Illustrate any claims you make with examples, but remember you are aiming to inform, entertain and be thought-provoking. This is not a school or university essay!
Use original, striking language, and avoid clichés. Don't “state the obvious” or you'll turn your readers off straight away.
Make sure your spelling, grammar, and presentation are immaculate.
Give it a Proper Ending
End with a sentence summarising your conclusion - was the subject of the review worth watching/visiting/buying? Did it have certain strengths, but fall short in some way? Try to end your piece with a memorable phrase.

Ian McEwan


Ian McEwan: I despise militant Islam

By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:16PM BST 22/06/2008

The award-winning novelist Ian McEwan has launched an outspoken attack on militant Islam, accusing it of "wanting to create a society that I detest".


Ian McEwan has been criticised by the Muslim Council of Britain
The author said he "despises Islamism" because of its views on women and homosexuality.
But predicting a backlash against his comments, which were made in an Italian newspaper, he insisted he was not a racist.

The writer of Atonement and Enduring Love condemned religious hardliners as he defended his friend, the writer Martin Amis, against charges of racism.
Article continues
Amis was accused last year of being Islamaphobic after he said that "the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order".
In an essay written the day before the fifth anniversary of the bombing of New York's Twin Towers, the novelist suggested "strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan", preventing Muslims from travelling, and further down the road, deportation.
In The Age of Horrorism, Amis argued that fundamentalists had won the battle between Islam and Islamism.


McEwan, 60, said it was "logically absurd and morally unacceptable" that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist.


"As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.

"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on - we know it well."
McEwan recognised that similar views were held by some Christian hardliners in America.
"I find them equally absurd," he said. "I don't like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city, that's the difference."

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, criticised McEwan's defence of Amis.

"Mr McEwan is being rather disingenuous about his friend, Martin Amis's remarks. Of course you should be allowed to criticise the tenets of any religion. However, Amis went much further than that," he said.

"He was advocating that the Muslim community be made to suffer 'until it gets its own house in order'. And what sort of suffering did Amis have in mind? In his own words, 'Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children.'"

He added: "Those were clearly very bigoted remarks and the fact that McEwan prefers to whitewash them tells us much about his own views too."

Wednesday 11 June 2008

Houses ~ Falls much bigger!!

'House prices to fall until 2010': the options for buyers and sellers
Last Updated: 12:56am BST 11/06/2008
Page 1 of 2
Have your say Read comments
Homeowners are being warned to brace themselves for three years of falling house prices, writes Paul Farrow
There are signs that tens of thousands of borrowers are already being sucked into negative equity.
Ed Stansfield, at Capital Economics, said: "We had forecast price falls of 8 per cent this year and 10 per cent next year, but the 8 per cent figure is looking very conservative. It is now plausible that prices will fall by 15 per cent in 2008. When it comes to forecasting the direction of prices in 2010 it is a case of reasoning why prices won't fall further rather than the other way around. House prices falls tend to run in years not months."
Mortgage repossessions: how to hang on to your home
Ten tips to get the best price when you sell your home
Surviving negative equity
The gloomy prediction comes as the number of homeowners in danger of falling into negative equity begins to rise. More than 23,000 homeowners took out 100 per cent home loans in the past year – and it is highly likely they are already in negative territory.
Weighed down: homeowners need to be prepared for difficult times in the housing market
The number of houses changing hands has also "collapsed" to the lowest level in 30 years. The fall in sales far exceeds the depths of the last housing crash in the 1990s and is the lowest since records began in 1978. The average number of houses that estate agents sold in the past three months was 17.4 - almost a third lower than a year ago, says the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
Miles Shipside at Rightmove said that those that were still looking to sell were being totally unrealistic – new asking prices were, on average still higher than a year ago. "Sellers have to drop their asking price by at least 10 per cent," he said.
Last month, Hometrack, the property research company said that property values had fallen eight months in a row, while Nationwide and Halifax, the two largest mortgage lenders, confirmed that house prices are falling year-on-year.
House sales fall is steepest since the 1970s, says RICS
House prices: News, views and data
RICS UK housing market survey, May 2008 [PDF Format]
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We have canvassed the thoughts of some other leading experts on how far they see prices falling – and what they would do if they were a buyer or a seller during these difficult times.
How far can prices fall and has your forecast changed recently given the ongoing gloom and fall in consumer confidence?
Alun Powell, senior UK economist, HSBC "The recent run of weak housing market statistics, including the very low levels of mortgage approvals for house purchase and falling house prices, has led us to downgrade our forecasts for house price inflation. We now expect that by the end of this year, prices will be 10 per cent lower than they were at the end of 2007. The bigger question is what will happen to house prices in 2009. Our view is that a weakening economy will keep the housing market subdued."
Melanie Bien, director Savills Private Finance "The UK mainstream market will fall 8 per cent this year and 2 per cent in 2009 assuming liquidity pressures ease by the end of the year. The worst case scenario is a 10 per cent fall in average values in 2008 and a further 15 per cent in 2009 taking values back to 2004 levels for UK residential."
Ray Boulger, analyst at John Charcol, the mortgage broker "I have changed a little. I expect prices to fall by about 9 per cent this year but to be recovering by the second half of next year."
Marc Goldberg, head of residential sales, Hamptons International "We have seen prices fall by around 10-15 per cent so far, since the peak of 2007 and it is possible we will see another 5 per cent over the next few months – which will mean a 20 per cent drop since summer 2007."
What would you do if you were a buyer?
Melanie Bien: "If I were a buyer I would find a property I liked and then seriously haggle on the asking price. It's important in a housing market downturn that you don't pay more than you need to, nor overstretch yourself on the mortgage.
"If I were a buyer without a deposit of at least 5 per cent (preferably) or 10 per cent and no likelihood of assistance I would return to old-fashioned values and save for one. Because there is a downturn you won't risk being priced off the ladder while you save and it will widen your options, give you access to a greater number of mortgages at preferential rates."
Mark Goldberg: "Analyse prices carefully. Prices are 15 per cent off the peak of last summer and some vendors have taken advice from their agent on this and adjusted prices accordingly. However, others have ignored the recent changes in the market.
"Ask the agent why the vendor is moving. There are always people moving for genuine reasons and these people are more likely to be realistic than those just looking to cash in on an investment. It is a more relaxed proposition buying in a down-turn though, as buyers can, on the whole, secure the price they want."
Have your say
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Tuesday 10 June 2008

Dialect researchers given a 'canny load of chink' to sort 'pikeys' from 'chavs' in regional accents
By Andy McSmithFriday, 1 June 2007


If, in this age of instant nationwide communication, you think that regional dialects have died off in the UK, you must be a bit of a noggerhead (as they say in Somerset), or perhaps or a nizgul (from the Black Country), or you're a bit cakey (Staffordshire), or batchy (Essex), mazed (Devon and Somerset), niddy-noddy (Isle of Man), or just gormless (Yorkshire).
Researchers at Leeds University are sifting through a vast collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by a project run by the BBC, in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout the country.
So much information came back that the Arts and Humanities Research Council has awarded a team led by Sally Johnson, Professor of Linguistics and Phonetics at Leeds University, £460,000 to study it. Among thousands of items turned up by the BBC Voices project is the range of words the young use to insult one another.


How, for instance, do they describe someone who goes around dressed in a lot of cheap, trendy clothes and jewellery, someone like the singer Lily Allen, for example? The best-known insult thrown at such a person is "chav", which can be heard all across the south of England and has spread north.


But in the South-east, such a person may also be called a "pikey", a corruption of 'turnpike sailor', a derogatory name that used to be directed at gypsies.


Other regional insults, all given the same meaning, include "charva", a Romany word heard in Newcastle, "scally" on Merseyside, "ned" in southern Scotland, and "kev" - short for Kevin - around Birmingham.


One of Lily Allen's offences against sartorial standards was to be photographed in a dress and trainers - trainers as the universal word for footwear known as "pumps" in Yorkshire, "gutties" in Scotland, and "daps" if you're on the south coast. "These labels are perhaps more eloquent of the people who are using them, and their attitudes, than of the people they try to stick these labels on," Clive Upton, a member of the research team, said.
"There is a study to be done as to whether when somebody calls someone else a 'pikey' or a 'scally', the word means the same to the hearer as to the person using it. Some people might think of it as a style statement, others might hear something threatening.

"But while we are in academia studying these questions, the people who really know what is going on and the people who are really driving the language forward are the people who speak it."
Mr Upton, who is Professor of English at Leeds University, said that they were "very pleased" - and indeed, "well chuffed" - at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country, or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink"


The word on the street: dialects from around Britain


Northern Ireland
Foundered: cold, chilled
Hirple: hobble or walk with a limp or unevenly
Peasewisp: untidy heap
Scrake of dawn: very early
Yam: crying sound of a cat

Glasgow
Go-carry: piggy-back
Midgie men: bin men
Oaxter: armpit
Planked: hidden

Tyneside
Canny: something or someone good
Copper wife: policewoman
Hadaway/Howay: be gone
Snotter cloot: handkerchief
Wor: our

Liverpool
Backie: riding on the back of someone's bike
Delf: cups, saucers, plates
Exey cosher: newspaper street seller
Latchlifter: having enough money to go to the pub
Spondoolicks: money

Yorkshire
Ay oop/Ey oop: hello
Baht: without
Clarty: muddy
Happen, or 'appen: perhaps
Owt: anything
Black Country
Mardy: moody
Nizgul: stupid person
Ronk: horrible
Toy: a gentleman's neck tie

London
Russell Harty: party
North and South: mouth
Pete Tong: wrong
Leo Sayer: all dayer
Tom Cruise: booze
Boracic lint: skint
Lord Mayor: swear

Southern Counties
Allus: always
Bodger: careless worker
Swimey: sick, or faint
Twitten: narrow path or lane

Edinburgh
Gie's a schifter: let me have a go/look
Mawkit: dirty
Pure: solid, really difficult
Top gadgie: great guy
Somerset
Acker: friend
Lart: wooden flooring
Noggerhead: idiot
Pixie-led: simple minded or crazed
Scollared: taught

Mid-Wales
Chimook: chimney
Glat: hole in the hedge
Her's in a cank!: she is in a bad mood
Unty tump: mole hill

Wiltshire
Fuckling: tiresome
Galley-bagger: scarecrow
Loppity: to feel weak or out of sorts
Mucker a miser: Teg sheep

Norfolk
Bishy-barney-bee: ladybird
Dodman snail: Mawkin scarecrow

Another Pikey joke.......

Did you hear about the pikey who won the lottery?Apparently they're going to pay him with Travellers Cheques...

Sunday 8 June 2008

Gordon Brown ~ Good news and Bad news for Porridge

The good news, according to the Politics Home website, is that Brown’s unpopularity has finally “bottomed out”.

The bad news is that his approval ratings have flatlined, with 77% thinking he is doing a bad job.

At prime minister’s questions, he looked more miserable and lonely than ever. The talk among Labour MPs is doom-laden.

Could he have gone by Xmas?

Gordon Porridge ~ record breaker

Gordon Brown is breaking all the wrong kind of records.

Only John Major has hit a lower poll rating in office than Brown today. A recovery from here would make history.

With the first anniversary of his premiership still not upon us, Gordon Brown has set an unenviable record. He leads the most unpopular Labour government in polling history.
Jim Callaghan, in the Seventies, never fell below 30 per cent in the Gallup polls of his day. Harold Wilson's nadir was 28 per cent in 1968. Mr Brown's government is supported by just 26 per cent.
Only John Major, who slipped below 20 per cent, stands between Mr Brown and the wooden spoon for most unpopular government. It is hardly a comforting thought.

Gordon Porridge is full of oats

June 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party reached a record low in popularity ratings, a poll found, although the same survey showed public backing for his counter-terror proposals, a key government policy that faces a vote in Parliament this week.
An ICM Ltd. poll for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper published today gave the main opposition Conservative party a popularity ranking of 42 percent, while Labour scored 26 percent -- the lowest recorded rating for the party by the polling company. ICM interviewed 1,023 adults on June 4 and 5 and no margin of error was given.

Irish to vote NO NO NO NO YES

No camp 'gains' in Irish EU vote

Irish No campaigners seem to have gained ground
Irish and EU officials say they are confident the EU reform treaty will pass an Irish referendum despite a poll suggesting the No vote is surging.
A survey published by the Irish Times on Friday suggested 35% of people would vote No - more than twice the figure polled two weeks ago - against 30% Yes.
It is the first poll to put the Nos in the lead, ahead of Thursday's vote.
Ireland is the only country holding a referendum on the treaty. A No vote would throw the process into chaos.

Carol's Birthday on 30th May 2008


Tuesday 3 June 2008

Tories surge ahead in polls

The Conservative Party enjoys a 14-point lead over Labour, enough to give David Cameron an overall majority of 102, according to the latest poll by ComRes for The Independent.
It puts the Tories on 44 per cent, their highest rating since the company began polling for this newspaper in October 2006.
Labour is on 30 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 16 per cent.
Although Tory support has risen four points since our last ComRes survey five weeks ago, their lead over Labour remains the same because Labour is also up four points. Other parties appear to have been squeezed. The Liberal Democrats have dropped four points, and the smaller parties have fallen back by the same amount.

Monday 2 June 2008

Modern Jazz Quartet - Django

Incredible group from my youth.