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If you like grand old architecture, check out the Central Library (newly reopened) and its beautiful reading room & the John Ryland's Library on Deansgate.

For food, Home Sweet Home in Northern Quarter does an excellent brunch-y style thing but is a little shoreditch for some. The best burgers in all the land can be found at Almost Famous (keep your byrons, your honest burgers and your five guys London).

If you like boardgames and the like, Fanboy 23 just up the road from Travelling Man is well kept, well organised and extremely well stocked.

With you entirely on that Indigo - the electoral system is badly broken. I can't believe that people campaigned against that referendum because 'it wasn't enough'. Some positive change is better than no positive change... and Labour really messed it up there. I get why the Tories will resist that forever but FPTP is an incredibly limiting system which makes voting an even more frustrating exercise than it would inherently be.

I am very happy that the London mayoral election uses SV and that small difference would still go a long way to improving our democracy. It would at least be an end to 'If you vote X you are wasting your vote", the explicit acknowledgement that the system is ****ed.

Tories taking the credit for the gay marriage bill* and avoiding any blame for Iraq** is the reason we can't have nice things.

*134 against vs 126 for, vs Labour's 217/22 and Lib's 44/4. So really I'd say it's taking credit for what Labour did.
**146 for and 3 against, though in this case it's simply that Labour couldn't have done it without them tho.

I liked the Lib Dems enough to vote for them in 2010. Compromise would have been one thing but the Dems rolled and surrendered where they didn't actively assist.

But that's not how politics works - oppositions can't push laws through, only Governments can. Gay Marriage would never have become law if the Tory Government hadn't support it. So whilst you note/criticise the Tory party for having a large proportion of homophobes...Cameron's Government clearly deserves credit for supporting the measure (i.e. drafting bill, championing the cause, allotting parliamentary time and allocating resources to implementation).

Likewise on Iraq. You can attack IDS as a blithering idiot who failed to hold Blair to account (unlike Milliband over Syria), but no matter how much the Tories supported the war, it would never have been considered if Blair hadn't have wanted British involvement.

Agree entirely, I am just amazed at how many people throw shit around but get away without anyone noticing the brown stuff on their hands. Cameron's government pushed through Gay marriage, but the Conservative party voted against it. And likewise (inversely) on Iraq. Blair's government pushed it through, but the tories voted for it.

Tories taking the credit for the gay marriage bill* and avoiding any blame for Iraq** is the reason we can't have nice things.

*134 against vs 126 for, vs Labour's 217/22 and Lib's 44/4. So really I'd say it's taking credit for what Labour did.
**146 for and 3 against, though in this case it's simply that Labour couldn't have done it without them tho.

I liked the Lib Dems enough to vote for them in 2010. Compromise would have been one thing but the Dems rolled and surrendered where they didn't actively assist.

Don't read the reviews....9/10

TOO LATE

[Happy Valley]

Happy Valley series 1. Hebden Bridge is my dream town and the place we want to live as soon as possible. So it's been very interesting to see the Calder Valley in a slightly different light Gripping, well acted stuff; reminded me a little of Fargo in its set-up of a kidnapping orchestrated by a small, bitter man but much darker and harder.

Oh, this explains so much

I was glancing through Lake of Fire while the Missus searched Orbital comics the other day. Looked reet good. I thoroughly enjoyed Dark Ages by Dan Abnett which was somewhat similiar in concept, but ended on a bit of a weird non-climax. Hopefully Lake of Fire will keep up the pace of what I saw in that first issue - will be adding it to my pull list I think.

It is bonkers, a lost classic from 2000. They go into the game Half-Life in the movie for example, wild stuff.

What

So my BVS viewing was broken into halves, because I can only stay in the bath for so long and more interesting things occupy me when I'm not lying still in cozy warm water (god bless ipads). Probably not the best way to watch a movie but honestly, did wonders for my patience with that steaming wreck of a movie...

Realise I am far behind the times on this but I could all too readily believe what I'd heard based on Man of Steel and lo, it did not disappoint in terms of disappointment. The worst part is that I liked elements - you could easily make a good movie with some of the things they threw in there. Or at least if you got rid of MOS you could do (make Superman an actual hero first rather than primarily a scary alien for instance). But here, all those good moments and scenes are unearned. They play on the ideas of heroism and the World's Finest whilst pissing all over those themes immediately beforehand.

Really, the only good scene was Batman in the warehouse (not including his strafing run) and Wonder Woman for about 5 seconds. Everything else was disjointed, cheap, and gloomy.

I am properly irritated when I think back on all those idiots who cried it was some sort of Marvel fanboy conspiracy. I am a total DC fanboy or at least, pre-nu52 I was. I watch the World's Finest animation at least once a year. I know the names of Kal-El's extended family. And this isn't about who is an authentic fanboy but saying, no sir, this is not Superman and it's barely, barely Batman. But my favourite thing about Superman (and Batman) is that they save people. And my favourite thing about Lex Luthor is that he is clever and cynical and uses society as a shield - not that he's the Joker meets Lovecraft (incidentally, Lex has never been portrayed well on the big screen. All of his plans are suicidal and rubbish, beyond the megalomania of the comics).

Really, Snyder's DCU is objectively not good. Not good movies, not good for actual DC fanboys who like superheroes for more than just OTT action. Unlike Marvel they are entirely unable to take several comic book stories and thread the best bits together to make an interesting movie.

I want a Superman reboot already.

[the content has always been with me in one form or another]

Heh, that's a good read. He has written another novel, not featuring Mr Django Zoom... Wolf Cries Man. Which has an interesting synopsis, quoted and given my emphasis and slight grammatical adjustment to avoid WALL OF TEXT (because you don't want to miss some of the stuff in here):

The writing for Wolf cries man started out in 1999 and the book in 2003, but the content has always been with me in one form or another. A separate piece of work entitled, a unique reality was merged with it in 2010.

A work that has developed over the years, Wolf cries man began its life as a few pages of scribbling, moving on to automatic writing and later to the product of thoughts derived from and linked to other levels of consciousness that are not remote or running alongside other levels, but are actually just one level with many levels running at a single point of observation that can be accessed at the same point of observation using thought energy, which literally means: Every level is happening now and there is no travelling involved. Wolf cries man was, is, and will forever be an observation.

As a child, I thought that God was external to me. As I grew, I questioned God existence. I asked: "If God is the ultimate creator then what created God?" The searching began and it was only after my total understanding and knowing of my solipsism, I came to know that I was the ultimate creator of my experience and I was the God I was searching for.

Sometimes, it's hard to see the wood for the trees - the searching ended and I became free. What once was a form of expression to the others I deemed as separate from me when Wolf Cries Man was born and developed, has turned into something that is simply Me, I, Us, We, God, creating the writers and the readers and the players and the actors with an ultimate goal of keeping the creator busy in observation and so, if I were to summarise Wolf Cries Man into a single sentence it would be: Wolf Cries Man is merely Jibber Jabber in a lonely God's game of hide-and-seek for one.

Amazing. Thanks Tharg, this is rather special.

Mr De Witt knocks it out of the park, but then Deadman strikes back with the lowly biro...

Any of youse around Manchester, Fanboy 23 had a fair few FFG/GW books and games in stock when I was there on Monday.

Yup!

Being dragged off by security services at Luton airport because he appeared in a Michael Winterbottom movie about Guantanamo made me realise our side is as crap at this intelligence stuff as the Iranians were when they believed that a man publicly announced he was a secret agent on The daily show (As featured in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewater_(film))