Where to Get BBC Magazine Subscriptions in the USA
March 10, 2010 by jonathan
Filed under BBC, British Newspapers, british products
One of the great things about the BBC America shop is that they feature a lot of products that are hard to find in local stores. One product I’m really glad they offer are subscriptions to excellent BBC published magazine.
So, if you were wondering where to get a subscription of your favorite BBC magazines – look no further than the BBC America Shop for magazines.
Here’s a selection of my favorite BBC Magazines. BBC Knowledge is by far my favorite magazine as I love learning new things – so I’m glad to see you can buy a BBC Knowledge in America subscription here!
Pirate Radio – The Boat That Rocked DVD Differences Explained
March 9, 2010 by jonathan
Filed under British Movies, British Music, british products
We’ve written before about the travesty that is Pirate Radio – a recut of the excellent movie The Boat The Rocked. You can read all about the differences between the two here.
Now, the question is what will the DVD be like?
Well, John Rabon on the Brit Track mailing list did some research and found here – here’s his report on the Boat That Rocked/Pirate Radio DVD differences.
So, doing some research today on the Pirate Radio (aka The Boat that Rocked) US DVD release date–that is 4/13/10. The problem, though, if you’ve seen the original unedited TBTR version, is that the US DVD will be just like the US release of the film, which means there’s not separate extended edition or director’s cut on the DVD. You do, however, get the cut scenes as a DVD extra.
Some good news, if you own a Blu-Ray player, is that the Blu-Ray edition of The Boat that Rocked will play on US Blu-Ray players. Certain studios, including Universal, are kind enough to permit their Blu-Ray discs to be region-free. If you want to see the movie as it was originally meant to be, this is pretty much your only option right now.
Thanks John!
A Pint of Bitter: Michael Foot, 1913-2010; writer, minister, leader
I know I usually write about the political controversies and manoeuverings of the day: matters such as the taxes of Lord Ashcroft and the return of Labour in the polls do matter. But some things matter more, and I want to devote my words on this occasion entirely to the life and ideas of Michael Foot, who died this week aged 96. He was well known here in Britain as a politician from the 1950s to the 1980s, when he led the Labour Party, and as a writer. He’s a particularly English figure, less well known abroad: but no understanding of our politics especially since 1980 is complete without considering his career.
Michael Foot | Bob Naylor, CreativeCommons
Foot was born in Plymouth in 1913, into a family of Liberal Methodists, and the roundhead tradition of radical Christian dissent was a key influence on Foot – though he became a convinced atheist. His father was also an obsessive book buyer and reader, habits that rubbed thick on to young Michael, who steeped himself in the English romanticism of Byron and Shelley and who in later life wrote serious studies of Swift and H. G. Wells. He was an unusual, exceptionally literate and intellectual politician of a kind rarely seen. At Oxford he was first a left-wing Liberal, but became a socialist in the early 1930s. This was the time of the marked decline of the Liberal Party; socialism in all its forms had recently emerged, in Soviet Communism (which Foot rejected both then and throughout his life) and with the coming of Labour government in Britain in the 1920s. He was far from the first Liberal radical to join Labour, which must have seemed the “happening” party, as we’d now put it, for a young and passionate radical anxious for social justice, for peace and to oppose fascism.
Michael Foot in 1945 | Still from "The Way We Live" directed by Jill Craigie
He was a journalist for Tribune (for whom George Orwell also wrote, later) and then editor of the Evening Standard; during the war the short book Guilty Men, which he co-wrote in a few days with two colleagues, caused something of a sensation with its indictment of the pre-war appeasers – Chamberlain, Baldwin, Halifax and the rest. Then in 1945 he was elected to Parliament for Plymouth Devonport, which he held for ten years. During the 1950s Foot was a prominent “Bevanite”: a supporter of Aneurin (“Nye”) Bevan, the charismatic Welsh ex-miner and leader of the left who had established the National Health Service as health minister after the war but who had fallen out with the Labour leadership first over prescription charges, then the H-bomb. Foot was vehemently opposed to Britain’s adoption of nuclear weaponry and felt shocked and bewildered when Bevan famously drew back from outright unilateral disarmament in 1957. But he still revered his mentor; and when Bevan died in 1960, Foot re-entered Parliament at the resulting Ebbw Vale by-election. And used his time in opposition to write the first volume of his biography of the great man, arguably his most important literary work, completed in the early seventies after a period spent as Labour’s most prominent backbench critic under the first government of Harold Wilson.
Nye Bevan in 1954 | Associated Press
Foot then surprisingly embarked upon an career as an ultra-loyalist minister in the 1970s under Wilson and then Jim Callaghan, first as employment minister, then negotiating with the Liberals to keep the Labour government afloat. But it sank in the end; and in the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s rule, Labour turned sharply left – and began to tear itself apart. Tony Benn was the most prominent and controversial figure on the left, an austere, calculating figure, inspiring to some and sinister to others. The rise of Benn, and the resulting shift in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament and left-wing, anti-European policies enabled Foot to become leader. But he faced constant internal opposition from Benn who, having welcomed Foot’s leadership, tried to both use and destroy it, and to capture Labour for his own ends. To much of the moderate left, Labour was no longer home, and Foot failed to prevent some MPs leaving to form the Social Democratic Party, now long gone but which can be seen as a forerunner of Tony Blair’s “New Labour” vision. Foot had failed to keep Labour united: and it went down to its worst, most notorious defeat in the general election of 1983.
Tony Benn | Nice Logo, CreativeCommons
To his credit, Foot had successfully faced down Tony Benn and he started the campaign to root out “Militant”, an extraordinary Trotskyist sect that was attempting to take Labour over from within. I thought then, and still think that Foot was wrong on all the big issues in the 1980s. I now realise though that Labour’s wasted years were less his fault than the fault of others. I can see that Foot and Bevan had a good case in the 1950s against Britain’s testing and making the bomb. But the 1980s would have been the wrong time to adopt unilateral nuclear disarmament and remove US bases. The United States and NATO had adopted a tough stance to Moscow’s increasing militarism, and unilateral desertion of that strategy by Britain would at best helped Kremlin hardliners delay their own disarmament. On Europe, to withdraw immediately, less than a decade after our joining, after the voters had decided overwhelmingly to stay in and without consulting them further, would have been a foreign policy disaster. Yet it was Labour’s policy under Michael Foot.
Even so, I think he has important things to teach us. He consistently wanted international control of nuclear weapons, and their ultimate abolition – admirable aims, and in my view it is right for Britain to support Barack Obama now in his efforts to move us just a few short steps along that road. And perhaps now it is finally right for Britain to ask whether it is right to remain a nuclear weapons state. On Europe, all but a few on the Labour side have now abandoned Foot’s thinking, and I would certainly not argue for Euroscepticism. But he reminds us that Euroscepticism is not an intrinsically Conservative attitude and that liberal internationalism does not require support for all the works of Brussels. Michael Foot was a sturdy romantic whose passion and idealism deserve our respect, and whose writing will remain rightly admired. His was a very English strain of radicalism, and I don’t think it’s right to assume his ideas are dead. Foot’s thinking represents a strong underlying current of independence and dissent that you can still find among some Tories as well as in green, libertarian and anti-capitalist circles. I expect it to attach before long to some new great movement – and for Foot to be rediscovered and referenced in a generation to come. if you’d like to know more, listen to this excellent Radio 4 programme about his life.
Barring the death of some other political giant, normal service will be resumed next time.
Cool Doctor Who Merchandise From the BBC America Shop: Figures, T-Shirts, DVD’s and More
March 3, 2010 by jonathan
Filed under Anglophile Deals, Anglophile Gear, Doctor Who, british products
I was browsing the BBC America shop today and I found some really cool products I thought I’d share with you guys. I love Doctor Who and they have a great selection of Doctor Who merchandise. Here are my favorite Dr Who gifts.
If you’ve been wondering where to buy a real sonic screwdriver or a Tardis t-shirt – this list if for you! My favorite item on this list is the Doctor Who Tardis USB Hub – I’ve had one for a couple years now and it’s awesome!
Help Answering an Age Old Question: Is the Tube or a Taxi Cheaper?
March 3, 2010 by jonathan
Filed under Anglophile Reviews, British Travel, London, british products
When it comes to traveling around central London – tourist and locals alike have many options. Usually the Tube is the cheapest way to get around.
But in the days of rising Tube fares and the convenience of London Black Taxi Cabs – often one wonders, which is cheaper?
Well, as Apple likes to say, there’s an app for that.
The London Taxi Fare app is a great little tool. It will tell you how much a taxi will be between any two destinations in London. Not only that it uses GPS location tracking to let you know how much it would be to get from your exact spot to where you want to go. It also tells you how long the journey will take.
This would have been incredibly useful on our last trip to London.
The app is pretty cheap at only $.99! Well worth the money!
Check it out in iTunes here: 
