Adam Dykes and Danny Tickle inspired Hull FC to a third straight win and gave us the confidence that the team can go into the next Derby match in Cardiff with a real opportunity to regain City wide bragging rights after recent Robins domination of these fixtures.

The match started slowly and I fear that a repeat performance against one of the better sides in the competition would have seen Hull FC punished, but once Danny Tickle’s boot opened the scoring you could almost physically see the players growing in stature and want to take individual responsibility rather than looking elsewhere.

I will get slaughtered for saying this, but Lee Radford is precisely one of those players who should be leading from the front but is content to leave it to others. Not great captaincy material in my humble view.

Tickle’s penalty goal caused a casualty in the crowd as Conor jumped for joy, but doesn’t get the tip up bit about the seats, falling backwards and hurting his arm in best You’ve Been Framed style. But the well-known healing powers of Refreshers on five-year-old boys saved the day.

FC became far more direct in their running and more breaks in open play were created providing a platform for the flair players.

Dykes put Craig Hall over and then Danny Washbrook brushed off three tackles to go over the white wash only to see the Giants impressive scrum half, Luke Robinson score just before the break.

The visitors came out of the blocks like a train after half time, and FC had some defending to do until Tom Lee burst free with a powerful run to put Tickle in.

Two more scores sealed the game for the Black and Whites but beware. We need to start games with more vim otherwise the better teams will batter us, but overall I feel quietly confident going into the Cardiff weekend despite the Robin’s creditable display against Leeds on Friday night.

Hull FC: Tony, Byrne, Yeaman, Hall, Raynor, Washbrook, Dykes, Dowes, Berrigan, Cusack, Radford, Manu, Tickle.
Replacements: Thackray, Houghton, Burnett, Lee.

Att: 24,350

Thirty-year-old Primary School teacher Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is enjoying her life, work, and friends despite the attentions of bonkers driving instructor Scott (Eddie Marsen) and the sometimes harsh realities of contemporary London life.

For most of the film I was, once again the sole audience member and I wonder if the Vue will knock this 1pm Friday slot on the head.

Bafflingly a guy joined me twenty minutes into the film and left well before the end.

Maybe he was put off by the fact that a combination of a lidless coke, popcorn, my stick and the laces of my shoes contrived to make a mess of school outing proportions on my row.

Mike Leigh is a great writer and film maker and I confess to being an enormous fan of his work, Career Girls was repeated this week and a second viewing reminded me of what a little gem it really is.

Leigh tackles life as he sees it, and often this means the heavier side of the human condition is covered, Naked (1993) and Vera Drake (2004) spring readily to mind.

But then there is 1977’s Abigail’s Party in which Leigh uses humour to uncover the snobbery inherent in ‘Seventies Britain.

Happy Go Lucky is a very funny picture and if we use Mark Kermode’s barometer of five laugh out loud moments as a benchmark, then this film passes with flying colours.

Poppy is optimistic and bouncy in a Labrador sort of way, and this infuriates Scott, her driving instructor to the point of vein popping apoplexy as he rants on about how messed up Society really is in a diametrically opposed worldview to that of his pupil.

I liked this film a lot. It is easy to cynical, and God only knows there are a myriad of reasons why people end up bitter and twisted like Scott does, and sometimes the charge of naive can be laid at Poppy’s door, but she is street smart and sassy and her boundless positivism is a choice she has made, so good luck to her and all those out there like her. Standing up to be counted, refusing to be cowed in the face of life’s difficulties, never giving up, and ultimately making a real difference to people’s lives.

Life is for living and enjoying whilst recognising, as Poppy does that there are plenty worse off and they should be helped. There is a scene between Poppy and an unhappy boy in her class that resonated with me and I only hope that I dealt with such things 10% as well as she did.

So thank you to Mike Leigh for his uplifting, female-centric writing, Sally Hawkins for portraying all that is good in people and to Eddie Marsen as Scott for reminding us what can happen if you give in, are defeatist and allow cynical depression to rule.

 Mike Leigh, you little beauty.

Twenty-four years and four different CLPs. I have never known such anger and resentment towards the leadership of the Labour Party as I observed at our CLP meeting on Wednesday evening.

Members were incandescent with rage about the sheer cruelty meted out by Gordon Brown to the weakest and most vulnerable sections of our Society affected the 10p Tax Band abolition.

Like most Party meetings, much of our time is usually taken up with logistical matters, finance and the such like, but Wednesday saw the rawest political discussion I can remember since the Miners Strike. Not even Iraq caused this much anger, as there were some positive reasons for the invasion, anti Fascism being the main one.

But not now, not with this basic issue which defines who we are, common values and decency, but above all what the Labour party is for.

Speaker after speaker denounced Gordon and the mood turned from anger to a bleak resignation that this was (and I loathe this term) “a defining moment” in Brown’s Premiership.

Some theories were muted.

+ The Treasury officials mis briefed the Ministerial team as to the effects of the measure. This would confirm my suspicions that Gordon isn’t that bothered about the minutiae of Government and is in fact, a bit lazy.

+ Ministers realised what these proposals would do but were too scared to challenge Gordon for fear of being shouted down.

+ Brown was fully aware of what this stuff meant but thought that it is more important to help the Middle Class voters as the poor will never vote Tory. And anyway it’s their own fault for not being “hard working families”.

All the scenarios are bad, some worse than others.

Backbenchers have been craven in their approach to the issue as we all knew about this a year ago, and yet most voted it through without a second thought. It was only when they felt their seats were in danger due to the public outcry that they questioned what was happening.

But when the so-called rebels woke up to the fact that if they did take a principled stand and there was a vote to amend things, which could result in a change at the top, or in extremis an Election, they all fell into line.

MP’s pensions, perks and what have you come way above the needs of the poor and needy so it seems.

The compensation package is an absolute joke. A complete disgrace and Frank Field should hang his head in shame for agreeing to it.

Here are some excerpts form today’s Gruniard;

 “A report by the Social Market Foundation found that it would cost £4.5bn to "help all the groups in the chancellor's letter". This figure was estimated by Ian Mulheirn, the SMF's chief economist, who worked at the Treasury until recently.”

“A calculation by the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that only 2 million out of the 5.3 million families affected by the abolition of the 10p rate would be compensated by the chancellor's new package”

The package includes changes to the fuel package for over 65’s, and tinkering with the working tax credit system, neither which help us a single jot. And we won’t know the detail until the autumn by which time the Government will have got into another mess to eclipse this one.

The rebels bottled it, GB style when they realised voting down the abolition could affect them directly and this is the best example I can think of about turkeys not voting for Christmas.

We appointed a spokesperson and as a CLP we are putting in motion all means that we can to let the Prime Minister know just what this all means.

We await the Local Election results with a feeling of sick inevitability regarding the kicking the Labour party will deservedly take. Canvassing tomorrow in Hull should be a bundle of laughs.

What a bloody depressing and sorry mess this really is…

This brilliant series from the 70's is now being repeated on UKTV History.

It is set in the Second World War but is far from the stereotypical wartime drama. The heroes are flawed and the Germans shown in a more realistic light.

Clifford Rose plays the chilling Nazi Brussels Commandant brilliantly and his character could be seen by some as a caricature, but can people who order mass murder at the drop of a hat be portrayed sympathetically?

Terrance Hardiman and Michael Culver play Luftwaffe officers in charge of hunting downed Allied airman whilst trying to break up the escape line whose story forms the basis to the show.

Both are shown to be ordinary people stuck in an extraordinary situation, and the contempt that Brandt (Culver) has for his Gestapo superior is cleverly and subtlety done as Kessler is a fanatical ideologue whilst the airman is only involved because of circumstances, a situation that must have been familiar to millions of Germans who had no love for Hitler but had to fight for their country non the less.

This show can only enhance or understanding of the psychology of the war and un package the real feelings that people experienced through this, the darkest period in European history.

The plot revolves around "Lifeline" which is an evasion line for downed airmen run by Lisa (Jan Francis) and restaurant owner Albert (Bernard Hepton). The former is scarred by the death of her parents and wants to defeat the Nazis at seemingly all costs.

She is portrayed as ruthless and willing to take hard decisions for the greater good. An especially dark episode ends with the Candide owner, Albert, giving up two allied airmen to certain death in order to protect the line.

This is brilliant, well thought out drama and very thought provoking. We can all look at the German people and say it couldn't happen here, or at the Occupied Countries and say we would have been in the Resistance.

But Nazi domination was based on simple everyday slights to minorities that in themselves didn't seem OTT but produced an atmosphere of fear and the opportunity for ruthless or inadequate people to do their worst whilst people looked the other way or said, "It's not my problem”.

This is exactly the dynamic that allows (present tense) Sinn Fein/IRA to keep Nationalist areas under control and mean that real democracy and the rule of law are a sham in Northern Ireland, sacrificed at the altar of the so called “peace” process.

Six million don't die because the Nazi Elite thought it was a good idea. You have to make people complicit or at best make it so they are ambivalent to the fate of others or just plain scared, tactics used to devastating effect by Sinn Fein/IRA over the last thirty years.

This drama is for me the best thing broadcast by the BBC ever drama wise and I would put it up there with the Sopranos as it is just one of those shows where everything clicks into place.

Dark, atmospheric, Pinteresque spring to mind and its Belgian production values give the thing a Satrean existentialist feel.

There is a myth that telly was better in the 70's. It wasn’t. It was mostly terrible but with the odd absolute gem such as Secret Army and Denis Potter’s genius material. I wonder if these programmes would be made today due to ratings, which is the King.

 Thank God for HBO and US programme makers with brilliant serial dramas such as The Sopranos, Dexter, Jericho, Huff just to mention a few where an uncompromising approach is adopted by the makers who view the audience with respect rather than as stupid sponges, something which irks me about ITV especially.

Gordon Brown at last moved to recognise the furore in the Party and more importantly in the Country over the shocking decision to abolish the 10p rate of tax, which Brown himself introduced to help the poorest in Society, by saying that “I get it” about why people feel so angry and betrayed.

The Poll Tax was Thatcher’s unashamed gambit to redistribute wealth from the poor to the better off which is classic Tory philosophy and an exposition of exactly what they stand for.

Unfortunately for her she failed to recognise that the British people as a whole didn’t share her twisted selfish view that, “there is no such thing as Society”, and she was booted out as soon as the Cabinet and MPs realised that this would lose them the next Election.

It proved that the Tories have a very low view of the average person in the Street and that they imagine that voters sole concern is how much dosh they can receive from whoever is in power. That’s their default setting. People are out for what they can get and screw everyone else.

The Poll Tax proved that if the British people perceive a blatant injustice, then they simply won’t put up with it. Period.

And this seems to be the zeitgeist regarding the abolition of the ten pence band.

It is what it is; taking money off the poor to pay for a tax cut to benefit the Middle Class.

There is no other way of describing the measure which sees the basic rate cut to 20p, raised thresholds for the 40p band and all paid for by taking a total of £700 million out of the pockets of the poorest.

What happened at the time Gordon and his team were drawing up the 2007 Budget?

Was it a case of bad advice from the Civil Service regarding how many people would be affected and by how much?

Was it a case of delaying it for a year in order that any gale of protest would blow itself out?

Or was it a case of, “Well these people will never vote Tory, if they vote at all, so bugger ‘em?”

Dawn Primarilo is saying it’s too late to change course. What she means is that we can act as guarantors for Northern Wreck and the other irresponsible lenders that Gordon encouraged to act in such a crazy way, but we can’t find the money to right this wrong.

The sad truth is that the country is skint, largely due to poor stewardship form Brown whilst he was at the Treasury.

He had the enormous good luck to inherit a stable and growing economy from Ken Clarke, further record growth and receipts from tax and whilst the Tories did this at the expense of the poor and had no interest in Social Justice, Brown went spending mad and we all cheered him to the rafters.

Clarke himself pointed out that such a splurge was unsustainable, and we booed him out of court, but it looks like he was right all along, and in his leadership bid he suggested that Public Spending be reigned in to 40% of GDP in order to prevent a massive deficit and to make sure we were in good shape when the next icy blast came along.

I don’t really understand economics, but it seems to me that Gordon winged it, and we went along with it because of the Social Justice benefits without realising what the consequences really were.

Brown’s luck ran out, and now he is making the poor carry the can.

I get the impression that he never takes advice and panics when it goes wrong by doing a runner from the Public eye, fine when you are Chancellor but not now.

Gordon is threatening the backbenchers by making it a confidence issue, a tactic that makes John Major seem positively statesman like. They will fall into place because turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and they know that not even the Tories could mess this up if there were to be an Election.

 But this is a defining moment. We have lost our reputation for economic competency, and even worse we have shat on our own voters from a great height and sold the principles of the Party down the river.

A family trip to an idyllic lakeside setting is interrupted by the arrival of two violent sadists…

This is a shot for shot, line for line remake by the same director except the scenario is moved from Austria to the USA, and even the sets are identical which makes for a strange experience.

I saw the original about five years ago on TV and can say beyond shadow of a doubt that it is one of the bleakest and disturbing films one could ever see, and Haneke, I’m glad to say, resists all temptation for a more upbeat finale to appease the studio.

This film is a commentary on what can happen when people become totally amoral, and have had any sense of revulsion removed from their psyche just allowing pure evil to rule their actions and thoughts, taking pleasure from the base suffering of fellow humans.

As the original was in German it was hard not to make connections with the actions of those caught up in the madness of the Nazi Regime and the opportunities that it afforded for humanity to sink to it’s lowest of depths, especially as the two young sadists are on the face of it clean cut, well mannered and respectable with the ability to turn on and off their psychotic tendencies.

And this is how it must have been in the Nazi Era as men and women performed unspeakable acts of craven depravity whilst being family people and, post war, continuing fully functional and conventional members of Society.

For our times one only has to hear about what goes on in the Occupied Territories as an ostensibly Democratic Western Society (Israel), conducts the barbaric oppression of the Palestinians and those Israelis involved carry on normal lifestyles midst such chaos, seemingly unable, or unwilling to do something about it.

The violence in Funny Games is clinical and meted out with the minimum of fuss and this is what makes it so utterly chilling.

The fact is that such behaviour is completely and everyday occurrence for these two young men, as indeed on a different scale this is true of certain members of our Society.

Uncomfortable stuff but well worth exploring.

The photography is simple, and we have a number of single shots that go on for minutes at a time and prove very effective, showing that simplicity is often best when creating an ambience.

The cast produce an outstanding ensemble performance, but special mention must go to Naomi Watts as the wife and mother who witnesses the wanton destruction of her family for absolutely no reason other than as entertainment for these amoral young men.

 As a thriller the picture works fantastically, with good pace and construction, but it is as a timeless existential commentary that lifts Funny Games into the realms of being an excellent, bordering on great film. 

The term “Political Correctness” is seemingly always used pejoratively by the right wing gutter press and is usually followed by the words “gone mad”.  We are then regaled with a completely exaggerated, or even made up story about how some Labour run Council is oppressing people by stopping them celebrating Easter, or not allowing a nativity play in case it offends (generally) Muslim sensibilities.

The latter example always makes me laugh as, if you check out the Koran, Muslims are expected to believe in the Virgin Birth as literal truth whereas Roman Catholics aside, it’s optional within Christianity.

PC is usually deployed by the right wing brigade to scare people about the Left, and caricature progressive ideas.

But if you think about it, the best example of PC is the Local Government Act 1988 and it’s infamous Clause 28 which stated that teachers should on no account “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

So the Law, in best Stalinist terms directs teachers how to influence their pupils. How much more “Politically Correct” can you get?

Ther sheer base offensiveness of the sentiments expressed in Clause 28 sum up how it is the Tories, and not always the Left who want to indulge in thought control, Orwell style.

What it means is that I was meant to make my gay and lesbian pupils feel even more confused and worthless (the most common initial reactions to sexuality issues) by telling them that their feelings and lifestyle choice were beyond the pale? No way.

How many prosecutions resulted from Clause 28? Err, umm precisley none. In some ways that makes it worse, as the Clause was inserted purely for malfeasance. The Nasty Party at it’s best.

Why this preamble?

Because what I am about to relate, to some will constitute that dreaded PC label.

Babar the Elephant. Good old Babar.

He has attracted criticism from philosopher Ariel Dorfman who says, "In imagining the independence of the land of the elephants, Jean de Brunhoff anticipates, more than a decade before history forced Europe to put it into practice, the theory of neocolonialism”.

I can see Dorfman’s point, as the idea is that Babar is “civilised” by contact with Westerners and aims to promote such values in his own Kingdom.

But at the end of the day it’s a kid’s story about elephants, so I’m not going to into all that stuff about banning it and indeed Babar appears in one of Conor’s anthology books, and we have read and enjoyed it.

So, when he spied Babar’s Travels on the shelf at Hull Central Library, we got it down and began to read…

All is going swimmingly until Babar and his Queen, Celeste have balloon accident and end up on a (seemingly) deserted island.

They make camp and settle down for the night.

This is where it starts to get ugly.

Barbar and Celeste are rudely awakened by what the text describes as “wild savages”. Borderline, but what drives the thing into the realms of downright offensiveness is the illustrations, which evoke Boris Johnson’s description of black people as “grinning piccaninies with watermelon smiles”.

Charm less and quite the most witless portrayal of black people that you could conceive.

On the subject of Boris the Buffoon, the word “picaninny” was used by Enoch Powell in his infamous 1968 Rivers of Blood speech, something that Johnson is well aware of. Draw your own conclusions.

I understand that Babar was written in the ‘Thirties and context should be allowed for before we condemn writer Jean de Brunhoff as a racist, but could you imagine a remake of the Dam Busters with the dog’s name (the “N” word) remaining intact? Or how about a re launch for Agatha Christie’s Ten Little N+++++?

This edition of Babar was published by Egmont last year. No excuses. Everyone I have shown it to has been shocked by it, or at least can see how it would be offensive.

I showed the Librarian, who agreed with me and withdrew it from display, but when we went back three days hence, the book was again on the shelves.

Whilst not wanting to become Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, I feel a letter coming on…

I deliberately didn’t read any reviews of this film; I just wanted to take my son to see a movie, not get into a heavy-duty dissection of what or may not be the agenda of a kid’s film.

I’ve read the controversies surrounding the penguin film, is it or isn’t it Christian Fundamentalist propaganda, and my reaction is; “Get over it! It’s flippin film for crying out loud!”  

But… By the end of this film I was starting to get irate and feel like the writers were making some lame point about how Christians are an oppressed minority, and the Big Bad Atheist Lobby won’t believe in what they spout unless they have incontrovertible proof.

The basic plot is that Jim Carrey’s animated elephant Horton can hear a whole civilisation existing as a speck on a flower. He goes out of his way to protect them in the face of the scorn and disbelief of his peers.

The book, which I checked out in Waterstones, afterwards is a ten-minute read job, and I found it endearing.

But the movie is padded out and is about as subtle as a brick. Yes, we get it that you can’t see God. Yes, we get it about intelligent design. Blah, blah. Yawn.

I asked Conor if he enjoyed it. He said yes, mostly I suspect because of the well animated, slick and colourful production values, but when I asked him if it was funny he said; “Not much. Only a bit”.

Which surprised me as I thought a film voiced by Carrey and Steve Carrell would set out to be hilarious.

But even without my objections on propaganda grounds, it was just slow and unmemorable, padded out with stuff like the old Elephant On a Rope Bridge gag.

 Disappointing really would sum up my feelings on this film.