There has been a fair amount of hype surrounding Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in this, Christopher Nolan’s second outing in the chair of the Batman franchise, but if there is a petition for Ledger to receive a posthumous Oscar then I will enthusiastically sign. The Australian’s performance takes Batman to a new, darker and existential level.

No mask or OTT stylism for Ledger’s creation. Just scruffy, caked, mouldy make up that emphasises a hideous scar and this portrayal is about as far as Jack Nicholson’s cartoon creation as you can get.

Christian Bale’s Batman has the right royal hump. Derided by some in Gotham City as a mere vigilante in comparison with squeaky clean DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), to add insult to injury the new city official is moving in on his girl, and when Dent declares war on the mob by indicting 526 suspects, the Joker is called in to restore the criminal balance.

This picture is totally different from the 1960’s Adam West creation and here Nolan has combined Satrean human condition analysis with stunning action sequences to produce the best film I have seen this year. My only concern is for a rather generous 12A certificate as there is some strongish violence and menacing themes. Allowing for the fact that you can assume kids two years younger get to see it, a 15 would have been more appropriate, as this is not a children’s film in the conventional superhero sense.

“I cannot exist without you”, the Joker tells Batman and therein lies the core question posed in this film. Can you have good without evil? Is this a necessary philosophical balance, and if you think about it Batman, and by extension all well-intentioned altruistic human actions are defined by in response to evil in the world.

 Heavy duty stuff, and clocking in at 152 minutes this is a lengthy picture, but in no way as a viewer do you feel the film to lose momentum with every scene and piece of dialogue integral and the cast deliver a superb experience with Heath Ledger rightly garnering the major plaudits.

This fixture was meant to involve Yorkshire, but in true ECB style it was called off with five minutes to go over a row involving the Tykes fielding Aseem Raffiq in the crucial group victory over Notts, who it turned out was ineligible.

I have no problem with Yorkshire being chucked out of the Competition as this farce sums up the Mickey mouse organisation abroad in the County scene, and if it makes things more professional in the long run, then fair enough.

What does irk me, and it shouldn’t as what do you expect, is the woefully buffoonish way by which matters progressed.

To know about the issue for a number of days and allow the fixture to get to within a whisker of starting is unforgivable, and if had been at the Riverside I would have been incandescent that the ECB showed such contempt for the fans. It is far from cheap to travel to away fixtures these days.

Then Notts were re instated, then they weren’t, then Durham were given a bye, but finally some sense was restored when Glamorgan as best third place side were invited to contest this Quarter Final.

It was just a fiver to get in, and free for kids with the gate money going to local charity, so well done to Durham for restoring some faith amongst the fans that the Clubs are not simply motivated by money and can do the right thing un prompted.

The ground was full and developed a good atmosphere, although the Geordies are absolutely silent when the bowler runs up, then exploding when a run is scored, or a dot ball is bowled depending on what Durham are doing.

Unlike us at Yorkshire, no credit at all is given to the opposition but there is no imaginative sledging either, and when I greeted Harmison’s introduction with a cry of “Wide!” there was no reaction at all. Not even when I cheered on the Glam with abandon did anyone raise a riposte. Most disappointing. They seem to take it all a bit seriously in the North East.

Glamorgan, for a variety of pointless reasons are my second County team and I have seen a good deal of them over the years. One thing I have always admired is that the core of the team is Welsh and the spirit in the dressing room is brilliant.

But they are in the doldrums big time at the moment, and with Hershelle Gibbs no longer at the Club they have no big time player to look to for a match winning performance.

There is no doubting the heart of the team, but when push came to shove the Glam just couldn’t deal with pressure situations, as despite pegging the hosts back fro the first 17 overs to just 117, three terrible overs from Wharf and the talented but raw Harris saw Durham smash 46 runs, Breese, Pollock and Liam Plunkett doing the damage.

There is no doubt that if Glamorgan sacked their whole staff en masse that only Harris, Powell and at a push Wallace would get contracts at any other Club. Too many mediocre players plus lack of cash for overseas stars at the top of their game mean that the Welsh County will be perennial strugglers.

The Glamorgan innings began with Grant being bowled of the very first ball, and once the promising partnership of Dalrymple and Wallace was broken, there was only one winner.

As for England…. Harmison looks quick and hungry, plus Plunkett is maturing into a fine young all rounder.

 How disheartened these two must have been by the selection of Pattinson, a view shared if the papers are to be believed by Michael Vaughan.   

As Parliament rises for the summer recess it’s hard not to feel a sense of sick inevitability regarding the next election, and whilst I am not in denial about how bad things really are, those who are already in the mindset of preparing for Opposition are jumping the gun in my opinion.

To say that the public are fed up with us is perhaps a more realistic viewpoint than to say that they are deeply angry, cross and sceptical about the Government being on their side, sentiments that were abroad during the dying days of the Major Government.

That’s not the case here at all, but we need to communicate much more effectively that Ministers do understand and care about the stresses and strains that afflict the electorate, and unfortunately Gordon Brown’s demeanour and way of going about things grate with the public, as evidenced by his idiotically ill thought out comment regarding food waste, uttered during the G8 Summit where naturally egg and chips ain’t going to be on the menu.

In some ways the Government is a victim of it’s own success having presided over record employment, steady growth, low inflation and interest rates allied to a record number of people in work. Factor in the massive successes in the NHS regarding waiting lists, record police numbers, falling crime and huge investments in our schools then any problems are going to be magnified in people’s minds.

The Tory years saw and ethos of cuts and low expectations from the electorate about what the Government could achieve for Society as a whole. We have changed that and are now rightly being held to account.

In any walk of life you can’t take all the glory and credit when things go well if you aren’t prepared to accept responsibility when events don’t go the way that they should do.

I was delighted by James Purnell’s radical initiative to reform welfare, and as a family reliant on benefits it’s good to see the Government doing something positive to encourage people back to work as I think the biggest positive thing in my life at the moment is a sense of purpose and pride that I get from voluntary work.

Purnell, and Alan Johnson at Health are driving reform and setting the agenda. They provide the template for other Ministers to follow.

Now comes the Big One. What are we going to do about Gordon?

I favour him staying in Office but with either Straw or Johnson in a beefed up Deputy PM role, and with Milburn, Clarke and Blunkett being brought back to the Cabinet table, not as a strategy of looking back but as a means to assure the public that there are people at the top with gravitas, experience and a sense of purpose to compare with the lightweight Tory alternative.

 In two years time it will be a straight fight between Labour values and experience over the powder puff Tory offer of change. All the micro stories that buffet the Government week by week will be put aside and I really believe that if we make sure that we really look like we are listening and acting on people’s concerns, then we can still win a fourth term.

What narks me most about this heavy defeat is it’s depressing inevitability, and the fact that even a two pence so called pundit like me could have called it this way.

The inertia within the batting line up resulting from a thumb sucking comfort zone mentality, results in the afflictions of the ‘Nineties being repeated here where a guy comes under pressure, produces a score and then phew, place secured for a few more games.

I exempt KP and Cook from this list, but Strauss and Bell are prime examples of people who only seem to do the business exceedingly sporadically.

The problems with the batting are exacerbated when Broad’s place seems to be determined by his ability to get runs at eight. This subconsciously releases a bit of pressure from the top and middle order who think that it is less important for them not to get out as there are guys below who will bale the side out.

I’m feeling miffed at the moment so my message to the selectors regarding the tail getting runs is this; bollocks. If you are relying on your number eight to get runs, you might as well pack up and go home.

Five batters, five bowlers and a wicket keeper. Capish?

If one of your bowlers, in this case Flintoff, and your keeper (Foster for me) can get big runs, then that’s a bonus. You should NOT be letting ability with the willow affect selection unless it’s too close to call between two candidates.

We have to take twenty wickets, that’s how it works in Test cricket so to heck with fiddling about, pick the best bowlers and keeper, batters in form and let’s see what happens…

We have the small matter of the Ashes this time next year so what I suggest must be taken with this in mind.

Michael Vaughan has been the best English Test skipper since Mike Brearley and the way he steered us to glory in 2005 ensures his place in cricket is secure, but there is no room for sentiment. If we are honest his batting has been horribly out of touch and he seems incapable of producing a big knock at a crucial time, and some of his dismissals have been frankly embarrassing, as if his eyes have failed to pick the line of the ball.

Therefore it time for him to go. His replacement should be Andrew Strauss who I feel would come alive again given the responsibility, which he coped with brilliantly in 2006 against Pakistan.

Starting Eleven v S. Africa Third Test.

Denley, Cook, Strauss©, Pietersen, Shah, Flintoff, Foster (WK), Sidebottom, Anderson, Tremlett, Panesar. 

 The urge to promote Adil Rashid MUST be resisted and whoever served the wine when Miller and Giles selected Pattinson should be traced and if need be, eliminated.

A 28-year-old roofer from Melbourne is plucked from Grade cricket to make his Pura Cup debut for Victoria, and just eleven First Class games later he finds himself lining up for the country he left behind at the age of five in the 2008 Headingley Test against South Africa.

Grimsby born Darren Pattinson’s story can be seen as the epitome of the romance of sport, and don’t get me wrong, I will be rooting for the guy to do the decent thing and continue the story with a match winning haul, but this selection raises a lot of awkward questions about how international and domestic English is run.

Thousands of pounds of investment have been ploughed into the development of Sajid Mahmood, Tim Bresnan, Graham Onions and most pertinently here Chris Tremlett, through the Academy Programme. Is the selection of Pattinson proof positive that this process has been a monumental waste of everyone’s time?

What does this pick tell us about the views of the selectors regarding the strength of the County Championship?

It tells this correspondent that Ashley Giles, Geoff Miller et al consider that a guy with six Pura Cup appearances obviously must be more worthy than players that have progressed via the domestic system because there is the belief that County cricket isn’t intense or competitive enough, ergo Aussie Shield cricket must be inherently better.

Pattinson is cited as a swing bowler. So if you take the Mallender horses for courses template, then there is a certain M.J. Hoggard who has been known to bowl the odd deviating delivery, especially to hefty, ponderous opening left handers having dismissed Graeme Smith four times in the last series. Then there is Mahmood who took six wickets in his only Leeds Test, Tim Bresnan, Onions or Jon Lewis from Gloucester.

And the leading wicket taker in the Championship? Stephen Harmison. He has taken being dropped on the chin, knuckled down and done the business for his Club.

If the selectors wanted an off the wall pick, how about Notts all rounder Samit Patel?  

 But, in common with all the others he has cut his teeth in the County Championship, which the selectors seem to view with contempt and disdain.  

A Blue Collar black American’s life in ‘Seventies L.A…

Normally the above sentence would conclude with “is brought to life”. Not a chance here.

This was the most pointless film I have ever seen bar non, despite it being bigged up by a bloke from the BFI who introduced it as a defining moment in black, or indeed any genre of Cinema.

He was a black American, so maybe it did resonate with him but, typically the audience was made up almost entirely of earnest, well meaning, right on Guardian readers. Err… yes, people like me.

 It’s a fine line between empathy for the plight of fellow humans and emotional tourism not followed up by actions, and I get the feeling that there are certain types of people who attend these sorts of things and actually are bored shitless, but when drinking the fair trade tea afterwards eulogise about what an “honest portrayal of life” we have just seen. A woman said this to me, but I was too polite to demure and admit the thing bored me to death, so much that I slept soundly for the final half hour.

The bloke went to work, hated it, shouted at his kids for not sticking up for each other in a fight, fiddled about with DIY on his kitchen floor, turned down a chance to earn a few bob as a get away driver, messed about with an engine and then dropped off the back of his pick up truck, was vaguely feeling maritally unfulfilled, and then went to bed.  

Maybe Killer of Sheep was the first time black people had experienced being portrayed as ordinary and with the same problems as their white compatriots, but the speaker (not necessarily the director because I don’t know his motivations), failed to acknowledge, as many have done since and will continue to do, that Class is the issue and that Malcolm X was right on the money when he said, “You can’t have Capitalism without racism”.

The over the top praise for this film is patronising, and reminisent of the reception given to Richard's all time favourite film, Ten Canoes.

On a totally different note, Mama Mia is a total musical tour de force, and if Meryl Streep doesn’t get nominated for Best Female Actor at the Oscars, then I’m a monkey’s Uncle.

The cheese element is taken as read by the director and as a result the sets and costumes are nothing special, which only serves to enhance the songs and the story, and not cause unnecessary distraction from what is a joyous and tremendously fun film which I thought was just brilliant, positive escapism at it’s best.

Streep was simply sensational in the lead part, driving the whole film with the energy of a woman forty years her junior, and her singing was first class as was the whole cast’s with one notable exception.

Why was Julie Walters in this film? She was utterly pointless to the extent that it annoyed me, which was a shame given how surprisingly good Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stelan Starsgard were.

Abba were brilliant. Great pop numbers crafted with the skill of classical composers at work, and this story brought some of the best songs ever written to exuberant life.

Wanted is a fantastic action movie, which must be experienced in a digital HD cinema, as all that is good about CGI is present in this brilliantly paced, yet strangely existential film.

The dark themes of revenge, self-esteem and morality are here, but not in a preaching, dare I say stereotypical Hollywood way. The story is outlined and you can make your own mind up about how far you want to reflect on what is presented, the story being a revenge of the nerd type affair.

But Wanted’s main appeal is the unbelievably good action, and one of the best car chases committed to celluloid in these hi tech times. 

 James McAvoy has been mentioned as a possible successor to David Tennant in Doctor Who, but on this, and recent showings such as the Last King of Scotland, he is set for mega Hollywood stardom.

Every time we leave this handily placed specialist food pub the conversation inevitably ends with, “…. Well, we won’t be going back there again!”, and a list of complaints is aired culminating in the only positive fact about the place; it has an indoor play area.

But for whatever reason, roughly eighteen or so months elapses and we end up back at Home Farm, this time the inclement weather eliminated the impressive new establishment at Melton, the Sand Piper and so it came to pass…

The two for £9 on adult meals before half 6 was the clincher this time, until a perusal of the menu unveiled that this excluded anything tempting and was in fact a list of the stuff such as veggie lasagne and crap that no one really likes, or the food eaten when on a pretend diet.

You pay in advance here, and as a result you have no leverage when the service is awful, as it always is because they don’t have enough staff as a matter of policy it would seem.

We waited an eternity, which isn’t a problem if you have kids due to the play area, but forty minutes seems to be the average for the starter, followed by a further twenty minutes minimum for the mains.

I had a mixed grill which included two burnt and stale sausages, one could have been used to inflict injury on someone it was so hard.

And it was extremely luke warm, but having failed in my quest for a spoon for Conor and a ten-minute wait for ketchup, I just couldn’t be bothered to ask for a warm up as I had something to do a week on Tuesday.

Everyone chuntered about something, from the kids meals being wrong to missing ice cream, but when a sweet natured young waitress asked us if all was well, we concurred as saying something would have felt like kicking a puppy.

 How terribly British of us. I wonder whether matters will have improved in eighteen months or so. I wouldn’t bank on it….

“I confess to Almighty God, and to you my Brothers and Sisters that I did purchase gratuitously, and with malfeant intent the following vinyl records in the mid ‘Eighties. Duran “Notorious”, A-Ha “Hunting High and Low”, Spandau Ballet “To Cut a Long Story Short” (12” format), and most shamefully and without any mitigation being offered by this defendant; Roger Daltrey “Under a Raging Moon””.

Actually as Crimes Against Music go it’s not a really bad charge sheet. I have a weakness for pop. It’s longstanding. But I defy anyone to argue that the Cathy Dennis penned hit for Kylie Minogue “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” isn't three minutes of pure, unadulterated genius. Musical gold. And Hanson’s “Um Bop” which Phil Jupitas said was the sound of the little one’s balls dropping, a joke I repeated to my 1996 vintage Year 9 Class, an indiscretion only bettered by an off the cuff quip about Monica Lewinsky and some tippex.

The reason for this confession aired on Sky Three last Sunday morning. “Songbook” is a show where Will Hodgkinson, a likable budding muso with an endearing awe of his subjects, interviews a singer songwriter who explains with a guitar how particular songs came to be written, and then performs them acoustically.

Gary Kemp was first up, and whilst I absolutely loath “True”, and find it as guilty as Chris de Burgh’s abysmal “Lady in Red” in the realms of crimes against music and general human decency, I always had a sneaking appreciation for some of Spandau Ballet’s output and admired Kemp’s musicianship.

This was sealed by the London wide boy’s full and unequivocal support for the Miners, putting his principles into practice by taking the band to Sheffield for a benefit gig in aid of the strikers.

It turns out that Kemp’s politics were shaped by non other than Trevor Huddleston who gave the then 10 year old a guitar and tape recorder on the condition that he write his own songs and play them to him.

This resulted from the Bishop being a governor at Kemp’s school and spotting his talent and commitment to music.

Top man, and what the Church of England should be doing, getting stuck in and being involved in working class communities instead of obsessing about people’s bedroom habits.

Kemp spoke honestly about his upbringing, and what inspired him performing some of the old hits, which sounded very interesting in this context. But he proved why Tony Hadley was a very necessary member of the band. Kemp can’t sing a note.

The next show was just amazing telly. Captivating and spellbinding as Ian McCulloch told us the secrets behind some of the best music made by an Englishman in the ‘Eighties, performing “Rescue”, “The Killing Moon” and their brilliant 1995 comeback record, the amazingly evocative and haunting melody of “Nothing Ever Lasts Forever”.

McCulloch, like me, is technically blind and it was fascinating to hear him relate how this affected his musical development.

But he never let it hold him back and this show provided a reminder of why this band meant so much to me, and to countless others of our age group.

 McCulloch rates “Ocean Rain” as the best album ever made. It’s good to have self-belief. I had it at 11…

Six years on and Sam (Noel Clarke) is released from gaol having been convicted for the manslaughter of a black contemporary at the end of this film's prequel, the impressive commentary on inner city London youth, 2005’s Kidulthood.

 I was very enthused by the first pictures and felt that Clarke had made an important contribution to the debate about teenage, and particularly black male social exclusion, and illustrated the thesis, since validated by the Audit Office that the twin factors of socio economic status and whether your parents live together hinder and often destroy educational, and by extension life success.

But where Kidulthood was insightful, its bigger sibling was clichéd. Where Noel Clarke’s writing and direction were inspired, this film was laboured and where Kidulthood engaged the viewer in a roller coaster ride Adulthood was poorly paced and failed to draw me in for sustained periods.

Noel Clarke is a fine writer/actor/director but this film verged on self-indulgence, but given the woeful quality of the cast it’s perhaps unsurprising that he ended up carrying the thing almost single-handed.

His leading lady (Scarlett Alice Johnson) was wooden beyond belief, and her accent veered wildly between street patois and stage school cut glass Cheltenham Ladies College, in totally random ways.

One character was especially poor, and on scanning IMDB it transpires that Dabs was played by some wanna be gangsta rapper known as Plan B. He was absolutely hopeless and totally out of his depth.

Overall this film was a huge let down, with a weak story and a poor cast. Can anyone tell me what Danny Dyer’s cameo was all about? Pointless.

 Clarke is a major talent, and lets hope this is his Shane Meadows equivalent of the total stinker that was Once Upon a Time in the Midlands.

If this is your first David Peace novel, then you will love it as the gambits of repetition, mantra and leitmotiv are deployed by the author to create a taut, claustrophobic, seedy atmosphere leaving a thin film of human degradation all over the reader making you feel in need of a darn good wash.

Peace, like Irvine Welsh before him has a deeply disturbing ability to burrow his way into every nook and cranny of the worst parts of humanity and this made GB84 and the Damned United especially impressive works.

I felt like a real protagonist at the Miners Strike, and this book struck a massive chord within me, and the fictionalised account of Brian Clough’s stormy 44-day reign at Elland Road really evoked the times both in a footballing and social sense.

Delving into David Peace’s back catalogue of the so called “Yorkshire Noir” genre through the West Riding Quartet of books showed an author honing his skills which came together to produce GB84 and the Damned United, so I felt able to cut the guy a bit of slack reading the four books about the 1970’s underbelly of God’s Own County.

When I spied Tokyo Year Zero in the library I was like a kid at Christmas, beginning to read the thing in the bus station.

I admit to feeling badly let down, so this may cloud my judgement making this less than objective.

Hell, it’s a blog, not the London Book Review after all.

All the ingredients that drive Peace’s best work are present here. And how. This is the problem. Everything is done to death such as the narrative of a soldier, which requires you to follow it by jumping through masses of text and then going back over it.

Innovative in GB84. Here just bloody irritating.

In common with the West Riding books we are party to the investigation to a series of grubby murders in immediate post war Tokyo, and if I’m honest its just rehashed material placed in a different historical and geographical context.

The character of the Cop is pure Irvine Welsh’s Filth and just too reminiscent of previous Peace outings so I regret to report I knocked it on the head after 150 pages having lost the will to live a good 100 pages earlier.

 But if it is your intro to Peace then I refer the right honourable gentlemen to the answer I gave some moments ago.

When Kirk Yeaman crashed over the white wash with just four minutes left on the clock, the KC was rocking in anticipation of a well-deserved victory, the result of a barnstorming second half display and despite conceding some soft tries the Airlie Birds kept on going showing great heart and fortitude.

Earlier in the campaign an error such as that produced by Washbrook’s horribly mislaid pass which resulted in an impressive break away score from the jet propelled Wire wingman Penney, would have seen heads go down and a thrashing ensue.

Not so on Sunday. Sleeves were rolled up, the work rate was impressive and Hull FC controlled much of the game in awful slippery conditions by playing basic football. Take the tackle, play the ball and probe the opposition’s defence.

Warrington played true to form. Either brilliant flowing rugby replete with imaginative offloads and impressive movement at first receiver, or dreadful basic handling and powder puff defence. A similar effort to that witnessed at Craven Park earlier in the season when Wire contrived to nearly blow a six try advantage and were only saved from a catastrophic collapse with a last gasp drop goal to steal the points.

And last gasp it was here as Black and White hearts were broken with a score from Matt King right on the hooter, which Hicks converted with amazing, sang-froid as 11,000 throaty roars attempted to put him off.

We were all gutted, and the looks of disbelief were something to behold as we trudged out of the Stadium.

Hopefully we are saving the luck for the semi final, and judging by the performance turned in by Wakefield Trinity at Craven Park in front of the Sky cameras on Saturday night, we are going to need it by the shovelful.

An under whelming season has just taken a turn for the (even) worse by the shameful actions of Gareth Carvell who, despite signing a new contract yesterday after weeks of messing about hoping for a move, slapped in a transfer demand only this morning.

“I could have handled things better from my side”, the GB prop and World Cup hopeful told the Mail.

 Master of the understatement there me old mucker…..