A Day in the Life

Movies, as some of you will know, are one of my abiding interests, and I have sometimes told of the movies I like, such as "The Third Man", "The Godfather (part 1 & 2)", "Apocalypse Now", "Raging Bull", "The Searchers", "Taxi Driver", "Le Fue Follet" and "Le Mepris". These films are, probably without exception, regarded as "good", if not "great" cinema. So, I thought, as I have nothing else to write about, why not, for once, go to the other end of the scale and look at movies which are regarded as being perhaps the worst...ever. It appears that one cannot do this without running into the figure of Ed Wood. Making films during the 1950s, Wood was a notoriously bad director and was responsible for such unbelievably laughable films as "Glen or Glenda" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space". Wood actually teamed up, also somewhat unbelievably, with the Hungarian actor Bela Lu...

Yesterday Stoke City Football Club played against Bolton in the semi-final of the F.A. Cup. And, wait for it, ladies and gentlemen... they won. Not only that, they won emphatically. The final score was 5-0 in favour of Stoke. This will mean that for the first time in the club's 148 year history, they will be appearing in the final of the F.A. Cup at Wembley Stadium in London in around a month's time, when they will play against Manchester City. The success of Stoke City has seemingly had a far-reaching effect. Not only are fans of the club beside themselves with joy (we were told by our local radio station that grown men actually cried after seeing the game), but it has given a whole uplift to the city in which I live. Even as a fan of Port Vale (a local, rival team), I myself can not help but be pleased by this inspiring victory. As one of the most socially and economically deprived areas of the country, living in Stoke-on-Trent can sometimes be, how can I say it, depressing...

A short while ago, ex-England and Yorkshire cricketer Geoff Boycott criticised the England all-rounder Michael Yardy for flying home from Sri Lanka as a result of depression. Boycott, the 108-Test veteran, is reported to have said: "He must have been reading my comments about his bowling. That must have upset him as it's obviously too much for him. He's not good enough at this level." When told that Yardy had quit due to illness, not loss of form, Boycott went on to remark: "I've always got picked, played good, so I've not been in the position where my quality of play has been poor and it's got to me mind-wise." Various mental health charities were, understandably, outraged by Boycott's remarks and Sane's Marjorie Wallace said: "It is wrong and old-fashioned to regard depression as a form of weakness, or a disguise for a lack of achievement. It takes courage to speak out as Michael has done." Indeed, Boycott's remarks, how...

If there's one thing that tends to rouse my indignation it's when those experiencing mental ill health (or, for that matter, any other form of illness) come to be regarded, because they have to claim benefits to survive, as lazy, or work-shy, or just plain scroungers. Recently, in our local paper, "The Sentinel", the journalist Martin Tideswell wrote an article entitled "Means-testing will sort genuine claimants from work-shy loafers". The article gave an example of one genuine case (a man suffering from motor neurone disease), but then went on to say that new measures being brought in by the government which will mean that everyone on incapacity benefit will be re-tested to assess their condition and whether they are fit to work will "force a few malingerers to get off their lazy backsides and earn a crust like the rest of us have to." Tideswell pointed to the genuinely worrying statistic that 19.1% of working-age people in Stoke-on-Trent were r...