Saturday:Typical BBCIt's another REPEATSo these must be the Type IV travel machines, then. Drone, Scientist, Strategist, Eternal (whatever that might mean) and Supreme.I've been putting off writing this review, using the election as an excuse and writing other, political, stuff because it turns out I've not really got a lot to say.So let's keep this short.It was great, like a sugar-rush, pressing all those fanboy buttons, bringing back the Daleks badder than ever, and... that's it, really. "The Power of the Daleks" is a terrific story, focusing on teh Daleks sinister cunning as much as their deathray weaponry; Doctor Who in World War II seems so natually Who-ish that it's almost a surprise that they only did it once in the first twenty-six years of the series, and then without any Nazis;...

Saturday:Hang on a minute! We thought the Big Fish people were doing "Song of the Space Whale"!Here's Daddy's review: They do say: "If voting changed anything, they'd drop you down a mile long chute into the belly of a space beast…" or something like that anyway.This is splatter-gun satire mixed with a punningly literal interpretation of "steampunk": literal in the sense of splicing the steam-age ocean-liner-gone-to-seed look of Starship UK (with its unorthodox and non-technological "engine") with the Sex Pistols. God here being the Doctor, saving the Queen and her loyal fascist regime of smilers and winders.The satire comes from the cynical use of the "voting booths" to cleanse the population of objectors by feeding them to the whale and in the blunt reminder that – even as heroic...

The veteran broadcaster on being the thinking man's crumpet, Harold Pinter's lover – and fighting the label 'voice of the old'Don't, a colleague advises ahead of me meeting Joan Bakewell, go heavy on "thinking man's crumpet" or Harold Pinter. Naturally, the first thing I tell her when we meet is that I've been advised not to mention these. "Thinking man's crumpet is 30 years out of date really, so I think we can consign that to . . ." she says, never quite telling me where it should be consigned. "But I don't mind you mentioning Harold. He's part of my past, everyone's past."I manage hardly to mention TMC – the term humorist/chauvinist (delete according to taste) Frank Muir applied to the sleek, dark-haired, mini-skirted Bakewell when she presented Late Night Line-Up in the 60s –...

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For 40 years Nancy Banks-Smith has delighted Guardian readers with her brilliant TV reviews. Her first editor Michael McNay recalls her early days in the job, and the likes of Sir David Attenborough and Lynda La Plante explain why they love her workNancy Banks-Smith left the Sun, which had just been bought by Rupert Murdoch and relaunched as a tabloid, to join the Guardian 40 years ago. She was the new star in a constellation that included the plummy but brilliant opera and drama critic Philip Hope-Wallace (old enough to have seen Pavlova dance, he once told me), and the sainted or at least knighted octogenarian Neville Cardus, who wrote his copy in longhand and had it delivered by taxi.Peter Preston, then features editor, had made it one of his first tasks to create the Guardian's...

From humble origins in the US rustbelt, the Weinsteins brought foreign and arthouse films to a huge American audienceIt was the story of two brothers who promoted concerts in the rustbelt town of Buffalo and dreamed of making it big in the movies.Bob and Harvey Weinstein went on to reshape Hollywood with their company Miramax, collecting armfuls of Oscars and launching the careers of some of the most influential names in American cinema, including the directors Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh and Kevin Smith, bringing independent cinema to a wider audience. They sold Miramax to Walt Disney but remained at the helm for more than a decade before chaffing at the corporate bit, falling victim to their own hubris with a slate of big budgets films and quitting in 2005.Then, this week, the...

Business dragons, fitness trainers, psychologists, philosophers, style consultants, sex experts… Thirty gurus present bright ideas to help you make the most of 2010STEVE BENBOW ON KEEPING BEES IN THE CITYEinstein is supposed to have said: "If we lose bees then humanity falls to its knees." Whether or not the great man actually said it, the debt we owe these tireless pollinators was pulled sharply into focus last year as a global decline in bee populations became one of the 2009's biggest environmental stories. It was the year of the film The Vanishing of the Bees and the British Beekeepers' Association marched on parliament. This year, however, is all about our response. And many of us have been left wondering if we could help by becoming bee keepers ourselves, even those of us who are...

Precious, the story of an obese and abused black teenager, is the year's most reviled as well as praised film in America. But director Lee Daniels is used to trouble, he tells Gaby Wood. He grew up gay on the streets of Philadelphia, after all, and is drawn to the most disturbing truths. That'll be why he's heading to America's Deep South for his next film…For the past month, one particular actress has filled American movie screens and visited American minds. She is obese and very dark-skinned, and the character she plays – a 16-year-old illiterate girl from Harlem who is abused by her mother and pregnant by her father for the second time – has been dealt one of the worst hands society has to offer. Yet what's most often said about Gabourey Sidibe – in this Aniston-adoring,...

Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished novella, The Original of Laura, is being published despite the author's instructions that it be destroyed after his death. Martin Amis confronts the tortuous questions posed by a genius in declineLanguage leads a double life – and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs (LOOK LEFT), and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form – as the stuff of patterned artifice. Most writers, I think, would want to go along with Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), when he reminisced in 1974:". . . I regarded Paris, with its gray-toned days and charcoal nights, merely as the chance setting for the most authentic and faithful...

• Ferguson highlights striker as City's 'best player'• Carlos Tevez's potential return not an issueSir Alex Ferguson is unconcerned whether Carlos Tevez recovers from a knee injury in time to face Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday. He is more pleased that the player he identifies as City's biggest threat, Emmanuel Adebayor, is suspended.While Tevez's move from United to City created controversy, Adebayor has scored four goals in as many league matches. His ban for last weekend's stamp on Robin van Persie means he will be consigned to the sidelines."I am not bothered whether Tevez plays or not – Manchester City's best player won't be playing," said Ferguson. "Adebayor is their star player, there is no question about that. He has scored in every game so far."Ferguson...

Keith Floyd, cook, restaurateur and presenter of TV cookery and food programmes, died on 14 September 2009. He was 65. Born near Reading in the middle of the Second World War, he spent his early years in the West Country, as the Daily Telegraph describes: Keith Floyd was born on December 28 1943 and grew up in Somerset, the son of a meter repairman for the electricity board. It was, he recorded, a very happy rural childhood during which he learned his mother’s great love of cookery. By diligent saving, his parents managed to pay for him to attend the local public school – Wellington College [sic], though it had no connection to its more famous Berkshire namesake [other obituaries correctly identify the school Floyd attended as Wellington School]. His head boy was Jeffrey Archer....

ToryDiary: Labour's latest salvo in the NHS "debate" is pathetic and smacks of desperationSyed Kamall MEP on Platform: How tomorrow's African leaders think a Conservative Government could usefully spend its international aid budgetSeats and Candidates Diary of a PPC: Alan Wright hits the ground running in his first full week as PPC for Hartlepool Lewis Robinson in Local Government: How Southwark Tories are punching above their weight WATCH: Lord Howell tells the Royal Commonwealth Society that the Commonwealth is underfunded and under-appreciatedLISTEN: Tim Montgomerie and Dr Tim Bale discuss whether the Conservative Party has changed under David Cameron on last night's Westminster Hour More on Conservative plans to overhaul the system of exams and league tables"An overhaul of school...

Jeff Koons is a mega-artist, rivalled only by Damien Hirst in commercial success and fame. He is also underrated as a fantastic chronicler of the modern world. As a major new exhibition opens in London, he talks to Jonathan JonesIt is 1988 and Michael Jackson sits surrounded by golden flowers, in golden clothes, hugging close to him his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles. People walk around him and gawp. They don't know if they should laugh or feel creeped out or simply admire an innocent homage to genius.This porcelain sculpture created by Jeff Koons was part of a series that raised him from being an artist known only by other artists to a celebrity in his own right. The series called Banality brought him the fame he had craved through the 1980s, since he first came from Pennsylvania to New York...

Stars line up to pay tribute to strikers as a new movie seals the UK film industry's love affair with the working classes, reports Vanessa ThorpeWhen the women who led the strikers at the Dagenham Ford plant marched on Westminster in 1968 they carried a banner with the words "We want sexual equality". Unfortunately, it had not unfurled and read simply "We want sex". The wolf whistles and car horns that supported them en route cheered them on nonetheless.Now the true story of those crusading workers is to become a film starring some of Britain's leading acting talents. Sally Hawkins, who won a Golden Globe for her lead role in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky this year, is to play Rita, the ringleader of the group, with Bob Hoskins, former Bond girl Rosamund Pike and Andrea Riseborough, star of...

This one's quite a whopper, folks. Watch out for the previously unblogged material, most notably the details about a letter from The Sun to the PCC. This is not a letter that I write lightly, and I regret having to write it as an open letter to a man I regard to be both sensible and honourable. If you're a long-time reader and would like to help me get my point/case across, you could write a MUCH SHORTER email/letter to Private Eye, pointing out that I haven't actually boiled any bunnies... that you're aware of. Dear Ian, First, please excuse my writing this as an open letter; I have always regarded you to be an upstanding individual who won't stand for bullshit or injustice, but I have been let down by quite a few people lately, and don't feel much like taking chances today. My...

ToryDiary: 'UKIP have completely wasted their big opportunity'Mark Wallace on Local government: David Cameron will force Town Hall Fat Cats to declare their payStar Chamber: "You can cut public spending if you really want to" says Boris Michael Brown on Platform: How I was launched into Parliament thirty years ago todayAfter voting for Boris, Tracey Emin set to vote for David Cameron+ Scottish rugby star pledges £100,000 to Tories "Tracey Emin, the enfant terrible of the Britart movement and long-term Labour voter, is poised to switch to the Conservatives at the next general election... Although she did not vote at the 2005 general election, Emin had previously always backed Labour. This weekend she attacked Gordon Brown’s government for not showing enough “pride” in the arts...

ToryDiary: David Cameron has succeeded in broadening the party donor base (to a point)Rupert Matthews on Platform: UKIP is out of its depth as a political party and its MEPs fail to represent the British peopleLeah Fraser in Seats and Candidates: How I am "love-bombing" Liberal Democrats in WallaseyLocal Government: Cllr Jim Harker outlines the Conservative agenda for Northamptonshire being proposed at next month's county council elections Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh: Reform the flawed social housing system Yesterday's local by-election results Star Chamber: Scrap Regional Development AgenciesWATCH: Gordon Brown and David Cameron react to the votes on reforming MPs' allowances A viral attack on the big spending of Australian Prime Minister "Krazy" Kevin Rudd  David Cameron ponders...

ToryDiary: David Davis concludes that he cannot justify a wholesale upgrade of Trident, as he weighs into the debate about public spendingJonathan Munday on Platform: The next Conservative Government must introduce a Great Repeal ActSeats and Candidates:Former Lib Dem candidate Norsheen Bhatti: Why I quit the Lib Dems to join the Conservatives David Cameron will inherit a parliamentary party that cut its ideological teeth under the Iron Lady Local Government: Jessica Crowe: Scrutiny of councils is working BBC survey shows councillors' allowances rise There is a pothole every 120 yards in this country Star Chamber: End the Government Car ServiceWATCH: Sky News asks the question: are enough preparations being made to deal with swine flu?The Times characterises the new generation of...

ToryDiary: Ten reasons why Tory MEPs are 'delivering for Britain'Howard Flight on Platform: How we should regulate the UK's financial services industry Seats and candidates: Diary of a PPC: Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire)Local government: Is town twinning a good thing?Star Chamber: Cancellation of the A400M transport aircraft and the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FTSA) would save £3bn John Redwood identifies 17 EXISTING Tory spending cut commitments Coverage of David Cameron's "age of austerity speech" Britain will become the 'sick man of Europe' again unless debt crisis is dealt with, warns Cameron - Sky"In his gloomiest speech since taking over as Tory leader in 2005, Cameron said that the dire state of the public finances meant that he would be judged as prime minister by his...

A few years ago, the idea of hackers bringing the world to the brink of catastrophe was just a fun Hollywood plotline. Now, cyber-attacks are on the rise and Nato's top computer experts have gathered in a military base in Estonia to prepare cyberwar defencesBack in 1983, the world was a simpler place. The economy looked healthy, there were only four channels on the TV - and, if you believed Hollywood at least, the biggest threat to world security was a pimply teenager with a computer. Matthew Broderick's turn in the film WarGames, as a nerdy kid who accidentally blunders into a highly classified computer system that controls the US nuclear arsenal and proceeds to take the world to the brink of nuclear war, didn't win many awards. But it made its mark on millions of people around the world...

TwitLight is a Twitter Spotlight posted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Also have a look at all the previous TwitLights and you are more than welcome to take part, too! Good morning, good afternoon, good evening or good night and thanks for reading yet another TwitLight! Today’s TwitLight is about someone I’ve briefly mentioned in @ingridf’s TwitLight last week which you really should read if you haven’t done so already! But anyways, today it’s all about @akaSylvia and just like with many others I don’t even know where to begin! She speaks several languages, loves flying yet has a fear of landing and is a writer. Most importantly to many on Titter, however, she is responsible for Satscenes. Twitter Blog is the host of Saturday Scenes, photographs...

He grew up in Nazi Germany and went on to become the most beloved of children's authors. Today, he receives 10,000 fan letters a year. Emma Brockes meets of The Very Hungry Caterpillar's authorEric Carle, the rock star of children's literature, has cobalt-blue eyes, gently accented English, and braces holding up his trousers, which together make him seem like a character from fable; part Raymond Briggs' Father Christmas, part Pinocchio's father, Geppetto. His most famous book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has sold 30 million copies, bringing his total to roughly 88 million, a fact that, in his 80th year, still amazes him. Forty years after it was first published, The Very Hungry Caterpillar remains a bestseller, and although it's a quarter of a century since my dad last read it to me,...

‘NOLR History’ has made some very interesting observations on another post, important enough, I think, to be flagged up and made into a post of their own. [The New Apostolic Reformation] belief that “God is restoring the office of Apostles and Prophets.” … can be traced to the “1679 Prophecy” by the occult Christian Kabbalist sect called the Philadelphian Society. The Philadelphians believed in the Kabbalah doctrine of “Gilgul” or the Transmigration of souls. They believed that the souls of ancient Israel would reincarnate into their genetic descendants, which include to souls of the *original* apostles and prophets. Mike Bickle, Bob Weiner, John Wimber, Bill Hamon, Rick Joyner, C. Peter Wagner and all the many Latter Rain “Apostles and Prophets” get...

Crooked House is a trilogy of haunting tales written by, and starring, Mark Gatiss.It opens in the present day. Ben, a school teacher, has recently moved into a new house and found a door-knocker in his garden. The local museum curator identifies it as having once belonged to Geap Manor, a now-demolished Tudor mansion with a ghostly reputation. Intrigued, Ben asks if there are any juicy stories to be told, and the curator obliges. He begins to recount stories of the manor's curious past.It's 1786, and Joseph Bloxham Esq is a self-made man and something of a star in fashionable coffee-house society. But Bloxham has used his ill-gotten gains to buy Geap Manor, paying no heed to the warnings of Noakes and his friend, Duncalfe. When Bloxham starts to hear ghastly sounds in the newly installed...

Article by Miguel Hayworth from here “Patricia King’s Hermetics Examined There are many strange manifestations happening more than ever. What is happening in the churches today and how can this be explained? This page is to shed light on the subject. There is more to this woman then meets the eye, here are some things to consider in this description of what Patricia King is promoting. Hermetics Teaches: Considers humanity to be on a spiritual journey to return to a state of unity with the Divine; this is the Great Work of humankind. Holds that if we would attain to the Divine, we must aspire to the Divine; spiritual growth cannot be achieved without human effort Is polytheistic, yet ultimately monotheisitic (i.e., posits a multiplicity of Manifestations of the Divine Which emanate...

It is Books of the Year time again! Like I do every year, I've asked a number of friends and contributors to ReadySteadyBook to tell me which books impressed and moved them most over the last twelve months, regardless of whether the books concerned were published this year or not. The RSB Books of the Year 2008 symposium contributors are: Sacha Arnold, Derek Attridge, David Auerbach, Edward Champion, Richard Crary, Robin Durie, Scott Esposito, Rebecca Ford, Sarah Hesketh, Lars Iyer, Gabriel Josipovici, Robert Kelly, Charlotte Mandell, Tom McCarthy, China Miéville, Steve Mitchelmore, Nicholas Murray, Rodney Pybus, Lee Rourke, Anthony Rudolf, Leora Skokin-Smith, Dan Visel, Ken Worpole and also me! Thanks so much to everyone who contributed. *** Sacha Arnold is a...

Remember, remember the fifth of November!This week in this Sceptered Isle they will commemorate on Bonfire Night, the 5th November, the 403rd Anniversary of Guy Fawkes and friend’s unsuccessful experiment in direct democracy. Some say Mr. Fawkes and Co. were the last people to enter the Houses of Parliament in Westminster with honest intentions. Bonfire Night is an annual celebration on the evening of the 5th of November celebrating the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the 5th of November 1605 in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London, England. It is primarily marked in the United Kingdom where it was compulsory, by Royal Decree, to celebrate the deliverance of the King until 1859.This tasteful commemoration...

The press are all over Madonna's recent interview in Q magazine where she "hits out at London's transport network".According to the Press Association: "The star criticised the congestion charge, the Tube and complained that traffic was worse than ever.Madonna, 49, often spotted cycling around the capital but also using chauffeur-driven limousines, told Q magazine: "I would make it so that young musicians, aspiring musicians wouldn't have to pay the congestion charge or pay taxes.""Will Ken Livingstone get my vote? No. The traffic in London is worse than ever now. All Red Ken wants is roadworks going on everywhere." She added: "Don't use The Tube; can't use the roads? No. I'll just have to walk I guess."Jesus wept, the reason she doesn't use the Tube is that she would get mobbed if she...

Yes, yes, we love the Tate, and the V&A; is a national treasure, but there’s more to London’s museum scene, you know. The city is full of offbeat spaces that will satisfy the most niche tastes: Devotees of sewing machines, hand fans (not people with hand fetishes but those fascinated by pleated cooling accessories) and even hot beverages will find a museum dedicated to their passion.Pollock’s Toy MuseumTucked away behind Goodge Street station, this museum gives new meaning to the words “hidden treasure”. Spread out over six cosy (British for tiny) rooms connected by narrow, creaking stairways, Pollock’s is like a doll’s house itself. The museum pays loving tribute to the toys and gewgaws that have entertained children across the world: the familiar rude visages of Punch and...

I have a ton of work to do, but I need to get something good up here. So, here's what I just read from the Star:[I]t is hard to admit that one was without love in the past. And yet -- love would not be the moving, gripping, the searing experience that it is if the moved, gripped, seared soul were not conscious of the fact that up to this moment it had not been moved nor gripped. Thus a shock was necessary before the self could become beloved soul. And the soul is ashamed of its former self, and that it did not, under its own power, break this spell in which it was confined. This is the shame which blocks the beloved mouth that wishes to make acknowledgment. The mouth has to acknowledge its past and still present weakness by wishing to acknowledge its already present and future bliss. And...