So we're back again for another dose of Kevin and his Castleford project. Last week we saw how the council and local community could clash and pull together, in one episode, to build a much needed bridge in the town. This week it's all about three public parks in the area, all with a distinctly different starting point and execution, and their apparent need to be revitalised after "Thatcher pulled the plug" on these spaces...as Mr McCloud puts it (I may paraphrase slightly).

The question you instinctively have going in to the program is just how much simply building public recreational space can help a community, especially with regard to crime and perception of crime. Unfortunately the program never really answers this, merely alluding to a drop in delinquency in certain areas. Perhaps the program never could answer this question, at least not before a full generational turn over to see the effects of a new set of children on an area they have no real ownership over.

But what was amazingly interesting was how different parts of this same town took to these ideas and ran with them, with very different solutions.

I'm not going to be long posting this, for those reading regularly I'm afraid that I can't guarantee a regular week of posting as work is particularly heavy at the moment...but for now see my thoughts on Monday's program Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan.

The program (first in a series of four) focused on the iconic bridge built at Castleford to connect an island just off the main town centre, affectionately known as duck island, to the rest of the town. Spanning almost 5 years the work was fairly fast but bureaucracy and division manages to bog down the task for the first 3 and a half of those years. Who was to blame, who saved the day?

It has to be done, I'm a big Batman fan and to overlook the chance to review this film would be...well...I wouldn't feel right, so here it is, like it or not. If you don't want to read someone else's opinion I would recommend Millennium Elephant's account, though be warned, there are spoilers. But then, there will also be spoilers in my review, so if you haven't seen it then perhaps you should check out some Politalks stuff that will be coming back soon.

The latest Politalks is here, remember that episode 7 and 8 will also be posted on a Tuesday due to other commitments. This week we've seen childish politics reach new highs and more than just a little bit of borrowing from others to try and get ahead in the polls. Also, more weighty content with a scathing analysis of the ever ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflict.Not work safe with transcript below.

Well this is a little later than usual given I had to rebuild my news on the site from backups, but it is here...unfortunately Gavin was too busy to provide a hand with this one so you'll have to do with my voice, which I've decided is slightly camper when digitalised than my counterpart! It's not work safe and due to the time I've not got links at the end like last week...transcript can be found when clicking "Continue Article..."

The next episode of Politalks is now here, with thanks to Gavin Whenman who will for the foreseeable future be partnering me on the project. Video below is probably NSFW!

I'm trying something new here, not sure if it's going to work as well as intended but here it is. Read more for the transcript of this movie.

The final part of my analysis of the issues raised by the "Big food fight" season on Channel 4. We've had a fortnight of being absolutely blitzed with potentially new knowledge about the welfare of the animals we eat, the quality of the food we eat, the effect it has on our health and the debates about who holds responsibility for changing all of these for the better. Now, with "The Truth About Food (pt 2)" that issue of corporate and governmental responsibility, along with our own need for some more common sense, is truly fleshed out.

The next big program in the food fight season that I was able to see (I must admit I've yet to watch the dispatches documentary that will probably round up this series of blogs, and missed a program about an extreme diet) features 18 unhealthy eaters. These are people addicted to junk food, to pepsi, and even those that don't even eat vegetables...at all. The reasons are varied, from liking what they eat in terms of taste all the way down to one saying there's not enough time to eat anything else. Along side them will be Jamie Oliver with his team to try and wise them up, a doctor, nutritionist and Gunther von Hagens, that creepy looking guy that cuts up dead bodies. Today it will be one guy who was 25 stone at his death for the main course.

The program went in to the main areas of why junk food is bad; sugar, salt, lack of fibre, cholesterol and fat. These five areas will be looked at for why they are bad, how our 18 bad eaters are falling into bad habits, and also what the best way to avoid and potentially reverse the effects are. All in all the program was very interesting, and despite the multitude of things I've watched and read on the subject it was still able to teach me some things. I didn't quite buy in to the style but I know others would so I believe this is really essential viewing for the education of people on their habits. Below is my review.

Today (Friday) ended what will probably, or hopefully, be the biggest thing to happen on the politics of food since Jamies School Dinners finished airing the first time around. This time he wasn't the sole orchestrator but once again had his hands in, literally at times, making this issue of food quality apparent for all to see. Jamie's Fowl Dinners aired for an hour and a half and focused completely on the lives of chicken for both meat and egg production. Most of us watching had no doubt seen all the facts before about meat production but to add the facts about egg production was enlightening and essential to round off the picture about welfare of chicken in this country. Channel 4 also, surreptitiously, managed to kick start the next half of their "food fight" season with a short documentary that was, perhaps unintentionally, hilariously covering the lifestyles of "raw" diet eaters.