JEWISH STATIONERY

Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff is a special place for me, there is a lot that it has that other places in Cardiff do not have. I have seen a lot of films there with varying levels of enjoyment but never a let down.

Tonight I went to Chapter to see 'Paperclips,' a film which documents the efforts of a tiny school deep in the South of America called Whitwell Middle School. In response to a desire for a 'project' to undertake one of the teachers takes inspiration from a local convention to dedicate their efforts to a study of the Holocaust in order to learn to "respect their fellow men."

The school becomes immersed in the study and one child, on discovering that six million Jews died reveals how he/she doesn't know what six million even is. The story rolls on about how they found out that the paperclip was invented in Norway and that the Norwegian Jews would wear paperclips in order to symbolise their departed brethren. They then embark on a mission to collect one paperclip for every Jew killed. In short the mission escalates and they end up with 29,000,000 paperclips, an old Nazi railcar and a sequence of celebrity benefactors.

The story is quaint, the people are sweet and the sentiment is wonderful but I just again couldn't cope with the Jewish attitude. They were visited by Holocaust survivors who spoke to them of their experiences. There were interviews with Jewish people who had been toucheed by their endeavours and felt the need to get involved.

I studied the Jewish diaspora community in Shanghai in 1938-1947 for my dissertation and then as now I was struck with the same forceful blow by how strong and how honest and how forgiving the Jewish people are/were.

IAIN DALE: ANARCHIC SUPERHERO OR SELF IMPORTANT DREAMER?

18 Doughty Street is Iain Dale's lovechild and he is proud of it, in his mind it is the most subversive and hard-hitting of media-vehicles careering down the internet superhighway and smashing out through your screen and inta yer face! It's not all that, he thinks it's all that...but it ain't all that.

The concept, on the other hand, is excellent, it opens ones eyes to a world of options for aspiring film-makers and in this respect Iain Dale is right to be smug.

While Dale's smugness is a bit dementing, I have to admire his conviction. He knows that for an outspoken Tory to endear a crowd of Guardian-cradling, aspiring media types it's going to take something short of a miracle. Having Tory leanings myself I am maybe a less representative judge but the response from the masses was largely positive with guarded praise. I liked the way he said what he had to say without regard for whether he endeared himself or not. He had a point to make and he wasn't going to doctor his rhetoric to play to his crowd.

It's a pity then that 18 Doughty Street doesn't live up to his hype. Hopefully it will spawn a new generation of internet television and political programming (which he rightly pointed out has become saturated and boring) will reclaim its potency. His legacy could be great but he might have to get over himself first.

AVERT YOUR EYES

New Media, it would appear, is the future of media as we know it, but how far will it replace 'old media'? Will newspapers go the way of vinyl and become kitsch and collectable? Will television take it's final bow? and more to the point, will magazines take a bullet or will they struggle on regardless, taking the internet and its New Media allies - mobile phones and ipods and the like - under their wing and soaring forth into the future?

Amanda Powell joined us last week to give her take on NewMedia in her capacity as Editor of the Welsh division of BBC online based in our fair Cardiff. She was informative and talked well from a position of clear knowledge but one thing struck me as odd...

As you will see by following the above link the BBC have on their News front page, about halfway down, a set of three bars; one entitled 'video and audio news'; the second 'TV and Radio programmes'; and the third 'most popular video and audio'. This seems fine and dandy and makes sense as an option for news hungry surfers but Amanda informed us that due to their having received complaints from 'purists' (how you can be a purist of such a new medium I don't know) they have provided the option of hiding these bars. I don't understand how that could have worked.

Dear BBC,
I am a regular surfer of your wonderful internet site spending at least three and a half minutes there every day and I FULLY enjoy the content. Imagine my shock and dismay when I saw that you have seen fit to poison my eyes with the three bars in the centre of your page offering such dispicable fayre as 'audio' and 'video'. It sickens me to see it written here by my own fair hand. I hope you will understand my grievance and see fit to remedy your so heinous of crimes.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Head

Dear Mr Head,
Our collective head (no pun intended) here at the Beeb is hung in shame. Shame that we could have let down such an avid reader in such a horrible way. Your three and a half minutes mean a lot to us. You will see that we have acted to save your sight by giving you the option of hiding the offending articles via the click of your mouse. No more will you have to spend precious seconds seeing these things that vex you so.
Good luck and God bless,
Auntie