I think I have actually lost count of the number of times I have stood in various elections.

There are two possibilities – either Mr Walker has had complaints from council workers about racial discrimination and/or bullying or he hasn’t.

If he has then him getting sacked for raising the matter is really going to discourage anybody from coming forward on their own behalf as they won’t feel confident that they have any sort of whistleblowers’ protection. Would any individuals who spoke to him feel that their situation has been improved by this controversy? If they had a specific grivance about a particular individual or event, is their position made better by suggestions that it is part of institutional racism?

If he hasn’t then it could be even worse – he could be seen as stirring everything up so much that anybody with a genuine grievance in the future will be inclined to keep quiet about it, and the reputation of the council will have been harmed for nothing.

Of course, there is an argument that it was not so much what he said as how he said it: straight to the press without going through official channels, and in such melodramatic terms that bringing the authority into disrepute is a given. I have to say it doesn’t sound like the council I used to be part of and I can’t believe that it has changed so much in a dozen years.

What I hadn’t counted on was that this was another of those late-night showings of films with sign language for the hard of hearing.Now I have nothing against the hard of hearing, but it seems to me that this way of showing films is interfering with the films a lot more than it used to. I’m sure they used to do it by shrinking the film a little and showing it in a window on the screen, with the signer in the corner mostly outside that window. This time round the film was full-screen and the signer seemed larger than ever. In certain shots he was the same size as characters in the film and looked like he was part of the action.

At the start of the film there are some captions explaining the background of Bonnie and Clyde. One of them was unreadable because the signer was in front of the writing. Early on in the film there is that section where Clybe is teaching Bonnie to fire a gun, with an iconic shot of the two of them and a tyre hanging in the foreground. It is a beautifully framed image, somewhat spoiled by having a bloke taking up a large section of the picture. I would argue that even people who need the signing are having that image spoiled for them.

A few thoughts about all this:

• Why not go back to showing the film in a window? TV sets are so large now that the window would still be bigger than the whole screen was only a few years ago.
• Why are films only shown this way in the middle of the night? Are deafness and insomnia inextricably linked?
• Why are the (many) ad breaks not also signed?

More importantly, why not use the advances in technology to make life better for everybody? There are hundreds of channels on TV now. Many of them are extremely niche with audiences that are often officially zero. Many channels have a companion HD channel and a companion “+1″ channel so why not also have a companion signed channel? That way you could have all programmes with sign language enhancement, even during sensible hours as well as letting those of us who don’t need that to be able to record late-night films without unnecessary distraction.

By the way, is close caption sub-titling still available? It used to be on Ceefax. I think that if I was deaf I would prefer that. The signing may give you the meaning of everthing but it can’t (or doesn’t) convey the nuances of language being used – except by spelling out words which can’t be done quickly enough.

I have heard it said that Wodehouse cannot be adapted and be as good as the originals, and there is something in that. I am re-reading the Jeeves books at the moment and keep coming across brilliant bits that you just could not put into a play, film or TV show, but that doesn’t mean the adaptations would be useless. They might add other dimensions in compensation.

As an example of something that would be lost in an adaptation there is a passage I read today which was mostly a section of dialogue written as direct speech until one point where it changes to Wooster saying something like “and then he called me something offensive so perhaps he wasn’t won over by my argument”. Actually it wasn’t anything much like that. It was far better written. I really ought to go look it up and quote it properly but I’m not going to. The point is that it was funny because you can let your imagination fill in what the offensive term might have been. In an adaptation you couldn’t just cut from direct to indirect speech like that – unless you had a very contrived production where the action kept cutting to a narrator.

I think that any adaptor will recognise those limitations and an audience ought to as well. Just enjoy an episode with 100 jokes or witticisms in without worrying about those that were left out.

If we let that factor determine that we should have a referendum on EU membership then we are long overdue another referendum on whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK and then how about the Welsh and Scottish devolution bills? In about 25 years we could then argue for a referendum on doing away with the London mayor and go back to the GLC.

Personally I would be much more interested in a referendum or two about things we have never been asked about at all, ever, like having an elected second chamber or getting the monarchy totally removed from government.

Or is it that the Farages and Henry Smiths are only really interested in going to the public on certain topics that they think the public will agree with them on? Not that they should take the result for granted. I also wonder whether, if we had an in-out referendum and voted to stay in Europe would UKIP then accept the public opinion and shut up about it?

Another thought I had today about the public will is about the Falklands. Agentina have been stirring things up a bit lately and talking about some sort of international arbitration on the legal status of the islands. Our position seems to be that it doesn’t matter what the legal ownership should be but it is all up to the what the residents want. There may be good arguments on either side, but surely this isn’t one of them.

Look at it this way. Dale Farm had more than a third of the population of the Falklands at its peak. Should we have just said that it doesn’t matter what the law is, but we should go by the wishes of the residents? Exactly what is the cut-off in size or population for that to happen?

The programme was presented, written and directed by Jack Bond and featured him visiting Stockholm for a major Dali retrospective exhibition and talking about the film he directed in the 60s and also talking about Dali with people from the museum and various art experts. Now I do know a little bit about Dali, having been to an exhibition of his at the Tate and having read one of his autobiographies, so I knew he was eccentric to say the least, but there was plenty in this film that was new to me.Possibly the best bit was when Bond describes how he came to make his original documentary. Bear in mind that he was at that point a young filmmaker and Dali was one of the most famous people in the art world and a celebrity. He had been told that there was not much chance of him ever getting work with Dali but one day he received a phone call from somebody who said he was Dali’s director of military intelligence and would he like to come and have a chat with Dali.

What? I think that really puts the current crop of rappers to shame. They go everywhere with huge entourages but I don’t think they have directors of military intelligence on the payroll.

The whole film was a delight, with lots of clips of the original documentary. It also featured that famous sequence from Un Chien Andalou right at the point I was having something to eat. You know the bit. Eyeball. Say no more. It was fascinating to hear Dali speaking and speaking in English which was probably his third language. You might think that he was a great showman as much as a great artist, but while that might be true it certainly didn’t seem to be an act. Somebody pointed out that he created this larger than life and stranger than fiction character and then became it completely and said that this made him literally a self-made man.

What really jolted me was seeing the credits start with Dali’s dates of 1904-1989. I hadn’t really appreciated that he was still around so late. I always thought of him as a between the wars sort of person, which of course he was, but hadn’t really registered that, for example, he would still have been alive and only in his mid-70s when I went to see his stuff at the Tate.

It occurred to me that I sort of missed the news of his death and just assumed it must have been earlier. Easily done. In 1989 we didn’t have the internet and I was spending a lot of time out of the country and when I was at home burning the candle at both ends with work and a very complicated social life.

Afterwards I looked up this director of military intelligence, and he was quite interesting himself. Peter Moore was actually Dali’s personal secretary but during the war he did work in military intelligence as a corporal. Winston Churchill was so impressed with his work in psychological warfare that he gave him the honorary rank of captain. He hit the news himself in 1999 when he was accused of churning out fake Dalis on an industrial scale.

The thing that most struck me was how genuinely strange Dali was but how there was usually some theoretical basis in even his strangest works, stemming from his so-called paranoic-critical method that seemed to let him unhinge himself and imagine bizarre conjunctions. What I really mean is that it reminded me of how over-used and misunderstood the word ‘surreal’ is these days.

On just about every news program the word seems to crop up somewhere. For example, a flood victim might say how their living room had a foot of water in it with furniture floating around and it was ‘really surreal’. No it wasn’t. It was just real. If they had a foot of water clinging to the ceiling and the furniture all went bendy while the pictures on the wallpaper started moving then it would be surreal.

The film was called Discovering… Dali. If it turns up on Sky Arts again, do give it a try.

I listening to the wireless last night (well OK, it was 6 Music on DAB) and heard a song that just grabbed me straight away. It was by a band I had never heard of, despite following all sorts of websites and RSS feeds and trying to keep up with new releases on Spotify. There still is a place for in this wired existence for somebody to just play records on the radio and throw in some well-chosen obscurities to introduce them to a wider audience.

On the other hand my experience afterwards was 100% 2013. I couldn’t remember the name of the band so went onto the 6 Music website to see the playlist of the show to find out – I remembered the the previous track was Genesis by Grimes (also very good BTW). Then I tried to listen to the whole album. It isn’t available on Spotify and you can’t buy a CD on Amazon, in fact it seems to only be available in physical form from one independent redord shop in Bristol. I can listen to some samples and download on iTunes or Amazon. They seem to be an unsigned band who have produced their own CD locally and yet thanks to the radio I can find out about them and then download it straight away.

For the record, the band are Goan Dogs. The track was Hotel Rooms and it sounds as much like Tinariwen as a band from Bristol could possible do.

WILKO JOHNSON – IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT I am very sad to announce that Wilko has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas. He has chosen not to receive any chemotherapy. He is currently in good spirits, is not yet suffering any physical effects and can expect to enjoy at least another few months of reasonable health and activity.

He has just set off on a trip to Japan; on his return we plan to complete a new CD, make a short tour of France, then give a series of farewell gigs in the UK. There is also a live DVD in the pipeline, filmed on the last UK tour. Wilko wishes to offer his sincere thanks for all the support he has had over his long career, from those who have worked with him to, above all, those devoted fans and admirers who have attended his live gigs, bought his recordings and generally made his life such an extraordinarily full and eventful experience.

Thank you. Robert Hoy (Manager)

It is not just the sheer bad news of the impending demise of the greatest living Essexman and a certifiable national treasure but the idea of him making the decision to forego treatment and then to see out what could be his last months of health with tours and other business.

I had wanted to see him play in Brighton last year just after my birthday but nobody picked up on my subtle hints. Somehow I never have got round to seeing him play live because when I saw Dr. Feelgood it was just after he left, and now I probably won’t because I suspect his farewell tour will be a morbid and traumatic experience. I guess it is good that he, and his fans, get some warning and a chance to say goodbye properly rather than the sudden deaths of, say, Whitney Houston or Michael Jackson, but it would be difficult to enjoy the show with that sort of cloud hanging over it.

What surprised me was just how upset I was about this news. Plenty of famous people have got ill or died without me really feeling it. I can’t even claim to be a massive lifelong fan. I remember we all enjoyed Wilko’s manic playing when we saw him on TV in the 70s but I only really appreciated just how good and influential his time in the Feelgoods was over the last ten years. Or twenty. Time really flies doesn’t it?

Anyway, I don’t think I have ever felt so bad about hearing such news about anybody I wasn’t related to. If you had asked me any time before today which celebrity I would feel most upset to hear bad news about I don’t know who I would have said, but doubt I would have come up with Wilko’s name straight away. It just shows that sometimes you really don’t know your own mind.

Each episode follows a formula, which is the same formula used in so many shows. It starts with a death which is either very obviously a murder or very quickly becomes one. The detective picks up on some small detail very early which he obsesses over and nobody else is very worried about. There is a small group of people connected with the deceased and one of them looks like a prime suspect and is possibly even accused and arrested at some point. Towards the end the detective sees some other tiny detail which makes him realise the significance of the earlier detail, at which point he gathers together all the people connected to the case and reveals the identity of the killer.

At this point the killer admits it, possibly throwing in some extra detail about motive.

It is a formula that has kept detective stories going since Agatha Christie and normally it annoys me to the extent that I avoid such things like the plague. Is it the novelty of seeing Danny John-Jules without cat fangs? Is it because Ben Miller is a very likeable actor? Is it just because it looks very good?

Whatever it is, I’m glad it is back. OK so the formulaic approach makes it unrealistic and predictable, but it is fiction rather than a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Real life can be dull and everything doesn’t always work out perfectly, which is why we like some sort of escapist element to our drama and fiction.

It occurs to me that maybe I am not as opposed to the strict formula as I thought. Maybe the reason I never enjoyed other shows so much is because I just didn’t like Miss Marple, Poirot, Mrs Murder-she-wrote and all the other.

Of course none of them compares to Sherlock Holmes but then what does?

On the whole I didn’t like it much. There were plenty of individual things I enjoyed but the overall experience was not great and that is partly because I spend a lot of my time at work and that was more or less the total opposite of great for the whole year and for 12 months nothing changed. It was like being put on hold for a year.

On a more positive note I re-discovered reading in 2012, partly because of the Kindle I got for Christmas 2011. This year I read (I think) 47 books and 29 of them were on the Kindle. Many of them were free download or heavily discounted deals-of-the-day and some of the most enjoyable ones were actually open source books. Of the 47 books 15 were non-fiction, including at least 4 on psychology/behavioural economics/decision theory.

I know that electronic books are not everybody’s cup of tea, but the books I have read on the Kindle this yea, plus the ones I still have in the ‘unread’ folder would have taken up at least three feet of shelf space if I had paper copies and that is three feet of shelf space I just don’t have any more.

I don’t think I listened to a whole lot of new music in 2012. I gave quite a few new albums a bit of a listen on Spotify but very few grabbed my attention. The ones I actually returned to are VCMG, Paul Weller, Toy, Ultravox, Madness and Donald Fagen. Oh, and Tame Impala, Elton John vs Pnau and Kid Koala.

The highlights of the year were obviously the London games, especially the Olympic opening ceremony, getting two extra bank holidays and giving in to Jayne’s begging to get a dog. I was worried about having a dog again but Diablo has turned out to be brilliant. He keeps us amused, gives us lots of exercise and because of him Jayne and I spend a lot more time together.

The low point of the year was failing to get tickets for Kraftwerk.

No resolutions for 2013 as such, but I do intend to come out of my shell and get out of the rut I have been in for a couple of years. In 2012 I hardly crossed the borough boundaries of Crawley. In fact I think I only got more than 5 miles away from the house a couple of times in the first six months. Things are looking up already. It is only January 8th and I have two job interviews lined up for this week. If anything comes of them I think it will act as a catalyst for me.

To the few people who still persist in reading this blog, Happy New Year for 2013.