Andy Diggle, Ian Rankin line up for prestigious LitFest appearance

Marvel writer Andy Diggle

The Losers and Daredevil writer Andy Diggle will be wowing his hometown fans alongside author Ian Rankin next month as part of the Lancaster Literature Festival - Britain's oldest annual literature event.

Ian Rankin is Britain’s number one best-selling crime author, creator of the phenomenally successful Edinburghian sleuth Inspector Rebus, and described by the LitFest's blog as "a serial award winner whose bristling mantel-piece is home to the prestigious CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in crime writing, and for the imperialists in the audience he is also an Officer of the Order of the British Empire."

Former 2000AD editor Andy, despite being well known to readers of downthetubes, is, it seems, a harder sell for the LitFest - but they don't pull any punches when it comes to promoting him and his work, dismissing the concerns of those who happily describe comics as "a genre that is packed to the gills with adolescent nonsense.

"Comics doesn’t mean the Dandy or Beano," a spokesperson for LitFest argues in an enthusiastic blogpost. "Doesn’t just mean Superman and Spiderman (sic) either. And 'adult comics' doesn’t imply dodgy hand-drawn porno.

"There are plenty of comics out on the market that are smart and grown-up. Andy Diggle is a great example of how much you can do with the comics medium once you get over all the muscle-bound weirdos in leotards. And so, for that matter, is Ian Rankin."

"...Dark Entries is tight, a real little doozie," they continue. "...The noir sentiments of the story are supported by a scratchy, minimal black-and-white art style from Werther Dell’Edera, who picks the characters out with nasty grins and sharp lines. You’ll polish off Dark Entries in about the time it’d take you to watch a decent crime movie.


"The main story [of The Losers] is a conspiracy – who betrayed the Losers, and why?" they note of Andy's work, "but the action unfolds as a spate of high-profile heists in the best tradition of Mission: Impossible, Where Eagles Dare and The Italian Job, as the Losers fight to get the information and the leverage they need to win their lives back. Throw in a villain who makes James Bond’s worst nemeses look like short-termist, visionless wimps and you’ve got a winning combo.


"I should mention the artist, Jock, who’s done a great job creating the story’s many sets and differentiating the key characters. Best of all is the sense of motion and energy in every panel of the story. His action scenes are frenetic. You can hear his explosions go 'Boom'."

Cleraly impressed by their catch from the comic world for the Festival, whose line up also includes Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and author Sarah Fine, Andy and Ian's talk is described as "a discussion between the two of their different contributions to the comics field and the experience of having their work adapted for the screen.

"I’ve also been informed by Andy Diggle that together they can 'talk the leg off a dead donkey', so perhaps we’ll find ourselves regailed with some entirely tangential stories. The only way to find out is to come, of course."

While comics are increasingly getting onto the literary agenda, it's always gratifying to see so much enthusiasm for some of its proponents from such a well-regarded literature organisation.

• Ian Rankin and Andy Diggle, 7.30pm, Thursday 21st October, The Storey, Lancaster £8.50 (£7 concs) – £1 off if you order in advance.  Call the LitFest Box Office on 01524 582394 or book online

Lancaster Comics Event

Lancaster's comics fans gather at the northern town's Gregson this week, for an event organised by First Age Comics, which is based in the Assembly Rooms in King Street.

The Uncanny League Of Astonishing Amazers will kick off at 8.00pm on Wednesday (18 Frebruary) at the Gregson in Moor Lane.

Various comics creators now live in the area, including Andy Diggle, former editor of 2000AD and whose credits include Green Arrow for DC Comics and Paul Harrison-Davies, artist for Boom! Studios and a contributor to an upcoming comic supplement for TOXIC.

• First Age Comics is open Tuesday-Fridays from 10.00am-4.30pm, Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm. Web Link: www.comicspace.com/first_age
• More event details on Facebook

Tourists ask the strangest things...

After the national press reported some of the strange questions asked of tourist offices across the country this week, including "Are there any lakes in the Lake District?", "Is Wales closed in the Winter?" and " What time of night does the Loch Ness monster surface and who feeds it?" I wondered what questions were asked of Lancaster and Morecambe's Tourism offices, and I've written a story for Virtual-Lancaster based on the response I got from our obliging Council press office, which I thought I 'd share with you as some New Year amusement.

It's clear they get their fair share of the strange, and answer them with a mix of patience and the usual forthright responses you'd expect.

The Tourist Office has details of over 300 strange questions asked in 2006, but a selection of their favourites includes "Is Morecambe north or south of Pontefract?", " Do you need a passport to go to The Isle of Man?", How do I stop my telephone bill while I’m on holiday? I live in West Yorkshire" and "Does the ferry go right into the port?" (No, it ditches you in the sea!)

Other general questions included "Is the beach open?", " Can you put me on your mailing list for shows in Manchester?" and "Have the guided walks been stopped because of the petrol shortage?"

A display by the Red Arrows in Morecambe provoked some strange questions. " When the Red Arrows come, will you be opening The Platform doors to let them in?" asked one bemused visitor, while another asked "Where will the Red Arrows be?" In the sky, hopefully - and they were, as anyone who watched the impressive show last year will recall

Major local events such as Lancaster's Fireworks Night generate plenty of questions. " What time are the fireworks?" asked one Lancaster customer. "About ten o’clock," replied the dutiful Tourist officer.

"Oh," pondered the visitor. "Is that at night?"

Morecambe's location seems to confound some visitors. Several visitors ask questions about Blackpool rather than our local seaside town, one asking for a list of Blackpool churches and tourism figures for Blackpool Pleasure Beach. One asked for a list of hotels which was immediately supplied. "Oh, great," came the enthused response. Then: "And they’re all close to Robin Hood’s Bay, are they?"

Sometimes, Tourist Information has to refer visitors to Council offices elsewhere in our area. When one tourist was advised they should visit the City Council's Arts and Events office to answer their queries, the visitor responded "Have they got a door?"

The best answer to a question I was sent has to be the response to the poser "What does the Eric Morecambe statue on the promenade weigh?"

"We he he!" replied the staff member, aping one of Eric Morecambe's famous phrases. Yes, we can just picture the blank face of the tourist who got that response.

The Tourism offices deal with thousands of visitor queries a month, so you'd expect some oddities amongst the many sensible ones. But there are some that stump even the best brains on Castle Hill or the Platform offices. One worried caller rang to ask "My catheter is leaking. What should I do?"

"Have you tried your doctor?" replied the officer, helpfully.

"Yes, but there was no reply," said the caller, "So I thought I would try you..."

Austen Baker Strikes Back

Oh dear, I seem to have upset Mr Austen Baker after I reported on his letter to Private Eye bemoaning public transport and bus lanes (he gets a right pasting in the current edition from other readers so it would appear I wasn't the only person he annoyed with his 'rich must come first' inferences of the published version of his correspondence to Brtiain's best-known satirical magazine.

Given that his Private Eye letter was of local interest I posted a story about it on Virtual-Lancaster too, provoking a quick response from the gentleman which I am only too happy to publish here for 'balance'

Dear Sir,

You have given prominence to a rant from someone who turns out to be one John Freeman, who appears to be a local public transport obsessive, relating to a letter from me published in the current issue of Private Eye. I'm afraid I would have to give him an F for English Comprehension, on the strength of this item, which also appears on his blog.

I did not say the rich should be given priority over the poor in transport matters, nor did I evince a belief that lower earners are second class citizens. I made two points - in rather direct manner, as befits Private Eye (this is not the Spectator or the Economist) - both of which have to be understood in the context of arguments over transport that have been going on for decades now.

One concern has always been that congestion, because it delays the arrival of goods and workers, carries with it an economic cost. My point was that bus lanes are not the solution to this. Bus users are likely to be on average lower earners than car users (subject to lots of qualifications and exceptions one cannot make in a short letter to the press). Economically (not morally) speaking, higher earners' time is more important - their greater earnings reflect a greater economic value placed on their time. A low earner delayed for 30 minutes represents a smaller loss to the economy as a whole than a higher earner delayed for the same time. This is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a moment or two. And I did not even argue that higher paid car users should be given priority over buses; merely that buses, with their lower earning passengers should not be given priority over cars (which is a quite different argument). Bus lanes narrow the available space available to cars and goods vehicles, thus exacerbating the delays they suffer in order to minimize delays for bus users. There is a cost to the economy of such a policy, and it does not seem to me that it necessarily makes good economic sense. That is all.

The second argument, which represented the bulk of my letter, and which he does not actually refute, is that transport policy ought not to be made against the background of a public debate distorted by misrepresentations.

I pointed out that buses not only emit quite a bit of pollution themselves, but, by forcing queues of traffic behind them to slow down/stop and then accelerate away again each time the bus stops to pick up or set down passengers, create additional pollution not usually counted in calculating environmental impacts (just set your car's trip computer to display current fuel consumption, and compare consumption - which equals emissions - at a steady 30 with the consumption as you pull away and get up to speed: the latter is phenomenally higher).

I also offered a recent example from a recent BBC TV news broadcast. Viewers were told that a journey from London to Edinburgh by car put out 100kg of emissions per person, by plane 50kg and by train 25kg. What they were not told was that this assumes one person in the car but a full to capacity train. Outside peak hours, though, we all know perfectly well that trains are far from full. I have made literally hundreds of journeys on trains little more than a quarter full. In that case, the train works out at 100kg per person, and if two people are making the car trip, the car works out at 50kg per person. You will see how misleading some of the statistics used can be.

I also pointed out the logical fallacy of using such figures to justify a proposal to charge large sums per mile to use busy roads at peak times (as the BBC was doing): at peak times on popular routes the trains are full, so penalising drivers to induce them onto the trains at those times on those routes would have a devastating effect on the rail infrastructure (and I pointed out that the BBC regional news for the West Midlands immediately following the news programme in question, carried an item about how through rail routes were to be cut because New Street Station in Birmingham was already operating at double the capacity it was designed for - highlighting the illogicality of the Government/BBC argument).

Finally, Mr Freeman takes a swipe at the University. I wrote to Private Eye expressing my own views, not those of the University, and it is inappropriate for him to suggest that what I write reflects University transport policy. While I do not speak for the University, I would point out that it does in fact have a coherent transport plan, agreed with the local authority, and makes great efforts to promote cycling, bus use and car sharing amongst its staff (and, with certain exceptions in special circumstances, prohibits students from obtaining parking permits). The University is, however, one of the city's largest employers and a major contributor to the local economy, so it naturally attracts a lot of traffic carrying both staff and visitors - all the transport plans in the world won't change that.

I realise that this is a local community website, but it is Nonetheless important that people are not misrepresented in this cavalier fashion. I would ask that you give my rebuttal equal prominence with Mr Freeman's assertions.

Yours faithfully,
Dr Richard Austen-Baker
Lecturer in Law
Lancaster University Law School
LANCASTER
LA1 4YN

So there you have it - just for balance.

Rich People must come first on transport says lecturer

This got right up my nose this week: a Lancaster University lecturer has declared rich people should come first on matters of transport.

Law lecturer Richard Austen-Baker, who works at Lancaster University’s law school, took magazine Private Eye to task this week for “being taken in by the public transport lobby”, arguing in favour of abolishing bus lanes – a move Birmingham and Ealing councils are in the process of making.

In a letter to Private Eye Austen-Baker, perhaps reflecting the University’s continued lack of transport strategies, resulting in huge car use that helps to choke Lancaster’s one-way system in term time, argues that ”People… use public transport because they can’t afford private transport. On average, bus passengers who are employed at all (many are pensioners, students and schoolchildren or the unemployed) earn far less than car users.”

Clearly Austen-Baker thinks these people are second class citizens compared to car drivers, arguing “their time is less valuable to the economy.
“It therefore makes no sense whatever to give them priority over people in cars.”

Austen-Baker obviously has it in for public transport, claiming arguments for it are based on “misrepresentations”. Perhaps he's been stuck behind a bus pumping out “horrible emissions in large doses once too often” once too often on his way to work during term time, obviously unable to notice that most of the traffic causing jams in Lancaster are his fellow lecturers and students driving to the University, despite the huge number of buses laid on by various privatised bus companies.

There’s only one “horrible emission” I can definitely see here — and it isn’t a bus.

Hollywood comes to Hornby

(Old post reinstated, ignore if RSS checking) Well, not exactly: World's End Television , the company behind London-based World's End Television are to shoot a short film in Hornby next week. The cast list for the film, Last Night, is under wraps: apparently revealing who's in it might warrant "unwanted attention", so I can't tell you any more than that.

World's End is a major indie producer for the BBC and makes shows such as the MTV/Channel Five ‘dope opera’, Top Buzzer and BBC Radio Five Live’s points for punditry sporting debate show, Fighting Talk.

There's been quite a bit of filming around here recently: Billie Biper has been filming at Sunderland Point, as part of the work going on the BBC's adaptation of Philip Pullman's The Ruby In The Smoke. Julie Walters was also here, playing the role of the charismatic and deadly Mrs Holland, a woman determined to mastermind Sally's demise.

Avoiding the World Cup Day Six

Hmm. I find the wording of this press release from my local council highly suspicious...

The England flag will be flying from the roof of Lancaster and Morecambe Town Halls on Thursday in support of our boys playing in the World Cup in Germany.

The flag of St George will be flown when England matches are played and will continue to be flown on England match days if they make it through to the knockout stages of the tournament.
Football mad council staff will also be wearing their footbaking donations to Sport Relief

I wasn't actually aware that when it came to "our boys", there were any Lancaster or Morecambe-born players in the England squad, otherwise the Lancaster Guardian would be running them as pin ups by now...

As usual, the Council seems to have woken up the fact that a major event is taking place well after it's started...

Is there something in the water?

So let me see if I have this right...

-- In the past few weeks in Lancaster, almost every councillor (except the Greens and some Skerton reps) have voted in support of a bypass route they've all consistently rejected in the past...

-- Rather than spend money on toilets in Morecambe and Lancaster the latest idea sure to benefit public hygiene is to close them for all but limited times, so don't drink too much while you're out enjoying yourself (although pissing in back alleys, bus station walls and shop doorways are of course acceptable alternatives). It's also OK to sell off toilets -- Lancaster's Brock Street toilets went for £58,000 or thereabouts - after redevelopment the property now must be worth almost triple that. Meanwhile in other countries, even impoverished Turkey, public toilets remain open some even with attendants to stop the vandalism that has necessitated closing them here. Rather than improve the loo situation the 'Toilet Task Group' has left us with stinking sheds in car parks well away from town centres where they might be some use...

-- after protesting vociferously about the closure of local post offices (not that it did any good) the city council had no qualms about closing their offices in Ryelands where people from Halton and other outlying areas in North Lancaster were happily paying their council tax rather than add to the traffic numbers by driving to the town hall to pay there. Apparently this is due to some inter-department rivalry over budgets - a solution could have been found but it would have meant co-operation...

I was just wondering, when the "silly season" ended at the end of August, did anyone tell our Council?

Are Jet Skis a menace?

Local bird lovers in Lancaster are up in arms over jet ski use on the River Lune, concerned for the safety of nesting birds. Several people have also complained to Virtual-Lancaster, the local web site I write for, about the noise the jet skis make and raised safety concerns.

Jet skiers now regularly tear up the Lune beyond Skerton Bridge -- despite a voluntary agreement made some years ago not to go further.

Some local bird watchers have called for a ban on the machines, saying that unchecked, the jet ski problem will only get worse. They are especially concerned by jet ski use further down the Lune, on the marsh channels where birds are nesting.
"One of the things I love about living in Marsh is the access to countryside, says local Ian McCulloch. "Five minutes walk down the footpath next to Coronation Field and you're surrounded by fields, another five and you're at Marsh Point. Which is great unless it's a sunny Sunday afternoon, and the river is full of screaming jet-skis from the Golden Ball on the opposite bank. In a spot which is gloriously quiet apart from them it seems a bit much."

"I've never seen so many nesting birds on the River Lune as I have this year," one Skerton resident told Virtual-Lancaster. "They're an absolute delight and a wonderful sight for both locals and visitors alike. "Sadly, it appears the increasing number of jet skiers on the Lune are determined to rob us of this wonderful natural attraction."

Local councillors are beginning to wake up to the issue, with promises of investigation and possible action. Lancaster councillor Ron Sands, cabinet member responsible for tourism, feels action must be taken, pointing out that new speed restrictions on Lake Windermere, due to come into force next year, will lead to what he calls "a search by the hundreds of displaced skiiers for alternative habitats to destroy."

Up until now however, although there has been some discussion among local organisations with environmental interests -- such as the Morecambe Bay Partnership -- no clear plan to address the problems jets skiers cause has been agreed. Nationally, government has yet to find time to address concerns raised by several local authorities about jet ski use, even though the machines have been in use for over five years in the UK.

Jet skis, which can reach speeds of more than 70mph and can be legally driven by children, remain unregulated.

One problem in addressing the issue, according to local bird watcher Jon Carter, is that there are no local jet ski clubs who could advise users on where to use their machines safely. Those using the Lune at present are all independent jet ski owners who may be ignorant of local concerns and complaints.

Locals point out there is likely to be more jet ski use on the Lune in future and the dangers they pose to personal safety. (Earlier this month, a 32-year-old man was seriously injured in a collision between two jet skis off Ardrossan beach in North Ayrshire. A man was killed on a North Yorkshire lake last year, after a collision between two jet skis).

In the US, where jet ski use is more prevalent, steps have been taken against them on both conservation and noise pollution grounds. Several national parks have banned jet ski use outright, after numerous studies revealed they can cause lasting damage to park resources and wildlife. Hawaii has classified jet skis as "thrillcraft" and banned them from some coastal waters during the whale calving season. In California, the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary severely restricted personal watercraft because of the threat posed to sea otters and other users of the 4,000-square-mile sanctuary.

Campaigners against jet skis living in Cape Cod cited a catalogue of issues with the vehicles, arguing they pollute the air and water, create law enforcement problems, threaten public safety, endanger wildlife, destroy natural quiet and diminish visitor enjoyment.

It is now law to wear helmets and life jackets while riding a jet ski in some states and New York state now requires all skiers, regardless of their age, complete an 8-hour boating safety course before they can use a machine there, or face being fined -- see this report from Capital News.

Locally, Lancaster City Council already has byelaws in place to deal with motorcycle abuse and it is possible they could be applied to jet skiers. As well as Coun Ron Sands acknowledgement of the issue, local councillor Jon Barry told Virtual-Lancaster he was trying to find out if anything could be done about the problems caused on environmental grounds.

It remains to be seen whether any action will - or can be taken, especially given apparent government reticence to tackle the problem despite the dangers and destruction jet skis can pose if used improperly.

Links From Minnesota Public Radio:
• The dangers of unregulated Jet Ski Use to swimmers (Both side of the argument put)
• Environmental impact of Jet Skis