Harry's Blog

The Photography Monthly magazine redesign is truly awful. Hardly any content now (I think they must have sacked most of the team) and what remains is presented in huge text to hide its brevity - like a magazine for primary school children. Used to be a great magazine - just a few months ago. No I won't be renewing my subscription.

The last few issues that have popped through my letterbox have been absolutely dire. If you were willing to actually read every word I think it'd probably take you 15 minutes. There is very little in there worth looking at.

Grumpy Bob has gone, for example.

It was the only photo magazine I subscribed to and it is now a shadow of its former seld. I keep getting emails and mail inviting me to resubscribe but I won't be wasting any more money on the magazine. A real shame - because it was once a great mag.

My little family. My wife Jo and our children; twins Pat and Kitty along with little baby Will.

I'm all for strict control of who plays violent videogames - but we feel that sometimes the message about protecting children is somewhat ruined by nutters like Anglican Synod lay member Tom Benyon.

Benyon has been frothing at the mouth about games - so much so he's had to actually invent game content to get upset about, a bit like those preachers adding their own backwards messages to rock and roll in the sixties.

"There is a bubbling sewer of gratuitously violent and sexual pornography and games all around us. I have seen its pernicious effect. A family member saw a so-called ‘game’ and he had nightmares. The images remained with him for months," he most probably lied.

The comments came in a church Synod debate calling on the government to introduce stricter controls on games. Benyon then went on to focus on some imagined games - we have no idea where he saw some of this stuff...

"Why is it acceptable, indeed lawful, to portray the killing and burning of a woman in Fatality, [or] the sawing up of a woman in Mortal Kombat, or playing football with severed heads; the chainsaw killing of a man in Saw III, rape, torture and so on?”

Rape sir? Rape? We challenge you to tell us which game you saw this in?

In the interest of balance I should point out my wife is an Anglican priest. She was horrified by this story too. But horrified that yet again various nutters seem to be doing their best to show the church in the very worst light.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/8510091.stm

A primary school in Weston-super-Mare has banned Valentine cards to save pupils the "emotional trauma" of being rejected.

Yesterday was a very a strange one for our family. Full of mixed emotions. On the one hands our little baby will crawled for the first time. We are amazed at his progress and so very proud of him. This has been a hard week for Will - he had a nasty cold over the weekend and cut his first two teeth - not a happy combination. But now the little monkey is mobile and it's both wonderful and rather terrifying - the twins crawled so much later, once they were more aware of their surroundings.

The joy at our children's growing abilities was tempered by a very hurtful correspondence we received in the post. I won't go into details here. But let me put it this way - I've held my tongue for years now while these people hurt those I love. No longer.

Now before you send the Eco-Stazi round I just want to make clear that I believe that it's more likely than not that mankind is having an adverse effect on our climate. But my beef is the way that views on climate change are being forced on people and the way language is being used to do so.

We're well used to hearing phrases like "holocaust denier" - and rightly such people are pilloried for being ignorant racist fools. But when similar language is applied to people who are unconvinced by what continue to be a lot of contradictory arguments, bad science and total nonsense it's not surprising people remain sceptical about the concept of man-made climate change.

To describe such people as "climate change deniers" is disingenuous, unfair and really a Godwin'a Law own-goal. It also displays a Newspeak style attempt at controlling thought through language.

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Some photos of our little baby Will now he's reached the ripe-old age of half a year...

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