We know how to be friends!

I'm working on a proper blog post but it's taking a while as I really need to be sure I get it right. If I tell you it will be tagged "Politics" and has a working title of "If I ruled the world..." you can see why it's vital that I dot every i and cross every t before it sees the light of day.

In the meantime then, a stopgap. Watching Family Guy on BBC3 the other night, this cutaway made me chuckle, in part because, like so much good comedy, it has an essential truism at its heart.

Hard-hitting politics to follow soon(-ish), I promise. Until then, take a moment to cast your eyes up and to the right, and vote in my little poll. Cheers.

We used to snigger at her surname...

Sorry to read, this morning, that Alexandra Bastedo has died. Having grown up watching repeats of The Champions during the school holidays, there was a definite period when I had a bit of a crush on her. And then she only went and graced the cover of The Smiths' live album, Rank. Credentials assured then, however you rate that album (Morrissey famously named it "Rank - as in J. Arthur").

For evidence of the ear-worm nature of The Champions theme music, head here. I've been whistling it all day, despite the jauntiness of my whistle seeming somewhat inappropriate for such sombre news. But anyway, for a perfect snapshot of everyday Sixties sexism (and to see why I used to have a pre-teen crush on her), you could just watch Alexandra's "Introducing the Champions" promo, below...

Should I stay or should I go?

In the face of an ever-dwindling readership, I (like many others) have recently contemplated whether I should bother with blogging any more. Very few of you will read this. Fewer still will comment, share or otherwise interact. The harsh truth is that the blogging wave has long since crested, and I have come to the conclusion that if I carry on doing this then it will primarily be for my own benefit. I know, how very selfish.

That also means I should consider taking steps to make it easier on myself. No more hand-coding every page, every RSS entry, every sitemap. No more manually pinging blog indexes after every new post. No more writing my own commenting and blogroll solutions (however much I secretly enjoyed the techie challenge). Why not give myself a way to submit posts by email? Or remotely using a mobile app? Maybe, just maybe, I should succumb and move the whole shebang to one of the blogging big boys...

So that's what I've done. It's taken a lot of cutting and pasting, but the entirety of PipSpeak is now on Blogger, comments and all. I've taken the opportunity to have a big redesign too and a renaming - the new title comes from an old Gene song. The quote below the title comes from the best short story I read in 2013. And the whole thing can be found at:

newamusements.blogspot.com (RSS)

So what do you think? Should I soldier on with DIY-blogging at pip.host22.com or get into bed with Google at newamusements.blogspot.com? Comment here, or there (or both), and tell me what you think?