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When you turn the steering wheel of a car, you expect that the wheels will respond and move the vehicle accordingly – it’s a basic function of a car. This has always been my experience in forty years of driving, until recently that is! I was driving round a roundabout, but as I turned left to exit, the steering jammed and I only just managed to wrestle the car round. The steering continued to be unbelievably stiff until I managed to bring the car to a safe stop. Incidentally, I managed to stop near a post box and I did have some letters to post, so at least it served a useful purpose! Having switched the engine off, locked the car, unlocked the car, and restarted it – the problem disappeared! Unfortunately, as I drove to my destination, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I was thinking it was going to happen again any minute, such was my loss of confidence.

As soon as I had the opportunity I did what everyone does in situations like this – Google it! It soon became clear that it’s a common problem with the Meriva. I also quickly found several friends on Facebook and Twitter who’d had the same experience as me, and a YouTube clip from the BBC programme Watchdog where it was featured. So why did I have a Meriva with this problem? Why hadn’t Vauxhall recalled the unsafe vehicles? What was the Vauxhall dealer going to do about it?

Well, they repaired the car and told me they had fitted modified parts that don’t have the fault. This begs question, why no recall?

So, for me, the main issue is why hasn’t there been a recall when so many Merivas have this potentially dangerous fault? Imagine I was doing 50 mph on a left-hand bend with oncoming traffic when it happened? The Vauxhall garage was excellent, although they’re clearly well-versed in dealing with Meriva customers with the same problem!

This is my account of the Turkish GP written in real-time as the race unfolded, the first time I’ve tried this. World Champion Sebastian Vettel started on pole position, having qualified 0.4 of a second faster than his Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber. This might not seem very much, but a F1 car travels a very long way in 0.4 of a second! A side-by-side display of their qualifying laps on the BBC coverage showed how Vettel was slightly better than Webber in many of the corners, and this made the difference. Vettel is clearly the man to beat!

At the start, Rosberg made a great start from third on the grid to overtake Webber, who then had to defend his position. Schumacher had to come in for an early pit-stop to change his front wing after a coming together with Petrov. Schumacher had done very well in practice, but was disappointed with his qualifying position. Webber made a good move on Rosberg on lap 5, made it stick and moved into second place. There was some great duelling between team-mates Hamilton and Button, but Button retained ahead of Hamilton – maintaining the advantage he gained early on in the race.

Around lap 10 there were a whole raft of pit-stops, during which Hamilton made the jump on Massa, who may have been released dangerously into the path of the McLaren and may get penalised. One of the unwritten rules of F1 is don’t take your team-mate out of the race, but Petrov had a good go at knocking his Renault team-mate Heidfeld into the pit lane – prompting much hand gesticulating! Schumacher’s problems continued with another coming together in the midfield on about lap 16. There was still no sign of a penalty for Massa on lap 20 when he made a classic move on Rosberg, followed by a little later by Button taking Rosberg on the outside of the last corner in an exciting overtake. Massa soon had to make an unplanned pit-stop after locking-up a wheel and flat-spotting the tyre – F1 cars are so finely balanced that a simple mistake like this can mess up race strategy!

Top six after 26 laps: Vettel, Webber, Alonso, Button, Hamilton and Petrov, with Alonso (fastest on the track at that point) closing in on Webber. Indeed, Alonso took Webber on about lap 30 (just over half-distance).

There was a slight lull in the racing, but after a few laps Button passed Alonso. Hamilton had an awful pit-stop when a wheel gun stuck, and they had to hold him back a few seconds for an incoming Massa. Massa later went wide on the awesome turn 8, picked up a lot of tyre debris and it cost him quite a few places. There’s a lot of tyre debris (known as marbles) off the racing line this year, this is because the Pirelli tyres are designed to degrade fairly quickly.

On about lap 46 Paul di Resta came to a halt, but it didn’t require the safety car. Scot Paul di Resta is the third British driver in F1 this year, driving for Force India. As the race moved into the final 10 laps, Webber had the run on Alonso and overtook him. Schumacher has had what the BBC website described as an another ‘underwhelming’ race, languishing in the mid-field. For all his experience, he really should be doing better, as he is continually being out-performed by team-mate Rosberg.

After 58 laps the clear winner is Vettel, followed by team-mate Webber for a 1-2 Red Bull victory, with Alonso third. Hamilton was fourth, Rosberg fifth and Button sixth. A great race, with Vettel supreme again.

The BBC have published a high-definition, 1.15-gigapixel picture, which is a composite of 189 images. The full picture measures 81,471 pixels by 14,154 pixels. The field of view covers 200 degrees. Click on the picture to go to the BBC page, then you can move in any direction and zoom in and out to see individual faces in the crowd! You can see the official Royal Wedding photos by clicking here!

This guest post comes from my good friend Thomas Mathie, aka @headphonaught on Twitter and elsewhere.

When John asked me to write about Independent Music… I automatically thought of all the indie bands that make up the (capital “I”… capital “M”) Independent Music scene: Oasis… Stone Roses… etc. Independent Music aka Indie is a genre… a style of music worthy of capitalisation… and not necessarily what I intend to talk about.

When I talk of independent music… I talk of the roots of what became Indie (genre)… when folks made music that was released independently of the major music labels. I also think of one of my favourite bands… Fugazi… who are renowned, at least to me, for their frugal DIY tours and fair price policies in the late 80s through the 90s to the present. It was their stance towards their fans that got me thinking about what I wanted to talk about: fairtrade DIY music.

The whole concept of fairtrade is knowing the producers of the product you are buying have been given a fair price for their product. When it comes to music… this is vitally important for me. For the most part… we are moving from the physical to a digital environment, when it comes to the distribution of music. I still buy Records and CDs… and hope HMV doesn’t close because they own FOPP and FOPP is my favourite recordshop chain.

But things are changing… and with this change… the barriers of entry have been lowered considerably for independent musicians. Sites like SoundCloud, Last.fm and Bandcamp give the opportunity for musicians to be heard. My personal favourite is Bandcamp… because you can stream the whole recording before you download it… the formats they offer are excellent (320kpbs as default – higher than iTunes) and their tagging allows for efficient exploration of music deemed similar to that which you are listening to. It’s ideal for the one-man-or-woman-band… low cost to enter… the ability to set a price or suggest to the buyer that they can “pay what you want”… the opportunity to get heard and, hopefully, make some money.

Thing is… however… Bandcamp isn’t enough to get the message out there. I find the majority of my music through recommendations from friends… predominately on Twitter. Folks like guitarist Matt Stevens or ambient soundscape creator James Fahy aka Ambienteer have built up a real community of people (of which I am proud to be part) using tools like Bandcamp and Twitter. I love their work, found out about it on Twitter and happily paid for it once I had had a good listen to it.

Matt and James are truly independent. They don’t have a record label. They aren’t backed by one of the Majors. They aren’t backed by one of the Indies either. They are one-man-bands. Take Matt, for example… to have no one inbetween works in his favour… Matt can deal directly with his fans… react quickly and genuinely promote himself as a truly authentic independent artist. He can sell his physical CDs via his Bandcamp page (or bigcartel, if he wanted to) at very reasonable prices… because he simply doesn’t have the overheads that the labels do. What’s more… he streams concerts via his Cafe Noodle site… and brings others in. He opens the door for others to participate.

The thing is… if you are like me… you do not object to paying £5 for one of his albums… because you have a real relationship with him. This is what the labels so desperately need but can’t get their heads around… the desire for a real relationship. Dealing direct with the artists, in this manner, removes the need for a label. In essence, Matt or James are their own labels… Matt through his solo work or his work with his band… the fierce and the dead… and James through his Ambienteer work.

What is important to note, however… is that both Matt and James’ music is niche. Matt make wonderfully upbeat futuristic flamenco guitar sounds that he loops and tweaks to make a wall-of-sound. James makes droning ambient electronic soundscapes. When I say niche… I mean that the majority of X-Factor-loving drones won’t get it… but then Sigur Rós are “technically” niche and yet they’ve received mainstream acceptance… mostly for their appearance, at one time, on nearly every piece of incidental music on the BBC (see note below).

I guess it is fair to say all music is niche… with some niches bigger than others. What artists like Matt and James have done is to find their niche… and build a relationship with it… and that is extremely important to acknowledge and understand.

To be continued…

Note: Nearly every other piece not by Sigur Rós is likely to be by Brian Eno! (John)

The long-running British sci-fi television series has been a part of my life for nearly as long as I can remember, and so I’m very excited that a new series starts today! I remember watching the first ever episode on an old black and white television in 1963, and (apart from a time when it went off a bit and was dropped) it’s as good as ever. Yes, the format has changed, but the current episodes encapsulate the spirit of the original – scary episodes (hiding behind the sofa is legendary) and great humour, with the latter being far better than it ever used to be. So (I for one) can’t wait until 6.00 pm on BBC1 today!

Update after today’s episode: It had everything in 45 minutes that’s good about Dr Who! As near a perfect episode as you could get, if not perfect! Intelligent, thoughtful, surreal, scary and witty!

Today’s race was one of the best and most exciting for a while. Unpredictable to the last, it was won by Lewis Hamilton for McLaren. Sebastian Vettel came second, with Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber coming third – but that doesn’t tell half the story! You can read the BBC race report here, but I was most amused by Webber’s comments in the press conference afterwards! Now everyone knows there’s no love lost between Vettel and Webber, and today it stepped up a gear (much to Vettel’s surprise and Hamilton’s amusement). Webber made two very telling comments.

First of all, he expressed relief that someone had finally beaten Vettel, whilst at the same time realizing that he probably shouldn’t be saying that about his team-mate: Congratulations to Lewis. It was good that someone finally… Of course, Seb is in the same team, but he has been on a phenomenal run and we are all here together fighting for victories. Shame McLaren won in a way, but also we can’t let Seb get too far away. So it was good day for the racing and good day for us in terms of points for the team. Secondly, he referred to the McLarens as Vodafones, I was looking for more yellow flags, a few more retirements, a couple of Vodafone cars pulled over but nothing, no yellow flags, I had to pass everybody. Hardly a slip of the tongue! Surely a dig at Vettel, who last week mistakenly used the sponsor name to describe the Renaults? What do you think?

No race report for the Malaysian GP as I’m not planning to cover every race. Sebastian Vettel won from pole and had been flying all weekend! Vitaly Petrov, on the other hand, was literally flying – as screenshot shows!

I was up early this morning to watch F1 qualifying live from Australia, on the first race weekend of the 2011 season. Mark Webber (in the above screenshot) will be hoping to do well in his home grand prix, but it was his Red Bull team-mate and World Champion Sebastian Vettel who stormed to P1 in a dazzling display! During testing McLaren had looked poor (by their standards), but Lewis Hamilton joins Vettel on the front row of the grid. Mark Webber qualified third, with McLaren’s Jenson Button fourth.

This year could be as exciting as last year, especially with five world champions all racing together this year. In addition, we have three Brits on the grid. It’s also good to have two former drivers in the commentary box for the BBC: Martin Brundle moves over as main commentator, with David Coulthard as his side-kick! Anyway, I better get off to bed as it’s another early start – not least because the clocks go forward an hour tonight!

When John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) was on BBC The One Show last evening and mentioned PiL, the presenters didn’t have a clue what he was talking about and clearly hadn’t done their homework! This video may enlighten them! A great song, amazing bass by Jah Wobble, and excellent lyrics!

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha.
You never listen to word that I said
You only seen me
For the clothes that I wear
Or did the intrest go so much deeper
It must have been
The colour of my hair.

Public Image.

What you wanted was never made clear
Behind the image was ignorance and fear
You hide behind his public machine
Still follow the same old scheme.

Public Image.

Two sides to evrey story
Somebody had to stop me
I’m not the same as when I began
I will not be treated as property.

Public Image.

Two sides to evrey story
Somebody had to stop me
I’m not the same as when I began
It’s not a game of Monopoly.

Public Image.

Public Image you got what you wanted
The Public Image belongs to me
It’s my entrance
My own creation
My grand finale
My goodbye

Public Image.

Public Image.

Goodbye.

[strange growling/roaring noise at the end.]

On the day the government recommended that people cut back on red and processed meat to reduce their risk of getting cancer, it seemed appropriate to write about healthy eating and losing weight. I recently watched a BBC programme that presented 10 scientific facts to help us understand how our bodies and minds work.

The programme began with an examination of visceral (hidden) fat which accumulates around the organs of our abdomen and which causes various problems. But the good news is that it’s the first fat to be lost when we exercise and eat healthily. However, if we just go without food, the brain urges us to eat high-calorie food and this is counter-productive.

In brief, the 10 facts are these:

1. Don’t skip meals.

2. Use smaller plates.

3. Watch your calories, because even healthy food contains calories!

4. Don’t blame your metabolism!

5. Having a high protein breakfast staves off hunger pangs during the day.

6. Soup keeps you feeling fuller for longer.

7. The wider the choice, the more you eat.

8. Low fat dairy products actually help your body excrete fat.

9. Exercise burns fat for 24 hours, even when you’re asleep!

10. Keep moving to lose weight, small changes to activity levels can make a difference, but don’t eat more!

I’m currently trying to put these into practice in my everyday life, having recently returned my BMI to the normal range. See also Stretching Exercises!