Posted by Ian

On Adam and Joe's superb 6 Music show the other week, the pair observed slyly just how well-timed is the release of Portishead's new album.

It's the group's first LP for 11 years - the first since their Britpop-buoyed emergence in the mid-90s when no discerning CD collection was without a copy of 'Dummy' and its ubiquitous single 'Sour Times'. It's also arrived, as Adam and Joe noted, in an atmosphere of economic kerfuffle and financial unease...just like the mid-90s, in fact, when the UK was groping its way through a currency crisis and all-round doom and gloom.

Portishead: The Recession-Friendly Band! They've consulted the stock markets and concluded that, yup, now is the time for another long-player of eerie bleeps and whispered high-pitched trilling.

Trouble is, Portishead are also a totem of, how can I put this, Tory Britain. They arrived in the midst and mayhem of John Major's administration...and now they're back, just as the papers are full of how the Conservatives are also back and set to 'trounce' Labour at the next general election. Ulp.

In the wake of the local elections several of us in the office remarked on how weird - and unsettling - it was to hear news reports on the TV chanting 'The Tories have gained' this and 'The Tories have taken' that. It took us right back to our childhoods, and in particular the 1980s.

Has everyone forgotten just what that decade was like? The best of times for some; sour times for others.

Posted by Ian

A quick look at what you thought of the site this month.

The new designs for Britain's coins, and high street banks losing a test case concerning overdraft charges attracted the greatest number of visitors to the homepage.

Other features that did well included 12 things you didn't know about alcohol, interest rates being slightly lowered to 5%, fashion taboos to break this spring, and a preview of this summer's blockbuster new films. 

The most popular message boards were a discussion of the return of Heroes, those new coin designs, and St George's Day. 

Thanks for all your contributions, opinions and feedback.

As ever there were a few errors of judgement and spelling you were quick to pick up on, and for which we apologise. These included running a headline about a woman dying in a police chase crash on the same page as a feature entitled 'the world's craziest police chases'; claiming the world's smallest islands are the Pitcairn Islands, whereas in fact they are the least populated; erroneously insisting the giant Singapore Flyer wheel travelled 18km at a speed of 36km per hour; and being too hasty - in some people's opinion - in revealing the name of who gets kicked off The Apprentice each week.

Several people complained about how long the site takes to appear in your browser ('World War Two could have been fought and won in the time it takes your page to load') and this is a problem that is being investigated. Far more complained about the sudden and unannounced switch from Windows Live Maps to Multimap, a policy that Microsoft has conceded should have been better advertised.

Finally, one person took offence at a photograph...of Bruce Forsyth. 'I have had to put up with that arrogant man on television for decades. I am DISGUSTED that I now have see his ghastly face when I use the MSN homepage. PLEASE do not irritate and insult your users in this way.'

Ah well. Clearly it's not always so nice to see him.

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Posted by Ian

It's that time of the year again. Local elections are being held across England and Wales on Thursday, along with contests for seats in the London Assembly and the post of London Mayor.

I'm not going to bang you over the head with all the moral and ethical reasons for voting; any sane, rational person is familiar with them and knows what to do.

I'll merely remind you of how, in an age where so much of our life is beyond our control, the chance to have any kind of say about the world in which we live is precious.

We can no longer influence the price of a tank of petrol or a loaf of bread; we can't do anything about interest rates or the ability to find a mortgage; we can't stop our country going to war or signing up for more nuclear weapons; we don't have a way of preventing jobs disappearing abroad or companies being gobbled up by international corporate giants.

But we can do something about the state of our roads, our bin collections, our nearby leisure centre, our parks, even our street lights and pavements. That may not sound very much, but together they add up to a hell of a lot to do with our quality of life and our ability to enjoy the world on our doorstep.

So get out and vote on Thursday. To coin a phrase from that unfairly-maligned decade, the 1980s: think global, act local. 

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Posted by Paul

Last November I was fuming when I opened a letter from my bank stating: "We acknowledge receipt of your complaint about bank charges. We believe though that the charges are fair, transparent and lawful."

What bunkum!

According to the BBC, the cost of employing a bank clerk to bounce a cheque is not more than £2 each time a customer goes overdrawn.

For a task that costs less than £2 to accomplish, some banks clobber customers with an outrageous £40 charge, and then have the gall to call such behaviour "fair".

Obscene would be more fitting.

I was cock-a-hoop though this morning when I breezed into the office to discover the latest development.

A judge has decided that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) can apply consumer contract regulations to decide if bank overdraft charges are fair or not.

Mr Justice Andrew Smith said the judgement did not necessarily mean the charges were unfair.

It may take months, but it is surely now only a matter of time until billions of pounds are returned, rightfully, to those who have been grossly overcharged.

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Posted by Ian

Can it really have been a year? Not in terms of the length of time Madeleine McCann has been missing - plenty of people have been absent for longer - but rather the kind of coverage the story has received in the media.

For most of those 12 months we've had to endure day upon day of hysterical scare-mongering, finger-pointing, muck-raking and innuendo. It's felt much much longer. Tittle-tattle has been elevated to gospel, and insinuation raised to the level of confirmation. Nobody is guiltless, MSN included. The merest scrap of a story has been treated as headline news. Conjecture - so and so *might* have this done to them, this *may* come to pass - has been passed off as fact. The most trivial of events - the McCann parents go out for a walk - has been hyped up to an enormous proportion. The result has been a shameful year for anybody associated with journalism in Great Britain.

After what's seemed like a lull in coverage, perhaps prompted by the treatment meted out to the Daily Express and Star, the same old headlines are now resurfacing. Or rather, the same old obsessions are resurfacing. The anniversary appears to be an excuse for everyone to pile in with retrospectives and reportage which add nothing to a story that has been appallingly sensationalised from the start.

Let's not be coy about this. The main reasons the media have been, and will continue to be, drawn to this tale like bees to honey are:

a) the missing person is a cute and adorable child
b) it happened in an exotic, picturesque location
c) middle-class people - i.e. the normally unimpeachable backbone of Britain - are involved

as opposed to:

a) the missing person being ordinary - i.e. dull
b) it happened in an everyday location
c) the usual suspects - i.e. single parents/unemployed/poor people - are to blame

Take a look at the work of Missing People, formerly the National Missing Persons Helpline; in particular the sheer number of current cases of missing and unidentified persons they are promoting (at the time of writing, 289 across the whole of the UK). Every single one of those people has a story to tell. A story that is not being told. A story that continues to be bumped off the pages of real newspapers by anything but real news.

The best thing we can hope for on the anniversary of Madeleine McCann's disappearance is a change in the attitude of everyone towards this and every case of a missing person. But I doubt it'll happen. In nobody's best interest, this will run and run.

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Posted by Dom

You won't be able to move next week (pun intended) for articles in the mainstream press about Nintendo's new 'Wii Fit' game, which aims to get everybody from 8 to 80 exercising in front of their TV, through a clever mixture of fun games and challenges and the 'Wii Balance Board'.

This Balance Board allows you to interact with the numerous exercises, workouts and challenges in the game, and ultimately build up your fitness levels from the comfort of your living room - no more long treks to the gym (or interacting with other human beings as well, I guess). 

At £69.99, the package doesn't come cheap - but when you see the size, build and quality of the Balance Board, the price does seem slightly more reasonable. I walked home with a review copy of the game under my arm last night and noticed quite a few enquiring/envious glances - Wii Fit is not out until April 25, and apparently video game stores up and down the country are sold out already of just their pre-order allocation, let alone actual stocks.

This marriage of home fitness and your games console ticks a lot of boxes in a society already gravely worried about a growing obesity crisis. Anything which makes exercise 'fun' and accessible, and which can be fitted in to your daily lifestyle easily, should be encouraged, but how well does the game actually work? I'm going to be keeping a diary for the MSN Life and Style channel where I see if the claims behind the title actually stand up in real life. You can read my conclusions on the game's release date next Friday.

In the meantime, do you think these kind of 'non-games' are a worrying development for the console industry as a whole, or a brilliant marketing ploy to get as many people as possible involved in playing games? Will fitness games like Wii Fit encourage you to exercise more consistently all the year round, or will you forget about them after the novelty's wore off and just go back to playing the latest Mario or Grand Theft Auto?

Leave your comments below - after watching this rather cynical (but witty) American take on the Wii Fit phenomenon ('Standing in one place has never been so much fun!')

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Posted by Laura

The French are very good at beating us at our own game. Only a few weeks after rubbing their inherent stylishness in our faces with the effortlessly chic visit of Nicolas Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni, they're at it again - only this time it's music.

Football we can handle (just about) but music, dear Gallic neighbours, is OUR turf. It's something we hold dear to our hearts as the one thing, when all the sporting remonstrations are said and done, we fall back on.

But this week the French Eurovision entry was announced - and it's actually very good. They seem to have struck upon a canny formula. Take a genre France is renowned for (arty, indie Europop), add an already acclaimed musician (enter Sebastien Tellier) and a song that's kooky without being too kitsch, et voilà - a Eurovision dream.

There's only one problem: many French people don't like it. Pourquoi? The lyrics are English. In fact, Tellier's Divine is stirring up such controversy a group that defends the French language has even suggested withholding TV taxes paid to public television by way of protest.

But aren't we missing the point here? French acts who sing in English, including the likes of Air, Daft Punk and M Tellier, don't sound British at all. They're still able to maintain their mysterious French je ne sais quoi despite not singing in their native tongue. It says a lot about a country's culture when its music can be intelligent enough to embrace the spirit of Europe and another language without losing its national identity.

And what kind of Euro-embracing pop do we produce here? I give you Girls Aloud's Can't Speak French. Enough said.

Allez la France! You deserve to win.

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Posted by Ian

Why is this bloke looking so pleased with himself?

Because he's just won a third stint as prime minister of Italy, that's why. Moreover, he's won it after a spell spent out of office - in other words, he's pulled off that increasingly rare political feat, the comeback.

Silvio Berlusconi, for it is he, may or may not be a crook*, but he's unequivocally a dab hand at triumphing in elections. Can you imagine a similar thing happening in this country? Say, Gordon Brown losing the next election but then going on to win the one after that?

Such Lazarus-like behaviour is highly unlikely, if not implicitly unacceptable, in the UK. It's just not the done thing. Once you've lost once, that's it for good. No second chances, let alone - as Berlusconi has done - a third. Even our leaders of the opposition nowadays feel obliged to quit if they fight and lose just one general election.

The last time any of our prime ministers did what Silvio's managed - come back to power after a spell in the wilderness - was over 30 years ago, in the shape of Harold Wilson. Truly another age. But why has that changed? Why should one defeat count as a permanent red card? Why are some countries happy to see old faces back calling the shots, while here there's an obsession with the searching for the next big thing?

Let's show a bit of respect for those with experience. Those who've been around the block a few times. Those who've had to take a few knocks and have learned from their mistakes. I'd rather have a seasoned warrior of 60+ running the country (from whatever party) than a baby face Cameron-esque thirtysomething. Does age count for nothing anymore?

*Other viewpoints are available

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Posted by Paul

The New York Times has just concluded its Worst Bad Name Contest.

Nominations this year included Chastity Beltz, Tiny Bimbo, Justin Credible and a girl whose father was a car mechanic but somehow didn’t realise he was effectively giving her the name of a tyre: Michele Lynn.

There were girls named Chaos and Tutu, and boys named Clever, Cowboy, Crash, Felony, Furious and Zero. There was Unnamed Jones (pronounced you-NAH-med) and then there was Brook Traut and his daughter, Rainbow.

But the winner was a woman from Cleveland, Ihio with the name Iona Knipl.

Have you come across an unfortunate name? If so please share and I'll post a blog piece highlighting the best of them next weekend, after consulting the Silly Names Committee at MSN Towers of course.

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Posted by Dom

A month ago I wrote in praise of the immense end-song to the video game Portal, calling it 'catchy, poignant, emotional, original, funny and intelligent... just so much better, on so many levels, than the half-hearted musical pap which dominates so many games these days'.

Feedback from you on my claim was broadly in agreement, although a few people who hadn't been lucky enough to play the game did, perhaps understandably, wonder what the fuss was about. Some of the references and comments in the song really do come into their own when you've been through the actual experience of playing the game to a finish.

One sure way of assessing whether a tune or game has become a cultural phenomenon or not is looking at the amount of spin-off blogs, websites, or musical tributes that it generates. It's in this spirit that I bring to you an email from one of our users:

'I'm a member of a rock band called 'missFlag'. We're huge fans of the games Half Life and Portal, and we've just finished recording a high quality cover of the song featured in Portal "Still Alive" - which we've released as a free download from our website.

We've put all our heart into it, and invested a lot of time and effort in this project - the feedback so far is amazing, and all we really need now is to spread the word amongst Portal fans.

I thought it would be AMAZING if you'd post something about it. All we want is for all Portal fans to hear the song and enjoy this project of ours as much as we enjoyed creating it.'

Here's the video - see what you think....

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Posted by Ian

The final episode in the latest series of one of the greatest television programmes ever was shown last night. Not that you would have noticed. Not that the channel which broadcast it went out of its way to get it noticed. In fact, they were probably glad to see the back of it.

The way More4 has treated Curb Your Enthusiasm has been diabolical. It's one thing burying it late at night on a Monday (a Monday! When has that been a night for classic comedy?!) It's another to do virtually nothing by way of publicity, or deciding to dump it from the schedule for two weeks for no reason, one of which was filled with - of all things - repeats of Phoenix Nights.

This show has never won the prestige or attention it deserved. There have been six series shown on one British TV channel or another, and none have been treated with respect. And before anyone says anything, this isn't one of those programmes that benefits from being an "undiscovered treasure" or having a "cult following" or any such rubbish. It should have been a massive hit and had the chance to be acclaimed as a genius of a sitcom by millions.

Anyway, last night's episode was a triumphant finale and one that, for once, saw its eternally frustrated protagonist Larry David end up on the winning side. Even if it did involve discussion of "a tickly anus".

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Posted by Nicole

Hot on the heels of our new Environment channel comes a refresh of our Music channel.  We wanted to do a better job of surfacing all the great content in the channel so we’ve reworked some sections, renamed others and added a few new exciting bits and pieces. 

  James,  our Music editor, goes into more detail over on his blog… 

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Posted by Dom

March was a busy month on the homepage. Breaking news events such as Hillary Clinton's unexpected comeback in the US presidential elections, missing girl Shannon Matthews being found alive and well, the McCartney divorce settlement, the Budget and yet more bad weather dominated the homepage, as you can see from this selection of slides from the last four weeks:

The Shannon Matthew story broke during the course of a normal working Friday, and we had a homepage slide published within 11 minutes of the news, which generated over 550,000 clicks during that afternoon alone. Recent developments in the case have kept the story high on our news agenda as well.

What got you talking

Popular message board topics this month included a discussion on the £24.3m payout for Heather Mills and a debate over whether the British public should be allowed to vote on the controversial Treaty of Lisbon.

Over in entertainment-land, developments in EastEnders, Dancing on Ice and The Apprentice, meanwhile, also kept you hooked.

Feedback on your feedback...

A couple of issues raised by you during March need clarifying. On the night of England's away friendly against France, a user complained: 'MSN page is a load of anti-Scottish b*******, there is not a thing about Scotland's draw with Croatia'.

I was working the out-of-hours rota shift myself that night, however, and can confirm that Scotland's match and result featured prominently in the homepage Sports module. Although we inevitably have to give some football matches preference over others, we will never intentionally ignore any match featuring the Home nations.

The onset of the new Grand Prix season also led to complaints from MSN users: 'Many thanks MSN - I, like millions of others WAS looking forward to the excitement of the F1 qualifying on TV this afternoon. Now you have published the results it won't be quite the suspense I was hoping for. Could you not at least put sports results that haven't yet been shown on TV on a page behind the front page without giving away the result as soon as we log on???' and 'Printing the results of the Grand Prix on the homepage before the afternoon showing on tv is out of order! Now i know the result (which I've avoided finding out) as spoilt the afternoon viewing of the 1st Grand Prix. I do hope you take this on board and think about putting the result up later not to annoy people who DIDNT want to know the result!' were just two of the comments.

All our rivals did put up the result soon after it happened, however, and as a breaking news and sport site we are duty-bound to put the result of a Grand Prix up soon after it happens. Users' comments have been taken on board, however, and we will look at alternative approaches to releasing the information; hopefully similar cases where the result is in the middle of the night UK time will not happen too many times over the course of the season.

We hold our hands up to...

A couple of unfortunate errors this month. As one user correctly pointed out: 'It is a little incorrect to have a headline about a woman dying in a police chase crash and then a section about the worlds craziest police chases - please change it NOW!!!!!!!!'.

This unfortunate juxtaposition of stories happened on the last day of the month and was rectified quickly after it was spotted; we keep our eyes peeled for these kinds of clashes every day we program the homepage, but occasionally something slips through the net.

An inaccurate 'Editor's Pick' headline drew this user's ire: 'Just like to point out some very clumsy (or deliberately scaremongering?) headline writing of yours. "House prices tumble to their lowest level for 12 years" Bloody Hell, I thought - have I just lost everything I've worked for for the past 20 years, without even noticing? How did this slump take place in a single day? Then I read the actual article. Ahhh, blessed relief! So, apparently, what is at its lowest for 12 years is the annual *growth* in house prices. House prices themselves, far from being at "their lowest level for 12 years", are still actually *higher* than a year ago. Phew!! Come on guys - that was a pretty shocking bit of rubbish, there'.

Again, this inaccurate headline was changed very quickly on the homepage after being spotted, but it shouldn't have got through in the first place, so our apologies.

'Your news article on the A380 gives Boeing as the manufacturer, it is of course Airbus' says one user - this mistake was from an automatic news feed rather than one of our live editors, but again, our apologies.

And finally...

'The Great Britain Track Cycling Team have won 9 Gold Medals at the World Track Championships ...............................and typically with myopic reporting in the sport section, is there ANY mention of it????' complained one user.

It's true that we did perhaps underplay this stunning sporting success on the homepage. With our recent national failures in football, rugby and cricket (until a late revival), maybe we should be looking at other sports, and impressive British triumphs, rather more closely than we actually do.

See you next month for another round-up of the past four weeks' events. Keep the feedback coming, as each and every comment is read by all who work on the homepage every day.

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Posted by Laura

You may have noticed a welcome addition to our navigation bar today - a placement for the new MSN Environment channel.

You can find it at the far right-hand side:

The new channel has a wealth of news, video and features - including the alarming World's 10 most polluted places, the fascinating look at how climate change will affect your region, and intriguing pictures of Britain's underwater wonders.

It also has tips on recycling and reducing your carbon footprint, plus interactive maps, photo galleries of endangered species and insights from our bloggers around the world.

Bookmark http://environment.uk.msn.com/ as your online guide to living a greener life.

Take a look and tell us what you think.

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