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  • The demise of The Word magazine (part 2)

    July 7th, 2012

    (I conked out before finishing all I had to say last night. Here’s the rest.)

    The Word (magazine)
    The Word (magazine) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Part one of this entry was all to do with my love of magazines, even if their contents didn’t interest me much. I come from a generation where you had the luxury of learning for love, broadening your perspective. The concept that you might consume media that is not specifically targeted at you is pretty alien these days.

    I’m marking Media Studies exams at the moment (don’t worry, nothing specific coming), and although it’s exhausting I find it very rewarding, because it makes me think about different topics and how I might communicate them to my students. What they should be learning is that the modern media is fast-moving and diverse, offering the audience the opportunity to tailor their consumption to their interests, contribute their own content, and interact with other like-minded people.

    All of that is pretty exciting. And here we are. But if you’re doing all that, you literally have no time to consume media in the old way. The point I was trying to make last night was that a magazine like The Word, with its luxuriously long articles, just doesn’t fit in with the mixture of consumption and production outlined above. Sure, it’s a shame in many ways, but it would also be a shame for a young person not to seize the opportunity to start a blog, follow hundreds of people on Twitter, or upload a few vids to YouTube or Vimeo.

    Reading magazines is a lifelong habit, which I’ve more or less lost because I’ve embraced the new way of doing things. I regret it sometimes, and out of nostalgia will pick up a magazine, but it just doesn’t work in the same way. In fact, it makes me feel bad because I feel guilty for not reading it, which is silly, but still. My whole Word subscription turned into a year of feeling guilty for not reading something that didn’t interest me much. Crucially, even downloading a magazine onto my iPad just doesn’t work. Because on my iPad I also have the Twitter, and Angry Birds, and Flipboard, and the WordPress app. Why read one magazine when you can find 10, 20 articles from 10, 20 other sources and red those? The whole world is a magazine now.

    In the exams, the students are asked to speculate on the future of various parts of the industry, including print. Most of them think that newspapers and magazines will die, or go online-only. The question of how all this will be funded never comes up. What I like about David Hepworth’s blog is that he often returns to this thorniest of all problems. If people are no longer willing to pay for content (in print, or in the form of TV drama, say), how does it get produced? The answer is that it doesn’t, and the media we produce for ourselves will have to suffice. This either means that the quality of what we consume will diminish, or that we’ll all have to get better at producing it — and paying for it, if necessary.

    This might bother people of my generation. But if you’re sixteen? It will always have been this way.

    Related articles
    • The demise of The Word Magazine (frequentlyarsed.wordpress.com)
    • Make Your Own Living Glossi Magazine From Social Networks (makeuseof.com)
    • The Word magazine closure: Twitter reaction (guardian.co.uk)
  • The demise of The Word Magazine (part 1)

    July 6th, 2012

    (Part 2 of this entry is here.)

    The Word Magazine has announced its closure after nine years.

    The Word (magazine)
    The Word (magazine) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    I admit I came late to it, and only then because I had a few spare Tesco vouchers. A colleague at work occasionally brings in a Mojo, or more rarely a Q, and I’ve long been indifferent to the content of such titles. I’ve been reading (and not reading) it for around a year and I’m not surprised it folded.

    Of course, it’s sad to see the demise of an intelligent print title and the loss of associated jobs, but as David Hepworth pointed out on his blog, these things are impossible to sustain in the modern media landscape. He exemplified this by talking about how the news broke (on Twitter) and how quickly the public reacted (on Twitter), long before the old media got their arses in gear.

    When I was between the ages of 17 and 22 I was an avid reader of the NME, sometimes so obsessed with music that I would even buy the Melody Maker and even Sounds (but never Record Mirror). I stopped reading the NME when it became the plaything of Ian Penman and Paul Morley. Later, I read Q for a while, and later still I briefly flirted with, and abandoned, Mojo.

    Here’s the thing. None of these magazines really wrote about any of the music that I love(d). Oh of course there was the odd edition with a Springsteen write-up, or a gnomic Dylan interview, or a Beatles cover story. But most of the time, from the NME onwards, I was reading because I was interested in music in general, and I liked the writing.

    And this is what I felt about The Word. Nice people, with an occasionally amusing podcast, still writing in the same jokey way that I loved back in the 70s and 80s, when Danny Baker was writing fake letters to the NME asking Where is Beatles band?

    I’ve tried picking up country music magazines, but they’re badly written, badly designed, and cheaply printed. I’ve read guitar magazines, but they feed an addiction I can’t afford.

    And I used to read all of the Apple computer magazines. But I no longer do. Why? Because the monthly or fortnightly news pages are already out of date. Because the reviews are duplicated a million times online. And because they feed an addiction I can’t afford.

    There was never anything in the Word about anybody I’d listen to, and I hated those Illustrator covers. And a copy would often lie around the house, part-read, for weeks on end. In fact, the last one of my Tesco subscription has been sitting on the table in the back room for a month. The one before that is by the bed. The one before that is on my desk at work.

    I bought an iPad last weekend, and just downloaded the last ever issue onto it. Read about twenty percent of it. David Hepworth recommends a Kenny Chesney album. Now, that’s almost my thing, but Kenny Chesney is naff.

    Read Part 2.

    Related articles
    • Why I’m going to miss the Word (guardian.co.uk)
    • Word magazine could not survive in changing media world (guardian.co.uk)
    • The Word magazine shuts down after nine years (newstatesman.com)
    • A Word On The Word (neilperkin.typepad.com)
    • RIP The Word magazine (telegraph.co.uk)
  • Thirty Miles West – Alan Jackson

    July 1st, 2012

    I’ve got a lot of respect for Alan Jackson. He knocks out an album a year, which is one thing. Sure, they all sound pretty much alike, but the quality control is extraordinary. And sure, it’s a bit, er, rich for a millionaire to be singing songs about the dignity of working in a hard hat, but I don’t doubt his sincerity. He knows his audience.

    So it’s the usual mixture of ballads and jukebox friendly country rock, and there’s the de rigeur song about cancer, but there’s nothing wrong any of that. The sounds are beautifully produced and Jackson is a steadfast holdout in the Loudness Wars. His records sound great when played loud, and you get to use your, you know, volume control.

    Thirty Miles West features 13 songs, some written by Jackson, and some by songwriting teams. Previously released singles “So You Don’t Have to Love Me Anymore” and “Long Way to Go” stand out, as do “You Go Your Way” and the song he wrote when his wife was being treated for cancer.

    Takes its place in the playlist with its commitment and honesty, and always lifts with its fine musicianship.

  • Don’t enter the arena

    June 27th, 2012
    Secret denunciations against anyone who will c...
    Secret denunciations against anyone who will conceal favors and services or will collude to hide the true revenue from them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Politics is insane-making at the best of times, but it’s especially bad when those opposed to the self-interested posh bastards in charge of the country (elected and unelected) can’t get their shit together. I’m sick of seeing links to reasoned, well-researched responses from well-meaning people who think the Tories might somehow be made to see sense.

    So Gove announces three unworkably stupid new ideas every week. So Cameron goes on record with nasty ideas about cutting benefits. So Osborne postpones the fuel tax increase. And the world is all a-flutter.

    Here’s what they’re doing. Everybody knows that the benefit cutting thing was to stop people talking about tax dodging. And it worked. And the fuel tax thing is a distraction too. If you thought about it, though, you’d realise that fuel taxes are one of the more progressive kinds of sales tax, because they tend to hurt rich people with big cars more than they hurt ordinary people with small, economical cars. So, in a way, it’s another tax cut for the rich.

    But the second thing they’re doing is they’re moving the argument further and further into their territory. Gove doesn’t really think he’ll get to reintroduce the CSE, and they’re unlikely to really get through a cut in housing benefits for all under-25s (or indeed to restrict benefit to the first two kids). The point is, these ideas are so OUT THERE, that to even enter a discussion about them moves political discourse far to the right.

    The only rational response to these people is abuse and ridicule. To even attempt to proffer a rational counter-argument is to give credibility to a political ideology that is repellent.

    Just tell the bastards to fuck off.

  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Royal Albert Hall, 18 June 2012

    June 21st, 2012
    Mike Campbell, wigging out in Oslo

    Going to gigs these days will always make me feel old. Even if I’d taken my daughter to see Taylor Swift (it was a school night, so we didn’t), I’d have felt like an old man.

    Taking the kids to see Tom Petty was no different. It was a school night, but we went anyway, to the first night (the extra night) at the Royal Albert Hall. For merely the price of a family holiday, it was a good night out.

    There were a lot of men and women of a certain age there, with a few younger faces. Looking at the grey hairs, the fatties, the baldies, I kept having to remind myself, not that I was a young man surrounded by oldies, but that I was looking into a mirror.

    I’d never been to the RAH before, and did think it was a good venue, with nobody sitting so far away that they didn’t get a good view. We were in the stalls, section G, at the side of the stage, and it’s one of the best views I’ve ever had at a gig, in spite of the fact that we weren’t face on. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never be one of those people in the front few rows, the ones who get to catch all the plectra thrown into the crowd. Not for the likes of me, like most of the things this country has to offer.

    The only thing about the RAH is that it’s miles from anywhere. Doesn’t warrant its own tube station, and you have to walk about a mile to get something to eat or drink that isn’t at venue prices.

    This is an expensive night out, and I know I shouldn’t go on about the money, but it bothers me. The £65 per ticket is fair enough: that’s how bands make money these days, accepted. £20-25 for a t-shirt, same thing. But the £5+ booking fee (per ticket), the train fair, the fact that you’re in Belgravia and a round of soft drinks is going to be almost a tenner, it felt like I was shedding £5 notes behind me as I walked. We walked down to a pub called The Goat that offered fish and chips if you could find a table. It was decent enough, although without the tartare sauce, the curry sauce, and all the other condiments, surprisingly bland. So that was another fifty notes.

    The standard irritations of a London gig weren’t absent. It started during the support act, the Jonathan Wilson band. Of course the venue remained mainly empty, which is a shame (because they were quite good), but I’d rather that than the other thing, which was the couple next to me who came in, late, with their drinks, making a lot of noise, and proceeded to continue a conversation at TOP VOLUME (because, you know, you have to SHOUT to make yourself HEARD when a BAND IS PLAYING). I tolerated it for as long as I could, even offering to swap places with my wife, who might prefer me not to start a fight. But she said she could hear her just as clearly.

    So in the end, I yelled, “YOU KNOW, IF YOU TALK REALLY, REALLY LOUD YOU CAN ALMOST HAVE A NORMAL CONVERSATION.”

    Which shut them up.

    Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers arrived on stage, on time, and played the kind of set that only a group of musicians who have been together for 40 years, more or less, can play. (Petty met Benmont Tench in ’68 and Mike Campbell in 1970.) They don’t leap around too much, but they play tight, with truly great musicianship.

    When you can start your set with stuff like “You Wreck Me“, “Here Comes My Girl”, and play crowd pleasers like “I Won’t Back Down,” “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, “Free Fallin’”, a Traveling Wilburys number, a Peter Green song, and  “Learning to Fly”; and when you can bring the set to a head with a blistering “Refugee”, and then come back and deliver “Mary Jane’s Last Dance“; when you can do all that, and you can still pull out “American Girl” to wrap it all up? Well, that’s entertainment.

    It was clear that the audience responded more to songs from the 70s and 80s more than they did the more recent Mojo tracks, but then I think that’s at least partly because TP has not toured the UK for 15 years or so. There was a tremendous warmth in the atmosphere, and a sense that the band were enjoying themselves and responding to the crowd. The interplay between Benmont Tench (in his nest of keyboards), Mike Campbell, and Tom Petty was as excellent as ever, and Scott Thurston’s backing vocals are a real asset. Mike Campbell just gets better and better, but Petty played some good guitar, too.

    A great occasion, and worth every minute of lost sleep on a school night.

    Related articles
    • Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Albert Hall – review (standard.co.uk)
    • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – review (guardian.co.uk)
    • Tom Petty’s debt to Bob Dylan (telegraph.co.uk)
  • Wish You Were Here

    June 17th, 2012
    Syd Barrett, visiting Abbey Road Studios on 5 ...
    Syd Barrett, visiting Abbey Road Studios on 5 June 1975. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Just watched the documentary about the making of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here that was on a couple of weeks ago.

    I enjoyed it; I’m not a Pink Floyd fan, but I have always liked that title track, with the 12-string guitar and its country-ish feel. I liked it a long time before I knew I liked country music. I was never a member of the Syd Barrett cult. Couldn’t see it, still can’t – there’s an awful lot of romance attached to those who burn out or die young. I suppose  a lot of people see their own unfulfilled potential in such figures.

    It brought up some memories actually, of my early teenage years and a period of time when I wasn’t quite sure what I liked and also felt very lonely. I knew I liked The Beatles, but that was about all I knew. The first album I bought was the Beatles Blue compilation; I think after that I bought the following, in no particular order: a Hawkwind (!) album; Thin Lizzy Live and Dangerous; and Pink Floyd Animals.

    I liked bits of Animals. Some good melodies, but not enough guitars for me. The Hawkwind album was one that had a track I frequently heard on Radio Caroline: “Spirit of the Age”, which I confess sounded much more interesting coming over a late-night, swirling, drifting AM radio signal.

    There were a couple of other kids at school were sort of interested in Pink Floyd. John, who would become my closest friend later on, had a couple of the early ones in his house. I remember hearing “Set the Controls…” and thinking it was boring. Think they were his Dad’s really. And someone else had Wish You Were Here and lent it to me.

    I probably taped it.

    Watching the film, it was fascinating as ever to feel the ongoing needle between Waters and Gilmour, albeit toned down. Waters spoke pointedly about the “valuable brand” of Pink Floyd. I knew that Syd Barrett was supposed to have turned up at the studio during the recording, and that bit of the documentary was a clock-stopping moment, as they one by one discussed not recognising this guy who was hanging around – before showing the shocking photo that was taken on the day. I wasn’t expecting that.

    It was a strange feeling, back then, not really having any friends yet (I was in the equivalent of Year 9 and Year 10, I think) and desperately seeking something to love. Probably the loneliness meant that music was far more important to me than it might have been. By the time I was 16, although I had a proper best friend by then, music was everything.

    Still is.

  • What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel

    June 8th, 2012
    TED 2010- Michael Sandel
    TED 2010- Michael Sandel (Photo credit: redmaxwell)

    I loved Michael Sandel‘s series of lectures on Justice (free on iTunes), so when I read about this book in the Guardian, thought I’d get hold of it.

    What Money Can’t Buy is a very thoughtful and measured discussion of something that fills me with rage: the forced introduction of market forces into all walks of life and public service, from education and health through policing and political lobbying.

    Sandel has two simple objections to the free market ideologues. One is to do with fairness; the other to do with corruption of things that are part of the public good. Introducing market norms, he shows over and over again, tends to squeeze out other non-market norms (like altruism and, you know, just being good to each other).

    Reducing everything in life to an ability to pay creates unfairness: in education, in health, in employment, and in politics. Creating a market in things that are supposed to be free means that the wealthy have unfair access. Sandel gives the good example of free theatre (Shakespeare in the Park). When people pay others to queue for them, or create a secondary market in something that was meant to be free, it means that access to the free theatre becomes difficult for those without the ability to pay: the very people who were meant to be the target audience. What Sandel doesn’t point out, actually, is that events like free public theatre have already been subsidised and paid for by taxpayers; to create a secondary market in tickets is therefore doubly immoral, especially when those who do so are wealthy people who pay proportionately less tax than they should. But free theatre is just the tip of the iceberg, and the seeping of market forces into all walks of life is a cancer that eats away at our social contract.

    Once the non-market norms have been squeezed out, it’s hard to get them back. Sandel gives another example: of an Israeli childcare provider who started to charge parents for late pickups of their kids. Instead of a reduction in the problem of late pickups (which forced teachers to stay later to care for semi-abandoned kids), the introduction of fines led to more of them. Clearly, once money is involved, people stopped feeling guilty about being late. The fines were abandoned, but the rate of late pickups remained high: the social contract had been broken.

    A key point made by Sandel is that the cancerous spread of market norms means that having money matters more than ever. If everything is subject to market forces, it means that money can buy more things that it could ever buy before. This makes the increasing gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in our capitalist societies even more significant. It would be okay to be poorer in a society where the best education and the best healthcare was available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. But when having money gets you better service and better access whilst at the same time squeezing out those who are unable to pay, wealth inequality becomes even more immoral.

    It creeps in everywhere. People jump queues at amusement parks, airports, the channel tunnel, by paying a bit extra. We Britons joke about them, but the queue is fundamental to our society. A queue is a great leveller: we really are all in it together when we queue. Given the opportunity to skip queues by paying more money, some wealthy people choose to do so. People in the regular queue may feel a mixture of emotions when they see this. My own reaction is seething rage. Money buys the rich quicker access, but also separates them from the rest of us. The more opportunities wealthy people take to use money to give themselves a separate, better service, the worse the service for the rest of us gets. This is why private schools and private healthcare are a cancer. We have more private cops (security guards) in this country than we have cops.

    Private schools, private health, skyboxes in stadia, fast track passport control: all signs of the same cancer.

    I used to laugh when people who’d paid Easyjet for priority boarding merely got on the bus that takes everyone to the plane first (and were then last off). I’ve once or twice seen someone trying to jump a queue in traffic (by going up the hard shoulder or other rule-breaking behaviour) get their just deserts. But such moments of satisfaction are all too rare. Most of them time, the rich get what they want, and they will always treat a relatively small fine (for a late pickup, or for parking where they shouldn’t) as a price worth paying to get what they want.

    I’m angry, bitter, frustrated by all this, sure. When people like me go on about stuff like this, we’re often accused of waging class war. You bet. But I didn’t start this class war. The war waged by the rich against the poor was started a long time ago, and it has accelerated in recent years. There have been free market ideologues for a long time, and they’ve always been morally corrupt. Being morally corrupt, they don’t even know how to care.

    It always comes back for me, to Kant‘s categorical imperative. How would it be if everyone behaved like you? If we all paid the extra for priority passport control? Market forces would mean that the price of priority treatment would go up and up, all so the rich could maintain their pristine separation and fast-track themselves through the queues. In other words, we can’t all behave like you. Which means your behaviour is not just unfair but morally wrong.

    An important book, this was probably more measured and reasonable than it would have been had I written it. It’s also somewhat repetitive of the same two basic points (which I suppose only adds to its power). Sandel hints at a discussion we need to have about what constitutes the good life, but never gets around to having it. He clearly doesn’t want to walk into tricky ideological areas. In America, he’d be accused of socialism. Of course, what America needs more than it needs anything else is socialism.

    The last quarter of the book consists of endnotes. One of the surprises of the Kindle is that books sometimes finish when you’re not expecting them to.

  • Never tweet your heroes

    June 8th, 2012
    twitter fail image
    twitter fail image (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Twitter vexed me over the holiday.

    For the few days I was away over the bank holiday, Twitter was my media. It’s where I kept up to date with the news, and what people were talking about. I didn’t have much network access. There was free WiFi in the hotel, but only in inconvenient spots, and the 3G only came through if you opened the windows. Since it was pissing down with rain for much of the time, that didn’t happen much.

    Recently, I’ve been following quite a few people involved in education, and others whose tweets struck me as coming from like-minded people. I don’t tend to follow the big celebrity tweeters because (a) they tend to tweet and retweet too much and too often and (b) you can go off people surprisingly quickly.

    (On the question of (b), it can be quite upsetting to become irritated with someone you previously admired. Twitter is an online version of that old saying, “Never meet your heroes.” )

    Anyway, my timeline has of late been filled with quite a lot of anti-government sentiment in particular focused on their education policy; but also, and quite by coincidence, republicanism. Which was probably the reason why my stream erupted with frustration and rage over the Jubilee weekend.

    Now, I ignored the Jubilee in ’77 (no street parties down our way), and was completely unaware of it ten years ago (I feel like I was on another planet then), and it turned out I was out of the country this time around. If, like me, you hate inherited privilege and wealth but realise you’re in a minority, the answer is to simply switch off for the duration. So, had I been in the UK, I wouldn’t have watched any of the television coverage, and I’d have refused to attend local street party.

    But it was hard to ignore it on Twitter, and here’s the thing.

    When Twitter gets a bee in its bonnet about something, it becomes a pub bore. I’m quite happy for a person to express an opinion. But what happens on Twitter is that people obsessively repeat their opinions, as if we didn’t notice the first time; and then they retweet other opinions that are the same as theirs; and then go on expressing their opinion, ad nauseam.

    The problem for me is that, while I agree with the expressed opinions (and might even be guilty of retweeting them), there’s nothing I can do with that. Clearly, this was not the moment of revolution. It was just people watching TV (why not switch off ferchristsake?) and complaining. Now, I feel like smashing things up most of the time, so I don’t need my frustration and rage to be constantly reinforced. What I’d like more of, please, is a kind of alternative media, where something else is happening other than the shit that most of the nation is up to their eyeballs in.

    Seems to me, since Twitter is our media, that we should be capable of coming up with an alternative view of reality that doesn’t involve carping about the parasites who are infecting the rest of the media.

    Tweetbot, my Twitter client of choice, has some great mute features (you can mute hashtags as well as people now), but it upsets me that I should have to resort to muting people I like and follow. I’d much rather we joined together in a concerted attempt to provide an alternative. As it was, my only option was to switch off Twitter, much as I’d have switched off the radio at home.

    Oh, and if I see that fucking picture of the fucking surprised looking house one more time…

  • Here be spoilers: Prometheus

    June 2nd, 2012

    So it’s not a direct prequel, taking place on a different planet than the one they land on at the beginning of Alien.

    Is that a cop-out? Maybe. On the other hand, Ridley Scott clearly went to pains to distance this film from Alien while staying in the same fictional universe.

    So I emerged with a vague sense of disappointment, because I’d gone to great lengths to avoid as much pre-publicity and discussion about the film – even going as far as offending some people on the Twitter. But then I do that every day. Probably.

    But it turned out that there were no surprises in the film, not really. Even though I’d done my best to learn NOTHING about it, I could have predicted most of it, if asked.

    Then I ask myself, what if I had never seen Alien or Blade Runner, two of the best films of all time, and probably the best attempts at science fiction ever committed to screen? Would I still feel disappointed?

    And the answer to that is probably not. So in other words, let’s cut Ridley Scott a break. Because he is clearly the best director of fully-imagined future worlds, and that is no small thing. If you loved Alien, you couldn’t help the sense of anticipation you felt going into this. Prometheus looks fabulous, with the kind of production design you’d expect from the fully visual thinker Ridley Scott. The only problem I have with it really is that there are too many characters in it. Alien had a nice small cast, but this one adds at least 11 other characters who don’t do much other than get in the way. Maybe it needed to be longer (I would never say that about a film normally, which is saying something).

    3D or 2D? Clearly when a studio is spending this much money, the director has no choice. In reality, Ridley Scott is not stupid enough to think 3D is better. I saw the 2D print and it looked great and at no point did I wistfully look towards one of the 3D screens. My 2D showing was full, too, and not all of us were wearing spectacles.

    Ridley Scott hints that he’ll do a Blade Runner film. Please don’t tell me anything about it for the next four years.

  • Polo: the most uncomfortable car

    June 1st, 2012

    I was interested to note, in one of the Telegraph’s frequent “Top 20” galleries, that the Mark 4 VW Polo is among the 20 worst cars on the road, according to the Auto Express Driver Power Survey.

    Yesterday, I spent the day with one of the latest Polo models (not the Mark 4, the 5). If you know me you know that I love Volkswagens (especially their dullness, before you chip in), because both our other Volkswagens were in for a simultaneous service.

    The loan Polo was a petrol-engined model with a manual gearbox. Petrol engines are traditionally smoother and quieter than diesels, with more low-end pulling power. This one wasn’t, because it was the 3-cylinder engine that VW stick in at the bottom end of their range. It sounded as rough as a diesel, without the turbo powered advantage. You have to stir around in the gears a lot to keep it moving, which brings us to the second problem.

    Both our cars are DSG-gearboxed automatics. I love this gearbox – it’s generally smooth and seamless, efficient, and economical (I regularly get 60 mpg in my Golf). I’ve also had hip pain for over 20 years, so not having to depress a clutch is great for me.

    Unused as I am to changing gears manually, I did find the Polo painful on my hip. Worse than this, though, there was actually no room for my left leg to change gears easily. The steering wheel, set as high as it would go, got in the way of my knee, as did the cavernous centre console (cavernous only so you can have two giant drinks in it). It was impossible to find a good position for the seat – so that, for example, your arms were comfortably relaxed and your face not too close to the airbag, but you could also change gears and reach the pedals with your feet.

    The ergonomics were terrible.

    As for the centre console with its cavernous capacity to drinking cups, I would assert that nobody driving a little 1.2 polo really has much of a need for a 2-litre diet or regular coke. I’m sceptical about the obsession everybody seems to have with having a drink close to hand at all times. Even on long journeys, you can stop every couple of hours and have a drink. Nobody’s going to die, nor even dehydrate.

    All in all, screaming, unrefined, agony.

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