The zero carbon off switch is the tech to go for

Mini LED vs OLED: which TV screen technology is better?

The world of TVs can be a confusing place. OLED, QLED, LED, LCD, Mini LED, MicroLED... the list goes on. We're here to demystify these terms, and explain what they actually mean for you, the viewer.

This time it's the turn of OLED and Mini LED. We'll explain both screen technologies and see how they compare so that when it comes time to buy a new TV, you'll know which is best for you.

A pint at bedtime

By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to bed.

Charles Dickens – The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)


Or better still –

Nodding his approval of this decisive and manly course of procedure, the landlord retired to draw the beer, and presently returning with it, applied himself to warm the same in a small tin vessel shaped funnel-wise, for the convenience of sticking it far down in the fire and getting at the bright places. This was soon done, and he handed it over to Mr Codlin with that creamy froth upon the surface which is one of the happy circumstances attendant on mulled malt.

Charles Dickens – The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)

It is impossible that you should be sincere

‘I am sincere!’ she broke in, with more passion than he had ever imagined her capable of uttering.

‘I cannot call it sincerity. It is impossible that you should be sincere; you live in the latter end of the nineteenth century; the conditions of your birth and education forbid sincerity of this kind.’

George Gissing - A Life's Morning (1888)


An interesting passage where Gissing’s character says that it is not possible for people of a certain social class and education to be sincere in certain circumstances. Today we tend to call this hypocrisy, but it is useful to see it as a selective failure to acknowledge the real world, a failure to be sincere. 

Insincerity is one of the roots of woke culture, accounting for that strange ability to blend ersatz sincerity with blatant virtue-signalling. To outsiders, woke rhetoric seems insincere because it is. It is not rooted in the real world, but in a politically ersatz world where ersatz sincerity is correspondingly necessary. 

Today it is one of the problems faced by sceptics in a world where professional insincerity is no obstacle to advancement. It never was an obstacle of course. Yet although such cultural shifts are nebulous and diffuse, perhaps the value of sincerity has been eroded. It certainly seems like it.

A major problem faced by sceptics is that virtue-signalling is a widespread substitute for public sincerity, as are emotional outbursts, high-profile stunts, appeals to authority, arm waving and so on. But for sceptics there is a reliable guide through the swamp –

As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice of the preacher.

Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers (1857)

This of course is the guide to sincerity which is not ersatz - outward signs. It is the guide in our day just as it was in Trollope’s. 

Today we know all about outward signs which point unerringly towards insincerity. The rich climate activist who travels by private jet, the celebrity with multiple houses, the journalist with a villa in a warmer climate, the callow young activist with wealthy parents.

It is impossible that you should be sincere...

BBC bias ten years on

Back in March, David Keighley wrote a News-watch piece about his ten years spent attacking BBC bias.


TEN YEARS ON, BBC BIAS IS WORSE THAN EVER

ASTONISHINGLY, it is almost ten years since I first wrote my first blog for The Conservative Woman website. By that time, I had been friends with and worked with Kathy Gyngell – whose brainchild it was – for almost 30 years, 14 of them in trying to hold the BBC in check over its outrageously pro-EU coverage, through News-watch.

The springboard to that blog a decade ago? The BBC’s incestuous, self-serving infatuation with Glastonbury. I noted that the Corporation was sending its usual hundreds-strong army to mount disproportionately lavish coverage of the event.

And why? I argued that in the BBC’s warped events diary, this was a ‘woke’ happening par excellence – because at its heart was support for a galaxy of right-on causes such as climate alarmism, led that year by Greenpeace.


Anyone paying attention will know this, but the whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that no major political party and no government is ever likely to do anything constructive about BBC bias. The political risk isn't worth it. 

Many MPs appear to rationalise this persistent failure by learning to see voters in much the same way that the BBC sees viewers - as the audience. 

We seem to have an inward-looking Parliamentary culture where viewers are voters and voters are viewers and neither guise makes them into decision-makers.    


A decade on has anything changed at the BBC, and is it likely to any time soon? Sadly, no. In late January, Lucy Frazer, the useless Tories’ Culture Secretary, very belatedly released the BBC’s Mid-Term Review (MTR)...

The MTR supposedly beefed up the complaints process by suggesting that Ofcom should become more rigorous about BBC bias. The reality is that since 2017 Ofcom has seen fit to investigate only a handful of BBC complaints. Most of its Content Board have strong BBC connections and instead focus their energies on attacking GB News.

Thus, nothing is happening to halt the ‘progressive’ agenda embraced by everyone at the BBC from the Director General downwards. All anyone can now do to resist BBC bias is to stop watching.

Restricted to everyone

Jill Biden privately pleas with Joe to stop Gaza’s suffering, report says

First Lady Dr Jill Biden is reportedly one of the strongest voices calling for the end of civilian deaths in Gaza in the White House and has been urging her husband, President Joe Biden, to help cease the violence.

Earlier this week, Mr Biden met with Muslim community members – something the first lady allegedly said she disapproved of because of Mr Biden’s support of Israel in the conflict with Hamas, according to a New York Times report.

One meeting attendee, Salima Suswell, the founder of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, said that Mr Biden recounted that Dr Biden had been urging him to, “Stop it, stop it now.”

Do they read as they write, or do modern journalists just skip the reading part altogether? The word 'private' doesn't usually include the whole world.

More likely is that the story comes via Joe's handlers who want to send a political signal, a signal so private it has to be restricted to the rest of the world.

The Seat Reservation

 

Let's go to Mam Tor

 

Easter weekend traffic to Mam Tor in Derbyshire. Notoriously busy anyway, but we never go there to find out for ourselves.