With no warning that I noticed, it seems that everyone at TV.com has taken Monday and Tuesday off work. Did somebody die? (Did somebody die 44 years ago?)

One consequence of yesterday's site relaunch is that I am now barred from submitting to the site. I'm getting a Forbidden (403) message, but it doesn't appear that other contributors are affected in the same way. I'll continue to moderate submissions, of course, but won't be able to submit to any guides until someone at TV.com fixes the problem. Which may be a while, given the huge number of issues that the development team has to deal with right now. I'm particularly upset that I won't be able to finish reconstructing recently liberated guides. But, hey-ho, stuff happens.

The general election in the UK on Thursday is the most important one in a generation.

The Government of 1997-2010 has tested to destruction the idea of measuring success by the amount of money spent by the state. A doubling in real terms in spending on health has seen little measurable improvement in outcomes, and a substantial increase in spending on education has seen the UK fall down the league tables on every measure. A failure to understand the most basic of economic principles has led to a declared national debt of 72% of GDP (our actual national debt is north of 150% of GDP) and a forecast deficit (the amount by which what the Government spends exceeds what it borrows) for 2010 of 12% of GDP. This year, we will spend more money on interest to service the national debt than we will spend on defence and almost as much as we spend on education.

The experiment is over. On Thursday we vote for change. An unhealthy obsession with the views of focus groups composed of the great undecided has seen the collapse of meaningful and principled political discourse and the pursuit by the main political parties (and the Liberal Democrats) of a mythical political "centre-ground". None of the parties has been prepared to be honest about the eye-watering size of the country's debt or the urgency with which that debt must be addressed, through tax rises of unprecedented scope and public sector budget cuts of unprecedented scale. Indeed, the parties have committed, in their manifestos, to actually increasing the budgets of key spending departments, and of introducing still more taxpayer-funded handouts to selected special-interest groups.

On Thursday, we have a choice. Some of us will vote having considered key issues deeply; some will vote for a political philosophy through tribal loyalty; some will vote through ignorance or self-interest; some will use their vote as a protest against a venal MP or against the banality of mainstream politics; some will, apparently, vote with a view to engineering a hung parliament, in which no party is in a position to effect radical change. It has been suggested elsewhere that the great undecided, whose instant negative reactions to any form of criticism by one party of another, and who have had such a malign influence on the state of politics in this country, may safely be discounted as, in large numbers, they remain undecided at every general election and express their support for the none-of-the-above party by staying at home while the rest of us get out and vote.

I don't mind how you vote, but you should vote. Get informed, understand what the parties stand for nationally, find out how the parties are polling locally, decide who you want to be your M.P. for the next five years and, on Thursday, cast your vote. For the Conservative party.

The Eleventh Hour. Saturday 3 April 2010. 6.20 pm BST. Be there!

Still waiting to hear back from nilla_chelle01 about some cases of flagrant editorial abuses here at TV.com. It's been two months since I set out chapter and verse, and the offending practices continue, so perhaps I should follow up. Meanwhile, I've had to start using the following explanation when tagging guides as duplicates.

"Notes duplicate guide. Not suitable for deletion as there is an extant credit attached to a show guide edited by an editor who refuses to accept consolidation submissions."

Incidentally, I looked today at the guides for a fondly-remembered show from the 1980s...

One guide has no summary, no broadcast information, no episodes... the only thing it has is a cast list, attached at summary level, which holds that every actor appearing in the show was a show star, although I remember it having just two. All of the cast members were added at a single submission. The guide has a single contributor, with 85 points. What's that all about?

You know what really yanks my chain?

Lots of things, actually. But my big beef for 2009 is the number of neglected guides sitting under inactive editors. It seems that some people are keener on acquiring guides than they are on looking after them.

It's not a question of being MIA. Editors who simply stop visiting are eventually dismissed under the ReportMIAEditor protocol. Some editors are occasional visitors, not logging on often enough to meet their obligation to consider submissions within seven days, but often enough to avoid sanction. That means unseemly delays while we wait for the approval of submissions, but that's only really inconvenient when a show is currently airing.

Some editors, whether occasional or frequent visitors to the site, seem to have stopped submitting to guides they edit, often on the day they were awarded the editorship. That may be fair enough for guides to old shows that are substantially complete, but there are many guides to currently-airing or recently-ended shows that are in a very sorry state.

I do a lot of credit consolidation work and this prompts me to visit a number of guides each week. A surprising number of recently-added guides to recently-aired shows have no editors. Elsewhere, editors preside over guides to older shows that are no more than skeletons, despite the ready availability of the information needed to knock the guides into shape; guides to currently-airing shows that haven't had an episode guide added in months; plagiarised, mis-spelled and synopsis-free episode guides; guides for which no writer, director or cast have been added since the current editor took over. For good or ill, it has long been the case that the presence of an editor appears to act as a deterrent to potential contributors, many of whom apparently prefer to submit to editorless guides.

The activities of some editors has certainly put me off submitting to guides they edit. Those who reject valid submissions, post or approve plagiarised synopses, add episodes that don't meet the two out of three criterion, add "coming soon" summaries, add show stars but not guests, or just the odd guest, to episodes. I've been holding back from carrying out essential repair work on many of these guides in the hope that someday, TV.com staff would enforce the Problem Editor protocol. It seems that no amount of transgression merits any kind of sanction, however.

Happily, I've just completed the latest phase of work on guides that I edit. I've still to add some production credits to some, and to sort cast and crew lists for others, but I'm happy to let that duty take a back seat while I do grunt work on some of the neglected guides to British shows. Shows like... Can I mention them here? The editors in question know who they are, and which guides I mean. You'll see a lot more in the way of submissions from me from now. Enjoy!

I don't mean to blog, but I'm bored with the old one. I don't want to post another blog about site deficiencies - there really isn't the space to list all the problems that have arisen following redesigns introduced since I last posted - but suffice to say I have a bit of time on my hands now that the addition and editing of cast and crew lists has been rendered impractical.

I could tell you that someone at work stole my iPod. It is a 6th generation model with 160GB capacity, and they don't make those any more. I didn't want to buy a (much cheaper) 7G 120GB model, as I have more than 120GB of material on my iTunes library, so I've spent much time sourcing an unused 160GB model. I could tell you that the picture finally went on my lovely old TV (no reds!) and that I've now got around to ordering a replacement. Or that I've finally asked my cable provider to replace my set top box with a PVR, ahead of my vacation. Jobs all done, I have nothing else to do but wait.

So, with nothing to say or do, I thought I would sing a song instead.

Bub-bub-a-boom, bub-bub-a-boom, bub-bub-a-boom, ba-boom
Bub-bub-a-boom, bub-bub-a-boom, bub-bub-a-boom, ba-boom
Ooh-ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh...
Waah
Bub-bub-a-boom, bub-bub-a-boom, bub-bub-a-boom, ba-boom...

Hmm. That's an idea. I'm just off to catch up on some old episodes!

It seems a long time ago now. Anyone remember the "we've been listening" propaganda in August and September? That presaged the big redesign that introduced an unpopular new look for the site, in which some features were removed, others were hidden behind tabs and sub-menus, and those features that had been working were broken.

Eleven weeks on, most broken functions and features are still broken. It seems that the current development team may have got bored with their thankless task, because they are once again adding new features and breaking things as they go!

Every page of every guide now has seven new video tabs. If you are interested in shows that are more than five minutes old, or from outside the U.S., that means seven new tabs each carrying the message "There are currently no videos." Thanks for sharing. Most of the guides I edit are so far off the corporate radar that the "There are currently no stories.", "There are currently no photos." and "There are currently no dvd for [show name]" already provide enough excitement.

This being TV.com, every new feature means more missing and broken links and loss of features, and the price to pay for the video tabs is a loss of the season dropdown list. If you want to access an episode, you have to access a list of every episode. That can be a pain if you happen to be visiting or editing a guide for a show with hundreds or thousands of episodes.

I read that someone is looking at the new problem. This being TV.com, no developer can or will simply reinstate a removed function, but we are liable to get a new way of accessing episodes or seasons in due course. Or maybe not.

As I recall, TV.com developers fixed most of the problems with v2.5 within three months or so. Other outstanding issues were left unfixed, and are now abandoned. Progress this time has been much much slower. I worry, therefore, that the other remaining issues from v3.0 are likely to remain unfixed when v4.0 is rolled out in summer or fall 2009. This all got me thinking. If the Technical Support forum is for things that were broken before mid-September, and the Redesign Feedback forum is for things that were broken eleven weeks ago, do we need a third forum for things that will be broken post-redesign?

"My name is William Hartnell and as Doctor Who I make my debut on Saturday 23 November at 5.15."

The world's unlikeliest and best S.F show is 45 years old. In 1963, incoming Head of Drama Sydney Newman decided that the BBC needed a new S.F. show to fill the early Saturday evening slot. Designed by committee, the show was eventually commissioned as a 13-episode serial featuring a bad-tempered professor-type from another world in charge of a capsule that could travel through space and time. Successive serials would see "Doctor Who" and his companions travel to other worlds, to significant points in Earth's history, and "sideways".

The show's mythology developed over the years as successive producers brought their own ideas, but the biggest and most important ideas were, firstly, the TARDIS, a time-travel capsule forever disguised as a 1930s-style London police box, and, in 1966, the decision to incorporate the recasting of the lead role into the plot of the show. Whereas Hartnell's grumpy old curmudgeon had evolved into a much-loved, stern but kind-hearted grandfather figure, Troughton played a radically different character. Troughton's Doctor, initially wearing a Chaplinesque variation of Hartnell's Edwardian get-up, came over as a clown, the better to mask his sharp intelligence as he frustrated endless attempts by corrupt interests to secure global domination.

I came early to the Doctor Who party, apparently watching it from birth early in Hartnell's reign, but my earliest memories are of Pat Troughton, both in the TV Comic/TV21 adaptations and in my classmates and I enacting scenes from The Invasion in the school playground on a Monday.

The difficult job of persuading a family audience that the Doctor could change his physical appearance and personality having been achieved, 1970 saw the introduction of Jon Pertwee… and colour TV! Pertwee's Doctor, deprived of a functioning TARDIS and marooned in late-20th century England, was a dandy, a dashing adventurer in the tradition of the Saint and Adam Adamant, but with a fatal arrogance. For the first time, the Doctor made do with a single companion - the best arrangement, I think - and Jo and then Sarah were two of the finest companions he ever had. These episodes saw the introduction of The Master, Moriarty to the Doctor's Holmes, and the establishment of the Brigadier and his U.N.I.T. cohorts as a permanent supporting cast. They say that everyone has their own Doctor, and Pertwee was my Doctor. I clearly remember the excitement of watching his first appearance, and dissecting each episode with my best friend each week. I never missed an episode of Pertwee's reign, and lapped up the omnibus transmissions broadcast each summer.

The next Doctor was arguably the biggest and best. Tom Baker's louche Bohemian — all teeth and curls — was the definitive Doctor for most of those who caught his unique protrayal, and the length of his tenure ensured that he was the first Doctor for more first-time viewers than any other, topping every "who is your favourite Doctor?" poll (until recently!). Baker brought more energy and more of himself to the role than any of his predecessors. If Pertwee was my Doctor, so was Baker. This period saw some of the most imaginative writing on the show, a broadening of the show's appeal, its highest viewing figures… and its lowest viewing figures. A new producer oversaw a drop in programme quality towards the end of Baker's tenure, when I reached my mid-teenaged years, changing my relationship with the Doctor.

When the BBC miscast Peter Davison, that nice young vet from All Creatures Great and Small, and moved the show to a midweek slot, I became an occasional viewer. Revisiting those episodes is still hard. Davison was just too young, his companions too shrill and numerous, and the new-look console too plasticky, while the adoption of uniforms jarred.

The Trials of a Time Lord

Increasing silliness under John Nathan Turner's reign meant the casting of an extraordinary coat as the sixth Doctor. As memory serves, Colin Baker also appeared in the show around this time. Baker got the short end of the stick. Having joined the show at the end of a season, the disfunctional and disturbing Doctor of that story became the template for his first full season. BBC politics came into play at this point. Successive executives were less than thrilled to be saddled with the show, and scheduled the show against ratings bankers on the ITV network. The extraordinary decision to switch to 45-minute episodes meant a loss of pace. Declining ratings, threadbare visual effects and watchdog concern over levels of violence appeared to make cancellation inevitable, but a highly effective campaign ensured that the show returned after an 18-month hiatus. When the show returned, it was with a short experimental season in which the Doctor, Colin Baker and Doctor Who were on trial for their very survival. Colin Baker went on to become the first Doctor since Hartnell to be sacked from the show, having appeared in the equivalent of just 44 regular-length episodes, not much more than Hartnell or Troughton managed in one year. Having been sacked, Baker, bitterly disappointed, declined to reprise the role for one more story. Another new Doctor then.

While I was of age to regard Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker as my Doctor, Sylvester McCoy was very much my Doctor. It may have been a return to regular, once-a-week episodes of 25 minutes, it may be that I was past my teenaged years and ready to commit to a TV show again, but it was certainly McCoy's beautifully observed performances that nailed these later seasons for me. Script editor and actor were as one again, and McCoy drew on every facet of the Doctor's earlier incarnations, alternately deadly serious or a clown. This Doctor was no longer travelling randomly through time and space but with focus, on a mission, tidying up loose ends. With the arrival of Ace, we had the strongest Doctor-assistant combination since Tom Baker's time. This new sense of purpose brought new excitement and, for the first time since the late 1970s I would wait anxiously for the next episode. Then, disaster. The show was not cancelled, but not renewed. Then it was being "rested". Then it was held out as a possible independent production, or film.

"He's Back — And It's About Time"

Doctor Who lived on, however, as the fan community, now all grown up, wrote novels charting the continuing adventures of Time's Champion. Much excitement followed when, in 1996, Fox Television and BBC Worldwide co-produced what was to be the first of several TV movies with Paul McGann as Doctor Who. McGann's interpretation was interesting — safe, traditional, but quite compelling. Unfortunately, the movie (continuity heavy but ignorant of continuity, overly American, and with a frankly incredible plot resolution) did not work for me, and the show did not pull enough viewers to persuade Fox to commission further episodes. Doctor Who, the world's longest continuously running SF show, was now dead. But that was OK, because we had the novels (revitalised now, with a whole new line featuring McGann's Doctor), and a series of ambitious audio plays by BBC Radio and Big Finish featuring Davison, Colin Baker, McCoy and McGann. With the TV Doctor dead and buried, BBC Worldwide allowed the commission of a new series of webcasts featuring Richard E Grant as the official, new and improved ninth Doctor.

But those pesky fans. One of them became a successful television writer and was somehow able to persuade BBC Wales to commission a revival of Doctor Who. The rest, they say, is television history in the making. It's not the same as it was, but it never was. On air or off air, Doctor Who is constantly evolving. If Doctor Who had not been cancelled in 1989, it would have slowly died a death. The new series is of its time, as well-written and slickly produced as anything else on the BBC's schedules. Chris Eccleston was fantastic (even if Colin Baker and I cannot quite understand why he was allowed to have a Northern accent.) And if Pertwee, Baker and McCoy were my Doctor, well... Tennant is my Doctor.

Forty-five years. Is that all? It's passed so quickly. Here's to Doctor Who. Please, Steven, look after it. We know you will.

I'm struggling to take in the enormity of today's intervention in the banking sector by the UK Government.

British politics had always been to the left of those in the U.S. In the UK, the Left argued for (and secured) state ownership of the means of production while the Right strove to safeguard its priorities through legislative intervention. By the end of the 1970s, Britain was a basket-case economy. The socialist experiment had failed, as it is bound to do. Economic reforms on the Friedman model saw the revitalisation of the UK economy at the same time as a new-found confidence in the concepts of freedom saw the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon democratic model while the Soviet bloc collapsed.

In the 1980s, the British Government gave up ownership of the manufacturing and service industries that it had run so badly. The benefits of this policy were unarguable. The Labour Party, the traditional party of the Left in Britain, finally abandoned its commitment to communist ideals in the early 1990s.

By 1997, the UK economic miracle was so firmly established that the people felt ready to elect a new kind of government. It chose New Labour, a party that claimed to recognise the error of its ways and that promised to run our economy responsibly. It undertook to match, but not exceed, spending limits inherited from the outgoing administration. In office, however, it subscribed to the new politics of the Left. Rather than own state industries, the new Government sought to secure the priorities of its class through legislation and massive spending programmes. There was a massive expansion of the unproductive public sector, with over 4,000,000 new jobs achieving precisely no economic benefit. Within ten years, the Government directly employed more of its citizens than it had done when it owned every coal mine, steel works, shipyard, car and aircraft manufacturer, railway line and telephone exchange.

Most of the rest of the country were caught up in a tax and benefits fiddle, where the poorest now had to pay income taxes but even the comfortably off could claim tax credits, provided that they were prepared to disclose intimate and personal details to the Government. No Western government has ever collected as much information on its citizens as the British Government does now. We have the largest DNA database in the world. We have the highest number of CCTV cameras per citizen in the world. Every car journey is logged and tracked through a number plate recognition system. Our people can be held in custody for 28 days without being charged with any offence, more than twice as long as in any other democracy, and the Government means to extend this to 42 days.

For over a decade, the British and European Governments have introduced more and more regulations designed to undo the freedoms that business had enjoyed in the 1980s in an undisguised attempt to engage in social engineering to ensure that the social priorities of the Left are implemented. Most governments pay off their debts and reduce their level of borrowing in times of prosperity, but the New Labour experiment has been to keep borrowing, in good times and bad. In recent weeks, governments across the world have struggled with a crisis in confidence in the banking sector. Despite claims to the contrary by the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, M.P., the UK economy is particularly vulnerable, as we have record levels of public debt, a sclerotic business sector, and a banking miracle that was no more than a house of cards built on sand.

In 1997, the Government imposed a "windfall tax" on the privatised utility companies. This retrospectively fined those companies that had made the biggest improvements in operating practices and profitability since being freed from state control, and raised £4,500,000,000 for the singularly unsuccessful Welfare to Work programme. In 1997, the UK had the best-funded private pension provision in the Western world. The Government abolished dividend tax relief at a cost to pension funds of £5,000,000,000 in the first year, and rising each year thereafter. This had an immediate and catastrophic effect on both share prices and pension provisions. Some 60% of pension schemes have closed to new members and many have closed entirely. Deloitte Haskins and Sells expects many more schemes to close in the next five years. This leaves millions of workers dependant upon the (unfunded) state scheme, but does not affect the arrangements of politicians or civil servants. The loss of confidence led to a drop in the value of shares, precipitating the crash of 2000 and prompting investors to find a new home for their money.

The then-Chancellor of the Exchequer reaped the benefits of economic reforms made in the 1990s, but soon started spending like it was going out of fashion, using sleight-of-hand to keep spending liabilities off the books. The Government has been funding new schools and hospitals through the Private Finance Initiative, whereby the state takes out a thirty-year mortgage with a developer, securing a new building today to be paid for by taxpayers in the future. This spending is off the books. In 2002, the Government confiscated the assets of Railtrack, acquiring the infrastructure of the rail network without compensating its shareholders. Its financial liabilities are kept off the books. In 2007, the Government nationalised Northern Rock, taking a struggling bank into state ownerhip without compensating its shareholders.

In his budget speech in 1997, the then-Chancellor said that he would "not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery" but the man was never as good as his word. He had already destroyed the pensions sector and, by 2000, eroded confidence in shares. It seemed the only way to guarantee making money was to invest in property. The British have had a high percentage of property-owners since the 1980s, and there was a feel-good actor about seeing the value of your property rise. Both borrowers and lenders were encouraged to act irresponsibly. Where once banks had insisted that customers raise 10% of the deposit price before getting a mortgage, they now competed with one another to offer better and better deals. House prices soon reached such a level that new entrants were unable to buy a first property, threatening the house-price escalator. Northern Rock started offering 125% mortgages. Eventually prices were so high that people really could not afford to enter the property-owning market. A new generation of rentiers was born, as banks such as Bradford & Bingley made what were in effect business loans to people with no experience as landlords, who would buy properties, use rental income to pay the mortgage, and sell the properties at a guaranteed profit. Borrower and lender alike saw a win-win situation with no downside. The boom continued, and by 2007, house prices were estimated to be overinflated by 30%. Britons, meanwhile have run up a personal debt liability (on unsound mortgages and credit cards) of £1,440,000,000,000. Personal debt exceeds our gross domestic product of £1,410,000,000,000: we are broke.

The official national debt is £581,000,000,000, some 43% of GDP, up 25% from 1997 and due to reach £700,000,000,000 according to the last budget statement. Before the banking crisis, our debt was increasing at almost £1,500 every second. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, existing PFI liabilities (which are not included in the official figure) amount to £110,000,000,000. Network Rail carries a liability of £18,000,000,000. The extent of the unfunded public sector pensions liability has been estimated at another £1,000,000,000,000. Government debt exceeds our gross domestic product of £1,410,000,000,000: we are broke.

After years of borrowing to expand and encouraging irresponsible lending, each British bank knows it is in trouble. Each bank assumes, correctly, that every other bank is in a similar position. So they won't lend to one another. The Government has nationalised Northern Rock and its £91,000,000,000 liabilities. It has acquired the £41,000,000,000 liabilities of Bradford & Bingley and brokered the sale of the good bits to Santander, which has not yet completed the acquisition of Alliance & Leicester. This sale was in contravention of our rules on mergers and acquisitions, as was the sale of HBOS to Lloyds-TSB, also brokered by the Government.

Each week, the British Government spends more on supporting the banking sector than the recent U.S. bail-out will cost each month. The Bank of England has been pursuing an inflation target for 11 years, and a rise in the bank base rate was certainly due, but political intervention has seen an across-the-board cut of 0.5% in central bank base lending rates in an attempt to revitalise lending. There is a certain naive charm behind the idea of pouring unlimited amounts of cash into the banks in the hope that they might start lending to the individuals and businesses who need to borrow funds. In the medium term, banks need to recapitalise, to bridge the funding gap between assets and deposits on the one hand, and loans and liabilities on the other. In the short term, all major UK banks (save HSBC, which is foreign-owned) have an immediate need for funds to address their liquidity issues. Abbey, now part of the Santander Group, has shown the way, swallowing the 0.5% cut in the base lending rate and electing to use this to improve capitalisation and profitability rather than pass the saving on to the consumers.

Last week, the Government unveiled the next stage in its plans to save the banking sector. This was an undertaking to guarantee and extend existing bank lending (up to £450,000,000,000) and to buy into troubled banks (up to £50,000,000,000) in exchange for a seat on the board and the right to determine a bank's policies. Today we have the details: the Government is taking control (63%) of the Royal Bank of Scotland for £20,000,000,000 and a minority (41%) stake in the meged Lloyds-TSB-HBOS for £17,000,000,000. It has claimed to be planning an arms-length relationship with its new toys, but is appointing directors to the boards of both banks. My thanks, then, to Barclays, which has resisted the Government's overtures. When the dust has settled, it will be the only shareholder-controlled British bank left standing.

The Labour Party has never put its proposals for the creation of a totalitarian state to the British electorate, but it has been building one, incrementally, over the past 11 years. No serious British politician has ever gone so far as to suggest the nationalisation of the banking industry, but that has now been achieved, without scrutiny by our legislature. The Prime Minister gained plaudits from a grateful Labour Party conference when he had a go at greedy British bankers and promised to build supranational institutions to manage the global banking industry. This week, we have seen governments announce unprecedented measures, but only the U.S. has troubled its elected representatives to come in and debate the matter.

Where is the money coming from? From us, from our children, and from our children's children. Thanks, Gordon.