News from Britain and Hollywood.

Let me just tell the people of the world what is happening here in Great Britain; the people of the world who read this, of course.
We know what is happening in Hollywood because it's in all the papers. The world famous, and comparatively recently built, Kodak Theatre, the place where they hold The Academy Awards, is to have a name change. I'm afraid Kodak has gone bankrupt and so the sponsorship has been withdrawn and it will be known, for the time being, as The Former Kodak Theatre.
This will go on for a while till the new sponsor, Dolby, has its name added to the illustrious place and then it will be known as The Dolby Theatre.
Of course who is Dolby? Is it Thomas Dolby the rock'n'roller who wrote many a soundtrack to a movie or, to be more precise, had some of his music used in movies.

Thomas Dolby sued the mighty Dolby Corporation and won. What he sued them for is unknown to me – I suppose I could look it up but – as they say here – I can't be arsed!!
Now, before we skip on to things happening here, what do the Dolby Corporation do? And why should they have their logo on the former Kodak Theatre?
Well they, Dolby, specialise in sound; originally it was called Dolby Stereo and they specialised in putting sound on to 35mm film which gets used on movies – even today with films being shown and edited in a digital format.
I can't get technical as I want to move on (and I'm not technical) but here is a shot of a frame of 35mm film print

featuring all four audio formats (or "quad track")- from left to right: SDDS (blue area to the left of the sprocket holes), Dolby Digital (grey area between the sprocket holes labelled with the Dolby "Double-D" logo in the middle), analog optical sound (the two white lines to the right of the sprocket holes), and the DTS Time Code (the dashed line to the far right.) 
Did you get that? Oh! 
So back to Blighty, which is where I started this post – back to Britain.
Today, Thursday May 3^rd, is election day. Not the general election but local authority elections and also the London Mayoral election.

In London there is a Mayor; at the moment it is a buffoon called Boris Johnson – here he is and what a prat he looks:

there is no need to say anything else; the picture tells it all.
London is the only city in Britain that has a mayor. The rest have leaders of the council or the city, or whatever, and have a non-elected Lord Mayor who is only some kind of figurehead. He is the man who meets a VIP visitor to the city or town and opens supermarkets and shopping centres. Here is the picture of a Lord Mayor:

Does he look as silly as Boris with that silly hat? It's debatable. And that chain??
What will be debatable, soon, is whether other towns and cities here should have a proper Mayor and not just a Lord Mayor.
At the moment we just don't know as they have to talk about it.
Oh and another thing: Britain is in a drought and there is a hose pipe ban; people cannot use hosepipes to wash their cars or do the garden and do you know what? It has been the wettest April since records began and still we are in a drought and cannot use the hosepipe.
Apparently it is the wrong kind of rain. That's what the experts have said The Wrong Kind of Rain.
Birmingham, a city in the west midlands, sold some water to a county in the south recently; it took the water, from where it was storing it, put it into a river, and down south the county took that water, when it reached them, from the river and paid the City of Birmingham for it; that's trust isn't it?
And who did I vote for in the Mayoral election? Not Boris. You can't trust people with white hair . . . oops!!