And I said I would get around to this (eventually). The Gruniad published on Monday a feature on Västra Hamnen which is the neck of the woods which me and the tribe inhabit. (The phot to the right shows an aerial view, and if you have not installed Google Earth I thoroughly recommend it). Turning Torso is marked by the pin.
The article seems to have run foul of a mad sub-editor as the by-line: Malmo's new neighbourhood is funky, environmentally friendly and the envy of architects worldwide. There's just one problem. The locals hate it. - Seems to be a odds with pretty much everything written in the article, shame on you guardian! And the fact is that most of the people we know really like it here.... Heres a few parts of the article which jumped out at me.

This is a country that is famously ahead of the curve in sustainability, architecture and most aspects of modern life. A place where the municipal dump has over 30 recycling categories.

- Which includes meatballs, dead seals and stained flat pack furniture. (cheap, I know)

As in Britain, the decline of heavy industries caused mass unemployment in Malmo, but in the mid-1990s, the city took steps to reinvent itself, building a new university and mounting a European housing exhibition, which became Bo01.

- The whole site was previously an immense ship yard called Kockums (which always makes me snigger) but which went the way of all such enterprises. It was replaced by SAAB (hence the huge, largely empty, factory building quite close to us) who left only a few years ago. The few remaining Kockums buildings are now used by a number of engineering companies, among them one that manufactures wind turbine masts (towers, whatever the hell you call them).

The visionary behind the scheme was a Swedish architect named Klas Tham, who had previously worked with Ralph Erskine on the Byker housing project in Newcastle, and designed villages in Newmarket and Milton Keynes.

- I studied this Ralphies stuff when I was a wee lad doing my A levels, and again when I was doing my undergrad thesis (they burnt rubbish to heat the flats – hence my interest. Byker (as in Byker, Byker, Grove……..) had, among other things, simple ideas like facing the least used rooms onto the busier side of the flat, hence making life quieter for the Geordies who lived there. Not so sure about the villages around Milton Keynes though.

The buildings are highly contemporary but the arrangement feels less like a modern city than a cross between a medieval town and a holiday village.

- And this is totally the case. When we first started looking around here I really felt a similar atmosphere that which I had felt in the some of the windy little backstreets of, for example, St Ives or Looe (Cornwall).

Malmo's population is foreign-born - mostly from Yugoslavia, East Africa, Iran and Iraq - and from their grubby housing blocks on the other side of the city, this must indeed look like an unattainable paradise.

- This is just shite journalism, yes its fact that the pop. here is largely white non-immigrant background but hopefully that will turn around in time. Calling the houses 'grubby' is just mean, point of fact, the worst areas ('worst' as in poorest) I've been taken to are still of a much higher standard than the Uks worst areas. I once stayed just over the road from Moss Side, believe me, no comparison.

It was originally hoped that the project would be a shining example of low-energy living but because of its citizens' necessarily affluent lifestyles, this never really happened.

I think part of the problem is that many of the people who have moved into this area and at, or close to retirement age, and the subtle demands of sustainable living pass them by. I regularly have mini-tantrums in our recycling room at people who’ve put stuff in the wrong boxes or have just left things out on the floor. Or perhaps I should get out more. And press my nose against windows. And why the fuck did the hack only interview an American, why not a Swede who lived there, or better yet, me.

I could go on, but I'm tired, i've been proof reading an application all day and my eyes are stinging (forgot to order new contact lens and suddenly realised these ones are well old).

Books: No prizes for guessing that I'm now re-reading Redemption Ark by A. Reynolds. Comic books in the last week include the Third collected volume of Y-The Last Man, which is really getting into its stride and I'm enjoying it as much as preacher;Sandman - Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman, which is fucking excellent (of course); Swamp Thing and Saga of Swamp Thing by Allan Moore (who, as PWEI would have use believe, 'knows the score'. Incidently, looking forward to the V for Vendetta movie, not having read any reviews I'm keen to see how it turns out. I wonder if they kept the original ending, which involved exploding tube trains?); and some collected volumes of RoboHunter (Verdus and Day of the Droids) which are lots of fun.

So lets have a look at what film threat say about V for Vendetta, which, as you may recall was Allan Moores backlash against Thatchers Britain of the '80s..........

.....nothing as it turns out, only a trailer........but heres a real nice V site and heres the official site