Unless you’ve been living in the Tora Bora caves for the last couple of weeks, you can’t have failed to have noticed that popular beat group The Beatles have released some new wares onto the marketplace.

I say “new”, but most of it is the very definition of old rope. Alongside the admittedly very shiny and apparently very good Beatles Rock Band video game, is a glut of “remastered” albums released on a long-forgotten format known as “CD”. So we have one cutting edge 2009 release, and several very old fashioned releases that would have seemed cutting edge circa 1982.

The remastered CDs will sell of course, thanks to millions of pounds worth of marketing and blanket media coverage, although not as many as Dame Vera Lynn, who pipped the Fab Four to this week’s number one in the UK album charts. But do we really need them?

There’s no denying they’re a great pop band – maybe the best pop band of all time – and I’m a big Beatles fan (despite that rubbish pun of a name, the often tiresome psychedelic nonsense, and the inescapable fact that John Lennon was a right tit…). They recorded some of my favourite songs of all time – Blackbird, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Eleanor Rigby… Most probably if I had an XBox I’d buy The Beatles Rock Band game. But the remastered albums have precisely zero appeal.

The Beatles albums have already been released as they were meant to be heard – on vinyl (most of them in mono). The subsequent original CD releases are apparently of ropey quality. If that is the case then I’d be delighted to return my CDs to Apple/EMI to be replaced at their cost with satisfactory ones. But I don’t see why I should be expected to fork out for “remastered” CDs.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this whole thing is that Apple and EMI have yet to release the Beatles’ music digitally for download. This is due to a long-running disagreement (yes – over money) with the unhappy consequence of making the Beatles virtually irrelevant to an entire generation of music fans. I wrote about the online “Beatles Gap” in the Guardian.

Now that the music has been remastered, and with Rock Band pricking the interest of the internet generation, why not release the Beatles catalogue for digital download, rather than on hoary old CD? (And if CD, why not cassette or mini-disc?)

The answer, I’m certain, is greed. Digital downloads will eventually be released, probably in 12 months time when fans have had a chance to empty their wallets purchasing the CDs. They’ll then be expected to buy the downloads as well. Anything to wring more cash from the Beatles’ legacy. Money, that’s what they want.

The whole farrago reflects poorly on Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr (and of course the other players involved in the Beatles’ estate). Nether surviving Beatle can be accurately described as being short of funds, and Ringo in particular has seemed to become particularly irritating in recent years.

First there was the Liverpool 8 debacle, then his regrettable rant at those autograph-seeking fans who have so generously contributed to his fortune. Then there is the frankly dim-witted Aviva name change advert in which Ringo asks, “Would any of this have happened to me if I’d still been Richard Starkey?” No, a common name like Richard would never have worked, you’d have needed an unusual name like John, Paul or George…

So ignore the money-grabbing tactics, but continue, like me, to love the Beatles’ music. Listen to the vinyl (or the old CDs), convert it to mp3, maybe hold out for the digital download release. But you don’t need the remastered CDs, and The Beatles don’t need your money. Money can’t buy them love.

Music, Technology The Beatles

Today I am moving out of my office, some say studio, at Brick Works, Newcastle.

Two and a half years ago I was the first to move in, along with Stu Wheatman, to this former, erm, brick works / printers / sweet factory. The Journal interviewed us not long afterwards. Stu moved out in January, and today I’m following him.

It’s been a good workspace, give or take a long-term broken window, a leaky roof that habitually turns the corridors into something from The Poseidon Adventure, and a resultant fug of lung-clogging damp. Oh, and the noise from the adjacent coach works’ diesel pump, which must surely be the most bone-shakingly teeth-grindingly noisy piece of equipment on this entire Earth.

Overall, though, I’m sad to be leaving, mainly because it means I will, for the time being, be working from home. Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean sitting with a laptop in front of the telly with one eye on Jeremy Kyle. It means knuckling down in the (still to be decorated) spare room for a good eight hours or maybe two thousand words.

I don’t have any problem motivating myself to start work by 8 every morning. The problem is stopping, and then switching off. There is always one more thing to be done, one little bit to be finished, and 5pm becomes 6, and 7, or sometimes 8.

Then, without the inevitably slow crawl home through rush hour traffic, it’s difficult to switch off. A quick toddle down the stairs is not really sufficient to clear a day’s work from the mind. Maybe I need to jump in the car and drive around the block each evening.

Whatever, bye bye Brick Works, if anyone needs me I’ll be at home, and feel free to disturb me during Loose Women.

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There have been some big games in the Unofficial Football World Championships over the last few months, and on Wednesday there is another one as current UFWC title holders the Netherlands (some say Holland) travel to Glasgow to take on all-time UFWC champions Scotland.

The game is also a crucial qualifying match for some tin pot competition to be held in South Africa next year, but obviously the player’s minds will be on the UFWC…

Scotland are the all-time UFWC champions, having won 86 UFWC title matches – more than any other nation, ahead of the likes of England, Argentina, Russia – and the Netherlands, who have won 38 title matches and are ranked fifth overall.

Scotland have not had an easy time of things in UFWC competition in recent years. The Scots last held the title in March 2007, having ended a 40-year drought by beating Georgia, only then to lose out just four days later to official world champions Italy.

The UFWC website has all the build-up to the game, and will cover the action on Wednesday night. The game will be shown live in the UK on Sky Sports 2.

If you have no idea what the previous 200 words mean, you can read an explanation of sorts at www.ufwc.co.uk.

Football, Websites UFWC