"We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office" - Aesop

I am currently gripped by a TV show, each week it provides moments of drama, moments of real comedy and farce, genuine human emotion by the bucket load. It is essentially a good vs. evil story, but in every episode the lines are blurred so it’s hard to tell which is which. It tries to deal with the corruption of the establishment, but no solutions to the problems seem to be solved at the end of each episode.

I’m not talking about The Wire, on BBC2, although that does do all the above and is fantastic. I was talking about Question Time, on BBC1 Thursdays 10:35pm. In this time of economic recession, of witnessing the last days of the decaying New Labour government, and the biggest ‘scandal’ to hit the country in modern times, MP’s expenses. Politics has never been so exciting. Each week, Question Time, which used to be a civil Q&A sessions between the politicians and the stupid public, the great unwashed would ask ridiculous questions based on prejudices and ignorance, and the politicians would respond with pre-prepared bullshit, everyone went home fairly happy as there seemed to be a mutual respect between the two groups.

Not anymore, watch an episode now, and you could be forgiven for thinking that you were watching a pantomime or a boardroom scene from the apprentice (an observation made by Charlie Brooker on his excellent BBC4 show “news wipe.”) Or the audience seems to react like the audience from the bewilderingly popular “Britain’s Got Talent” as they jeer and heckle the poor politician who is trying to defend an extravagant purchase which was “within the rules.” It makes for gripping television, one week, the BBC thought it was even worthy of replacing “Traffic Cops” in the 9pm slot, a scheduling issue which I feel should stay permanent, as Question Time is the best programme on telly.

Not only does it have the supposed ‘villains’ on the panel, as well as the “celebrities” who say the most stupid, impractical comments but know that the audience will respond with rapturous applause, for example something like “I think, as a mother of two, that all politicians should have their hands cut off and made to jig around in just their underpants while the people throw actual corpses of dead animals. And I think Joanna Lumley should become our divine ruler, because she’s so bloody wonderful.”And the audience will applaud, until someone says a contradictory statement but whose voice gets louder at the end so the audience believe that therefore what that person said was great and they all totally agreed with it. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah “villains” it has the ‘villains’ i.e. the politicians on the panel but also a sinister villain which is only ever mentioned on the show that never gets seen on question time. The BNP.
But politics has suddenly become far more exciting than any of the soap operas, talent shows or sporting events on the TV. It is an on going drama filled with plots, and corruption and deception. Each day brings an exciting new twist which radically changes the whole course of this unfolding story. It’s gripping television.

Watching, what feels like, the last days of the Labour government, I can’t help but feel sympathy for poor old Gordon Brown. Put yourself in his shoes, imagine that each day you wake up and find that all the national newspapers, the general public, the TV, the Radio, politicians and even your own colleagues are queuing up to tell you just how shit they think you are. Even though you work really hard to try to fix and solve problems which largely weren’t your fault but everyone seems to blame you for. But to be fair, Labour has been in power for far too long, and all the mistakes they have made over the last few years have come back and bitten them right on their old, decaying, broken arse.

But what are the options, how will the public punish them in today’s Euro/Local elections?Will they vote conservative and David Cameron, who I can not ignore Armando Iannucci’s observation that he looks like a whoopee cushion every time I see him. I realised I didn’t like him on the party election broadcast by the Tories when he was doing a “Cameron direct”, where he stood in front of a target, a dream for any would be assassins, and talked and received questions. There was one clip of a small child informing ‘Dave’ that she had started a campaign to “save the penguins” the expression on Cameron’s face was enough to make me actually puke. Into a bucket. YouTube it, and see for yourself, (the election broadcast I mean, not me vomiting into a bucket. That’s not on the internet as far as I’m aware.)

But anyway I could stretch this out to say about the BNP and how bloody hilarious they are with their, hee hee, racist views. Or how, because I’m a young student with a naive mind that I think you should vote for the Lib Dems.

But to be honest I can not be bothered to write any more, and I doubt you can be bothered to read this anymore (though the fact you’ve got this far is, quite frankly, astonishing) I just want to tell you to watch Question Time tonight on BBC1 10:35pm. It’s kind of good to watch it when you’re too young to vote, because you feel no pressure and you can watch it as an outsider, knowing that you can, you know, not do anything. Hmmmmmmm

Swine Flu: My View

Another day, another reason to fear life on earth. Hoorah! Yes, “Swine Flu” is the latest reason why we’re all going to die. 100 or so people have died from it in Mexico, and the total is rising by the day, the WHO (world health organisation not the band) has said it could lead to a global “pandemic.”

SARS and Bird Flu, that’s what I keep telling myself, the media made us all scared out of wits of the fear of those two diseases, thankfully they never materialised, and only killed a few people in Asia. But recently, the news has been so concerned about banging on about the bloody economy that they took their big, scare mongering, eye off the killer disease front and now “Swine Flu” has arrived and is killing 7% of everything in its way.

Now the human race is probably due for a mass culling, nature tends to do it every one hundred years or so, just to keep everything ticking over. But with so many threats around of global warming and nuclear holocausts, this flu seems a bit tame. It was precisely this reason why I was not able to get through a whole episode of recent BBC drama remake “Survivors” because if I want to watch a mass loss of human life, I want it to be exciting, I want explosions, I want people running away from big monsters, I want plagues of locust’s to engulf the world while four horseman ride on by. Instead I get a few people coughing, sneezing and suddenly feeling very tired, how very exciting. If this is the work of some god, then it goes to show it is not a very imaginative one.

The media would probably take the same view, as this story provides no stunning visuals, the only thing they seem to have is people walking around in face masks, and politicians telling people not to worry. They still do, however, manage to make it seem like this is almost certainly the apocalypse. Expect pounding dramatic drums, stern voices declaring the number of dead, expect graphics involving nuclear hazard signs and pigs, expect quotes from scientists and politicians blown out of all proportion to make it all seem much worse than they were intended to be. All it will lead to is that I will assess my life and my legacy, think about all the things I’ve yet to do, get extremely depressed and paranoid every time I so much as sniffle. Thanks for that. Even if they do try to reassure us, it’s meaningless; our brains naturally remember the scary words like ‘pandemic,’ ‘death,’ ‘Mexico,’ ‘flu,’ ‘human to human,’ ‘Swine!’

That’s another thing about this, the name “Swine Flu” to me, this sounds like a medieval crime. I can imagine princes sentencing peasants to death because they had “Swine Flu” in other words, they were a dirty Swine, and probably related to a witch.Another reason this is not a good disaster is because it was not overtly caused by humans, not like global warming or war, the news can not tell us how bad we all are, how ashamed we should be of our fellow humans, we can not shake our heads and ‘tut’ and the moronic, idiot leaders. No, this was not our fault, this is nature so we have no one to blame, because blaming someone always makes us feel better. Although we could find out that this was caused because a Mexican decided to have sex with a pig, which would be nice as we would all have someone to blame and we could all have a little giggle, in between the coughing fits and the dying.

This is also annoying as it mainly affects young adults with good immune systems. Now that is just unfair, I’m a young adult and I would like to think I have a strong immune system, as I rarely get ill. This is what you’re supposed to have, this is what they tell you to have, and I should be in the best position. I shouldn’t be most at risk, that’s not on, why doesn’t it pick on the elderly or very young? We need healthy, young adults, we are the future.

My chances also aren’t helped by the fact that next week I am travelling to London, one of the biggest, busiest, most metropolitan cities in the world to go to a small venue in Camden to watch a gig, while fit, young, healthy adults cough and splutter all over me. Brilliant, although if I’m going to die anywhere, then an Art Brut gig isn’t the worse place for that to happen.

So in the mean time I’ll try to have as little contact as possible with pigs, birds, Mexicans, Americans, young adults, children, elderly people, people with strong immune systems, people with weak immune systems, doctors without the potential cure, dogs, cats, mass social gatherings, airports and dirty, rotten witch like medieval swines.

"People need to get a sense of humour, a grip on reality and a life"

So Jonathan Ross has been suspended and Russell Brand has quit. All because they left answer machine messages on Manuel’s answer phone. Right or wrong, funny or not, this story does not need to be on the front page of every newspaper, or the top of every bulletin.

So what if Manuel found the calls offensive? Apologise to him then move on. Now I’m not a huge fan of Brand or Ross, I think they’re funny sometimes. The thing that annoys me is that the BBC received 30,000 complaints most of those from people who didn’t hear the show, they’re complaining for the sake of complaining, they’re complaining because everyone else is. Get a life. There are far more important things to worry about than two comedians behaving immaturely. I don’t know if it was funny or not, I didn’t hear it, so there’s no reason for me to complain.

The BBC seems to be caving into these, out of touch, moaning annoying people. This will result in performers and BBC editors/producers afraid to put out anything which is maybe a bit “edgy” which would be a huge shame. I’m a firm believer that most things can be made fun of and mocked, it’s one of the things that I want when I look for in a programme, they should take creative risks, this often produces the greatest programming. The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world, producing high quality programmes for all types of media, for all types of audience. This whole row is a generational thing. The older members of the audience, who didn’t even hear the show, complained and were outraged about “the dumbing down of the BBC” the show wasn’t even aimed at them. The younger members of the audience, who were listening to the show, didn’t see the need to complain. Well two did, but they should have apologised to Manuel and moved on. This audience divide was proven when the audience to Alan Titchmarsh’s show and “Buzzcocks” were interviewed and the Buzzcocks audience weren’t that bothered, Titchmarshe’s audience, however, were. And Never Mind the Buzzcocks have suffered as they have ditched a show that was recorded because Mr. Brand appeared on it, so the audience who are fine with Russell Brand, suffer.

Many “celebrities” have had their say on the matter, most of the sane ones saying; stuff like, although it wasn’t funny and inappropriate it has been blown out of all proportion. The best quote on the matter, though, has to go to, mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who said that the two people in question, Brand and Ross should donate their salaries to buying gifts for poor children. I don’t know how that is relevant to the issue, but what can you expect from Boris? He’s in charge of our capital, which shows that, despite all this, Britain still does have a sense of humour.
This whole debacle took up a lot of time on Newsnight last night, in which one of the presenters was interviewing, the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, (she was giving her boss a bit of a hard time, and there was a great moment in which he answered a question on whether Ross’s contract would be renewed, and Thompson replied with “his contract will be reviewed at the end of it (leaned into the presenter) along with ALL our presenters, well I found it funny.) Anyway this presenter bought up that on a night this week a repeated episode of “Mock the Week” was broadcast in which Frankie Boyle was one of several comedians on the show asked to think of something the Queen would not say in her Christmas speech.

He put on a high-pitched voice and said: "I have had a few medical issues this year - I'm now so old that my pussy is haunted." Now I’ve seen this episode many times, it’s been repeated a lot. But now, oh, John Beyer, of MediaWatch UK, told the Daily Mail: "It is very offensive and should not have been broadcast. It is indicative of the sloppy way in which this kind of thing gets on air.
There is a great deal of respect for the Queen and people do feel very strongly about any kind of disrespectful comments about her." Well how come nobody complained the first time this went out then, Mr.Beyer? I’ll tell you why, because the people who tune into a show like “Mock the Week” expect near the knuckle humour and have a sense of humour, I have respect for the monarchy, I still laughed when I saw that broadcast, because it was a joke.

The moral of the story is people need to get a sense of humour, a grip on reality and a life. Leave the BBC, and other broadcasters, to do their job, to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. If you don’t like it, don’t tune into the programme, let the people with who do enjoy it enjoy it. Atheists don’t complain that “Songs Of Praise” is on I don’t complain that I find shows like “Little Dorrit” piles of shit, no because I understand that different people have different tastes, and the BBC tries to cater for all it’s audience. So if you did write in to complain, you’re an idiot and need to lighten up, we’re not in the 50’s anymore.

"Loved up hearts spewed across the windows of the hall"

So, apparently the new High School Musical movie had is out. I’m proud to say I haven’t watched the other two films. I have, however, seen little clips, and those are enough for me to know that this film is the most annoying, fake, happy clappy nonsense and needs to be destroyed.

Lot’s of very good looking, and very irritating people singing and dancing about being young, or in love or happy or some bull shit like that. Real life isn’t like that; everyone isn’t that good looking, everyone isn’t that happy. Do these arrogant pricks prancing around on the screen watch the news? A recent study showed that teenagers are the most depressed they’ve been for a long time. I don’t know but I doubt high school musical will have extensive scenes of one of its main characters self harming, or them sitting around, wanking. Also normal people don’t burst into song and a heavily choreographed dance routine whenever they bloody well feel like it.

America, where the film is set, is famous for its high school shootings. Here’s an idea for the next instalment of HSM. A disgruntled, fat, ugly Star Trek fan that always gets left out of the dance routines and songs bursts into the sports hall while all the happy cunts are gleefully waving their arms around and banging out another god awful tune, takes out his machine gun, which he recently bought from a supermarket, and mows down the lot of them. A shower of bullets destroys their perfect faces, their gleaming white teeth now dispersed around the room. Their gel covered heads blown off, their loved up hearts spewed across the windows of the hall.

Of course this wouldn’t be a very long film. So what I would do, as director, would be to show the scene of the mass shooting over and over again. From different angles and slowed down. Also for a rather sick ironic twist their upbeat singings about how fucking wonderful life is, especially if you are a teenager, will be played while we see the end of theirs. Roll credits.

That’s just an idea of course, Disney if you’re interested in any of my ideas for “High School Musical 4” then do not hesitate to contact me.

Some useful links:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uu8U1t835Dg

My Pennysworth on the American Election

America. It’s not my favourite country in the world, in my opinion the only good things to come out of America, ever, are the bands Harvey Danger and The Mountain Goats, the TV shows The Simpsons and Family Guy, the movie Toy Story 2 and the song Hotel California. Apart from them everything else American serves no purpose in the world, or seems to be put there just to irritate me. Like many English people, I look down on Americans and see them as idiotic fat tubs of lard. I was recently reading a article in the Telegraph magazine by Stephen Fry, (that sounds very sophisticated I know) who argued that the only reason we have certain prejudices against America and it’s people is that in the UK we only get to see the weird sub cultures of Americans who are usually, racist, stupid, backwards or just plain annoying, and British TV rarely shows the normal, everyday, nice American. The other thing he said was that we can’t stand that Americans don’t care half as much about us as we do about them.

This may be true, but I’m not going on this semi-racist rant for no reason. Oh no, unless you’ve been living in an underground bunker for the past year, with earplugs in, with your eyes shut then you will know that the day is drawing ever closer for the American presidential elections. The moron who currently occupies the post is a certain George W. Bush, an idiotic cretin which every time I see him I shudder to think how much power he has and I also pinch myself to check that I’m still alive and he hasn’t destroyed the world yet, or his presidency has been a dream . (This is part of the reason; I think that we English have a certain unfavourable view to the American race, we think “if that dim witted boob is in charge of Americans, what hope is there for the rest of them?”) So like many I’ve been looking forward to the day that this imbecile of epic proportions finally leaves office and the American people elect some poor sod who has to clear up the mess left by “Dubya.” A poor sod that couldn’t possibly be worse than their predecessor.

I mean the American people now have a chance to redeem themselves for the past eight years. In the 2000 election, it wasn’t their fault, they elected Al Gore, but being the “greatest democracy in the world” what they got was George Bush. To be fair, poor old George had to deal with the whole 9/11 thing (or 11/9 to give it its correct name) but 4 years later, when you could to see what a tit he was, they voted him in for another 4 years...this is probably where I started to question my respect for the American people.

Any who, that’s all in the past now, there is still time to repent. America has an opportunity to make amends. I mean you could elect the bright, young, talented, sensible democrat Barack Obama. Or the half dead, ex soldier John McCain (who came second in a previous election to George Bush...I mean come on, that’s just taking the Mickey.) If he gets into office, he will be the oldest president, in history, to serve a first term. If he dies, which is a real possibility, and then who shall be there take up the position of most powerful person in the world? Step forward Sarah Palin.

Jesus Christ. There IS someone worse for the job of president than George Bush, who actually could be president. (Read that sentence again, then weep uncontrollably and pray for salvation for about a day.) Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for women’s rights, I think Margret Thatcher did a lot of good for this country and I have a, slightly disturbing, obsession with Ann Widdecombe. So I have absolutely no problem with women politicians. In fact, if women ruled the world I’m sure it would be a nicer place to live in. It would smell nice and look prettier. But unfortunately us big old stupid men have been in charge and, all in all, cocked things up. “Oh”, you might say, “A women is needed then to take control and sort this mess out.” Not when the woman in question is Sarah Palin.

For this reason: she is the equivalent of a medieval man. Let me explain, 1) she has no real grasp of the geography of the world. 2) She thinks that violence will solve everything (she has access to the biggest load of nuclear weapons don’t forget) 3) she thinks God created the world, and doesn’t believe in evolution. 4) She hunts, and kills, wild animals.

This world in which we live in is at its most fragile state in years. The economy in tatters, global warming, Islamic fundamentalism, our resources running out, heightened tensions between the nuclear super powers. Voting in the Republicans would be like saying “hey, do you know what? We give up, it’s too much, we’ve had a good run. Civilization is in terminal decline, it is shit. Here you go Mrs. Palin, do your worst. Kill us all, make it quick though.”

The world is a shit place to live in, I know, but hey I don’t want to die just yet. I’ve got so much to live for, so much knowledge to collect. Just the other day I found out that “Tesco” wasn’t in my predictive text; I’ve never played Wembley, never started a revolution, made a TV show, won a Nobel peace prize, and never had sex. But to be honest I’m not holding out much hope for the last one.

If the Americans, don’t vote for Obama, because his name sounds a bit like “Iraqi Bomber” or they think that he’s a Muslim. Or they think that team walking corpse and scary women or “hockey mom” what the hell does that mean that when you see her you want to cover yourself in protection and hit her violently with a stick? Just for the reason she spelt “mum” with an “o”, after that you can start beating her on behalf of every intelligent person in the world.

So if you are an American, I urge you, please vote Democrat. Vote Obama, and the world may be a little safer and you may just add a few more days to the human race’s life.

What We Can learn from History or Summin'

So, here I am again with another warning about our imminent death. Now just to clear this up, I’m not one of those mad people who stand in the street shouting at people telling them “the end is nigh.” I just look at the world around me and see it destroying itself, everyday, slowly with more interesting and scary ways of doing so. Also it helps that I’m a pessimist so I see the worst in situations, focus on that and instantly assume we’re all going to die.

Take the big news story of today, the collapse of some big American bank, I’ve forgotten the name. But apparently it’s been the worst day on Wall Street since the great crash of 1929 which triggered the great depression. Where thousands were made unemployed, homeless and became starving. In Germany this led to the rise of Hitler and Nazism, which in turn led to the start of the Second World War, which caused the death of millions and the mass genocide of 6million Jews. Now, I’m not saying that’ll happen again. They probably won’t be called the Nazis!

PLEASE NOTE: I don’t understand economics or anything to do with the stock exchange, the economy or the FTSE. On the news they talk about it and they might as well be saying “blah blah blah blah” because that’s all I can hear, so my predictions may not be entirely accurate.

Yeah the next story I picked up on was The Liberal Democrats saying how, if they get into power, they’ll cut taxes. They can literally say anything they want. If they got to power and carried out all their promises they’d probably be the most popular government for a long time. But they will never get in power. They can say they’ll cut taxes, they’ll say they’ll abolish student loans, they could promise a free unicorn for everyone in Devon if they wanted. They’re all seeing rent boys, cheeky girls or are alcoholics.

Anyhow, I said I wouldn’t write any more blogs, but here I am, but you don’t care cos you don’t exist. You’re not reading it. And if you are, you’re sad, I thought I was sad writing it, but you reading it???

Thank Fuck We're Still Here!

So we’re all still here. We didn’t get sucked into a black hole, I knew it wouldn’t happen. Some may have the nerve to tell me I’m a hypocrite because I have spent the last week telling people they’re going to die on Wednesday, and deep down, in the back of my head I knew we’d be alright, logically I knew I should trust the scientists. They knew what they were doing. It’s just that whenever something like this comes along, the logical thinking part of my brain get’s overtaken by the side of my brain shouting “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE” takes over and doesn’t let the logical side get a look in.

So yes we’re all been allowed to live for another few months*, allowed to carry on our pointless lives, allowed to carry on cluttering this world with our stupid bodies bumbling around, falling over and inventing new reality TV shows and thinking up new and inventive ways to destroy any forms of life. But now we may have slightly more knowledge of our universe. So everything’s good then.

Anyway I’m happy to still be roaming this earth, it’s alright I suppose. I did like everyone’s reaction when they found out the world was going to end. Everyone just carried on as normal occasionally making a joke about their impending doom. This was a good sign of the better side of the human race. I did have a lot of things to say I think I was going to rabble on about how life is shit and that something else will probably bring about the end of the world or some shit, but I literally can’t be arsed. Another thing I learnt from Wednesday was that, basically life’s too short, too short to waste it writing down my unimportant thoughts which no one will ever get to see. Blogging is like the sane equivalent of talking to yourself. Plus I’ve just started College, so I’m not that annoyed at things anymore, and I want to start “living” and all that shit, whatever that is. Plus now I’m doing something with my life, I won’t need to waste it on this thing.
So, until next time, (if there is a next time, there’s bound to be though cos I can’t enjoy college for ever and I need somewhere to moan!) Bye!!

*I heard somewhere that it’s October we need to worry about that’s when the LHC will destroy us. Possibly.