Tuesday, 26 July 2011

5th Column Television

When a DJ  clears the dance floor, it is because the choice of music is crap basically.

So what about our esteemed TV programme schedulers ??

Well they do not get my vote. In Britain we have more choice of channels and less entertainment or infotainment.

For instance the new BBC 3 and 4 channels are a waste of air time. Small audiences watching cartoons like Family Guy or abstract culture. BBC News is boring. Who would have thought that Sky could do it better, in an industry where the BBC trains all in the beginning. Terrestrial channels cannot or will not bid for national sport fixtures and those without a satellite dish or cable have to go to a pub to watch their team, their country.

Where is the new comedy replacing that of over 25 years ago? Do not tell me there is anything today as funny as Fawlty Towers or Rising Damp. Comedians were household names a plenty when we only had 3 channels, now they are a dying breed and certainly not as witty, satirical and clever as Spitting Image, the Muppets, the Two Ronnies, Monty Python, Pete and Dud, Tommy Cooper, the list goes on and on, like only fools and horses.


The truth is the demise of British Television started with Margaret Thatcher in the 80's when she forced BBC TV to devote 25% of production to independent programme makers, to break what she saw as a monopoly. I worked for BBC Current Affairs in those years, and the rot set in as BBC lost money due to her policy, to follow ITV in a downward spiral of performance levels. This is what we have ended up with and worse to come. 25 channels 50 channels of surfing and hopping, longer advert sequences, and monotony for couch potatoes.

It is cheap television to run repeats, to run talent shows, where the contestants are free. Reality TV is also cheap using talent less no hopers for the viewers to watch sleeping, making a cuppa tea going to the toilet on CCTV. Expectation levels are down, viewers watch 2 hours of cooking genres, 2 hours of soap operas night after night, except all viewing figures are down as is advertising revenue, because even advertisers realise TV is garbish whereas the internet, computer gaming, dvd films are increasingly better forms of home entertainment for those that are less mindless sheep watching what we are being served up............ dross !!!.

5th Column - Come on you Spurs !! (1)

Part of the BBC cuts saw the erasing of the Football Fanzine BBC 606 website. A great dis service to football fans in England. It gave a voice by comment to the silent majority.

I have been a life long Tottenham Hotspur supporter, and I have decided to write on but on a different tablet...this blog, my own blog.

Football in England has got too greedy since Sky TV pumped huge amounts of money into the game, greedy chairman, greedy players, all disloyal in the main to their ever faithful fans. Football allegiance is like no other, it is one and only, it is lifetime. But many players have become foreign mercenaries, except the English players do not travel well abroad.

So avarice has led to the rich greedy clubs getting richer and more successful to the exclusion of the other clubs. Success breeds success based on an increased revenue stream. Other clubst can only compete on the bumpy uphill slope of a playing field, by spending money they have not got, on buying and paying exorbitant fees and wages.

This has led to the decline of the English national side. Players like Rooney, Ferdinand and Lampard look  good alongside world international players each week playing for their clubs. When positioned alongside their own countrymen exclusively, they are shown up for what they are, no pride, no passion, no skill, just losers. Where are the likes of Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton , Alan Ball, Nobby Stiles, Martin Peters, who would run, tackle and run until they dropped.  There are not many today to compare with yesterday.

Today we have substitutes, unfit players, who still get money they have not earned. The Spurs double side of the sixties used 14 players in that all winning season. Today EUFA have limited squads to 25 for less than 90 minutes of work twice a week. Most of the fans watching will have worked in excess of 35 hours that week.

This money money money situation has to be resolved, else the game will spiral out of control, the sport is now a  business and the bubble will burst. The fans will suffer for a game they love and have  to pay more and more for,  through the turnstiles and replica kit.

FIFA is corrupt and incompetent. Players rule, contracts mean nothing, players and chairmen betray managers and fans.

I suppose all fans like me, live on for the next season, another attempt to win a trophy, and above all .....hope.

Last Season Luka Modric  was voted player of the season and rightly so by Tottenham fans. Now he wants a transfer to Chelsea.  Berbatov a few years ago  hid under a car blanket on the back seat of Alex Fergusson's car in order to sign from Manchester United and escape White Heart Lane. Berbatov was not even on the subs bench for the European Cup Final, and serve him right. These players, as good as they are, still make mistakes, still miss passes, tackles, goals, they are far from perfect, they are professional and some cannot even kick the ball with either foot.

Football is a team game, there is no room for passengers. Ball watchers should stay on the terraces in their seats and not change into a team strip , put their boots on and walk onto the pitch.

I hope Modric stays, I hope he starts scoring goals. I hope Spurs become consistent, I hope they win something. I hope Manchester United fail. Another season dawns..............let the games commence.

5th Column - Communications

Technology and machines have eliminated the switch board operator. Now I listen to endless music or arithmetic lessons as I am asked to press buttons 1 - 10 for the service I want, and by the time the voice instructions has finished, I have forgotten what was said in the first place. Meanwhile the cost of the call is mounting, and I have got nowhere slow.

The other day I laughed as even the British Telecom engineer could only get voice mail when calling into his depot.

Machines are efficient and cheaper than human beings, but not as effective. Neither are call centres who are staffed by people who do not speak my lingo, but they are cheap, just like the service and image they project.

With technology making communication cheaper  or even free, the standard of service is poorer. It should all be in the computer. The computer cannot get it wrong. Trouble is computers are artificial intelligence not allowing for human illogical incompetent intelligence. The result is the computer says no...........best way.

Retail Industry, Banking Services, even the Communication Industry this is your wake up call................ oh it appears you are otherwise engaged !!!  zzzzzzzzzzzzzz   sorry I tried to wake you !!!!!!!

5th Column - Recession

I have just heard the Tory Chancellor Osborne tell the TV viewers "everything is  all right". What planet is Osborne on??? We still have factories and shops closing, unemployment rising, money as scarce as jobs.

True the British Government have ways in concealing true unemployment numbers. How else would the number of unemployed not equate with those on job seeker allowance. So that is fiddle number one for the Government through statistics.

The reality is that our High Streets have empty shops, factories closed, because the government offers contracts abroad, instead of protecting British Industry, like the Italians, Germans and French do. Most of our manufacturing base has long been allowed to die. It was replaced by a corrupt greedy financial service industry that Gordon Brown permitted to produce a Monopoly money economy and then the bubble burst and the banks were bankrupt.

Now we the ordinary people are paying for the mistakes the rich made, and the rich are impervious to their misdemeanours,  the poor are poorer.  If you have a job , you are lucky to hold onto it.

In the Great Depression , we built our way out of trouble, with houses, roads and infrastructure. Today, yesterday and tomorrow, we have to see it out and there is no plan, no way out, except cut cut cut expenditure, and no growth no building, no better tomorrow.

We never had it so bad.

5th Column - Bugging Me

I hate litter.

An ex Londoner, I have just moved to Peterborough, having also lived in small towns. Peterborough is a scruffy city. It's scruffy because of the people that live there. It's scruffy because  teenagers drop litter. They go to the corner shop buy cans of drink, packets of sweets and the empty containers are just dropped on the ground or thrown into the hedge. Worse they smash bottles, not caring that the broken glass splinters will harm the paws of pets and wild life. They have no pride in their surroundings, no care for the environment. They are mindless morons.

Why should the council provide green spaces, trees, shrubs as  pleasant surroundings , litter bins, road sweepers to try to keep the city tidy mopping  up after these delinquent yobs.
One wonders how this riff raff have been brought up, maybe they live in abject squalor and their parents are equally to blame, dirty, untidy beings spoiling life  for any decent human being.

Once upon a time Corona delivered full bottles of pop door to door and collected the empties refunding a small 3 pence deposit on the glass bottle. Years ago non self service shops meant products were not prepacked and sweets were sold loose into a brown paper bag.

So called progress means take away packaged food and drink, and the shops and fast food outlets produce the excess packaging for litter louts to scatter about.

City Council's like Peterborough would do well to promote Pride in the Community, Pride in Peterborough. After all it is not a Peterborough problem alone. Prizes could be given as an incentive for cleaner neighbourhoods. Prizes could be sponsored by the fast food outlets and supermarkets.  Individuals that spoilt it for others could be named and shamed. The silent clean majority could isolate the scruffy few.There has to be a system of carrots and sticks. Enforcement is reactive and expensive. Proactive initiatives are cheaper, prevention is better than cure. Schools and the unemployed ranks could provide volunteers to blitz clear up areas.

I would like to bag all the litter these parasites  have dropped and empty it all around their beds while they slept. Would they even notice when they woke up, now only a fly on the wall would see if they had modicum of intelligence.