Telephone trauma

Then They Returned!

If yesterday’s opening sounded like a Yeats poem title, today’s sounds like a cheap sci-fi horror flick. Yet the leaden phrase hides something positive – the first viewers of the year are returning for a second view! This is something to think about, even if their second visit is not until next Tuesday. This gives us time to try and repair the broken fence, though probably not tomorrow as we are predicted howling gales (again) and then lots of lashing rain. It will give me time to try and find the screws which have been carefully put away; so carefully that they are now effectively lost. These things are a small price to pay for pay, as it were!

The controversy about Celebrity Big Brother continues to grow with howls of outrage: not, unfortunately about the sheer poor taste which the programme displays twenty four hours a day, but rather in terms of racism. It turns out that the Bollywood film star has been picked on by the gaggle of brainless witches which constitute the majority of the females left in the House. The controversy has reached the sort of level where Brown was assailed by questions about the programme on his trip to India.

Now part of me is delighted that opprobrium is building up against the programme and my first reaction was pompously to state that I couldn’t see how, in all conscience, the programme could be allowed to continue and it should obviously be terminated at once. But, there again, that’s what I used to say about the Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher – so, let’s get a sense of proportion in here. I do think that the programme is pernicious, but all you have to do is turn the bloody thing off. I do not read the sort of papers which make programmes like this the staple for their readers. How, therefore does this effect me?

Closing down programmes or banning content goes against what I believe. I particularly dislike media induced hiccoughs of moral outrage which prompt politicians to start making populist statements which have long term deleterious effects on life in Britain. At best this programme is giving public folk the opportunity to make facile statements about racism, which they are against. Well, that’s a surprise! A gaggle of brainless nonentities thinking themselves significant react badly when confronted with a person who exudes sophistication and articulacy and who is from a different culture. There is another surprise! Thatcher put paid to working class socialism and the women are true inheritors of Thatcher’s legacy.

I will have to buy a quality newspaper tomorrow and see the cultural fall out analysed with flair and panache from Big Brother. I think that I will enjoy the political fall out more than the programme that I don’t watch!

Today has been an elusive day. It has gone with very little to show for it. The morning was lost in pseudo illness. I think that Toni and I are still suffering from the tail end of the illness which stuck us over Christmas. At least I was able to rest for part of the morning and was only woken by the agents informing me about the return of the viewers whereas poor old Toni had to labour on with an extra hour of overtime too!

Better tomorrow. Brave the gales and shame the devil.

Toujours gai! Archie! Toujours gai!