April 2010 Archives

The tedium of this General Election is breathtaking. It reminds me of when you look through the menu in a restaurant and find nothing there that you really want to eat and when you look at what is coming out of the kitchen it all looks a bit old and tired but you have to eat there and the waiter is waiting for your order.

It strikes me that people will be voting for what candidates don't represent - he or she is not the lying Scotsman, or smarmy Clegg or posh Dave or whatever rather than what the parties are promising to do for us. Not that a politician's promise is worth a snowball in a furnace.

The problem with a hung Parliament (unless it involves lots of rope in which case it would be a good thing) is that this whole election jamboree is going to be running again sooner rather than later when they all fall out and chuck their expenses receipts out of the party prams.

And the demands of the LibDems on promises on proportional representation before they will side with anyone in a sort of political whoring have their own dangers. It would help them and parties with plenty of candidates in every election but full PR would be the end of real independents.

No Kidderminster doctors or local candidates would ever manage enough votes to win a seat campaigning on local issues. It would just be the big three and larger minority parties with MPs allocated in the order they are on the party list. And of course the likes of the BNP would probably manage a few seats under a PR system as would UKIP. Local democracy and representation would be dead. Votes would be for the party with 1984 coming 30 years too late.

And MPs would be much more concerned with keeping or improving their place on the party list than looking after constituents while the parties would spend all their time doing dodgy deals with any bunch of nutters who could keep them in power.

Meanwhile the Scottish Numpty Party are still trying to muscle in on the last televised leadership debate as if anyone in the rest of Britain cares they exist. It is telling they have lodged their case at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, a Scottish court administering Scottish law. They have their own Parliament, own law, own currency and own powers - please someone give them their own country as well so we can be rid of the lot of them.

Dr Who fans seem to be getting their knickers in a twist about some puerile Graham Norton cartoon advertising the BBC's sponsorship of Andrew Lloyd Webber's next West End show.

Wouldn't every other theatre producer love weeks of prime time Saturday night telly with hours of ads dressed up as entertainment for their next show. His Lordship must be laughing all the way to the bank - shows sold out before they have even opened. But that is another story.

Back to Dr Who and television's intensely annoying habit of trailing the next programme before the one you are watching has finished.

First of all with a few minutes to go up pops a caption telling you what is on next presumably for viewers incapable of working out what all those words mean in TV pages in newspapers or the Radio or TV Times. Personally if viewers are that thick I doubt they managed to work out the caption in any case.

Then why anyone bothers putting credits at the end of programmes these days is beyond me. As a programme or a film ends you should have those contemplative moments when you can take in what you have seen, who was in the cast, see where it was filmed, who sang the song of whatever - no chance.

Instead the screen is squashed up into one unreadable half while the other half is taken up with a trailer for the next programme with some often inappropriately happy voice inanely prattling on.

You have just watched some moving film or a harrowing documentary and as the screen fades and the credits roll up pops Miss Happy telling you that next up is Celebrity Brain Surgeon where minor stars from soaps all have to perform surgery while singing a song chosen by viewers . . .

The whole object of the exercise shows amazing contempt for the viewers. A fear that if we are not told what is coming next we will rush to the remote control and hop around the channels like headless chickens until we find something with pretty colours that moves a lot.

Whereas if Mr Cheery or Miss Happy tell us what we are watching next we will sit there contented and shun other channels.

It is the same contempt of viewers shown in documentaries and and non-fiction programmes such as all those endless buying houses, antiques, B&Bs or whatever shows.

Programme makers reckon we are so stupid with such a short attention span and poor memory that they have to do a recap every few minutes to remind us what is going on.

Commercial TV is the worst simply because it has ads. After each ad break we have to be told what has happened so far which means that by the final part of a one hour programme is largely taken up by telling you what happened in parts one, two, three and so on. It is like the TV equivalent of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

So, Dr Who fans, you are on a loser. The good doctor is nothing special and is fighting the same Philistine foe as any other programme on TV.

SO what could go wrong. Posters are up, tickets are selling the sun is shining . . . and the pub is double booked!!!!

Anyone who read my blog about the play Radio at The Station Pub in Sutton Coldfield on Wednesday and Thursday (April 28 and 29) disregard it. The blog has been removed to avoid any confusion by the way.

It was all hunky dory until I spotted a piece in the paper about a comedy club at The Station pub, home of my pub theatre, The Other RSC.

The problem was that it was on the same night as one of the play performances. Ooops. There was a double booking at the pub.

As the comedy club have national acts on contracts, 100 seats and the audiences tend to have a remarkable thirst it does not need an IQ in double figures to work out there was only ever going to be one winner.

So we looked at just cancelling the Thursday performance, or postponing it or even starting earlier but in the end we decided, that is me and First Light Theatre who are producing the play, that we would give up on this week and cancel both performances and reschedule them later in the year.

So if you were thinking of turning up . . . don't. I will let you know the new dates.

Next show by the way is in May (Wed 19 and Thur 20) when Janice Connolly will be bringing her character Barbara Nice to The Station with her production Hiya and Higher as the opener for a Midland tour. Janice is well known as Holy Mary in both Phoenix Nights and Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere and has also appeared in Coronation Street as Dolly Gartside and Sheila Wheeler as well as numerous appearances on TV and Radio.

Don't you just love the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

They complained unsuccessfully to the BBC Trust that they should be part of the three party circus of the leaders' debates when it rolls into the BBC next week presumably under the impression that anyone outside of Scotland or Wales is interested in what they think.

Scotland and Wales have their own Parliaments and their own MPs so I cannot see a good reason why they should have much representation at Westminster let alone a voice in the leaders' debate.

As to why Scottish MPs and to a lesser extent the Welsh MPs should have any right at all to vote on matters that directly affect England but have no bearing whatsoever on what happens in Scotland or Wales is completely beyond me - and that includes Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling as well. The politics of bedlam.

Let's get it in perspective. Scotland, with its own Parliament and Government - all paid for by us - has a population of about 5 million, less than the West Midlands, while Wales is less than 3 million. Northern Ireland is less than 2 million incidentally.

England has a population somewhere between 50 and 60 million. It is all a bit vague as the Government hasn't a clue ho many people are here and no one has been counting for 13 years.

So with that sort of maths the SNP and Plaid Cymru think they are entitled to chuck in their two pennyworth and we should have to listen to two parties more than 90 per cent of the population can't even vote for as there will be no candidate.

Get real lads. In the the real election you are not even a minority. Plaid Cymru should be given their own debate on SC4 - that's the channel that doesn't have a single viewer for some programmes - while I am quite happy for Scotland to be given independence tomorrow. At least it would rid us of Brown and Darling at a stroke.

There really should be some sort of intelligence test before you are allowed to vote in an election.

We have a stage-managed, rule-bound 90-minute debate where the leaders of the three major parties politely, most of the time, put forward the points their campaign teams, spin doctors, political advisors, odds and sods and strategy consultants have decided will float the electorate's boat.

Nick Clegg, who most people seemed to thing was a character in Last of the Summer Wine up to last Thursday, did OK and suddenly he is the new Messiah and he and his disciples, the Lib Dems are leading us to the promised land.

Meanwhile TV and the National Press fall over themselves with body language experts, media consultants and the rest to tell us what the leaders were really saying behind their praying hands, hands in pockets or standing back from the podium . . . sorry I was just nodding off.

And then we had the great British public who decided on 90 minutes of Nick Clegg, leader of a party last in power 104 years ago, that he is the man - until the next debate that is.

Sadly you do get the feeling that a significant proportion of those watching were waiting for the numbers to call to vote for your favourite leader to pop up on the screen with the leader with least votes last sent home and not making it through to next week's semi-final when, no doubt, they will be hoping to see some singing and dancing as last week's stand-up was a bit dull - and where was Simon Cowell?

If anyone was unsure of the third rate banana republic we have become you only need to look at the shortage of cancer drugs available to NHS patients because NHS hospitals and pharmacies have been flogging them off abroad to make a quick buck.

If we take just one example The Royal Surrey County Hospital Trust had some flak in February for exporting more than £4m of drugs and it has now been revealed that one of the drugs it was flogging from its battered suitcase on some foreign street corner was a cancer drug in short supply.

The lives of NHS patients obviously didn't matter as long as the managers of the the old Royal Surrey had a nice little earner.

It is hard to decide whether they just lie out of habit or are just plain old thick when they have the affrontery to claim there was "absolutely no evidence" to suggest its practices had contributed to the shortage.

Anyone finding difficulty sourcing essential drugs will be pleased to know that the Del Boys of Royal Surrey made £300,000 flogging drugs destined for NHS patients abroad last year.

Meanwhile the Department of Health stamps its feet for the cameras and says trading in drugs is unacceptable - perhaps someone should tell them they are supposed to be running the NHS and they make the rules.

I suspect that the turnout at the General Election could be the lowest on record. There seems little enthusiasm to vote for any of the self serving, pocket lining, lying, corrupt shower.

We can't just blame the Blair and Brown years although I am sure history will struggle to find enough words to describe the disasters they have brought on the country. The Tories before them also played their inglorious part.

As it is we are top or near the top of all the league tables which are bad, such as worst cancer survival rates, worst levels of illiteracy, highest cost of public transport and so on and down the bottom of any table that shows how well you are doing as a nation.

We are an island surrounded by what were among the richest fishing grounds in the world and now have hardly any fishing industry to speak off. Unlike the other major European nations we have no coal industry, no steel industry, no car industry and indeed very little industry.

And our conscientious bosses export our jobs to Eastern Europe, the Far East and India.

Something like a third of people of working age are "economically inactive", we spend almost as much on welfare as we do on pensions and health, more than half of those who work are employed in the public sector and we have become a nation where the richer you are the less tax you pay with enough loopholes in our tax laws at the top end to make a Swiss cheese look solid.

And when it comes to elections we are offered two choices, heads or tails of what is the same old tired bent coin.

It is no wonder people think what is the point? Why should I vote for someone who has very little intention of looking after my interests? This current lot are ruling despite the fact some 80 per cent of those eligible to vote did not vote for them - backing from 20 per cent of the electorate is hardly a compelling mandate.

I must admit I favour the Australian system where everyone has to vote. Democracy is fragile and this lot have already damaged it with their fiddling postal vote fiascos to grab a few extra dodgy Labour crosses in inner city areas. Although what else would you expect from a bent Government than a bent voting system.

If you don't want to vote for any candidate then you really have a duty to still turn up in memory of those who battled for the right for everyone to vote. But turn up with a nice thick felt tip and write your comments and views on the voting slip. A few seats where spoilt ballots won would be a wonderful indictment on our spent political system and even a significant number of spoilt ballots would send a much clearer message than a low turnout.

I never cease to be amazed at the things people say.

Last weekend two smart, well dressed women ahead of me stopped and looked into a shop window and one said to the other: "See that blue jacket there? Well it is just like the one I saw that I was telling you about except it was white and double breasted and it had a different collar."

So it was pretty well identical then . . .

I never cease to be amazed at the things people say.

Last weekend two smart, well dressed women ahead of me stopped and looked into a shop window and one said to the other: "See that blue jacket there? Well it is just like the one I saw that I was telling you about except it was white and double breasted and it had a different collar."

So it was pretty well identical then . . .

You have to wonder if anyone at Waitrose has ever grown anything but a balance sheet.

It appears that Delia Smith and her rhubarb and ginger brûlée ad for the supermarket chain has caused such a demand that there is a shortage of rhubarb - a fact merrily trumpeted as proof of the success of the advertising campaign.

But is it? Who in their right mind would launch a campaign with a recipe using a principal ingredient which is several weeks away from its main domestic season?

There are small supplies of British forced rhubarb at this time of year but with the main season weeks away the timing was always going to mean imported rhubarb so we have supermarket shelves - not just Waitrose as the rest cash in on demand - full of rhubarb from Spain and other countries at premium prices.

Not exactly supporting British agriculture is it and with artics of the stuff crossing Europe it does not show much in the way of green credentials. The danger now is that when the British crop does come on line that the celebrity obsessed populus will be all rhubarbed out and stripping the shelves of the ingredients of the current ad. Meanwhile a couple of traditional growers will decide the crop is no longer worthwhile and move on to something else and a bit more of what makes up Britain will be lost.