BBC

As Ben Goldacre has pointed out, programmes for nerds and those with nerdish tendencies, are few and far between on television. The same is true of photography. We live in an age where ownership of photographic tools is widespread.  Camera phones and compact digital cameras are ubiquitous. Many people don’t realise the degree to which, in terms of artistic capability, the type of camera is irrelevant. Good photos are good photos.

Chase Jarvis demonstrates this with his book of iPhone photography: The Best Camera is The One That’s with You (picked up on via Ken Rockwell). Most photographers, in my experience (I’m not a photographer, I’m a hobby master), use particular kit because it makes their job easier, but given a camera phone, or compact digital camera, will produce photographs with artistic merit. Because the greatest common factor between the camera phone or compact, and the professional kit, is the photographer. A pro may require particular professional kit to do their job, but without the underlying skill, it’s irrelevant.

Most, if not all, contemporary technology shows focus on the latest gadgets, rather than what people actually own. It would be a truly wonderful thing if there was a photography show that engages and interacts with an audience, with a particular emphasis on technology that everyone owns. I say interacts because a major part of the show could be viewer submitted pictures.

A magazine format hosted by people with a genuine interest in photography. The show could focus on things common to all photography: lighting, location, composition and colour. So it’s relevant to people regardless of the camera they own. Segments on things like The Rule of Thirds, how time of a day affects a photograph, etc., and, at the end of the show, solicit picture from viewers using things discussed in the programme. Using whatever they have at hand.

There could be segments on professional photography, and photographers. Giving viewers an insight into the world of professional photography. Covering things like fashion photography, commercial photography, wildlife photography, landscape photography, (s)urban photography, paparazzi celebrity photography, and so on. Even photographic history could be examined.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being all old fashioned and Reithian about it. It’d be perfect for the BBC. But I really hope someone commissions a show like that. I claim no ownership of the idea (take it! take it! I have about five to ten ideas a day), it seems obvious to me, and could be talking bollocks. It is, after all, the internet.

I’m watching a mind-fuck via the BBC called “Blood, Sweat, and Takeaways” (it’s on iPlayer). It’s the televisual equivalent of slumming it. Six typical young people are taken to work in developing countries – to work in factories and occupations that sell to the west. First problem is the typical people chosen as the subjects for the show, are naïve, loud, and rude. I’m all for that. Provided it’s funny. It’s not. They’re English Borats. Maybe it’d be funny if I wasn’t English.

I somewhat hope they’ll be mugged. But whatever I hope has no bearing on the subject. To think otherwise is magic thinking, and you’ll go to hell for magic thinking. I know, in theory, the show is good: giving people that don’t read, and have no imagination, an idea of what global consumerism means for people. But in reality it’s just another reality show.

About a bunch of typical people, that apply for a show, are pre-screened, pre-approved, in a fish out of water scenario, acting like twats.

Yes. (Clickable)

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Remakes are fucked.  Thing is, the only successful remakes are where they change it nearly beyond recognition (the Battlestar Galactica method), or, keep it reasonably close, capturing the essential qualities of the original despite modernisation (The Star Trek Next TNG method). If it’s anywhere in between the two you end up with Carry on Columbus, Star Trek Voyager, and virtually every other remake or spin-off, including some I probably haven’t watched.

Watch for yourself on iPlayer (click No above). If you’re abroad, you’re not missing much. Things to note: colour saturation, audio gain on the laughter track, exaggerated facial expressions, minimal distance between gags and punchlines, Reggie’s pseudo existential angst, the difficulty in suspending belief, on top of a grinding feeling that you’re watching the original as interpreted by idiots.

They’ve used some kind of phaser in the new version of the old theme tune.  That’s almost a metaphor for the show.

Tonight I had a chance to watch Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle on BBC 2. It was good.   I don’t like watching old bands doing their old stuff. I don’t know why. I think it could be the people I associate with attending the concerts of old bands doing their old stuff. I’m not opposed to old bands. Or, to an extent, old stuff. But, when a band becomes, in essence, a tribute act, to itself, and gigs are attended by people mindlessly shouting for the band’s radio hits, it’s dull. The best artists put a new spin on their art, to avoid going mad. Or give it a new context.

The same goes for comedians. Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle probably did interesting things and, until tonight, I missed it. Out of the prejudice that people who watched it are like Genesis fans post Phil Collins singing.  Or people shouting things suspiciously like ‘blahblah-blahblah-blah’  to the first ten or so bars of  Bound 4 Da Reload  by Oxide & Neutrino, at an ironic millennium revival party, in Surrey. Dressed like people from the year 2000.  Because they are, and are so mind-numbingly stupid, they need to be reminded of it at fixed intervals.

It’s on iPlayer.  No doubt bittorrent(s) too.

There’s a collection of his previous work (with – here – Richard Herring) here (that will work in the rest of the world). I can’t say I watched him when he was funny, because he’s still funny. I was going to say that he’s never been funny. But couldn’t lie. On the other-hand, as a species, we’re often twats. And with the previous line I hedge my bets.

On the Observer website, front page, to the left (no pun intended), is David Mitchell’s face, along with a sub heading that says “I’ll tell you what really offends me”. It got my blood boiling, a bit, because I was thinking: pray tell, what is this ironic thing you have decided to be upset* about for entertainment purposes. It’s something about his face. Given I’ve decided to be upset about something for entertainment purposes it may as well be his curmudgeonly** face.

But, as is often the case, he actually said something interesting; not that I’m implying that he doesn’t say interesting things, he does. He’s just got one of those faces. The face of an angry village gardener. He’s one of those people who, when they’ve totally lost their rag, and are angrily berating, could only elicit laughter. Evolution is efficient. There must be a reason for it. Other than everyone being accidental occupants of 1 in 100 billion planets, in an ever expanding universe, we’re all going to die eventually, and there is no god.

He’s annoyed with Hazel Blears. For those of you who aren’t in the UK she’s a kind of news troll, who craves attention in a very sad way, and is pulled out of the sack as often as Polly Toynbee, every time her party, New Labour, fucks up. Her intellectual news repertoire can be defined as such:

• The Tories are worse.
• I agree with the tabloids, but the Tories are worse.
• In my constituency people don’t care.
• We never do anything wrong.
• I’m a common person just like you, I’ll pretend to be as ignorant.
• Tora! Tora! Tora!
• Bloggers are all cynical about politics. (lol)

She’s Polly Toynbee for truly thick people.

Anyway, she had a go at Russell Brand and that knob-end Jonathan Ross, again, by suggesting that they pay a fine the BBC received for that stupid phone call that generated a few headlines. The one with that doddering Manuel bloke (¿¿ qué he hecho yo para merecer esto ??).

Aside from the utter stupidity and bandwagon jumping***, any amount of government expenditure, be it social, or hospitals, or porn, dwarfs in comparison to the government debt generated in the last 9 months. When it comes to this government giving anyone financial advice, or lecturing anyone about waste, or anything of that nature, they are the biggest hypocrites.

I heartily approve of Russell Brand’s Twitter stream, it’s a little bit like his radio show****, without the censorship imposed by a political class that have disappeared up their own arses. It could do with Matt Morgan interjecting occasionally.

And, before I leave you, for some toast, the Tories are a bunch of cocks too. People say that a crippling bad back affects your temperament. They can go fuck themselves.

* Yeah, I know, everything below this point I’m only mildly upset about in real life, and I am actually quite mild and pleasant.
** Thank-you Richard Herring.
*** This blog post could be.  I’m not an impartial judge.
**** If radio wasn’t invented and we had to rely on telegraphs, we’d have something like Twitter.

Seeing is believing.  I think there’s going to be a bit of a Horne & Corden backlash – as reported by Andrew Johnson in today’s Independent.  I think that people should make up their own mind.   Maybe I’m being snobby and elitist (although such accusations are tacit admissions that the show is simple). Maybe I’m some kind of prude.  Maybe I’m jealous.

I really think people should make up their own mind.

So, with no further ado, here’s the show on iPlayer, and for all of you without UK proxies, here’s ‘ Two new fragrances by Fag Le Jay Jean-Peterson‘ (I am not making this up – not my words, not internet irony, not the words of the Westboro Baptist Church,  but the words of BBC 3* ).

On the internet you can slag a television show off merely by telling people to watch it.

* ‘… Tim Goodall, a gay TV journalist, who’s more interested in sipping Pina Colada and discussing how fit the soldiers are in Basra than delivering breaking news …’ – translation: lol, gay – not my words, but the words of BBC 3’s press department.

Years ago, at school – a macho boys school – homo and poof were frequent terms of abuse for anything that seemed effeminate or weak. It was primarily driven by a lack of life experience (ignorance), a kind of lazy, ill-thought out, homophobia. Upon leaving school most people, possessing half a brain or more, and a bit of life experience, rapidly realise that people are generally people regardless of their gender. There are copious amounts of stupid people of every gender. It’s the one thing that unites all nationalities. The basic problem with humour derived from gay stereotypes is pretty much the same as humour derived from any other stereotype. Unless it’s ironic, or has some deeper meaning, it’s obvious, and because it’s obvious, it’s retarded.

I could be missing something about Al Murray’s ‘gay’ Nazi, and Horne & Corden’s ‘gay’ war correspondent, because I don’t think any of the comedians in question are homophobic. In Al Murray’s case he’s got a track record of taking the piss out of homophobia in the form of the pub landlord (‘never confused’). But in the case of the ‘gay’ Nazi and the ‘gay’ war correspondent the humour is derived from some pretty negative homosexual stereotypes. This can be contrasted with Sascha Baron Cohen’s Brüno – here for instance – which is essentially about peoples reactions to absurd situations, and absurd stereotypes, rather than a strict play on stereotypes. If people are just laughing at the stereotype then the comedy is retarded.

I’m not homosexual, and I’ve never experienced the kinds of bullying or discrimination that people have, but I have seen how ignorance about other genders can lead to a kind of lazy, semi-malevolent, homophobia. I’m principally opposed to the ‘gay’ Nazi sketch and Horne & Corden’s ‘gay’ war correspondent sketches because I think they’re retarded sketches, aimed at idiots, and lazy, in some very fundamental ways. People forget that in order to be edgy you have to be smart.

Given how thick people are it should do rather well.

FFS.

On your BBC.  It’s not like there’s anything else going on.  A good use of the license fee.  Everyone is affected by knife-crime.  So let’s wheel out grieving relatives of knife crime victims and ask them what they think should be done nationally.

Sure to be as objective as past media treatments, see 5cc here for selected highlights.

Robert Peston’s thoughts on the future of the world economy. PDF linked from the blog entry.

The current episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe is quite special (series 4 episode 3, or series 5 episode 3 if you count from somewhere else, see comments below). During the programme he chats with several prominent UK screen writers about their work. It’s available on iPlayer here, and foreigners will soon find it on YouTube.

I don’t normally like watching things like that episode, because it sometimes reveals a dispassionate professionalism in heroes that tinges the way I see them forever, like they’ve been dipped in the bog of eternal stench. I don’t necessarily want to know the artist to appreciate their art. I’m that childish.

But all of the people in the programme (Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Graham Linehan, Russell T Davies, Paul Abbott, Tony Jordan) came across well, and none of the questions asked by Brooker were stupid in a way that I, as a layman, could detect.

Recently I had a casual conversation with someone about Simon Amstell’s Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which led to a broader discussion about contemporary comedy. I’m of the opinion that Simon Amstell is very funny, and they were of the opinion that Simon Amstell is nasty and picks on people. It’s indicative of a wide gap between the internet generation (it’s not an age thing – it’s an information thing) and everybody else. I have some opinions on ‘modern’ humour. Just like I possess an anus.

Sex and morality – still a big issue for many, there are a whole generation of people that openly discuss issues that were taboo. In part through things like sex education in schools, in part changing attitudes, and in part because of the internet. There are plenty of subjects that people do not consider shock-worthy. Superficially it seems callous, but in my opinion, honesty does not equal not caring.  Humour based on things that were taboo does not cheapen debate, but signifies willingness to talk openly about issues that were considered in bad taste. It’s the inverse of Victorian double standards. People don’t look the other way. In the previous paragraph I placed modern in quote marks because I believe people like Daniel Defoe, William Hogarth, later Samuel Butler, countless others, did the same thing (some would say they did it better, and the comparison is disproportionate – I agree  – but the point is about precedents). It’s not new.

Take the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross ruckus – moral decline? In some ways I am glad to live in a country that is still shocked by bad behaviour – the exact opposite of moral decline – on the other-hand I think some of the more vitriolic responses to the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross ruckus were driven by people who are unwilling to talk about sex because they think it’s immoral outside of marriage, which is a shame, because it happens. It happened in the past too . When people point to things like teenage pregnancy rates in the UK as a sign of moral decline, it’s worth noting that among the industrialised nations Japan, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and France, have far lower rates of teenage pregnancy, with attitudes towards sex that are far more open than ours. A willingness to talk about sex does not equal immorality, any more than Victorians not talking about sex equalled morality. Nor does it equal ‘the answer’ – I won’t pretend that I think an unwillingness to talk about sex is the reason for the UK and America’s high teenage pregnancy rates. I have no doubt at all that it’s more complicated than that, and requires impartial inquiry, free of the shackles of mere opinion such as this.

If people were campaigning against Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross because they invaded the privacy of Georgina Baillie (whom seems reasonable and intelligent) I think they’ve got a fair point – but they weren’t – they were complaining about it been ‘grossly offensive’. Not a gross invasion of privacy, or good old fashioned bad manners, but an issue of taste, decency, and morality. Combined with a general sense of anger towards the BBC.

I don’t know many people on my side of the debate who thinks what Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross did was edgy, or anything other than mildly amusing (at best – many people thought it was rubbish – they can both be far funnier), but the reactions to it exposed a divide and a mutual misunderstanding from both sides. As BBC license fee payers those who found the broadcast offensive were absolutely within their rights to complain. But in the rush for judgement many people feel as if their views were ignored because they were not suitably incensed or represented. I felt quite angry about that at the time, and was as rabid, or worse, than the people I criticised. I was wrong and I regret that. Retrospect is a fine thing. Emotions running high do not lead to a quality debate or bode well for free speech.

Honesty being mistaken for nastiness – Simon Amstell’s humour is based on honesty. His stand up and his presenting. When he is picking on some celebrity he doesn’t do so with anything other than the truth. This is no more apparent when a celebrity on Never Mind The Buzzcocks (available on iPlayer here) says something along the lines of ‘yeah – so what’ and the audience applauds. I think this is a natural Twenty First Century reaction to Twentieth Century celebrity. PR, image making, to an extent the machinery of media production, is no longer transparent to the audience, and people like Simon Amstell are a reaction to that. The divide in the opinions of Never Mind The Buzzcocks viewers after the exit of Mark Lamarr exactly mirrors the cultural divide. One could almost get Hegelian about this sort of thing,

Disability and the use of politically incorrect language in satire – there was a bit of a fuss as a result of Simple Jack in the film Tropic Thunder, over the use of the word retarded. Again, I think many people missed the point; in Tropic Thunder Simple Jack was presented as a film that starred Tugg Speedman as a cognitively impaired lad who could talk to animals. It it was presented as a film that bombed (failed miserably at the box-office). The point was that it bombed because Tugg Speedman played ‘the full retard’ – as Kirk Lazarus, method actor extraordinaire, pointed out. People do not want to see people who are greatly cognitively impaired in films, they prefer people like Rain Man or Forest Gump, idealised, sanitised versions of disability. The film was as much a satire of cinema audiences as movies and actors. Everyone picked up on the use of the word retard and a blacked-up Robert Downey Jr (Kirk Lazarus was a satire of stereotypes in method acting), but not what was spelt out by Kirk Lazarus about movie depictions of the cognitively impaired. People were too busy being offended to notice. Tropic Thunder was a great satire. & Tom Cruise was brilliant in it (click here for a tasty morsel, or even better, buy the DVD).

I’ve intermittently wanked on about the credit crunch for quite some time, in many ways it’s been like watching a railway crash, in that there’s been a fixed trajectory, and from a great distance things don’t appear to be moving that fast. I have a couple of comments; firstly, none of the underlying problems with the affected economies have been solved *, and secondly, there aren’t half some head cases that comment on Robert Peston’s blog. I haven’t blogged about anything financial or economic because it depresses the living fuck out of me (plus typing fucks my back). I have kept up with the situation, and, as a part of that, I’ve read RP’s blog. It’s good. I think RP is a credit to the BBC.  As for Robert Peston having a political bias – bollocks – he’s pissed people off of all stripes, which is an indicator of how good he is.

There are a lot of people who are sane enough to type their mad ideas (how would I know if I was one of them?), and it appears they’re attracted to Robert Peston’s blog like nutters to church. If you’ve got a few minutes you must have a chuckle at the comments on this post. Some of them go from fat-cats to socialist apocalypse faster than Hackney carriage drivers.

* I think there’s a 50/50 chance this will turn into an aggregate cluster fuck rather than a mere cluster fuck. Oh yeah – and nobody has mentioned the affect St Barack’s election in the US has had on British government tax policy, and/or speculated about what that indicates with upcoming US fiscal policy. I suspect the broad direction of fiscal policy was informally discussed well in advance at a well publicised visit to the UK. Lol.

I wasn’t going to comment on the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross/Andrew Sachs thing, lest I add to press sentiment that ‘prank call’ story is newsworthy.  But I’m going to comment.  The whole thing is ridiculous, and has brought all kinds of unpleasant people out of the woodwork.  Essentially it is a fuss about someone making a joke about fucking someone, you know – that thing lots of adults do for fun  –  but has played out as if Jonathan Ross has somehow tarred Manuel’s adult granddaughter by outing the fact that Russell Brand shagged her at one of his hot tub parties. As if sex is somehow dirty and a taboo.  The headline should be “Man shags woman, tells grumpy elderly relative, incensed newspaper readers foam at the mouth”

Listen for yourself on YouTube here.  Be sure to check out all of the comments from the new puritans, rabid anti BBC-types, armchair moralists, old people of questionable intelligence, and general fuckwits.

I heard the radio show a couple of weeks ago, the morning after it aired. It was mildly amusing.  When Jonathan Ross shouted out “he fwucked your gwanddaughter” I thought – “So?  Who gives a shit – big deal”.  It wasn’t the funniest Russell Brand show.  It wasn’t particularly notable. The show is much funnier when Russell Brand has a foil such as Matt Morgan (or Simon Amstell).  It was broadcast at night, after 9pm.  The telephone call was arranged in advance, Manuel didn’t pick up the phone.  The programme apologised a few days later.

Thing is – it’s funny now.  It wasn’t that funny to begin with but the shitstorm of indignation from the illiterate opinionated twats of Great Britain has made it lolworthy.  It’s been getting funnier by the morally outraged minute.

All of those people that are morally outraged have been trolled hard, and can go fuck themselves.  If that’s the type of people Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross have offended – good.

I’d pay double the license fee if they could annoy idiot newspaper readers twice a month.

Well done BBC – but it’s stupid to suspend people for pissing off an elderly guest of the show.

People really want a right not to be offended but don’t realise the consequences. They’re too stupid.

I love political drama in the UK press because things play out like a soap opera or third-rate thriller. Commentated by people of questionable rationality. Unlike me. If I were in charge of a BBC television channel I would commission a show in which political correspondents commentate on apes. Like A Life of Grime but with apes and Nick Robinson as John Peel. “Hey, if the good ship ape-house were the titanic, and this was a bad metaphor – Julius, alpha chimp, of the political jungle – his body language is telling – he wants to urinate, or stimulate an erection, AND (inhales), the ramifications for the king are spectacular. Look out for ice-bergs! Over to you Sophie”

All apes ever get credit for is fiddling with themselves, lobbing shit at people, picking fleas off each other, and hanging around. I think that is very unfair and my idea for a television programme would solve the issue.

There’s a sketch from the Fast Show that comprises of Chris Jackson, the crafty cockney, trying to convince naïve people that he’s a thief. But often they don’t believe him because he’s a cheeky, amiable, chap. At a stretch you could pull a metaphor out of your arse with Chris Jackson as certain parts of the financial world and the naïve people as regulators. Here’s an example sketch where he is believed, but told “you can’t do this”.

Robert Peston’s Super Rich: The Greed Game is a much better exploration of the recent turmoil in the financial sector. If you’re in the UK it’s on BBC iPlayer – watch it here. If you’re not in the UK – watch it here.  The Damien Hirst reference in the title is a reference to Robert Peston’s Damien Hirst reference.  Essential viewing.

This makes me angry.   The BBC has some really good people, including Robert Peston, so when they talk complete bollocks re: oil prices they’ve got no excuse. Here’s what the BBC has to say about today’s spike in oil prices (believe it or not the biggest spike took place in the space of five minutes!) Keep in mind all commodities are up, not just oil:

Record one-day jump in oil price

The price of oil has jumped by more than $16 to $120.92 a barrel, the biggest one-day gain on record.

The increase in the price of US light, sweet crude was driven by concerns about supply.

Production in the Gulf of Mexico is still affected by Hurricane Ike and Saudi Arabia is cutting production.

Oil traders also believe that the US government’s bank bail-out plan will help the economy and therefore demand for oil.

Last week oil traded as low as $91 a barrel. It had fallen from its peak of $147 a barrel that it reached in July.

The volatility in the price has been exacerbated by the fact that the contract for the supply of oil in October expires on Monday.

From here (I’ve cut and pasted for the purposes of discussion and that the BBC has a tendency to edit articles days later).  In my opinion what they have written is unmitigated bullshit.

Here’s what Bloomberg had to say (I’ve cut and pasted for the purposes of discussion and commentary):

Oil Posts Biggest Gain as Traders Caught in End-Month Squeeze

By Mark Shenk

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil climbed more than $25 a barrel, the biggest gain ever, as traders scrambled to unwind positions on the October contract’s last day of trading. The more-active November contract rose $6.62.

“This looks like a squeeze play,” said Phil Flynn, senior trader at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. “All of the contracts are up, but nothing like October. This is the last day of trading and someone is scrambling to guarantee supply.”

Crude oil for October delivery rose $16.37, or 17 percent, to settle at $120.92 a barrel at 2:46 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the highest settlement price since Aug. 21. Futures for November delivery rose 6.4 percent to settle at $109.37 a barrel.

Prices climbed today as traders who sold the October contract last week, when oil dipped close to $90, had to buy the futures back. In a squeeze a trader has gone short by selling contracts hoping the price will decline. In the last days before the contract expires the trader must buy back the same number of futures or be forced to deliver the underlying oil.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that’s the indication of a huge squeeze,” said Craig Pirrong, director of energy markets for the University of Houston’s Global Energy Management Institute. “It’s just stunning this could happen” given the recent scrutiny in Congress and among U.S. regulators concerning the crude oil markets, he said.

`Yawning Gap’

“It’s a very small pool playing in this market right now, and that’s why you’re seeing those massive differentials” between the October and November contracts, said David Kirsch, an energy markets analyst at PFC Energy in Washington. “Somebody did place a wrong bet and is trying to cover that position.”

“The overarching factor is that the October futures contract expires today,” said Ryan Oatman, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in Houston. “This is a classic short squeeze. What lead up to it was a strong euro, up on concerns U.S. government actions will ultimately result in a greater budget deficit, higher inflation and a weaker dollar.”

Investors looking to hedge against the dollar’s decline earlier this year have helped lead oil, gold, corn and gasoline to records. Oil rose as high as $130 a barrel, up from $104.55 on Sept. 19, as the dollar dropped on concern that a U.S. proposal to buy $700 billion of troubled assets from financial firms will deepen the budget deficit.

The dollar declined 2.4 percent to $1.4817 per euro, from $1.4466 on Sept. 19. It touched $1.4818, the weakest level since Aug. 22.

Hard Assets

“Gold, silver, oil, copper, just about any hard asset, is looking good at this point,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, vice president for energy risk management at MF Global Ltd. in New York. “With the dollar down and stocks getting hit, commodities look like a safe play.”

Oil has risen 33 percent since Sept. 16 as lawmakers pledged fast consideration of the Treasury’s plan to buy devalued mortgage-related securities.

“There’s a flight to quality and the energy markets are benefiting,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts. “The dollar is down again and investors are fleeing to commodities. We are back to the cycle that pushed prices to records earlier this year.”

Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators increased their net-long position in New York crude-oil futures in the week ended Sept. 16, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.

Speculative long positions, or bets prices will rise, outnumbered short positions by 19,379 contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the Washington-based commission said in its Commitments of Traders report.

Gasoline

Gasoline for October delivery increased 10.41 cents, or 4 percent, to settle at $2.7038 a gallon in New York. Heating oil rose 14.52 cents, or 5 percent, to settle at $3.043, the biggest single-session gain since June 6.

Regular gasoline, averaged nationwide, declined 1.8 cents to $3.739 a gallon, AAA, the nation’s largest motorist organization, said today on its Web site. Pump prices reached a record $4.114 a gallon on July 17.

Crude oil prices are “too high” because the global economic slowdown may spread and cut consumption, the International Energy Agency’s deputy executive director said.

“The economic slowdown in the U.S., Europe hasn’t gotten into China, India much, but at some point you have to presume it will,” William Ramsay said in an interview in Bangkok today.

The Paris-based IEA, which advises 27 developed nations on energy policy, was set up in 1974 in response to the Arab oil embargo.

Brent crude oil for November settlement rose $6.43, or 6.5 percent, to settle at $106.04 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange.

From here.

Who do you think gives a better idea of what happened today?  The BBC or Bloomberg?

Masterchef: The Professionals is brilliant.  I’m no foodie – but I do like good food, and appreciate good restaurants (in the sense that I don’t give a shit about the associated pomp – rather the food).  And Masterchef: The Professionals is all about the food.  Unlike many television shows all of the contestants are already reasonable chefs, and many of the contestants are not just competent; they border on brilliance.  If the up and coming chefs on the show are representative of David Cameron’s Broken Britain, it’s another reason he should go inflate himself with a bicycle pump every time he utters the platitude.   Many of the featured chefs are the future of the UK restaurant scene.

It’s the best food show on television at the moment.  Bar none.  It’s better than Top Chef.  There is zero excessive drama worked in by producers. So well done BBC.  Michel Roux Jnr is a bit scary though.  He reminds me of my old French teacher, who was ex-military, and had a stare that was odd.  But Michel Roux Jnr, and Gregg Wallace, are very good presenters for the show.  Because they know their onions (it’s a good one to note that BBC – front shows with people who know, in-depth, about the subject they’re presenting – seems obvious that one).  They’re also personable.

Great stuff – it’s on iPlayer, but if you can’t get iPlayer where you are you have my permission (as a license fee payer) to pirate it for the benefit of mankind.  It’s a shame it’s on 18:30 on BBC 2 because many people aren’t home to watch it on their actual telly-boxes.  Thanks to iPlayer that’s less of a problem than it was, but I think placing Masterchef: The Professionals in that slot is as bigger crime as the slot the first series of The Mighty Boosh had.

Robert Peston on what’s going down. It was hoped that someone would merge with it.  Didn’t happen.  Barclays pulled out.  Nobody panic.

Ghosts, the paranormal, and the associated arse frippery (psychics), are bollocks.   But there’s quite a few shows on television about it.  Taking a hard nosed, cynical, amoral position, for the purposes of this, it makes financial sense to make television programmes trading on people who like that sort of thing.  Because there’s a demand for it.

Thing is, I (kind-of) like the shows, because it’s people walking around dark places, and walking around dark places is scary.  Once I got lost in a forest, at night, while a bit drunk, and got into a panic.  It’s not that I believe in ghosts; it’s just that something primal kicks-in when you’re in the dark, alone, in the middle of nowhere.  After a bit I thought, to the best of my recollection, “fuck-it”, and fell asleep by a tree.  Luckily it was summer, luckily it wasn’t raining, and I wasn’t paralytic. So no hypothermia, exposure, or choking on my own vomit.  I got woken up by a fat dog-walker (golden retriever) at about 05:30, aching to the point that it hurt to walk, and with a mammoth hang-over. Seriously stupid.

Watching programmes like Most Haunted Live can send a little bit of a chill down your spine, if you’re in a exhausted, stupefied, frame of mind (not shouting things like “you feel cold because you’re panicking you fuckwit” at the screen). They can induce a pleasant form of mild hysteria.  I like that.  But – they don’t do it as well as the BBC’s prescient, and fictional, Ghostwatch.  Ghostwatch was Most Haunted/Ghost Hunters before they existed.  Without the grating dramatic sound effects of modern ‘reality’ paranormal shows.  Can’t recommend Ghostwatch enough.  It’s a little dated but it’s still very clever indeed (the style of the programme was identical to BBC live shows in the early 1990s, and featured real BBC presenters, presenting).

You can watch Ghostwatch here.

Most Haunted/Ghost Hunters and the spin-offs are kind of horror/drama lite – the very mildest of  shocks and drama.

Such shows have become like certification bodies for (supposedly) haunted places; imagine the visitor boost for any locations that have been featured on a show.  I think it is human nature that people, some say sensible people, will cheat, mess with the television people that make the shows, because having them say “this place is definitely haunted” is an incentive in itself.   It wouldn’t be difficult to do, if you spend more than a second thinking about it.

But back to Ghostwatch…

What I like best about Ghostwatch (the fictional and better than the ‘real’ shows drama) was that it fucked with the viewer.  Split second flashes of apparitions reflected on patio doors, 50/50 evidence, etc. – great stuff.  If there was a fictional modern Ghostwatch-alike, that kept to the spirit (ha-ha) of playing with the viewer, and the attention to detail (OK – the girls’ accents were a bit wonky, but the locations/costume/equipment used/carpets even were spot-on), it could be quite good.  Ghostwatch, until the last bit, was indistinguishable from real BBC live shows it dramatised.   Decent drama that provides a similar ’spooky’ fix could, in the absence of viewers getting a fucking clue-stick and shunning the paranormal, drain viewers from programmes like Most Haunted/Ghost Hunters.

Notice I didn’t mention Paranormal State.  A man has limits.  If Most Haunted/Ghost Hunters are retarded – Paranormal State is down with potatoes.

Watch for yourself here.

You know that when a television programme contains Britain in the title it’s attempting to cash-in on a collective sense of identity.  In most cases it’s a bit lazy.  In the case of Britain’s Really Disgusting Foods its symptomatic of the laziness, vacuity, and attempt to cash in on essentialist presumptions about food.   If I were to go down the essentialist route also I could sum-up the show up in a single sentence: The programme has cherry-picked the cheapest foods available to caterers in order to create a straw-man argument, cherry picked experts with vested interests against things like mechanically recovered meat, and created a cloud of brainless confusion aimed at a teenage audience on BBC 3.

The presenter, who’s mildly funny, like dandruff, starts the programmes by saying “I reckon there’s certain things that need answering once and for all, so I’ve composed an email to the meat hygiene service looking for some answers”.  He asks them if ears, eyes, eyelids, noses, brains, lips, nipples, bumholes (rather than anus – the programme is aimed at the youth, man, and they all say bumhole), tail,  testicles, penis, bones, and ballbag, are allowed in sausages.  Testicles appear twice.  Presumably for comedic purposes.  Ha ha.  Twenty minutes later we find out that none of those things are allowed in sausages.  There is, however, a loop hole that means that if you don’t call your meat products sausages they’re allowed 5% meat.  Which I’ll return to.

The programme goes on to discuss the cheapest chicken breasts available to caterers.  Which, surprisingly, or not, as the case may be, are injected with water, salt, and stabilisers.  Partly because they’re frozen.  According to the programme this is disgusting.  A great opportunity to inform the audience is missed  at every opportunity.  Salt, and the associated problems of over consumption are well known, but the chief point the programme makes about the chicken breasts is that they’re disgusting.   Without any qualification of the health ramifications of added salt – or that if consumed sensibly there’s really no problem.  But according to the programme they are disgusting simply because they’ve undergone processing.  Animal welfare can go fuck itself.  It’s not touched upon at all.

Then, at a food trade fair, to demonstrate how disgusting the cheapest, nastiest, cherry-picked faux-sausages are, they give a demonstration of how to make the cheapest, nastiest, faux-sausages. Raising the spectre of mechanically recovered meat.  In order to do this they get Richard Guy – the Real Meat Company founder, who has no conflict of interest at all, an entirely neutral contributor (like fuck)  to give a demonstration of mechanically recovered meat.  Holding up a chicken carcass that had the breast, leg, and other good bits of meat, removed.  Which is exactly what I use to make an excellent chicken soup, using the leftovers from a Sunday roast. He then goes on to explain how the meat – the straggly bits sinew etc. -  is removed in a factory to produce a paste.  They mention the use of ingredients like sodium metabisulfite, and they state, unequivocally, that it “isn’t there to make you live longer, be happier or anything else, it’s there to make a heap of disgusting meat stick together”.

Sodium metabisulfite is familiar to all home brewers.  It is used to sterilise equipment.  It is also a preservative.  It has been used to a very long time, and it has zero side-effects.  You piss it out.  It has absolutely nothing to do with sticking meat together.  It extends the shelf-life of products, and helps prevent food poisoning.  BBC 3 viewers should take what BBC 3 tells them with a pinch of salt.

Shortly after the that programme cuts to a chalk board with “The search for the Worlds Worst Sausage”  the apostrophe is missing from World presumably on purpose, for comedic purposes.  The problem with the board is that technically it’s false advertising.  The cheapest, nastiest, faux sausages they are making are not legally allowed to be called sausages.  No mention is made of the fat-content or salt content.  The two chief problems with the cheapest nastiest food you can cherry pick.  It’s referenced – they mention that fat goes in. But not how much or how much salt goes in.

The programme then consults a nutritionist, who tells us, with minimal elaboration, what we already know about the cheapest nastiest food you can cherry pick.  Nutritionally they’re not very good. Surprise surprise.

They later mention hydrogenated fats.  Hydrogenated fats are bad.  They state that hydrogenated fat “Increases risk of coronary heart disease/contains no nutritional value”.  They do increase the risk of coronary heart disease.  Similar to butter or other natural products that contain saturated fats.  However – they’re wrong about hydrogenated fats containing no nutritional value.  It’s the trans-fats which are a by-product of hydrogenated fats that have no nutritional value.  No mention is made of the problems with saturated fats.  Presumably because telling people their expensive supermarket best sausages can also be bad for their health doesn’t fit their straw-man argument.

They pick on the use of waxy starch in apple pie filling.   Which is no different from using cornflour to thicken things.  But that wouldn’t support the argument.

The programme’s attitude towards E-Numbers is similarly stupid.  At one point the host compares E-Numbers to excrement.  They mention that an E-Number colouring is derived from coal tar.  Like paracetamol used to be, and a whole host of other things utilising organic chemistry.  The idea that anything good can be derived from coal tar is ignored.  To support the argument that the E-number colouring in question is bad they mention that it’s banned in two countries.  I don’t know how many countries it is not banned in, but that doesn’t support the argument, so it’s omitted.

They talk about how marketing people give a false impression of food.  The next time I get a shag out of wearing Lynx deodorant I’ll celebrate by eating a trans-fat laden cake in a park where it’s always sunny and there’s no dog shit.  Marketing gives a misleading idea of what product is/does.  Well I never.  If the argument about misleading advertising were backed up by a coherent argument about unhealthy or disgusting food the programme may have had a point.  Instead it’s an opinion piece of the worst kind.

BBC 3 and Britain’s Most Disgusting Foods are shit.  It’s a broadly misleading programme, aimed at teenagers, that adds nothing to the argument about healthy food, and potentially increases the ignorance of its viewers.  The programme contains nothing about how much salt, saturated fat, and sugar it is healthy to consume.

Television.  Light entertainment.  Cooking.  One of the things I hate about celebrity chefs is that  for the purposes of entertainment they intervene in lives, and make recommendations about diets.    I’ll refer to such programmes as “intervention television”.  Of course, intervention television exists in many forms, notable examples are “I’m a cretin that subsists on chips – help me BBC 3”, “Fuck-a-doodle-do  I’m fat – come gawk at me like I’m a freak” on Channel 4, and “poor kids shouted at by 1950s pedo teachers” on Channel 5.  I’ll stick to food though, because celebrity chefs deliver petitions to Number 10 Downing Street, and, furthermore, they think they’re the shit (they are in a sense).

An episode of the F-Word particularly annoyed me.  Gordon Ramsay, in full on intervention mode, met some 20-something NORPs that live on takeaway curry, one of whom wants to run a marathon.  Gordon, in his infinite wisdom, recommended a curry recipe; the logic being that someone that lives on curry would want to cook it for themselves.  My problem is that if people can’t do basic food right, there’s fuck all point in teaching them things like making a curry.  As soon as the celebrity chef has gone the rice will be overcooked, the food will be under-seasoned, and worse the fuckers will force their new found gastronomic confidence on guests.

Often people who, basically, can’t cook, buy the latest Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay cookbook.  It’s not that the recipes are bad, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay are better chefs than the majority of people, it’s just that the pretentious fuckers buying their books often can’t cook a decent soup, let alone many of the recipes.  That’s why I think Marco Pierre White, and Delia Smith *, aside from being mental as rabid badgers, in their own way, are doing better things for British food than walking cocks like Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsay. They are teaching delicious basics.  That’s what many people in the UK need.  Not over-complication and pretentious fuckwittery.  For example – basic soup.

Anyone can cook a decent, ubergruppenhealthy **, soup.  All of what follows is approximate, and flexible:

The core of the recipe: One sliced medium onion, two peeled chopped carrots (or more if you like carrots), a bay leaf,  a few handfuls of of chopped potatoes, a couple of sticks of chopped celery, a peeled whole clove of garlic (more if you want), and some skinned chicken.  Put it all in a big saucepan cover with water  (plus a couple of stock cubes – although some are cuboids strictly speaking) or stock, put in some dried black peppercorns to taste (five or six is fine).  Optional herbs include thyme,  parsley,  tarragon (be careful – it’s a dominating herb –  a small pinch at most) etc.  That’s a basic soup.  Optional other stuff includes chopped ham, mushrooms, cabbage, leftover vegetables, a small handful of pearl barley, a handful of rice,  – nettles even, swedes, turnips, celeriac etc. etc.  It’s simple.

Cover. Bring to the boil simmer for an hour or more, taste, season, remove any bones, skim any excess fat, and voilà – acceptable, very healthy, soup.  A cheap pack of 12 chicken thighs will be enough for about 8 people with large soup portions – more people can be served if there’s some bread.  Alternatively a left-over roast chicken carcass is just fine also but it will need to be simmered longer.  A kid with minimal supervision and a blunt butter knife can make soup.  You can experiment, and find the perfect combinations/ratios for you.  Don’t get me started about dumplings and suet dumplings. A well trained dog could probably make them.  Bit of white pepper in the dumplings – lovely.

Total cost less than £8 – the main cost is the meat.  Dried herbs are fine. If it’s left overs the total cost is less than £5.  Hate chicken?  Use cheap cuts of lamb (cheap is betters suited to simmering) or rabbit (drop the tarragon in both cases IMHO), simmer until the meat is tender, and flavours defuse.

Celebrity chefs are teaching people stuff they aren’t equipped to do well.  MPW and DS excluded. I’d rather have a decent soup or other healthy basic recipe than some faddish nightmare cooked badly from a recipe book.  Serious.   Marco Pierre White is right.

* Years ago, at some ill-defind point in the past, I watched Delia Smith in an altered state of mind, and it took me weeks to get over it. In fact just thinking about it makes a little nervous.
** Which is, after all, what Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsay has in mind for us.  For us all to be ubergruppenhealthy.

Earlier this week I said something about a row of trees or bushes in dim silhouette. Read it, it’s like, short. About the Northampton Paranormal Group/English Civil War/Battle of Naseby ‘ghost photo’.  Well, the fine journalists of BBC Look East, counted among the finest journalists in the world,  have covered the story for regional news, and you can view where, exactly, the photo was taken.  In turn their report was picked up by the BBC News Online website, who want the clicks:

Watch here.

Trees and bushes in silhouette taken at night with a digital compact camera with a small CCD and low signal to noise ratio (SNR) by default at night.   It’s just as well the BBC employs so much critical thinking, and doesn’t lend credibility to bollocks.   Worst thing is that if the BBC have the story it will soon be picked up internationally.  So look forward to it being the funny story at the end of your favourite news programmes.

The news works like that.

This speaks for itself.  My only comment is that often civil servants, government and people who are removed from business, get screwed over because they fail to realise that business is amoral, and functions for profit.  I don’t mean that in a “business is bad” way.  I think business is good.  I mean that in a “people removed from business often get walked all over by business because they are naive in the extreme” way.  If business can exploit government for a profit it will, even if government ends up with a very bad deal, and the public ends up underwriting  any losses the business invokes.  Giving said businesses no incentive at all to do a good job.  Removing any sense of pride or social status that comes with working for the government (why?  because people are employed by businesses rather than the government, and businesses are run for profit, not for “the country”).

And a cashcow called Blairism came along – employing market fundamentalism.  Here’s a scenario – you’re a business – your company provides consulting services – it currently has six major contracts – two of which are with government and are underwritten in the case of failure – so, for perfectly sane reasons, you care more about the other four projects…  They are the priority.  The two government contract can overrun a bit, or fail, because it could be that you end up with more money that way anyway.  During the initial negotiations you told the government that nobody would take on that risk in the private sector without being underwritten.  Which is bullshit, of the semi-deniable form, but your job is to make a profit.

In the event of failure it will  be renegotiated through a long winded and exploitable government procurement process, run by people who have worked in the civil service since graduating, and are more than a bit green when it comes to what business tells them.

Cashcows.  Blairite/Brownite market fundamentalism is exploitable and will be exploited.   The old Tories, for their sins, at least understood that business was amoral and operated in its own interests.  Don’t trust government market fundamentalists, Tory, Labour, whatever.  They get fucked over by business.

Static electricity was described by Thales of Miletus on observing that if you rub amber it attracts minute particles. The word electron is Greek for amber (ήλεκτρον).  Jeremy Clarkson will never make such an observation, and is a twat. And so is Richard Hammond.  James May is probably OK.  Although, for all I know, he could be into badger baiting.  He probably isn’t.

Amber is cool.

I often disagree with the BBC’s Robert Peston, but his blog and television/radio reporting are shit-hot, and his blog is worth bookmarking. Read yesterday’s “… open letter to the governor of the Bank of England and to the chancellor of the exchequer from Mr Two-Point-Two, a thirty-four-year old school teacher from Anytown, UK.” Inflation is a nightmare and there’s a whole rather cosseted generation of people that haven’t experienced it as as adults. Or falling house prices. Or major lay-offs.

It’s going to be an interesting time in the next few weeks on the stock markets. I have previously found The Times (feat. the wonderful Anatole Kaletsky), Bloomberg, the avuncular business reporter on Sky News (Michael Wilson?), and Robert Peston to have the most reliable financial reports. But I’m no expert, and I frequently disagree with people, so this isn’t a blanket endorsement. Just a self-important explanation of where I get my news by the way of nothing.

Edit: Sky News do a good job on their blog also.

Reporters seem to be able to report without the constraints of television, via their blogs, which is self evident.

Meta4orce is an animated gem in a sea of celebrity worship aimed at kids (BBC Switch). The script is written by Peter Milligan. Watch it on iPlayer here, if you’re in the UK. More importantly play the game. That’s the clever bit. Otherwise watch the trailer, and find it elsewhere.

I have just discovered spEak You’re bRanes, via the Bad Science miniblog, and it’s wonderful. A blog chronicling the BBC News Online Have Your Say section. A must-see bit is The Twat-O-Tron. Just click new for a fairly typical Have Your Say comment. I think it raises the possibility of a Terminator-Skynet like botnet of fascist android sockpuppets. It really wouldn’t require much in the way of AI.

Russia: A Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby was good. Available to watch on the good bit of the BBC’s iPlayer here. If you’re in the UK.

Hopefully there will be a torrent or YouTube upload. The only failing of the documentary was that it packed too much in. That’s a niggle though. It’s a refreshing step-back to BBC documentaries; it’s not dumbed down, the soundtrack and camera-work are restrained, and the subject matter largely speaks for itself. It’s the kind of programme that is rarely made on commercial television channels and does a good job of distinguishing the BBC.

I have just discovered the show and I’d like to watch any previous episodes. However, I can’t because they are only available on iPlayer for a limited time. I can’t see why – other than to protect commercial DVD sales. If potential DVD sales are factored into the cost of producing the programme then it’s debateable, and possibly reasonable. If, on the other-hand, the license fee paid for the programme, time limits are wrong and should be removed.

It has been paid for by the license fee, and, people are already distributing BBC programmes, for free via Bittorrent. They’d do the same with programmes that were released into the wild legally. So costs for online distribution may go down if the BBC dropped the DRM nonsense. People don’t talk about that.

Interesting interview with Derren Brown.  Part 1 & Part 2.

• Oil prices are rising because of speculation. The current supply, believe it or not (I don’t care), exceeds demand, even taking into account China. The speculation is a result of uncertainty and people moving into commodities (rather than equities).
• The rise in wheat prices are partially the result of increased demand for meat in China. Not a ‘western style diet’. More meat requires more food for livestock. But it’s not the principle factor. Last year there were several droughts. Not least in Australia. Similar things happened to major rice producing countries last year. Blaming China is wrong and misleading.
• There is not a linear relationship between inflation in China and the prices of Chinese exports. That would be overly simplistic in the extreme. China is going to suffer from inflation, but as a side effect of increased prosperity and modernisation. Rather than a simplistic relationship between food and oil prices.
• There is a weak causal relationship between biofuels and the price of food.
• Chinese imports are one of the factors that has helped control inflation in the UK. A minor factor given the percentage of Chinese goods as proportions of inflation indices.
• The Government measures of inflation are reliant on indices. So to say prices “on average have risen 3%” is an unwarranted generalisation based on an index. Real inflation may differ. A better phrase would be that prices tracked by X index have risen. Anything else is lazy.

With that in mind please watch the following:

What keeps inflation rising?

And ask yourself whether it did a good job. I think it is misleading and does a poor job of explaining things. One gets the impression that Richard Scott thinks the increased wheat prices are because of Chinese people eating vast quantities of toast.

Edit @ a few days later:  The programme has been removed from listen again already.  So that link no longer works.

Click here to listen to Jon Ronson’s Radio 4 programme with Robbie Williams. It’s kind of a melancholy programme. One of the reasons I think Jon Ronson is so special is he lets subjects speak for themselves, unadorned. and respects his audience enough to let them make up their own minds. I agree with Brandon.

The situation with the BBC is not wholly of its own making. The corporation has been pressured to be popular, and, simultaneously, a public service broadcaster. And many people moaned when it was a public service broadcaster, during the patriarchal age of broadcasting. Now people are moaning that things have gone too far the other way. Quite correctly. My argument against popularity at the expense of quality is fairly simple: If the BBC makes programmes in popular formats, that are of the same quality as those available on commercial channels (or worse), there is nothing to distinguish it from the commercial channels. Making questions about the license fee inevitable. That is the situation today.

The assumption about an audience, needed to arrive at a conclusion of inaccessibility, is worrying. Accessibility is totally wrong. The most patriarchal thing since Abraham is that broadcasting needs to be accessible. I don’t necessarily think there’s an assumption people are stupid, but suspect there’s an assumption people are not interested in complexity. So, as a result, controversial issues turn into tabloid, bite size chunks, which alarm people irresponsibly, or presentation heavy documentaries, light on detail and low in accuracy. Maybe people being turned off by politics, science, the arts, and current affairs, is, in part, because they associate it with ‘accessible’ broadcasting. People sense that they’re being spoken down-to.

There should be an assumption that the majority of people are not stupid, and that complex subjects should be presented to inform. That is a different assumption from accessibility, because it assumes the viewers are intelligent and capable of learning. That not everything in a documentary needs to be so dumbed down it is accessible to the majority of viewers. People are capable of looking things up that interest them. The BBC used to produce decent fact sheets. As such there is zero replay value in many BBC current affairs programmes, and documentaries, because the information within them is so light very few people would have a problem with remembering their contents. Unless distracted by the special effects, and music track.

The BBC needs to compete to survive and in order to compete, with the other channels, many of whom are now producing documentaries of acceptable quality, the BBC needs to produce documentaries that are better. They desperately need to take a step-backwards. Until the late nineties BBC documentaries were the envy of the world. The BBC is the broadcaster best placed to attract the next David Attenborough(s) and needs to do that right away if it is to survive.

And the BBC could. Because the talent tucked away in places like BBC 4, a channel that receives a tiny fraction of the license fee and speaks for itself. Likewise Radio 4. Accessibility should be regarded as a failed experiment.

It virtually goes without saying that producing reality television, from talent shows to DIY, when everyone is doing it, makes the BBC less distinguishable from the commercial channels. Sacrificing long-term survival for short-term popularity. BBC 3 is, to my mind, schizophrenic, veering between sub-Channel 4 youth television, and, occasionally, decent drama/comedy. Half of what is on BBC 3 is done on commercial channels, and often better. I don’t think there is a dearth of talent – the talent is out there – the BBC needs to aggressively seek it out.

Someone needs a big brush to sweep away accessability and replace it with talent. Talent should reflect the subjects they’re involved in. There should be no more broadcasters covering subjects that leave them so out of their depth they look stupid.

Much of the above applies to the rest of the media but I don’t care about them as much as the BBC. I would like to be able to mock foreign friends about how much better BBC documentaries are than theirs. I felt smug when I could do that.

This.  I think the video demonstrates my point and I will say nothing further on the subject.

Tonight’s local election coverage on BBC News 24 is, aside from David Dimbleby, completely crap.  I am currently watching Jeremy Vine do a really shit American accent, dressed as a cowboy, reading out truly woefully described statistics about the Liberal Democrats.   It’s really difficult to watch.  It’s as if someone has decided that local election coverage needs to be fun.  Fun in the sense of   BBC Children’s Television fun.  My eyes feel soiled.  I hope someone puts the Jeremy Vine clip on YouTube because I did not make this up but doubt anyone will believe me.