Down On The Street

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is the BBC programme The Street That Cut Everything.

The first problem was that it was presented by Nick Robinson, a man who seems incapable of reporting the news without incessant attempts at humour which make absolutely no sense. 'The coalition is beginning to present itself as two different dishes, which taste better together, than on their own.' WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

But last night we saw him go to a street in Preston, where he told the residents that for the next 6 weeks, the council would not exist to them. They were given back 6 weeks of their council tax, with which they'd have to provide the withdrawn services themselves. The idea was to make them see how difficult life was without the council, but it was all ridiculously skewed to make it completely impossible.

Jimmy McGovern's latest character

The programme weirdly made it look as if Nick Robinson was personally responsible for the revocation of council services, to the point where if I ever see him again my immediate response will be to panic and lock up my bins before he gets his Tory hands on them. Because in this programme, Nick Robinson takes away the bins of the residents, because they're council owned, but not before he's emptied the contents of the bins into the street. So the residents have to collect the loose rubbish and keep it in their garages, exactly like councils don't.

Nick Robinson realises he's accidentally thrown away his glasses

He also arranges for some fly-tipping, where sofas and fridges are dumped on the street, and the residents have to deal with it. I thought this experiment was about how people would cope without their council, in which case all you need to do is withdraw the council's services. Don't create more problems by orchestrating your own unrealistic situations, BBC. By doing that, they completely undermined the whole point, whatever that was.

The opening titles of Preston's version of Friends

For some reason, another thing that is withdrawn is the carer of the dad of one of the residents, even though the dad lives on a different street. This experiment is meant to just be affecting one street, yet for some reason the BBC have decided to take away care for a man with no legs who lives somewhere completely different. They also take dogs down the street and make them leave dogshit for the residents to clean up. Because obviously if we didn't have councils, dogs would be encouraged to shit everywhere. Just like how people would be encouraged to graffiti everything, which also happens. And Nick Robinson arranges for some 'youths' to be 'antisocial' in a 'car'. I'm hoping they were the children of Nick Robinson and, I don't know, Andrew Marr. Because they can't phone the council, one of the residents deals with the situation himself. He seems to forget that its all engineered for a TV programme, and threatens to get a crowbar. Which is presumably just what the council would have done.

Well we were all thinking it

For further reasons that are never adequately explained, the residents have to take on council jobs, such as cleaning public toilets. But again, these aren't on the street. The BBC set what are essentially Big Brother style tasks all the way through, in a futile attempt to make it less fucking boring. And in the same reality TV vein, they create human conflict through these tasks and through editing, because TV patronisingly thinks that we need this ridiculous narrative in everything we watch. At one point a woman says she needs money to replace the housing benefit that the council would normally provide, because independently she can't afford to pay for housing, due to having a low income and being a single parent. A cunt then says that he's also a single parent but he manages it just fine. Well done, you have more money than she does, presumably you earn more.

Anyway, I liked what this programme was trying to do. It's main message was that cuts to local councils are a bad thing, and I agree with that. At the start of the experiment a woman says she doesn't think the council's services are worth what she pays in council tax, but by the end she has changed her mind. So that was good. In fact, it's surprising quite how biased this programme was. No wonder some Tories spoke out against it. It was openly anti-cuts. It showed that tax is basically a good thing, and that the Big Society is a bad idea. If it wasn't for the fact that I approve of the message, I'd be annoyed by the lack of impartiality shown by the BBC. But I can't help feeling that by orchestrating these ridiculous situations, by organising fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour and dogshit, and by making it into a Big Brother style reality show, they pushed it so far that the message may have been undermined.

The cunt that cut everything

This blog is named after a song by The Stooges; I will leave you with Rage Against The Machine's brilliant cover version, enjoy!

Smoke And Mirrors

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and here are five more of them.

As you've probably worked out, I watch a lot of TV, and recently I've been watching a lot of dramas. And I've noticed an annoying amount of unnecessary shots of lead characters, particularly on BBC dramas. These shots are designed to externalise how the character is feeling, but the methods they use are lazy and overdone. I'll explain 5 examples of the kind of thing I mean...

Mirrors: Vampires hate them, directors love them. Need to show how a character is feeling without the dull process of writing a decent script? Simple, just film the character looking in a mirror! If they're happy, they can smile at a mirror. And if they're sad, they can frown at a mirror. And it's realistic, because people do look in mirrors! Plus it's like a visual metaphor, because the character is literally reflecting! Oh hang on, this isn't a GCSE English class, you're just a lazy, boring director.

I've spoken before about the BBC drama 'Dive', a story which will resonate with anyone who has had to juggle teenage pregnancy and olympic diving. It's like... it's like it's talking directly to me. *Sniff* Everything was wrong with Dive, including shots of people just looking in mirrors.

This went on for 12 seconds.

Photographs: Native Americans hate them, directors love them. How can we make it clear that this character's wife is dead, bearing in mind we've spilt coffee on the laptop so can't alter the script? Simple, just have him stare at a photo of her for ages, perhaps tearing up a little! The audience will love that. Providing they're all idiots.

That isn't what's going on in this picture, and I feel bad for using it because the BBC's 'Wallander' is excellent. But you get what I mean.

Cars: Princess Diana hates them, directors love them. Want to set a depressing tone in a modern drama? Simple, have your character drive around at night in the rain! Film through the windscreen, the street lights make a cool visual effect. Plus it's another visual metaphor for how the character is feeling, because they're all alone and aimless and dejected and the rain represents their tears and FUCK OFF.

Last week's 'Exile' on the BBC was one of the best thrillers I've ever seen, with John Simm, Jim Broadbent and Olivia Colman brilliantly bringing Paul Abbott's idea to life. However, the first five minutes consisted of exactly this.

Whisky: Whisky trees hate it, directors love it. This male character is upset and there are no mirrors in this room, what the fuck do we do?! Simple, show him sitting with his head in his hands, nursing a glass of whisky. Or brandy, it doesn't really matter. And I'm not talking about 'Mad Men', in which they're constantly drinking whisky. I just mean when a throwaway shot of a man with a drink is used to convey that he is depressed. This makes me so annoyed that I have to sit with a whisky, so that if anyone saw me they'd know I was upset.

I'm genuinely sorry to use 'Exile' as an example again because I'm making it seem really bad, but I have to stress that it was absolutely amazing. But...

Windows: Steve Jobs hates them, directors love them. Does your character need to show that they're being pensive? Have you already added the line 'I'm pretty pensive about this', only to have it removed by the script editor? Simple, get a shot of them gazing out of the window! It shows they're being thoughtful and detached, and it's another visual metaphor. Probably. And people are always staring out of windows aren't they? NO. People don't do that you fucking idiot.

'The Crimson Petal And The White' was recently on the BBC and it was another superb drama. I highly recommend it, the tone is just right and the cast is perfect, notably Chris O'Dowd from The IT Crowd. But stuff like this did tend to happen...

So please BBC, and TV dramas in general, give us a little more credit; we can pretty much tell how characters are feeling just by stuff that's happening to them. And if the script is good enough, we don't need these lazy, throwaway shots. As you can see from the picture at the top, 30 Rock understands. (As it does everything.) Why can't you? I will leave you with the song that this blog is named after, by the incredible Jamiroquai. Enjoy!

Question!

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and here are five of them.

I'm posing these all as questions, asking 'Why?' But they're rhetorical, so you don't get a say. Much like our democracy. Zing! Which brings me to...

5. Why did two-thirds of voters vote No to AV? I understand why you'd vote against AV if you're a Tory, but otherwise it just seems like a stupid thing to do. These people denied themselves greater representation, and denied everyone else greater representation in the process. So now, thanks to a Tory-led campaign of misinformation and fear-mongering and lies, we're stuck with a shit, unfair system for the rest of our lives. Because the overwhelming No vote won't be translated as a vote against Nick Clegg or a vote for a more proportional system, it will be translated as a vote for sticking with the status quo. And the only people who benefit are the Tories, with their elitist ideals overriding democracy. Well done, the public. I guess most of you were too busy creating inane fucking Facebook groups about Bin Laden to even bother to vote. And while we're on AV...

4. Why did the New Statesman website have a massive No To AV advert on its home page? The New Statesman openly endorsed the Yes vote. That seems like a ridiculous oversight.

3. Why is Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle on at such an annoying time? As Jack Seale tweeted, a REPEAT of Never Mind The Buzzcocks went out in the primetime 10 o'clock slot, but a BRAND NEW episode of Comedy Vehicle was hidden away at 11.20pm. But then as Andrew Collins said, its amazing that Stewart Lee is on TV at all, so we should probably just be grateful. And I am. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is exactly the kind of thing the BBC should be making. Comedy that's fresh and clever. Rather than churning out infinite repeats of lazy panel shows.

2. Why are so many people calling Bin Laden 'evil'? I thought we were beyond thinking in terms of Good vs. Evil. I thought we were pretty much agreed that morality is subjective. But I also thought people weren't so idiotic as to all reject AV, so maybe I should just dramatically lower my expectations of everyone. And talking of Bin Laden, why should we indulge this belief that his death is good because it brings people 'closure'? It's understandable that the families of his victims would be pleased, but its also misguided to think that his death somehow makes it better. And while we're still on Bin Laden...

1. Why does Bin Laden always get called 'Osama'? And the same goes for how Saddam Hussein was always referred to as Saddam. Those are their first names, aren't they? It's like calling the Prime Minister 'David.' You don't get headlines like, 'Vote 2011: David insists coalition can still work.' But you do get headlines like 'Osama's death: What next for al-Qaeda?' Since when have we been on first name terms with 'evil' men? Blair saying, 'the world is a better place with Saddam in prison' is like someone saying, 'the world is a better place with Tony in prison.' You just wouldn't say it. I mean, it would be true, but you wouldn't say 'Tony'. Ha! Eat your nuggets of hypocrisy with my peanutty satire sauce, New Labour.

Thanks for reading my angry blog. And remember how important it is to question everything. Apart from this blog. And you can answer any of those questions, this blog is a democracy. But I will always be in charge, so I guess its like democracy in Zimbabwe. I will leave you with the lovely song about death by System Of A Down, and its cool video, that this blog is named after. Enjoy!

Not Fucking Around

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is David Cameron.

I was going to write a blog about his 'calm down, dear' incident, but then one thing led to another and it turns out I can't be arsed. But if I'd written something, it would have probably gone something like this.

According to Cameron, the left don't have a sense of humour. This is a bizarre generalisation and I'd personally say its wrong, as all the best comedians are on the left. Who do the right have? Jim Davidson? I think I'll stick with people like Robin Ince and Stewart Lee THANKS. The prime minister finding Michael Winner adverts funny is worrying enough, telling people what they should find funny is more worrying still. Especially as his comment was actually, to use Angela Eagle's words, a 'revealing slip'. (Oh, turns out I could be arsed.)

But hey, you know what I do find funny? When politicians swear! I know it's immature but it shows a rare human side to politicians, and actually tends to make me like them more.

So we're obviously all celebrating Cameron's 355 days in office, and I bet the press copy me in 10 days time. Just remember it was my idea first. To celebrate, here are my Top 5 David Cameron Swearing Moments!

5. 'We are heading for a fucking car crash.' (October 2010) Cameron's private prediction of the results of a review of control orders sounds like the worst traffic report ever. It also makes him sound strangely cool, to the point that I'm suspicious of whether he actually said it, or if it was just an elaborate piece of PR...

4. 'Shit happens.' (November 2010) Cameron's speech at the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the year awards ceremony included this gem of a phrase amongst a load of boring phrases. The official line at Number 10 is that he actually said, 'it happens.' Except he didn't, he said 'shit.' See.

3. 'Kate Middleton would fucking get it all the different ways.' (April 2011) Okay, I made that one up. David Cameron definitely did not say that, please do not sue me. He actually did say all the others here though.

2. 'Too many twits might make a twat.' (July 2009) Cameron's explanation for why he's not on twitter, on an interview on Absolute Radio, makes no sense whatsoever. Shortly after, in the same interview, he said, 'the public are rightly pissed off - sorry, I can't say that in the morning.' It's weird that he thinks 'pissed off' isn't appropriate but 'twat' is. What's also strange is that, in the same interview before both instances, he had said, 'politicians do have to think about what we say.' Then he said 'twat' on morning radio. This time I really think it was a deliberate PR move. Have a listen, it's all very odd.

1. 'You fucker!' (April 2011) Cameron's angry outburst at a journalist who had the sheer audacity to report the news makes me warm to him. Then he says 'calm down, dear' and I remember that he's a cunt.

Thanks for reading, I will leave you with the Big D & The Kids Table song that this blog is named after, enjoy!

Twin Studies

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is the ITV show Long Lost Family.

During the advert break of The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher, as I wondered whether Paddy Considine was actually a real policeman, (seriously, what he's picked up from playing an officer of the law in Hot Fuzz, Red Riding and now Mr Whicher must leave him qualified to tackle some minor crimes at least) I saw a trail for a show called Long Lost Family, in which people are reunited with lost family members by the two obvious choices: Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall.

I tweeted: 'The 2 people I'd least want breaking the news of the discovery of my lost relatives: Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall http://t.co/wOdzf7k.' I thought Davina would leave ridiculous pauses at inappropriately sensitive moments. 'We have found your long lost brother..............................James!' By the end of the pause you'd have forgotten the context in which Davina was shouting at you and just assumed that James had been evicted. And Nicky Campbell would insist on spinning a giant wheel, I guess. I shouldn't have been watching ITV in the first place, but Peter Capaldi was in this Mr Whicher adaptation and he's always brilliant, plus I enjoy waiting to see if he forgets he's not playing Malcolm Tucker and starts shouting elaborate expletives. I went to bed and thought no more of it, but the next day I checked Twitter to find that Nicky Campbell had replied to my tweet: 'did you see it?'

I was surprised, mainly because I hadn't tweeted @ him. So how had he seen it? Had he searched his own name? I was worried I'd offended Nicky Campbell, and felt guilty because I have nothing but respect for the man. Literally, nothing but respect. Respect is all I have for Nicky Campbell. That's it. I replied: 'Nope, I'll catch up online' which I immediately regretted, because it meant I'd then have to, because as we know from his time on Watchdog, you do not lie to Nicky Campbell.

The show was actually sensitively done, if in a hyper-emotive, schmaltzy kind of ITV way. But it all felt horribly uncomfortable. I'm not sure if the public should actually be watching the intimate, life-changing moments of these people. As Lucy Mangan asks in The Guardian, 'Does the bringing together of two families justify the potential intrusion, exploitation, raising and dashing of hopes seen and unseen involved in making a programme that primarily serves a voyeuristic, self-indulgent desire to witness other people's misery and joy?'

At times it's painful watching people who've just had news of a long lost twin being found being poked and prodded to provide a sentimental soundbite. The presence of the cameras forces them to say the kind of things people never ever say in real life. Things like: 'I feel like I could tackle the world today.'

They've been told something incredibly emotional, and their immediate response is, understandably, to cry and not say anything. Through tears, one of them said something like, 'I don't know what to say,' but the camera stayed on them, as if saying 'well fucking think of what to say. Oh boo hoo, look how emotional I am! Say something stupid! Go on!' So they just say, 'wow...gosh...' Let them fucking come to terms with it!

People are also made to read letters from long lost relatives aloud. It's the first time they've read it, so obviously they're crying, but they have to read aloud for the cameras, which just seems cruel. The letter is written to the individual, not to ITV.

As I predicted, Davina does leave stupid Big Brother style pauses. To build up tension, she says, 'there are obviously different ways that it can go...' well that's ominous, '...but I have come here today with some news...' yeah clearly, '...and it's good news...' you could have said it was good news when you said you had news '...your sister has been found,' what was that sorry? I fell asleep. I mean for fuck's sake, she's waiting to hear the most important news of her life, she's not on The Million Pound Drop Live.

And actually, Nicky (I call him Nicky, we're practically pen pals now) was almost as guilty when it came to inappropriate pauses. 'Would you like to see a photograph?' he asked, without moving, even when she said she did, he just sat there, smiling. In fact, his presence was particularly awkward. He's definitely not the warmest man on TV. Whenever he put his hand on the shoulder of an elderly person, I was worried they'd think it was the chilly grip of the Grim Reaper, come to take them. I don't know which is better, his 'almost pathological lack of charisma' (as Lucy Mangan excellently puts it) or Davina's patronising gurning, which, as Michael Deacon says in the Telegraph, is reminiscent of a 'proud mother, waving them off at the school gate.'

Overall, the intrusive nature of the show, combined with the mawkish soundtrack and awkwardly lingering shots of people crying, as well as bizarre bits where Davina and Nicky would walk towards a fixed camera until their faces were creepily close, made it utterly uncomfortable.

But if you're reading this because you've googled yourself and trawled to page 57 Nicky, we'll meet up for a pint soon.

Thanks for reading, I'll leave you with the song that this blog is named after, which is by the rapping evolutionist Baba Brinkman, enjoy!

Idiot Box

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is TV.

Obviously that's not strictly true, as you'll know if you've ever read this blog before; I love TV. Except I don't - what I love is TV shows. Lots of them. So when I'm at uni, where I don't have a TV, I always think I miss having a TV. That's until I turn one on. That's when I realise, straight away, that I really, really don't. And here's why. Here are 3 things I've seen on TV since I've been home that have made me realise just how lucky those poor Africans who have no TVs really are.

3. There's a show called Great British Hairdresser which seems to be a reality competition for hairdressers. I don't want to know why it exists, I just want to forget that it does.

2. I saw a TK Maxx advert. I know it's my own fault for watching commercial television but M*A*S*H was on Film4. In this advert, a woman says: 'The only thing better than a new pair of shoes...' at which point I was thinking, surely there's more than one thing better than a new pair of shoes? Then I realised that this was a woman, and women love shoes more than anything, except one other thing. How silly of me to forget such a well known fact about all women. So then I thought, what could this one thing that's better than a new pair of shoes be? World peace, presumably. Perhaps it's friendship. Maybe it's M*A*S*H. But no, 'the only thing better than a new pair of shoes is a new bag to match.' Of course it is. Again, I forgot this was a woman. To all women the two best things are shoes and bags. Why is it okay for adverts to be sexist? Look how Mad Men's Don Draper responded to news of this advert:

1. On the BBC news there was a whole report about Kate Middleton's dress. No, not the ITV news, the fucking BBC. And no, not in the daytime, the fucking 10 o'clock news. I know David Cameron wants to privatise public services but I didn't think he'd sell the BBC to Heat magazine.

So I'm happy to watch TV shows online or on DVD, thus avoiding things like TV news, adverts, and... TV. This blog is named after the Incubus song that I'll leave you with. Enjoy!

Deep Inside

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is this article from the New Statesman.

I've written about my love/hate relationship with the New Statesman before. When I open my copy, there are a few things I hope not to see. An article by A A Gill, for instance. Zac Goldsmith's face. Russell Brand talking about Transcendental Meditation. Last week's issue included all three of those things. What are the chances?

Having said that, Zac Goldsmith's piece on democracy was actually very good (if slightly undermined by the fact that he was a non-dom until about a year ago.) and A A Gill's piece didn't infuriate me. Probably because I didn't read it, I'm not an idiot. But while these two failed to make me annoyed enough to write a blog, Russell Brand succeeded.

I've read some of his articles in the New Statesman before, and I've been pleasantly surprised. Generally when I read stuff he's written, my opinion of him improves infinitely, as I'm not confronted by his voice and hair, so I can disassociate the text from the writer, and pretend it's written by someone else. But not this time; this time I could hear the words on the page being shouted in his voice, and there was no escape.

Russell Brand denounces Richard Dawkins' targeting of 'mental' creationists (which is actually not Dawkins' fault, and probably more to do with the platforms on to which he's invited by TV companies for the sake of entertainment) and explains that it's not just mental people who are religious; look at Gandhi, St Francis of Assisi, the Dalai Lama, Andrew Sachs. (I may have added one he didn't say.) They're all religious too, and it is them 'to which we should turn when questioning the existence of a power beyond man.' But why? Because they did good things? I never understand that argument, that religious do-gooders are somehow proof of the existence of God. A lot of atheists have done 'good' things too, Thomas Paine, Bob Geldof, Dexter. And a lot of religious people have done 'bad' things (over 99% of US prisoners are religious). But that's all utterly irrelevant. Everyone in the world could be religious and it wouldn't make them right.

He also tackles the argument that religion causes war, claiming that we would still fight without religion. Obviously that's true, but we would fight less. And fighting less seems appealing. 'My last serious argument was about a croissant,' writes Brand, which is amusing enough. But his argument here is that even if there was no religion, we'd fight over things like croissants. The problem with that argument is that fights over religion are a lot more bloody and devastating than fights over croissants. Unless you really like croissants. Maybe if you're... French, I guess? So if I had a choice between horrendous wars over religion and trivial arguments over croissants, I'd obviously go for the latter. Russell Brand's shot himself in the foot a bit there. Sort of like here. He's just so scandalous.

Then he says, 'through Transcendental Meditation,' and that's when I start to hear his voice. Vividly. That's when I should have stopped reading. That's when I should have skipped to the great article by Alain de Botton, or just closed the magazine, or thrown myself out of the window. But like a cunt, I carried on reading. 'Through Transcendental Meditation, twice daily I feel the bliss of the divine.' Katy Perry, presumably.

He continues, 'through the mental repetition of a mantra, eventually my chattering monkey mind recedes.' Now he seems to be confusing spiritualism with mental illness. He goes on, 'gently banishing concerns of the past and drawing the inner eye away from speculation and want.' And lets face it, it must be hard to cast aside your 'want' when you're worth three million pounds and living here:

What a spiritual, immaterial man he is.

Brand doesn't need me to tell him that his enlightenment is not proof of God. Because he then points towards some kind of design argument; there was nothing, now there's something, it looks designed. This is a line of argument that I cannot stand. It starts by following a logical enough style of reasoning (things can't just randomly appear, that makes no sense!) and then leaps to the conclusion that God done it. I thought we were following some basic standard of logic? Apparently I was wrong. It seems that while it's just silly to think that a universe can emerge from nothing, it's perfectly justifiable to then point to a magic being. Either follow some sort of scientific reasoning or don't. If God's just going to be used to plug gaps in science, then, to quote the genius biologist-comedian-rapper Baba Brinkman, 'I say banish God into the gaps.' (And I implore you to listen to that Baba Brinkman song. It's 'the best of the best of the best of the best...')

Finally, Russell Brand asks: 'Could a witless miasma of molecules and dust ever have created anything as ingenious and incredible as Richard Dawkins?' Yes! It fucking did! Well, it wasn't 'a witless miasma', it was natural selection. Earlier Brand claimed: 'I have Dawkins to thank for my own understanding of the fantastic discovery that is evolution.' I hate to break it to you Russell Brand, but that thing you have of evolution is not an understanding. People who dismiss evolution tend to say things like 'look how complex we are as a species, how can that be chance?' It isn't chance, it's a rigorous process of selection! To put it into terms you'll understand, it's more Project Runway than Britain's Got Talent.

But still, that Gene Simmons joke was good.

I'll leave you with the Incubus song that this blog is named after, enjoy!