A Merry Retail Christmas

Every job has times when the employee thinks “am I really paid enough to handle this shit and not have a breakdown resulting in extreme pooping all over my work place and waving my junk around like a fleshy wind turbine?”

Luckily, a loose sense of shared social boundaries mean the second half of that sentence only happens very, very rarely but there comes times in every worker’s year/month/week/day/hour when the added stress of a job might just cause the line between normal and bat-shit crazy becomes a little hazy (there will be no more rhyming in this post).

For air stewardesses, it’s probably between the 78^th and 79^th time a drunken businessman has made a crude pass at her. For bin men, it could be when the students at Number 12 have left the bin bag unsealed, AGAIN. For bar staff at a Spanish holiday resort it’s after a long hard Summer of serving pints of lager to shaven-headed English men who call them “Jose” every five minutes with that hilarious exaggerated lisp.

And now to bring the personal experience.

As regular readers of this blog (all four of you that I haven’t sent Christmas cards to by the way, just in case you happened to be sitting eagerly outside your letterbox every morning for the last fortnight…weirdo), circumstances dictate that I currently work in retail at a well known supermarket and, as anyone who has undergone this experience before will tell you, Christmas is generally our breakdown breaking point (there will be no more alliteration in this post).

It’s an age old joke in retail that it would be the perfect job, if there were no customers. Christmas music being played for six weeks or so? That can be blocked out. Frequent heavy lifting? Long term damage to my body won’t be felt for ages, live for now dude. Being very low on the company’s food chain? Being sneeringly and depressingly contemporarily ironic will overcome this obstacle. Working your fingers to the bone and it never being quite enough to earn praise? Ah well, it’s only a job, it’s by quite a long distance not the most important thing in the world.

But customers will always be akin to Thomas Paine’s state; a necessary evil.

Whether it be repeatedly having a trolley driven in to you like you’re the crippled Irishman in one of Mr Burn’s flashbacks or being patronised when providing a service to someone (“I have a degree thanks” is what I’ll say every time this happens…after I hand in my notice and have another job lined up); there are just sometimes when it all gets a bit too much.

And then Christmas compounds this with the strange brand of abject misery it can create.  Stress and having to see way too many family members in way too short a space a time produces a situation where it’s fine to be more aggravating than usual. Add to this the usual, boring, stressful shopping experience, Hell might well be created on Earth in the relations between staff and customers. Yes, I’m well aware that you’re the most important person in the word and you cannot spend more than one minute here longer than you need to but it sure would be fantastic if you treated me like a person. And laughing at my small talk would be awesome too.

It probably doesn’t help us staff’s merriness levels either having to work extra days over the Christmas period. To be fair, it’s probably less customers not being able to handle the shops being closed for two days and more vice versa. Why not open up Boxing Day and squeeze a few more pennies out of pockets? It’s the kind of shrewd fiscal thinking (read institutionalised tightness and exploitation of needs) that our system is based on. If you don’t like it go to….China?

At least they don’t celebrate Christmas there.

Blast from the past- Nerdtastic TV

It is fair to say that the last five or six years have been good to the nerd. The world has come to us which is a relief because we damn well weren’t going to pluck up the courage to come to it.

All we had to do was keep doing what we always did and it eventually became cool. We played the waiting game with the law of averages and we were the lucky generation of nerds it paid off for. Video gaming, glasses, skinny jeans and faintly ironic T-shirts were in.

The fact that we became mainstream and hated it is another thought for another day because we’re here to examine an old TV show that just missed the point at which nerdism (totally a word) became acceptable. That show is the BBC's two series wonder, Time Commanders.

My generation of history and video game nerds was well served at the start of this century with the masterful Age of Empires series and the not very masterful but purely epic Total War series dominating our lives and guiding us on our first tentative steps into the world of online gaming. Yeah, thanks for that experience at the age of 12.

Essentially, Time Commanders took the Total War series and made it into a television show, thus instantly allowing thousands of people like me to do a primitive LOL at the contestants who failed show after show. Victory was a seldom seen outcome as the scales were tipped by getting contestants without experience of video gaming. Somewhat unrealistic perhaps as I don’t think the Romans ensured that their enemies’ armies were commanded by farmers but there we go.

Shot in an old warehouse reminiscent of any torture porn film set, Time Commanders allowed a team of four people, usually work colleagues (or, on one happy day, an all star celebrity team of Kate Silverton, Al Murray, Raji James and Ricky Flower), who took control of a virtual army in a battle from ancient history on a game engine similar to Rome; Total War.

Two of the team were “Generals” who ‘controlled’ (very loose term that) the battle from a raised platform in the centre of the warehouse, using a real-time overhead map and huge main screen in front of them. Much like real life Generals, these team members would pretend to have a plan whilst other team members would put in the hard yakka. Naturally, when things went wrong, it wasn’t their fault.

Said other two team members were “Lieutenants” who took incoherent or foolish orders from their Generals. The “Lieutenants” would then relay the orders in a further incoherent manner on to their own individual techie, resplendent in a black cap and seemingly without voices, who would control the units of the army for them. Chinese whispers clearly made battle a lot more confusing than the simple expedient of a phone.

Meanwhile, high on a balcony overlooking the team stood a pair of military historians judging the team and occasionally speaking to the camera. These men (they were always men because weapons and war and shit is manly stuff) were the real heroes of the show.

Ever-present Dr Aryeh Nusbacher was as excitable as a man who just found out his chat up line might be working. The other role was on rotation and was usually most fun when Mike Loades came in and played about in a faintly aggressive manner with some ancient weaponry. Other times, Saul David disappointingly didn’t wear a brown leather jacket and future Newsnight ‘Diplomacy Editor’ Mark Urban dreamt of more respectable TV appearances.

Completing the line up, initially at least, was the superb and currently dreadfully underused Eddie Mair with his funky earpiece thing that made me think he was deaf at first. After the first series, the decision was taken to begin the now customary task of finding a non-Top Gear role for Richard Hammond. The host’s role was to basically be very friendly and helpful whilst occasionally stating the obvious of what was happening on the big screen.

The fun of it all came when, inevitably, the team’s battle plan survived all of five seconds of contact with the enemy and then cue panicking and ultimate failure amongst much bickering, which was probably how battles worked in the ancient world although it’s fair to say there was almost certainly not a celebratory/commiseratory orgy at the end of the show.

Thankfully, if the team lost, the two historians would come down to them and say “Not to worry, you may have lost the battle but so did Alexander the Great in this particular conflict so, yeah, that’s fair enough.” This allowed everyone to go home happy with their day’s work. Apart from the thousands of dead or wounded CGI Celts who were less pleased with their day’s lot.

If you're sad like me, YouTube has plenty of clips to while away your time http://tinyurl.com/bv4nyoz

What do they know of our ways?

Way back in the middle of August, upon leaving my local pub after having a pint and waiting for it to all blow over, I pondered just how long it would be for the Government to sweep under the carpet the background reasons for the large scale rioting we saw. Today was finally the day that it happened.

For those who have yet to catch up with the news (and if I’m you’re primary source of news, God help you), Home Secretary Theresa May today attempted to distance the role the Government and the economic downturn had in the escalation of the riots that spread from an isolated incident in Tottenham to all over the country in the Summer.

Speaking at the Reading the Riots conference, May said (excuse the lengthy quotation); "What the LSE/Guardian report tells me more than anything is that the rioters still have not accepted responsibility for their actions. They are still blaming others – the police, the government, society. They are still making excuses, but I don't accept those excuses. The riots weren't about protests, unemployment, cuts. The riots were not about the future, about tomorrow. They were about today. They were about now. They were about instant gratification."

Whilst the theory that the Tories, and every Government since to be fair, are reaping what they sowed back in the 1980s with their “get rich and fuck everyone else” policy is interesting. In layman’s terms, if you encourage consumerism and link aspiration to buying nice things, poorer people resorting to looting when they can’t afford these things isn’t an implausible outcome. But I’m no socio-political expert so it would be foolish to look into that in any detail

Anyway, this blog post is about what I do know and can form a coherent and semi-conceivable opinion on, not what I can speculate on.

There probably is a certain element of truth in May’s statement today. I do not believe there was an element of protest to the rioting, the fact that there appeared to be no united political message quite clearly backs this up. And there probably was an element of instant gratification to it; stealing a TV to acquire a TV, smashing a window for the thrill of it, that sort of thing.

However, just because the actions themselves aren’t political, it does not mean politics cannot be associated with the reasons for the actions.

Let me give you an idea of what it’s like to be young in this country today; it’s difficult. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not “down t’pit at 12 and that’s your life” difficult but it sure as hell isn’t easy.

All of the major steps forward you can make in your life to better yourself or give you more of a chance of success are near as damn it out of your reach.

Want your own car to open up new job opportunities further afield? Good luck with paying the insurance on it. Want to get an education to degree level to open up more career doors? You better be prepared to have debt over your head for the rest of your life. Want to move out form your parent’s house? Direct all of your potential mortgage savings to some arsehole landlord in a rented property or you’re going to be in that bedroom of yours for a few more decades yet. Want a job that pays minimum wage but, hey, at least it’s a foot in the door? Get to the back of that million-long person queue buddy and good luck trying to further yourself without “relevant experience”. Have a previous conviction? That’s you fucked for life when it comes to many higher paid jobs Pentonville, no matter your qualities. Want to get the relevant experience by working for free? Have fun funding semi-essential things like eating whilst you do it.

I graduated in the Summer just gone and I currently work stacking shelves whilst I look for any employment related to my degree in a job market that, to say it’s an employer’s market would be the most tremendous understatement. For the time being, I’ve had to put moving out and building a life for myself on the back burner whilst I clamber on to the treadmill every morning to save up enough money to move up the ladder.  There are plenty of other people who graduated with me who are in the same situation or worse. The system has, arguably, failed us just as much as it failed so many of the rioters who had no access to employment or re-entering education.

The only thing stopping me from chucking it all in and claiming benefits is a (possibly stupid) sense of pride.

When you see bankers earning millions of pounds in bonuses, celebrities spending ridiculous amounts on cosmetic treatments and other examples of excess and greed, it’s no wonder why people get angry. Whether its anger directed at the excess itself and how disengaged these people are from reality or anger that one can’t perform these exercises in greed themselves is immaterial. The anger is there and nothing is being done to readdress the balance which then breeds apathy and laziness because what’s the point of contributing to the system when nothing will ever change? Combine the two and you get nihilism on the scale we saw across London and other metropolitan areas earlier this year.

When it comes down to it, the political classes just have no idea what life is like on the other side. You obviously need more intelligent people in charge of a country as that is how the system should work but when the big wigs of your three main political parties are from largely upper/upper-middle class backgrounds, you have a problem.

What does David Cameron know of the problems facing a working single mother? How can Nick Clegg understand the frustrations of the unemployed person who wants to get into work? What common ground does Ed Miliband share with the working class 18 year-old who is put off going to university due to £9,000 a year fees?

For May to take a nice, broad, sweeping generalisation and saying that the rioters blaming the Government or unemployment or the police as “excuses” just illustrates the point that her ilk have little idea what life is like in our cities and, worse than that, have little interest in bothering to find out either. Yes, instant gratification was a cause but to focus on one reason for the entire issue is simplistic and irresponsibility of the highest level from someone who is meant to help those she represents. A lack of social cohesion and homage to the social contract is an issue for all of us, regardless of our background.

The solutions to the problems of disillusionment, apathy and anger many people feel come from the political/economic sphere and for May to so crudely cut out the Government’s role in causing the riots, and in so doing, effectively severing its potential for preventing them happening again, is just even more irresponsible.

How the Internet suppresses me #153

John Lennon once sang that we’re kept “doped with religion and sex and TV”. If we take those three tools of suppression in chronological order, which makes a degree of sense to my mind, then the natural extension would be add to “the Internet” to this line in the song.

Naturally, this would involve re-writing a classic but I’m sure I wouldn’t do as bad a job at bastardising it as some of the cover versions have. Just check out some of the names on this list. The Academy Is…? Really?

Anyway, if I’ve managed to retain your attention, there is a point to the above digression and that is that the sheer amount of offerings on the Internet (or Internetz if you’re that way inclined. Or t’Internetz if you’re inclined that way) to take up your whole day that you won’t even have time to even put together some groundwork ideas on your plan to become a working class hero.

The focus of this blog post this evening is a concept that has existed for some fifty years (starting out bizarrely as an idea associated with golf)but has become more entrenched thanks to the user friendly element the Internet has given it.

It splits (mostly) male friends, family members, co-workers as they compete week in, week out against both each other and against the whole, entire world. The most popular site has over 2.5 million registered players on it this year. People spend hours tinkering and fine tuning their creations for optimum efficiency. It is a game but, like the real thing upon which it is based, it can be more important than that.

Yes, I am talking about Fantasy Football.

It’s like the British equivalent of the “fantasy draft” in the USA where, as I understand it, it’s an incredibly nerdy thing to do but totally socially acceptable for anyone to do it (if you are in ownership of a penis). Maybe because it involves sport; staying up all night playing FIFA is ok but do the same thing with a Legend of Zelda game and kiss goodbye to your hard earned social status, freak.

It might also be because deep, deep down, we’re already secretly thrilled that we can have an imaginary piece of control over some pixels and bytes and hyperlinks that represent millionaires. “Ha! Take that Rooney you rich bastard, I’m dropping you. Who’s the loser now, huh? Oh, oh right” *cries in the foetal position*

Anwho, it’s the simplicity which draws you in and the complexity which keeps you hooked as you spend hours thinking what is the best line up you can have for next weekend’s round of games. Endless permeations from who is injured or suspended to who is in form to what the fixtures are to the cost of potential signings.

Then you can bring in the cast iron ‘laws’ of football like a player going back to his old club will ALWAYS score or the sod’s law that if you drop a player that is underperforming, he’ll pick up points as soon as you get rid of him. All these factors and more must be considered before even attempting to alter your team.
For example, just today I've considered dropping Luis Suarez but I'm convinced he'll start scoring points as soon as I drop him. After pondering this for an hour or so, I take a look at my midfield quartet of Bale-Van der Vaart- Toure- Ramsey and wonder how I could improve this. Perhaps if I take out Doyle and Ramsey, I could tinker with a better striker? But what effect will that have on the midfield I ask myself. And on and on  and on.

Before you know it, you’ve spent your entire day in the office staring at one webpage and your chance for career advancement/ the opportunity of finally asking Emma from accounts out for a drink/ going to the water cooler to chat about the funny things the penguins did on Frozen Planet last night have all passed you by this day.

 But it doesn’t matter because you’ve put together the perfect team for this week’s round of fixtures. And then, you realise, it’s Man City Vs Chelsea this week and you’ve got Cech in goal and Aguero up front.

Bollocks.

Tomorrow on ways the Internet suppresses my urge to change the world and fight the man and whatnot; the effect of Wikipedia on the fact nerd.

In defence of the BBC and the licence fee

Everyone has their own fall back phrase and actions they use to describe their feelings when something has infuriated them. Mine usually involves the word “ridiculous” and a subsequent blog post that’s wonderfully unselfconsciously self-righteous, but that’s me.

The standard fall back phrase when the BBC produces a TV or radio show that someone doesn’t like is “it’s a waste of licence fee payers’ money”.* For the record, over 75% of BBC revenue comes from licence fee income so it is a large part of the broadcaster’s income that comes from the public so the loosely defined public has a right to get their money’s worth.

It’s kind of an easy target really is the poor old BBC as one is paying money directly to the institution for the programming and journalism one receives. One wouldn’t say it’s a waste of your weekly shop at ASDA money when ITV broadcasts a terrible show, despite the fact that said money is indirectly paying for the production of said show in the form of advertising. Although it’s something of a stupid concept, it’s vaguely valid in its own roundabout kind of way.

Firstly, the annoying semantics. Technically it isn’t a waste as you pay your licence fee for the BBC to produce programming on television or radio. Throwing said money into a giant hole and burying it or buying all the tickets to Glastonbury and not showing up would be a waste of money. If the BBC broadcasts something you don’t like, that would be a misuse of licence fee payers’ money, not a waste as there is guaranteed to be someone out there who liked the broadcast which made it viable.

Anyway, semantics aside, the real bone of contention I have with the lazy, fallback phrase outlined is that I find it very difficult to believe people do not get their money’s worth from the most renowned and admired public service broadcaster in the world.

For example, if you just watch the national and local news on the BBC five nights a week (that’s 4 million people on average), that’s around 270 hours of broadcasting you have watched a year meaning you pay around £1.90 an hour to watch. Which sounds like a lot.

However, no-one watches just the news on the BBC. From Eastenders to Match of the Day to QI to Top Gear to Strictly Come Dancing, there are shows on the BBC that draw in huge numbers viewers each and every week, all with large production values that must cost a bomb to make. According to the Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board, BBC1 and 2 alone have an average 21.3% audience share of TV viewers which is a whole lot of hours and licence fee being justified.

Then factor in the other aspects of the BBC’s output from a radio service that has a total listening share of 54.5% nationally, a news website that offers full multimedia interactivity and as up-to-date stories as any paid for media, various digital output at specialised audiences (from children to minority social groups) and the ongoing digital switchover to give more people the chance to have more access to more channels.

Taking into account all of the services the BBC offers, it is something of a miracle the revenue it produces is stretched so far.

Factor in all of this and even the staunchest non-BBC user probably swallows up more BBC output than they realise. Your commute to work? Might well have some BBC on the radio. Want to check up on the latest news? The BBC News website might be your first port of call. Need to keep up with the latest football scores? BBC Sport online is at least the equal of its competitors in this field, and with TV highlights to be found on the website to boot. The hours consuming BBC output soon adds up. It would be a very interesting experiment to see just how long you spend using some form of BBC service. And when I say “interesting” the result would be, not the procedure.

Yes, the BBC does screw up occasionally with its choice of programming and its ‘impartial’ journalism but to get either of these spot-on 100% of the time is a fool’s errand and fool’s expectation.

*Disclaimer; due to circumstances dictating that I am living at home with my parents once again, I am not currently paying for a TV licence. Go forth and state my reason to have an opinion on the matter is invalid.

That’s Britain- BBC1 @ 8pm Wednesdays- 3 out of 10

At the risk of sounding like an advert for stereotyping Britishness, we Brits all love a good moan. That and not making eye contact. And hiding our prejudices under a veneer of awkward politeness. Just to clarify, the first thing I said is what ‘That’s Britain’ is all about.

Fronting the show are second coolest stubble wearer in the world Nick Knowles and Julia Bradbury (of whom I have nothing to say really) who proceed to participate in awkward banter and bonhomie about Tube drivers, dog poo, recycling and why Warwickshire County Council shouldn’t make huge towers out of gold sheets.

To start with something called The Wall of Anger is introduced, which is a bit strong but then again, the Wall of Mild Annoyance isn’t quite as grabbing. It’s basically like a Tweet Clod and allows Knowles to rant, well, like an amateur really. Queues at the petrol station are caused by “turning them into supermarkets”. True, but hardly enthralling ranting their Knowlesy. Hopefully Twitter can organise some sort of campaign whereby the biggest thing on the wall is ‘That’s Britain’ itself making a paradox of embarrassment.

It’s not the only name that’s misleading. The kind of things that are investigated or the cause of annoyance are the same anywhere in the world. It probably should be called “That’s the world” or something a whole lot more imaginative than that.

Elsewhere, there are four reporters who tackle an issue each week in their own ways.

This week, first up was call centre operator’s nightmare Grainne Seoige who kicked off with a political piece on junk mail which was interesting at some points but incredibly boring at others. Not even Seoige’s Irishness (usually a surefire way to this reviewer’s heart) could redeem the feature. Oh, and it was spliced with tonnes of vox pops as why get expert opinion when you can ask the average plank on the street for a monotone monosyllable answer?

Next up, we had Shaun Williamson who looked dreadfully angry whenever he was referred to as “Eastenders’ Shaun Williamson”, which is fair enough as he left eight years ago. At least refer to him as “Extras’ Shaun Williamson”. Williamson was basically asking a question no one really wants to know the answer to; should we get bus conductors back? It would be quite nice to have bus conductors back but it would also be nice to have a house with four bathrooms but, for financial reasons, it probably isn’t going to happen. To cap it all off, a poll was conducted asking whether you would pay 25p extra on your bus fare to get said conductors back. Unsurprisingly, in a hypothetical, people went for the option that made them look good. The Pullitzer Prize is in the post.

Third on the hit list we had usually entertaining Ade Edmundson do a piece on just where our luggage goes at the airport. The report’s content was about as interesting as reading the latest issue of “Beige Magazine” on a train from Slough to Milton Keynes which couldn’t even be livened up by Edmondson’s natural sense of fun. No wonder he looked to be in a rush to get the hell out of there at the end of his piece.

Finally, Stanley Johnson, father of Boris (boy could you tell that) did a hidden camera experiment with an old fella parking his car badly and asking for help which was to investigative as Boris himself is to speech making.

You’ll notice that my description of each of the reports is getting shorter and shorter and, to be quite honest, by this point I’d lost 99% of my interest and had started to watch the clock ticking toward 9 o’clock so I could turn over and watch some Nick Robinson talking about taxation which might well tell its own story.

Interspersed with all these reports were more opportunities for Knowles to rant badly, for Bradbury to make an occasional decent quip and for Williamson to shout out nonsense from the sofa on the stage. It all felt like a really bad episode of Watchdog meets every single episode of The One Show bundled up with a lovely feeling of the BBC reaching out an olive branch to the Daily Mail with tales of local council spending and ridiculous health and safety stories

It’s not that it’s not very good, it’s just really, really, REALLY boring. If you want to make a show about current affairs, you would hire journalists to make the reports. If you want to make an entertainment show about issues, you hire well known faces to make films. ‘That’s Britain’ can’t seem to decide what it wants to be and ends up being neither. Which makes it not very good as well as boring come to think of it. And that’s what’s annoying me ‘That’s Britain’.

Fresh Meat @ 10pm Wednesdays, Channel 4- 8 out of 10 (series review)

British sitcoms set in and around university life revolving around the escapades of students are few and far between. Unless you count The Young Ones. Or to an extent Rising Damp. Or recent attempts like the woeful BBC3 attempt Off the Hook and E4’s not much better Campus. Ok, so maybe a few more examples there.

Anyway, the latest attempt at making only the second ever decent British sitcom centred on student life (stick that on a trophy BAFTA) looked promising when it was announced Fresh Meat was from the creators of Peep Show and starred the next generation British acting talent including Greg McHugh, Zawe Ashton and Kimberley Nixon.

So, was it a Richard the Third than Geoff Hurst? (See what I did there? Eh? It’s overused, outdated student slang for a Third and a First, dolt.)

The show revolves around six students (plus on mystery occupant who doesn’t appear until the last episode of the series) thrown together into a flat share for their first year at university and their various escapades, naturally involving drink, sex and all-nighters writing essays due in the next morning.

Early on, the show struggled to justify its hour (including adverts) length as the gags failed to come through consistently enough and the development of plotlines was as slow as the queue for start of year course registration. As an aside, are these university jokes working for ya? Like I care, they’re going to be a feature of this review.

However, like the member of the opposite (or same) sex on your first night out in Fresher’s week that looks better and better as the night goes on, Fresh Meat began to improve around the mid-series point, starting with wonderful Student Demo episode where the laughs kept on flowing and the story arcs began to advance.

The show certainly suffered from Channel 4’s decision to run the four episodes of Top Boy on consecutive nights, leaving the finale of Fresh Meat to air some two weeks after the penultimate episode meaning that momentum was lost somewhat with a quick Wikipedia reading required to recall the plotlines, a similar process used when writing an essay after attending all the lectures on the subject hungover.

Elsewhere, many of the complaints about the show have been centred around whether it is an accurate portrayal of student life. This isn’t really the point as of course you need to heighten the drinking, drug taking and sex as that is where the laughs come from. The important thing is that it has a firm basis in reality with regard to situations like casual sex, fancying the people you live with, drinking and studying, last and maybe least. Furthermore, even the exaggeration for comic effect isn’t overly used as none of the characters get off with someone (randomer or otherwise) every night and the characters are more often seen watching TV than drinking, a familiar enough experience for anyone who is/was at university.

A handful of the characters are pretty lazy stereotypes in their origin; the standard “we all knew one of them at uni” types. There is the up himself posh twat (JP, played surprisingly well by Whiteall albeit in a role built for him), the fake new-world kinda girl who is trying to reinvent herself (Oregon/Mellissa played by Charlotte Ritchie), the shy, young bloke (Kingsley portrayed by Joe Thomas basically carrying on his role as Simon in The Inbetweeners) and the uber-nerd Howard (McHugh). However, the characters are given enough substance to make them indie pubs as opposed to boring Liquid/Oceania generic products. Yeah, that comparison definitely works…

Elements of Peep Show can be found in two of the main characters make up. JP is the classic Bain/Armstrong character of a person who thinks he is higher up the social strata than he actually is and finding himself often screwed over by the people he sees as cooler than him in his attempts to impress them.

Meanwhile, Vod (played amazingly by Ashton) is the female version of Peep Show’s Super Hans; drug and drink addled but with her own set of sound morals. Refreshingly, she gets all the best lines in the show (along with Howard) as it is rare to see such a strong female lead in contemporary sitcoms.

However, it is the secondary characters that really stand out from Howard’s brilliantly socially psychotic on/off friend Brian, the mysterious “invisible” housemate Paul Lamb (although the cause of his absence is a bit of a letdown), the male Professor Shales for playing the part of pervy, exploitative lecturer to perfection, the female Professor Shales and her reasons for allowing her husband to have an affair with Oregon and JP’s even more exploitative posh mates, who are upper class versions of the male Only Way is Essex vessels; cocky and making up their own words.

As well as boasting, eventually, a strong series of story arcs (basically three stories; Kingsley and Josie’s relationship, Vod and Oregon’s friendship and JP’s issues), there are a number of memorable comedic scenes including JP getting emotional after his Dad’s death with Oregon’s dying horse whilst off his face on LSD, Kingsley and Josie’s confrontation over their deal to ‘cure’ Kingsley’s virginity at the student rally and the academic’s dinner evening at Oregon and Professor Shales’ flat which descends into sexually frustrated bickering.

Fresh Meat is certainly worth the extra series it has been granted (which will air next September, aptly) as the potential is there for a memorable, if not classic, example of British sitcom; well scripted, well acted, tightly directed and with sets that are lovingly made down to the last detail. The potential is certainly there as the show has demonstrated it can mix gross-out, awkwardness comedy mixed with almost touching sensitive scenes, particularly (and bizarrely) the aforementioned JP finding out his Dad died scene and Vod sticking up for JP in the final episode after he has been conned by his upper class “mates”.

And with each of the three story arcs left unanswered after last night’s finale, I find myself not being able to wait to see what the conclusions are which is a rarity for me with any sitcom.

You can catch up on Fresh Meat on 4OD http://www.channel4.com/programmes/fresh-meat/4od#3256081

A fallacy in Higher Education; a personal story

The figures released today showcasing just how bad youth unemployment is in this country should come as no surprise really.

When there are a lack of jobs in the market anyway due to economic issues, it will always be the youngest who suffer most as they are the ones with no experience in the workplace. When it comes to a choice between “experience” and “enthusiasm” on a CV, an employer is bound to choose the former as they can dive straight into work without being given any training, thus easing the transition from one employee to another.

It makes sense as an employer to do that but try telling that to anyone of the 1 million or so young people out of work right now.

The stock image on any TV news report when it comes to stories regarding youth unemployment is a shot of a Job Centre Plus with aggressive looking people wearing tracksuits outside it, maybe smoking a cigarette or sticking a hand down the front of their trackie bottoms.

But this is a false image; this is a problem across this generation regardless of qualifications gained. I know many people who graduated from university with me this year who are struggling to find a job, let alone a career-based job that there degree course was geared toward and I equally know that people who left school at 16 (thanks to the magic of Facebook) are struggling to find work.

For myself, training as a journalist and graduating with a 2:1 degree and a full set of NCTJ prelim qualifications would, from the outside world, look like the perfect recipe to jump straight into a newspaper career. Add in work experience stints at four local papers, a national magazine, writing for an online blog (plus my own blog) and an editor’s position on my student newspaper under my belt, I couldn’t be possibly more appealing to an employer.

However, throughout my time at university I was constantly told by my lecturers that you would need an awful bloody lot to stand out to employers in the field of journalism and I am very thankful for this advice as, after graduating, it helped me come to terms with one of the great fallacies of Higher Education and indeed of education as a whole in this country; get yourself a degree and you will get you the job you want. It’s the ‘fact’ that gets people going to university.

Quite simply, there is no guarantee of this. The reasons behind this are numerous and won’t be explored here but they include a sagging job market and huge student numbers in the 21^st century.

I find myself currently working at a supermarket for 30 hours a week and, whilst not exactly being happy about the situation, I will never ever complain about it as it is a job and a source of income which, as today’s figures show, makes me very lucky.

Furthermore, it has allowed me to buy a car and go travelling for a month and might even make me more grounded if I do manage to get the job I want.

Lastly, it gives me the impetus to keep searching for the career job that I want as if I have a crap day, it makes me want to get out of the place even more and give me more of a reason to fire off that CV again or send another email or make that phone call that might just open up the door.

Do I feel as if I am overqualified for the job I do? Yes, a little bit, particularly when I get a dirty look from a customer as if I’m a piece of dirt that won’t come off their shoe but that’s part of the game and part of the job and I know that.

But I am one of the luckier ones (the luckiest ones are those that have a job in the field they want but, as with any luck, they’ve earned it) and I’m sure many young people, graduate or otherwise, would be happy with having my job right now.

The problem with poppies

It’s probably poor form to bad mouth any aspect of a charity, even the ones that want to save really ugly animals that eat people (da da do de do da do, joke) but here we go.

I’m all for the Poppy campaign for the Royal British Legion has the charity itself does great things for the elderly and victims of wars but, in my opinion, the campaign has been somewhat bastardised by needless flashiness most exhibited on primetime TV.

What makes the Poppy campaign wonderful is its simplicity on two levels.

The first is the understated nature of displaying a poppy. Those who wish to use a poppy as their mark of respect for soldiers can simply put it on their clothing (incidentally, those who don’t wear poppies do not automatically lack this respect, in the same way laughing at someone’s misfortune doesn’t mean you don’t care for their wellbeing).

And the second is the actual poppy itself consisting of a simple couple of pieces of basic coloured paper, two types of plastic to hold it all together and a pin, if you remember to get one that is due to the whole H&S bollocks about not being able to take one and having to ask for it.

But in recent years, a booming new market in flashy showy off poppies is booming which started out on TV but has migrated itself to everyday life now.

Go across any terrestrial TV channel in the evening and I can guarantee that at least half of the poppies on display are sparkly or stupidly large or made out of multiple pieces of complex fabric or even bloody crystal-encrusted ones last year. It’s probably only a matter of time before a poppy is produced using Heston Blumnethal methods of construction.

It seems somewhat self-defeating to produce flashy, show off-y poppies when the beauty of the product and cause lies in its simplicity.

Obviously, if the proceeds of these poppies go to the fundraising campaign it doesn’t really matter as all the money that is raised is worthwhile. It’s even been argued that the flashy new poppies have boosted the fundraising for the Royal British Legion by way of extra exposure and appeal to a younger market.

But it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a charity has to almost reinvent itself to keep the campaign relevant and cutting, particularly when the Poppy campaign has an effective captive market (if you’ll excuse the quite horrible use of that particular phrase there) at the beginning of November every year for a cause that is so important.

What patriotism means to me

The news today that the English Defence League had scaled the headquarters of football’s governing body, FIFA, in Zurich over the dispute regarding whether or not the England football team can have poppies on their shirts in the game against Spain this weekend got me thinking about patriotism and what it means to me to be both English and British.

Firstly, that the EDL, a group that is based on anti-immigration and anti-Islamism, should associate itself with the Poppy campaign is both horrific and illogical. The Poppy campaign, as part of Remembrance Day, is designed to honour those who fought in wars for their country, particularly World Wars 1 and 2.

Lest we forget, people from across the British Empire fought in those wars, from the West Indies to African colonies to the Indian Raj. It seems illogical to me to be able to reconcile a firm anti-Islamism and anti-immigration ideology with a full commitment to the idea of Remembrance. But, hey ho, whoever said you needed to have logic to make a statement.

Anyway, this led me on to thinking what my problem is with the way English patriotism is displayed. By extension, this can also mean British patriotism due to the way England dominates Britain as an idea.

To me, English/British patriotism is displayed in an aggressive manner through something of a superiority complex. In my opinion, much of what constitutes this type of patriotism is a “we’re better than you” expression such as continual references to the various wars with Germany and France, for example. Perhaps this comes from the fallout of having an Empire and Britain as a whole needing to find a new place in the world.

It is probably for this reason why English people are so in need of sporting success to justify this superiority complex idea of patriotism; winning a World Cup in any sport means we are better than everyone else at something and therefore makes the approach correct to an extent.

This almost jingoistic approach is a source of danger in my opinion as it is a slippery slope from thinking your group of people is better than another to forcibly imposing it, particularly when the power to do the latter gets granted to the former group.

I should probably explain at this point that I am fully aware that being proud of the country where one was born is a little bit ridiculous as it is pure luck that one is born on one particular piece of soil that belongs to the fictional notion that is the state and then growing a love for that fictional notion.

However, that said, as a human being, I enjoy the idea of being connected to other people I don’t know in a group in which we have a shared history and culture. I also believe that this culture is constantly evolving with new people adding their own values and beliefs into the system we all share.

In relation to this, I do quite like being British due to the contribution Britain has made to the world in the form of ideas and art and science and so on. I like the idea of having a connection to the people that developed these ideas, however a tenuous connection being born in the same geo-political borders is.

I find it harder to be proud of being English as to my mind there is nothing truly English aside from sporting teams. The dominance of Britain by England has left a dearth of genuinely English concepts.

I’ve a great love of the type of patriotism that seems to be widespread in countries such as Scotland and Wales where patriotism is expressed through a devotion and love of one’s country rather than gaining pride through comparison to another country.

The Welsh and Scottish pride (as I perceive it) in their landscape, their language, their appreciation of their past and contemporary contribution to the arts and to science and so on is something I genuinely envy.

But, there is no reason why the newly forming English patriotism cannot be like that. The loudness of the campaigns by a small group like the EDL (lest we forget, they have very few members who are coached to rallies in different cities to present the illusion of being a larger group) needs to be silenced to allow a true patriotic voice to shine through over the current jingoistic rhetoric.

There is no reason why an English patriotism cannot develop in the form of its Scottish and Welsh counterparts with a focus on the beauty of the English countryside, the wonder of the English language, the contribution of people like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, Wordsworth, Austen, Newton, Wren and so on. Obviously, Welsh and Scottish patriotism is so strong due to their historical suppression from which well the English cannot also draw from but the point remains that it can happen.

Furthermore, the culture that England, in particular of the British nations, has evolved over the last half century in particular is my favourite achievement.

Of all the nations in the world, it has most successfully bred multi-culturalism. I adore the fact that there are a multitude of languages being spoken on English streets, a smorgasbord of international cuisine available everywhere you go and all the other cultural entities that immigrants have added to the culture melting pot of England and Britain.

This is what I am thankful to those who laid down their lives in wars, whatever their ethnicity or religion, for England and Britain; the chance to live in a society that’s brought the world to your doorstep.

How the Internet ruined criticism

Interactivity is great as it means you can get your own say on things because YOUR opinion really matters and needs to be told to everyone on the planet as YOU are the undiscovered genius, YOU are the voice of a generation, YOU are saying what everyone else is just thinking.*

But interactivity started out on pretty boring subjects like voting for who you wanted to be your MP or local councillor and even then you could only utilise your power once every few years. Where is the fun and enticing prospect of abuse of power in that? Nowhere, that’s where.

Thankfully, with the advent of the digital era, having your say on subjects has become much easier what with phone-in radio and TV shows, Twitter, text messaging, TV shows which encourage you to vote, blogs and the ubiquitous comments box on any website you visit.

Now you can forward your viewpoint on any subject you like from whichever empty vessels get to spend another Saturday night being judged and sentenced by millionaires (that’s The X Factor folks) to what the simple solution that all the world’s leaders are missing is for the Eurozone debt crisis or the exact reason why Man City put six past United on Sunday and the consequences of that for the rest of the season.

Hail interactivity, leveller of the playing field!

However all opportunities and freedoms are horrendously open to abuse and just generally ruining it for everyone by making everyone’s opinions being easy to air. And so we come to being negative and how the Internet has basically ruined it.

The funny, funny people over at cracked.com have made a register of the ten types of angry commenter one finds online and for this exercise there are two particular categories that this blog highlights; the Busy Critic and the Angry Unfunner.

It might be best to have a read about those first before continuing. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to finish.

…

…

Wow, you came back. All done? Good, let us continue.

You’ll find these two types of commenter appear pretty regularly if you peruse the Guardian website. For example, here is a piece on Channel 4’s Marmite-ish new comedy-drama Fresh Meat. I say Marmite-ish as its divisive and opinion-splitting, not what it tastes like (that would be beer and kebabs as it’s a show set in a student house… zing).

Skip down to the comments section and the people who like the show generally give reasons why they enjoy it and, if they see fit to, offer constructive criticism for how it can improve. Contrast that to the negative commenters who leave a one line sentence fragment saying they don’t like it and moving on to do the same on another article. No attempt to explain why they dislike it or what’s wrong with it or anything like that. No way, that’s too much like hard work and they’ve got a lot of bringing people down left on their to-do list today.

In many ways they’re like the immature guy at work/school/uni who found it funny to come towards people, drop a fart and then move on, thus ruining everyone’s day. Or for a few minutes at least.

Want some more examples? Just on the top five viewed items on the Guardian culture section, you can see a similar story when it comes to a review of the latest episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm and even flipping David Attenborough isn’t safe!

This is just plain lazy, you’re entitled to your opinion just like everyone else but to not even bother explaining your point of view is an insult to be quite frank as it suggests you don’t have the time to contextualise your opinion, it’s just there and should be treated as important as those who justify theirs.

In a similar vein, the sport pages provide a similar, if not the same, trend when it comes to internet commenter warriors.

The general theme is either abuse the writer with a petty comment, as seen with this Jonathan Wilson piece or a snide remark about their being another article about Man United or Arsenal as seen here and here, almost as if the reader has been forced at gunpoint to read the article. As can be seen from the Wilson article, some of the commenters don’t even bother reading the article, just taking the headline and slugline and making a comment from that. Again, lazy criticism from people that are often the first to complain about “lazy journalism.” To them of course, irony is an alien concept.

These examples come from just the sport and culture sections let alone delving into the murky depths of the Comment is Free free-for-all.

What I’m getting at it is that t vast majority of negative comments on websites now are so generic and boring that they are worthless. They aren’t going to persuade anyone to shift their opinion on the matter as you’ve seen them a million times before so what’s the point in taking them in?

The general consensus is that the commenter is an individual who merely writes the negative comment for the sake of it rather than any real dislike of the subject of the article, the article itself or the writer.

More to the point, the reason why it ruins being negative is that it tars ‘real’ negative comments with the same brush; the comment being penned by a bored, sad individual with no agenda but their own pitiful amusement. Thus, proper criticism that is well informed, constructive and, crucially, has a point gets skirted over and placed into the generic, negative comment (by this reader at least) to be filed for ignore now.

Comment away below.

*Post note; don’t point out the supreme hypocrisy of reading this on a blog that has a comments section and Twitter interactivity button. That would not be cool, right?

Solar powered spending

It’s not often this blog delves into politics and economics as, being lower middle class, this writer lacks the intellect to take on the big issues of the day. Well, that’s what the establishment brought me up to believe anyway.

Anywho, as I strolled through the centre of Reading today, a familiar scenario greeted me in the middle of the pedestrianised Broad Street; the sight of people whose job it is to convert your faith or sell you something.

After being accosted by a man who wanted to save my soul and a woman who wanted to sell me being shot in the testicles for an afternoon aka paintballing (incidentally, I’d choose the latter as a lifetime of commitment seems hard work), another salesman, who didn’t stop to talk to me, caught my eye.

He was at a stall that said “No more energy bills after one easy payment” which was empty, completely unsurprisingly, as nothing is ever that simple. Even the general public, who I’ve often spotted picking up pennies off of the wet pavement, weren’t gullible enough to believe this money-saving ruse.

However, it got me thinking; could solar energy help boost the UK’s flagging economy?

Here is my basic, layman analysis using back of a fag packet maths and a particularly loose grip of the laws of economics.

The reason for the fragility of the UK economy is a lack of faith in the system and not enough disposable income for the Average Joe to spend on things like speedboats, new shoes and fancy chocolates leading to less jobs in industries like designing, making and selling speedboats, shoes and fancy chocolates leading to less disposable income for the people who would fill these roles and so on in a long, unbroken cycle.

Now, if you can free up more of a person’s income to allow them to spend it on the above capitalist items of aspiration, that will help the economy grow by producing more jobs and then more disposable income from the newly employed.

So, if the Government was to invest in a scheme whereby, gradually, all the homes in the UK are fitted with the capacity to produce its own electricity through solar power, this would reduce a household’s energy bills leaving them more cash to spend on Thornton’s chocolate.

Naturally, the outlay for such a project wouldn’t come cheap and it is estimated that it will take until 2020 for the PV format of producing solar power to become competitive with fossil fuel alternatives but even starting a long-term scheme by just specifying all new properties must have solar panels built into them would be a foundation on which to build.

Likewise, funding a project for all homes to be fitted with proper insulation to the reduce energy bills for certain households and allow for more disposable income. Little things like this make a difference.

That said, the £3.2 billion the Treasury is expected to make by 2016 from carbon taxes (the costs of which electricity companies are allowed to pass on to their customers) is kind of a rather large weight to lose should a solar power policy be pursued.

Blast from the past; The Crystal Maze

One of the great joys of my youth was being ill as it allowed me to stay at home and watch Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network all day.

However, there is only so much Doug or Arthur you can watch without feeling a bit sick at all the bright colours, dodgy animation and the bizarre looking characters. And so, channel hopping would begin which would eventually lead to the glorious then and but slightly less glorious now Challenge TV.

I can’t pinpoint the first time I watched The Crystal Maze but it was probably before the turn of the century and I was, to an extent, terrified of it. A creepy fortune telling woman, people getting locked in small rooms for either failing some pretty basic challenges or failing at games tantamount to torture and Richard O’Brien all probably contributed to this.

But minor peril never really hurt anyone and thus, The Crystal Maze became my entertainment of choice when I was ill and off school right up until the very moment the Playstation 2 arrived in my life.

For anyone that doesn’t know, all five of you, The Crystal Maze was a loose copy of French show Fort Boyard in which contestants with very bad hair and in primary colour jumpsuits undertook a series of challenges in four different themed ‘worlds’ to win crystals. The challenges the contestants faced fell into four classifications; physical, mental, skill or mystery with sexism dictating male contestants often took the physical games and inevitably failing at them.

The number of crystals that the contestants won contributed to how long they would have in giant crystal filled with pieces of gold and silver paper; the show’s finale. If they grabbed enough of these pieces of paper in the allocated time, they won a prize ‘of a lifetime’ which was non-transferable for cash, I think. Not that it mattered of course, more humans have been on the moon than won The Crystal Maze.

At its peak, the show received up to 6 million viewers on Channel 4 and was the channel’s most popular programme, achieving cult status particularly among the student demographic, unsurprisingly.

Despite the innovative games, for my money, the two real joys of the show were the set and original host Richard O’Brien.

The maze was purpose-built in an aircraft hangar in Essex for £250,000 and the attention to detail and the quality of the production values were stunning, even to my youthful eyes. The dank squalor of the “Ocean” world contrasted so much with the open, bright “Aztec” world as to make them look like different planets, not a mere couple of feet apart. The haunting dungeon of the “Medieval” world was where the money was best spent with numerous genuine-looking props, eerie lighting and a constant supply of dry ice simultaneously produced a homely yet chilling effect.

It’s a wonder why the set piece for the finale looked so budget; a biosphere looking structure filled with fans at the bottom and lots of pieces of foil that, according to Wikipedia, took a lot of experimentation to perfect.

As I was saying before I went off on an inevitable tangent, O’Brien was the other main attraction. The writer of The Rocky Horror Show (yes really) was cast as a host and a bizarre host he was too. He was like a cool version of Dr Evil but more mad. His ‘character’ sounded as if he had been stranded in the maze for as long as he could remember (he had made the ‘Medieval’ world into his home where he lived with his ‘Mumsie’) and despite being a guide to the contestants, he wouldn’t hold back from putting them down witheringly. His seemingly random monologues to the camera and eccentric dress sense only added to the depth of his endearingly odd character. Oh, and every now and then he would start playing his harmonica. For no apparent reason other than he just could.

O’Brien left the show in 1993 and despite his successor, Edward Tudor-Jones (a cross between Dylan Moran and a rejected Doctor Who costume) adding his own brand of oddness to the show, he was no O’Brien as was reflected in the gradual diminishing in audience figures The Maze garnered, resulting in the show’s cancellation in 1995 after six series on Channel 4.

Its legacy can be seen anytime you put on terrestrial TV on a Saturday night with shows such as The Cube, Ant and Dec’s Push the Button and Total Wipeout to name but three all tracing their lineage back to The Crystal Maze’s combination of physical and mental challenges and host’s who either encourage or take the piss out of the contestants (sometimes both). One just needs to see the opening to the first ever episode to see elements of all the shows outlined above in evidence.

Clearly, its legacy is a lot less impressive than it should be but as is the way with trailblazers; the knock-offs will never be as original nor as compelling nor as innovative as they are just that, knock offs.

For one last thought, ITV were rumoured to be planning a remake of the show at the beginning of last year. For reasons no one can ever possibly explain, the host was to be Amanda Holden. The plans were shelved. The world breathed the biggest sigh of relief since VE Day.

Top Gear USA @ 7pm Fridays, BBC3- 7 out of 10

There has been a resolutely one way traffic flow with regard to TV shows appearing on US and UK screens; every over show on in the UK is an unchanged, American import whilst everything that goes the other way gets remade on the journey. Maybe there is an island for the process somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic with a machine for carrying out the remodelling process.

Anywho, Top Gear USA, whilst being a remake, shares enough of the genes of its British forefather to be recognisable to audiences over here in Blighty but enough differences to give it a sense of American….ness.

We’ll start off with the stuff that has been packed up from UK Top Gear and shipped over the Atlantic. Same theme music, same warehouse-style set, same combination of car reviews and challenges, same number of presenters, same dicking around, same interviewing segment with a celebrity driving around their version of the Top Gear test track. Basically what I’m getting at is the format is very, very similar. Not quite sure why that surprises me, kind of comes with the territory of “being a remake”.

One thing they haven’t tried to copy exactly like for like is the three presenters of British Top Gear. There was a larger, nerdier guy with a beard (a bit like James May at a push), a guy with a sticky up fringe (Richard Hammond-esque) and another guy with receding hair who looks a bit older and does the interviewing (Jeremy Clarkson, therefore), all of whom made such a large impression on me that none of their names stuck. And so, for the rest of their review, they shall be referred to by their British names. Oh, and another difference, the gratuitous amount of swearing.

The montage they put together at the start of the show to showcase what would be coming up over the series looked promising; similes, quips, fast cars, challenges that threaten injury, low level property damage and piss taking and the first show of the series pretty much was par for the course.

It involved “Hammond” and “May” trying to outrun a military helicopter in a Shelby Cobra through the streets of a Georgian town, “Clarkson”, “Hammond” and “May” going really, really fast on a long, straight road to find the best Lamborghini ever made and “Clarkson” interviewing Buzz Aldrin for about two and a half minutes followed by the poor old fella tootling around the track in a Suzuki. All pretty standard Top Gear fare then. Which is fine by me as each of the segments worked, if not quite as polished as their British counterparts just yet.

Now for the bad stuff; to begin with, the backing soundtrack, usually such a strong element of the Top Gear package was lacking with inappropriate music being used or it just being too quiet

Secondly, at times all three presenters suffer from a wooden on-screen style and the banter between co-presenters seems somewhat forced though, to be fair, on-screen chemistry just doesn’t happen overnight, even if the participants do happen to be perfect for each other. UK Top Gear took a good four years to develop the interchanges it has now between its presenters and there were glimmers of chemistry, particularly in the out and about, recorded segments.

Overall, I wanted to hate this show. I wanted to despise the fact it was an American remake of a British television institution. I wanted to mock its attempts to import British humour to an American audience. I wanted to belittle it’s presenters for having the gall to try to recreate it. I wanted it to blow up in an explosion of American bombast.

And yet, it was far from unwatchable; the presenters are knowledgable and passionate, the filiming is splendid and the content is thought out, if a little bit on the short side leaving things being rushed through or not fully explored. If it was called something other than Top Gear, I probably wouldn’t watch it so it’s living on its brand for the time being but it’s certainly worth sticking with, just to see what else they’ve come up.

Why Barcelona still bug me

Four months ago, Barcelona completed their 2011-12 season cum procession when they beat Man United in the Champions League final thus sealing their 3^rd win in that competition in six years to go with five further La Liga titles.

Best team of its generation? Oh yeah. Best team ever? Not yet but we’ll see, the potential is certainly there.

In the aftermath of their Champions League victory, I wrote a blog post explaining why, despite loving the footballing side of Barcelona, their corporate side meant I could never feel more than merely liking the club; not loving or admiring.

Many lovers of the club cite their role in keeping alive Catalan nationalism and opposition to Franco, their community role, their partnership with Unicef, the “Mes que un club” idea that marks them out as different from other clubs.

My argument was basically that they were no different from other clubs; same corporate greed, same big-spending, same dirty politics all wrapped up in a right-on, ‘left-wing’ marketing disguise. Whilst I don’t doubt they take their genuine interest in helping charities and that side of their business, it does make the philosophy a lot more attractive to sell.

After a trip to the Nou Camp, I feel no different.

I wasn’t surprised that the tickets for the ground tour or for a shirt were so pricey (22 and 80-odd Euros respectively) as its football; everything is ridiculously expensive though for a club who proclaims its community ethos, one would think the prices would reflect that.

The tour itself is nice enough, seeing the stadium bowl from the press box, the middle tier and pitchside, seeing the stadium innards such as the chapel, the dressing room and so on but it was the museum that caught my interest most of all.

Over 100 years of history, lovingly restored and displayed with replicas of all the trophies the club have won and memorabilia such as the whistle used in the club’s first game, various footballs and signed shirts and so on. A football nerd like me’s paradise.

However, as you read through the history of the club on tables that run the length of the museum, the one constant message that’s rammed home is the spiritual link between the club and the fans and how it cannot be broken. The pretentious, righteous, left-wing ‘right-on-ness’ that, speaking as a leftie, I cannot stand.

Of course it’s going to be biased, it’s the Barcelona museum, written by Barcelona people so it’s going to be unbalanced but the unrelenting tedium of how everything the club was for their community and fans became patronising and the message stale.

And then, at the end of the tables telling you the history of the club, you have a queue to have your photo taken and then superimposed into the Barcelona team, thus wrenching out more money from you for a tacky souvenir.

In a way, it’s even more patronising and downright bastard-ish than the Real Madrid or Man United marketing model as with them at least you know they are corporate, capitalist vehicles that are out to milk their fans for all they’re worth. Barcelona seem to attempt to hide it in a veneer of left-wing propaganda, that you’re buying into history and righteousness when it’s all just the same bullshit really.

The club does have a history of just behaviour in opposition to the fascist Franco regime in the past and it’s charity work in the present but one can’t help but feel it’s used to shift the “Mes que un club” philosophy for marketing purposes. One does wonder what brave individuals like Joan Gamper and Josep Sunyol would think of it all.

Sam and Evan: From Girls to Men @ 9pm Monday, BBC3- 6 out of 10

In the 21^st century, you can do pretty much whatever you like when it comes to romance; just as long as it involves another human and is within the established legal and ethical framework that has been refined and developed over human history. Thus, new unusual stories pop up and that’s just what Sam and Evan is all about

The documentary follows posh southerner Sam, who at the age of 17 and after five months dating 20 year old Evan, moves 200 miles north to live together which kind of makes it sound like a cross between a buddy movie and a rom-com but in the 21^st century. And set in Rochdale.

Both Sam and Evan were born girls, but are now on the way to becoming men as that is both what they feel they are and so they technically are in a gay relationship. They’re just a typical couple all things considered in the way they act and talk and relate. They probably argue like real (deliberate provocation FYI) couples too though broadcasting couples arguing is reserved for heterosexual couples on TV, it would appear.

Sometimes it gets a bit confusing when its men who are having a period and so on but modern life is quite confusing; working a Sky+ box takes some getting used to. Not that this is anything like working a Sky+ mind, the confusion bit is the only thing that would be in shared circle on a Venn diagram.

As the show continues, the viewer is show the pair undergoing the process of becoming men; starting with names and then moving on to clothes, testosterone injections, something called a “packer” to simulate a penis in one’s trousers (probably not available on Amazon) and eventually exploring gender realignment

The third key character is Evan’s very approving mother Kath who says she is so supportive as Sam “makes my son happy”. The couple live with Kath who even goes so far as to injecting Sam with the testosterone that he needs fortnightly. Other examples show of the bond of support from other members of the pair’s family and their friends; the strength of humanity.

But humanity has two faces of course. Little, (not gonna mince words here) cunty kids shouting abuse in the street and throwing eggs. That said, with only one instance of such prejudice being shown, perhaps it isn’t as prevalent as the “info” box about the show made out. Then again, an hour where every five minutes a scene of cunty kids shouting abuse isn’t exactly uplifting, inspiring TV. Unless immediately after shouting it they get immediate comeuppance in the form of a kick in the bollocks; damn this unfair world.

Things get even more confusing later on with revelations about Evan and his potential to undertake the sex change process but it only shows the couple’s strength of bond together and their support as they grow up and grow together.

The theme of growing up isn’t just to do with the participants of the show but also the BBC3 channel as a whole. BBC3 used to be more point and laugh style of documentaries but the channel is maturing. The subject matter does sadly have the point and laugh factor, that tends to come with the territory, but it’s so much more mature and refined.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not exactly award-winning documentary making but it wouldn’t be on BBC3 if it was and the fact that the show ends with a plug for the BBC Action Line for people who have similar feelings only serve to emphasise the show’s responsibility. Perhaps it would have been nice if they played the same message after Hotter than my daughter.

How to solve The Simpsons crisis

There be a crisis brewing over in the land of American television and you will never guess what it’s about. Ya huh, got it in one; money.

The main voice actors for The Simpsons, probably the single most influential television product ever and longest run US comedy series, have refused a 45% pay cut to their $8 million a season salaries and Fox are refusing to play ball. The voice actors have offered a 35% pay cut and a share of the show’s profits, the argument I may well take into my next pay discussion at the supermarket where I currently work.

Anywho, the show is expected to have enough episodes to run until May next year with the dispute being solved by December so the show’s writers can come up with a season or series finale, perhaps involving some kind of Futurama crossover but almost certainly not.

The Simpsons creates billions of dollars in syndication and merchandise for Fox so its loss would be huge to those all important Murdoch profit margins but, being the helpful sort, I’ve come up with some replacement show ideas for them. Free of charge.

1.

An animation revolving around the escapades of a white, American family that consists of the stupidest man on earth as the father, an almost as stupid son, a evil baby who has homosexual undertones, a stereotypical housewife mother, a dull as dishwater daughter and a talking, alcoholic dog. But, get this, you fill it with cutaway cultural gags and make it rather crude! Huh? Eh? Whatadyathink?

2.

Alternatively, you could run with this; a cartoon show that looks at the mundane activities in the lives of a white, working class, Methodist family from a fictional Texas town. The father can work in middle-management, there could be a fat son and a delusional mother where catchphrases are the order of the day.

3.

Or, better yet, I’ve got this. A show that, using the format of drawing, showcases a white, American family and the adventures they get up to. The father can work at the CIA and be right wing, the daughter can be something of a leftist (ooooo cue tension!), a nerdy son and a ditzy wife. Oh, and for some comic relief, a talking, alcoholic alien with a fondness of dressing up and homosexual undertones and a man trapped in the body of a fish who speaks three times a series. Boom, $$$$.

4.

Finally, if you want a branch out a bit and tamper slightly with the formula, there is this idea. Load up your animation software and take the working class family, a moustachioed father figure, the fat son, the talking baby and two generic female characters to make the wife and daughter and, now hear me out here, change their skin colour. Bingo, Yahtzee, prime time gold.

PS. I’m rather aware that this riff may have got old by the time you had read to #2 but hey, you’re the one that read this far

Unforeseen consequences

Returning to a story that has interested me for some time, earlier this week, Portsmouth publican Karen Murphy won an important EU ruling in her favour.

The case revolves around Mrs Murphy using a digital decoder from Greece to screen Premier League football games in her pub for a cheaper price than with UK football broadcaster Sky. Sky promptly took her to court when they found out six years ago under copyright infringement law.

However, Mrs Murphy took her case to the European Court of Justice who ruled that the way in which satellite broadcasters limit themselves to one country is against the freedom to provide services and for individuals in the European Union to choose the service providers they desire; thus, the prohibition on the sale of digital decoders is deemed unlawful. It is unprecedented for a national High Court to not enforce a ECJ ruling.

However, the ruling also pointed out that certain copyright infringements were also being made by Mrs Murphy and other decoder users in that whilst football is not covered by copyright law, graphics and sound and the whole branding used by companies such as Sky and ESPN are covered. Therefore, if pubs were to broadcast a match with this branding in it, they would be in breach of the law.

Quite simply, in the wake of this ruling, broadcasters could put a piece of their branding (a permanent graphic of a £ sign in the top corner perhaps) and thus a decoder user would be breaking copyright law.

I’ll not go into the footballing side of the ruling here (I may well do elsewhere in detail later this week) but on a side note of irony.

As one article notes and makes very clear, the main reason pubs broadcast football matches is that they pack pubs that are otherwise dying a rather slow and painful death. Anyone that’s been to a pub, say, on a Saturday at noon and a Thursday at the same time, it is clear to see that most of a pub’s revenue comes at the weekends when they show football from the hours of noon to about 10pm.

However, the ruling has made it a lot easier for football fans at home to get a digital decoder for themselves and use it instead of Sky to view football matches. Naturally, it is unlikely for a monolith like Sky to sue every single individual user of a decoder (if Sky’s copyright is infringed by use of the branding); apparently it’s not great for the marketing department to take millions of potential customers to court.

Anyway, that means that the opportunity for football fans to sit at home and watch matches is far greater as they can now afford to when prices for a digital decoder are up to a third the price of a Sky Sports subscription and booze from a supermarket of a similar price ratio.

Therefore, pubs, including Mrs Murphy’s, would get less income on their peak weekend times as more punters stay at home, thus hammering another nail into the pub coffin.

Do be careful what you wish for.

Reading's transfer window

In my preview for this season, I wrote that our fortunes for the year depended on what happened in the remaining month or so of the transfer window. What followed was a relatively busy month.

We saw the loss of last year’s star performer and top scorer Shane Long in a relatively expected move and in through the door came a man with way too many ‘S’s in his name (Kaspars Gorkss), Southampton’s third choice left-back (Joseph Mills) and the man with the most northern sounding name ever (Glenville Adam J. le Fondre).

I wrote at the start of the season that if we lost Shane Long then we would be in for a long hard season and, despite the arrival of le Fondre, I stand by that.

Le Fondre may bang in the goals at this level and his record elsewhere certainly shows he knows where the goal is but, increasingly in the Championship , being a goalscorer isn’t always enough. If a team plays two up front, one of the pair must be prepared to work the channels and work his socks off for the team. Matthieu Manset has shown glimpses of this but he is the only striker we have with the combination of pace and power to do it.

The signing of Gorkss should add a certain degree of fearless insanity that all backlines should have and one we have lacked since the loss of Andre Bikey. However, a distinct lack of pace is still in evidence in the defence as a whole and at centre back in particular, an issue that Gorkss, for all his positives as a very good centre half at this level, will not alleviate.

Mills looks like he is one for the medium to long term unless Ian Harte puts in some terrible performances over the next few weeks and Mills is required to step up.

Overall, the transfer window has not been unkind to us. Only losing Matt Mills and Long (as well as the releasing of the likes of Ivar Ingimarsson and Zurab Khisaishvili going back to his parent club) is not too bad when, quite conceivably, we could have also lost Adam Federici, Jimmy Kebe and Jem Karacan too.

Furthermore, each loss has had a like-for-like replacement brought in more or less as two centre halves have replaced the three that have left (with Sean Morrison being, rightly, expected to step up) and le Fondre replacing Long.

However, the issue that remains is one of faith of the fans. Money has been spent with the summer spending coming in at an estimated £1.5 million but faith comes into the equation when one asks if the replacements are good enough to plug the holes left by Mills and Long.

I do not believe the quality of the ins are as good as the outs though I would love to be proven wrong on this matter. However, that said, they are good acquisitions at this level and a top half finish with a possible play-off push is a distinct possibility should the team gel together.

We are notoriously slow-starters in this division these days but there is enough quality in the squad to pose a challenge to most sides in this league. The disappointment of course comes when one looks at the financial aspect of the ins and outs but that is another story and another can of worms.

If you ignore it, it might go away

Ten days ago or so, a ‘sliding-door’ moment happened.

 If, say, the police shooting of a man who, it would appear, did not fire first, albeit one that was armed, had happened this Saturday rather than the fortnight before, things may have turned out differently. Would the large scale riots have occurred in the pouring rain, for example?

However, ‘what-if’ moments are all well and good for reflection in the long-term future. You can speculate on what would have happened if JFK hadn’t been assassinated all you like as the permutations have pretty much run their cause. But, in the here and now, it’s time to focus on the fall-out and something that has been bugging me in the (generic, catch-all term alert) media’s reaction to it all.

Reference some events that have happened over the last fortnight or so. Firstly, a clear example of the Executive butting its nose into the business of the Judiciary by stating its desire for tough sentencing on rioters (rightly or wrongly) which has duly occurred in a great number of cases.

On to civil liberties with David Cameron Tory MP raising the possibility of shutting down Twitter and/or Facebook when riots break out to stop people using the social networking site to orchestrate and organise disturbances. Furthermore, Tory MP Louise Mensch suggesting rather than the public being told that Twitter is down, the message would be that it is under ‘maintenance’.

Finally, Cameron has also put forward a proposal to evict families from their council homes and withhold their benefits of the families of rioters. This is draconian, unfair and effective double jeopardy as it punishes those who may not have been involved in the rioting and only leads to exacerbating the problem of poverty which, it is this blogger's view, was a leading cause of the problem in the first place.

Now, I’m not one to throw about the term “totalitarianism” for two reasons. One; it will never happen in this country as even in a state as passive politically as ours, the people will not stand for large scale repealing of their civil liberties and secondly it’s an insult to use the term when there are genuine, frightening regimes out there that do fit the totalitarian model of rule and it is ignorant to make a comparison between the two.

But on the other side of the scale, the good folk at the Daily Mail and other papers on the ‘Right’ are often the first to jump on a story with the tiniest shred of liberty-crushing potential and impose the woefully GCSE-esque “Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not a blueprint” comparison.

This past fortnight, I make that examples of breaking the boundaries of checks and balances between the Executive and the Judiciary, suggested curtailing of civil liberties such as the freedom of speech, suggested deliberate lying to your electorate and denying citizens the elements of the welfare state to which they are entitled to.

These policies are most probably, as the New York Times points out, most likely a reaction to try to garner public support in the wake of the rioting but it smacks of double standards for the right-wing press to complain about how CCTV cameras are infringing people’s rights but these policies are not.

Let's not even get started how investigating the causes of the riots (not even a proper Inquiry?! Come off it) has been swept under the carpet by focussing on the punishments and re-establishing 'order'.

Five thoughts from Reading Vs Millwall

First games of the season are notoriously bad parameters for judging the outcome of the season to come, as Reading fans know all too well. 2005/06 saw us lose out curtain-raiser to Plymouth but we didn’t lose again until February and romped to the Championship title. Two years later, an impressive defensive display allowed us to hold champions Man United but come the end of the season, we were relegated. Last season, a defeat to relegation favourites Scunthorpe opened a season which ended with a play-off final.

With that in mind, here are some thoughts from this season’s opener against Millwall.

1.      Manset will be more than a handful this year

Mathieu Manset arrived at the Madejski last year on the back of a half-decent half-season at League Two Hereford United. Nicknamed ‘The Beast’, he looked to have the attributes to be a good striker at this level; he possessed strength, aerial threat, good hold up play and a deceptive turn of pace. However, what he appeared to lack was fitness, often not lasting 90 minutes.

However, he looked much more in shape today and with a pre-season behind him, he could prove to be our new secret weapon this year. His hold-up play was fantastic today and, as in evidence a few times last year, he has one hell of a shot on him. With Long, Hunt and Manset as striking options (for now), we appear to have three strikers who could easily each get into double figures this season, each of whom no defence would enjoy facing.

2.       McAnuff was the right choice as captain

Alright, there were not many other options for the role but Jobi McAnuff showed today why he was the man to replace Matt Mills as club captain. Whilst not being the vocal type, he leads by example. Not only was he a constant threat on the left-wing, he also showed his worth in a centre midfield role and was desperately unlucky to hit the post midway through the second half after beating two men with a clever shimmy.

Perhaps the best example of his ‘lead-by-example’ captaincy came in the closing moments of the game as he lost possession trying to set Andy Griffin free with a cross field ball but ran back fifty yards to close down the cross.

3.       We are a dangerous side

We may already know this but there is a caveat here. For the majority of the second half, we were quite awful with very little attacking threat and looking average defensively, being beaten by long balls for fun.

Despite looking so poor, we still managed to score twice, hit the post and hit the bar. On another day, we might have been able to say “we won when we didn’t play at our best”, the clichéd sign of quality teams. A little bit more luck and the opinions on this game would have been wildly different.

4.       Jimmy Kebe remains Jimmy Kebe

Wingers are rightly known as the most frustrating of players and Jimmy Kebe is perhaps the most frustrating of all wingers; stunning on his day, frustratingly wasteful other times. Today was more of the latter than the former. Continually, he would beat his man and put in a poor cross or not beat his man at all.

But, a winger is there to create goals and he did this once again, at last putting a dangerous cross in with the minutes ticking away that Manset headed home. That is why he is in the team, to create goalscoring chances and if he makes an assist or scores once a game, he is worth his weight in gold at this level.

5.       Leigertwood is our lynchpin

One of the reasons our season turned around after Christmas last season was the acquisition of Mikele Leigertwood on a loan deal to bolster our centre midfield. He did such a good job he was promptly signed up full time before the end of the season.

He showed today how important he is to the balance of our side as a ball winner and ball player. He plays more defensively than his centre midfield colleague Jem Karacan which allows the Turk to bomb up and down the pitch. Leigertwood’s ability to do the simple things well (win the ball and play it short) but also to play a accurate long pass is the reason why he is so important to Reading’s balance.