RANDOM JOTTINGS

People have been asking why I have not had a Random Rant for some time. Well the answer is simple, I did not think that this was an appropriate time to moan about trivia or things that personally irritate me when there was so much awfulness in the world.

It looks as if we are coming to the end, or the beginning of the end, in dealing with Corona though I cannot see us ever returning to the life we had before it struck us all. We have to become used to the “new normal” a phrase I simply hate.

But there have been things that have roused my ire over the last few months so perhaps can now venture forth in Ranthood and write about them.

First up – Slebs.  Or people who think they are famous and think that they know all about everything and that everyone is simply dying to listen to their views on anything. Being in lockdown and denied their usual access to being in the limelight and flashbulbs and red carpets, they have taken to making meaningful videos telling us how they empathise with us all and we are all in this together. Yeh right.

One of the earliest Sleb Vids was Madonna, that shy retiring lady who wished to share her thoughts with us all. There she was filmed sitting in a bath (why?) with rose petals scattered over the water and surrounded by candles.  She mused on the meaning of life and generally rambled and wittered. I am not sure she got the appreciation she was expecting. One wag on Twitter merely said that he was worried when she let the water out that the petals would clog up her drains….

Then up pops Kate Winslet.  She spoke to us about the dangers of the virus and how we had to be careful etc and she said she knew about this because she had been in a film called Contagion all About a Virus. If I remember rightly, she died fifteen minutes in but even so this made her an expert so up she popped.   Her little homily was met with widespread derision and rightly so.  Acting does not make you an expert on anything – you might as well assume that as George Clooney played a doctor in ER he can whip out an appendix at the drop of a hat. I could go on…..

I simply cannot understand why actors or Slebs feel we are interested in their thoughts on politics etc. It has always puzzled me.  If Meryl Streep was giving a talk on acting then I would watch, listen and learn because she knows what she is talking about. If, however, she decided to impart her opinions on politics, climate change or anything else, I don’t want to know.

Here in the UK we have an ex footballer Gary Lineker pontificating on about politics and, in particular, Brexit as if he actually knew what he was talking about and was an expert. He is perfectly entitled to his opinions and views but again, I don’t want to know. If he did a chat about football, fine that was his profession.

Emma Thompson – a wonderful actress but my god she is a smug righteous luvvie. She called the UK a “a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island.” and decided to become an Italian citizen with her luvvie husband Greg Wise. So off they go to Venice and leave all us proles and bores behind. Lo and behold we enter lockdown and she flies back to the UK and says she is now going to stay. Her mother is ill and she wants to be with her – fine, good reason but no doubt she will make full use of the NHS and all the health facilities she can afford for her mum, despite the fact this island is such a dump.

Colin Firth, aka Mr Darcy, took out Italian citizenship after Brexit which he loathes. He had an Italian wife so no doubt it was all lovely for him.  Four years later his marriage has broken up and I gather he is back having retained his UK citizenship all the time.

So now we come to Mainstream Media or MSM as it is catchily called. 

I defend the right to have a free press. I would hate the press to be censored as it is in other countries and to have facts and news hidden from us. However, my opinion of some of the press and the level of reporting over the last few months has really staggered me.   When we had Cummingsgate (those of my readers in the US will have to look him up – just google Dominic Cummings and lockdown and see what you get) the behaviour of the media was simply appalling. An entire gang of press photographers, tv reporters and photographers were shrieking and screaming outside his house, some of them literally spitting with anger and fury, no social distancing of course and resembling a baying mob. It was vile.

Cummings had to hold a press conference at No 10. The press demanded it and then turned round and said he should not be holding it in the garden there as he was not a government minister, only an “adviser” and it should not be allowed. True.

He took the conference and answered and responded with total courtesy and in a quiet manner a stream of aggressive questions from the press gang sitting in rows. The standard of questioning and the total lack of any kind of coherence was simply astounding. My granddaughters would have questioned with more clarity.

OK and this now leads me onto the BBC. Yes, I know I can hear you sighing OMG she is off again. And yes I am. Sorry.

Last year it was announced that the free TV licence which is given to the over 75’s in this country was to be rescinded as it was too expensive.  The reaction to this was exactly what you would expect. Now there are plenty of people in that age bracket who can afford a licence but plenty that cannot and if those decide not to pay, they run the risk of being carted off to court and, in extreme cases, can end up in jail.   I watch, at the most, about three hours a week of the output of the BBC, sometimes less than that, and yet I still have to pay for it.  While we entered lockdown, Tony Hall the outgoing director of the BBC announced that it would be put on hold while the country was in the throes of the pandemic. And then on the very day that Cummingsgate (see above) was dominating the news he quietly slipped out an announcement that from August the free tv licence was being stopped.

Pusillanimous is the word that comes to mind.

(Must mention here that the average age of the BBC viewer is 45 upwards and yet the BBC has just cancelled a quiz programme called Eggheads because the people who watch it are “old”. They are aiming for the youth market most of whom are streaming on their phones or watching Netflix. I am trying to work out the logic of the cancellation of this programme added to the taking away of the free tv licence, thus alienating their core audience).

I am now coming to the main complaint about the BBC that has riled me over the last few months. The presenters and interviewers – just who do they think they are?  Sky is just as bad in case you think I am homing in only on the Beeb and Channel 4 not far behind.   If you are a presenter or interviewer your job is to speak to the person in front of you, ask them questions, elicit straight answers, if possible, and press hard if they are being difficult or duplicitous.

You are NOT there to air your own personal opinions.   Many presenters think they are now the story, the person of importance.  They are now “personalities” they appear in glossy magazines, they do photoshoots, they are on Twitter and Instagram.  Once again, they fall into the trap of thinking they are important.

Emily Maitliss was blatant about her opinion of Dominic Cummings on Newsnight and after receiving a deluge of complaints from viewers, the Beeb had to reprimand her and issue an apology (this is not the first time this has happened regarding Ms Maitliss) and she was “furious” and accused the BBC of not treating her with respect.

If you are on a commercial tv station then perhaps you can get away with this but not if you work for the BBC which is funded by the taxpayer and is meant to be impartial.  Well that has been a joke for years.   

I look back on the days of Robin Day, Jeremy Paxman, Brian Walden and others.  These three could get under the skin of somebody trying to avoid a question or who behaved dubiously, they were forensic in their questioning, they were never aggressive or rude (though Paxman could be abrasive) but the point I am making here is that throughout the years of watching them or reading their words, I NEVER KNEW WHAT THEIR POLITICS WERE. I have put this in capitals to emphasis this as I think it is a vitally important point.

I have views on all matter of things to do with politics but I have no intention of ranting about them here on my blog though it is a perfect platform to do so, because why should I think that anybody would want to know?  Of course with friends and family we can hold discussions and argue and agree and disagree, but that is private.   Let us say that I suddenly became famous for one reason or another and was being interviewed, why would I think I can suddenly start airing my views? I am not an expert on anything.   Just because you have a high profile an an Oscar or two in the toilet why do you think you are an intellectual thinker who can lecture us all? Answer comes there none.

I have watched it get worse and worse during 2020 and I cannot see it ever getting any better.

Now I hardly read the newspapers, I just dip in and out and I never watch the news on the tv. I had not done so for over twenty years but thought I needed to when all this started. After watching one expert on the BBC tell me one thing about the virus and then turn over and find another expert on another channel saying the total opposite, I decided Enough. 

In the midst of all this I have had problems with my electricity supplier which is a rant for another day.   I am more interested in sorting that out than I am in listening to another total nonentity telling me what to think and posting a pouting selfie of themselves at the same time.

Oh and another thing – all these high faluting people singing on balconies and playing musical instruments and showing their love and solidarity, DON’T GET ME STARTED.  One family was stopped by the police from coming into their garden and playing string quartets which they had been doing to “lift the spirits” of the community.  Every Single Night.  I like string quartets but I don’t want to hear one every evening when I am trying to eat my dinner. Nor do I want an amateur tenor belting out Nessun Dorma from a seventh floor balcony.

We have suffered enough….

OK rant over.  I can’t even moan about Wimbledon and Pippa Middleton because it has been cancelled.  It is All Too Much to Bear.

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PS – I am writing this extra paragraph just to say that nobody should come to a conclusion as to how I regard the entire Cummings/lockdown episode. That is a subject that has caused so much vile abuse and vitriol on twitter that to even mention it there is a dangerous thing to do. For this reason this post will not be linked to my twitter feed which I have had to clear out in the last month, deleting and blocking. My rant is aimed at the press behaviour during the few days it was front page news.