Pages

14/04/2011

Sandi Toksvig,The One Show and all that . . .

I hesitated a while before going off on this one.  Having discovered Radio 4 at about 30 years old, and still listening everyday now, 158 years later, it has always (along with BBC 4) represented to me that solid, quality side of life that surprises, delights and informs.

But I have a problem.
Or rather two, (damn - now I've gone and mixed-up numbers for numbers, and typed numbers, and my backspace key was recently vapourised by a passing death-ship from the plant 'Aaarggo' - so you're stuck with it)

Blimmey! Where was I? - oh yeah, TWO problems:

Sandi Toksvig and 'The One Show' - these two are not linked, incidentally, in anything other than the fact that their . . . stuff, comes out of the same hole in my radio when the little light says 92.9, in rather a cool blue tone.

You see satire is good.  But this sneering, complicit, self-conglatutory mush is disturbing in the extreme - and funny, it seriously isn't. Bendan O'Neill (Guardian)  writes: really only massaging our prejudices, stroking our cynicism, rather than challenging us to think about the world differently. Alexander Pope said satirists should "without sneering teach the rest to sneer". Today, in our era of sneering, satire risks becoming a self-congratulatory, back-patting display of shared public cynicism.

It says all I want to - and it's here >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/05/comedy


and Sandie?
I don't like her voice, her sneering manner, and I hate that paused "erm . . . " after a delivery to give us time to laugh.   Don't bother, it's very rarely funny enough for that.

Isa Isa Baby

Weirdness personified - Halifax
No pleeeeeeeze!!!!   Too late to get my hand up to shield my eyes - no, my tormented brain - from this advert, I slump stunned back into the sofa - the sheer aching weirdness of it all washing over me as I lay gasping, helpless amid a sea of depression and confusion.
PLEASE stop showing this Advert - we're all gonna die.
Quite seriously, I cannot look at this Ad, I do actually hold-up my hand to mask the screen from vision until the sound tells me it's all over - it can't be right . . . . . can it?

06/04/2011

Only 74mpg? What? With ALL THAT TECH?


New TV Ad (View Ad) shows several look-alike Toyotas all doing amazing things - cutaway graphics display TWO engine systems, Petrol (or PETRAL as spelt somewhere I've just seen) and Electric - achieving a staggering 74mpg.
Now I'm not one for Conspiracy Theories - no really, but ONLY 74mpg - surely we've seen figures like that (and with petrol-only driven machines) for the past three or four years?  We're looking for 150mpg - aren't we?