Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse

TV-licensing in the UK, providing the best TV in the world

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Lacking a TV, last night the best girlfriend and I watched the highly entertaining, strangely gripping, though utterly pointless Polar Challenge by the BBC’s Top Gear crew (and a plethora of support vehicles) on the BBC’s Iplayer, uninterrupted by commercials. Prior to that, we laughed our heads off listening to the Radio 4’s The Now Show (conveniently served onto my Ipod via the miracle that is podcasting). On my way to the airport I got competely immersed in the stories of the second world war codebreakers in Bletchley park. My day outside work is pretty much scheduled around my favourite Radio 4 programs, all free of advertising. After living in New Zealand for so long, having to endure pretty much the worst TV that is on this earth I truly enjoy the miracle that is the BBC: TVNZ and its competitors (yes, even though John Campbell is an utterly charming, enthusiastic and at times even funny presenter, he can only do so much with the stuff his editorial team is dishing him out. And while Carol Hirschfeld might be one of the most intelligent and the most attractive woman in television, even she can’t make 30 minutes of lame ‘current affairs’ more interesting. Please, John and Carol: more Paxman than Susan Wood) show mainly regurgitated American light entertainment, interrupted by 17 minutes of (loud and cheap) advertising per hour, with bloated news shows that find Paris Hilton more interesting than elections in France and a tractor falling over in Temuka (with interviews with the farmer, his wife, her cousin, the ambulance driver and the minister for occupational health) more interesting than the political crisis in Pakistan. Documentaries ? Either you would get the excruciating ‘human interest’ stories a la 20/20, or shoddily researched, sensationalist fodder from such sensasionalist  30 minute shows like Close Up. But you get what you pay for.

So here I pay my 140 pounds per year (which equates to roughly 40 pence per day) and I do it happily.

40 pence a day for Clarkson, John Humphreys and the Now show? A bargain.

Part of me, Part of you.

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Now that I have learned how to embed youtube videos, may I just add my favourite song of the last Finn Brother Album. Come to think of it, this rates as one of the best songs of the two Finns ever, equalling some of their Crowded House stuff.

Enjoy…

Was (not Was) in London

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May I please announce that I just had a Non – ST elevation Myocardial Infarction after reading this:

“Was (Not Was) have just announced a rare UK concert at the London Islington Academy on Saturday 26th April. Tickets are priced £22 and go on sale today”

Well, I just got two tickets.

Was not Was. Live. In my lifetime. Unbebloodybelievable.

Racism in East Germany. It just won’t stop.

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A very touching article that is immensely rewarding (and troublesome) to read for those of you able to read German in the rhinean daily Kölner Stadtanzeiger: It describes the experiences of a West-German protestant priest and his family, sent to Rudolstadt in Thuringia to work as a religious guidance teacher. Problem was: his wife’s mum was from India, and she and their children had black hair and were mildly more tanned than the other Rudolstaedters. The kids being called ‘Nigger’, regularly beaten up at school and never invited to other children’s party was only the beginning: Some shops refused to serve Miriam (the mum), she was constantly treated condescedingly by the locals, and comments like ‘in the past, people like you would have been sterilised’ forced them into complete isolation.

Now the family is back in West Germany.

This is of course not an isolated incidence.

Last year’s manhunt in Muegeln and the echoes of racist incidents in places like Rostock continue to reverberate through the German psyche, as they have for 18 years. There continues to be a deeply ingrained suspicion and fear of everybody who hails from a different culture than those marvellous East Germans. It’s almost like there’s a invisible wall in these people’s souls, build to shut out everything that does not fit into the narrow confines of their culture.

I wonder how many generations it’s going to take before humans with an accent or some more pigmentation (apart from an Mallorcan tan) will be safe to enter East Germany.