Up Into The Dark

Oi! BBC Breakfast! A quick word of advice, anyone who has time to text into your show with views on anything whatsoever is someone with too much time on their hands and instead of texting would probably have been trying to lick the limescale off the kettle until you gave them an excuse to do something even more fruitless so you can generally discount their opinion, so will you please get on with actually reporting on things and providing analysis instead of indulging in pointless voxpopping...

The dumbing down continues. It's so bad I've thought about tuning in to Eamonn Holmes on SKY News in the mornings just to escape Twatface Turnbull and Smack-Faced Williams speaking to three different reporters in different parts of the country about 6 inches of snow, with panning shots to show that, wow, side roads are still open because there's not actually that much snow, and letting us know that there was a shower of snow around 4am while they sat in the car but it stopped about 4.30am. THIS IS NOT NEWS!

This morning it was an in-depth study of the postal service and Agnes in Ayrshire wanted everyone to know that her postie was great and delivered things in good time. Well that's just bloody marvellous Agnes. I'm sure there's only one postie in the whole of Ayrshire so he'll know exactly who he is and his employers will make sure he gets a massive bonus.

Seriously, what is it with news by proxy these days? Coming up a story on the intricacies of the international monetary system with specific emphasis on sub-prime lending and the knock-on effect on base-line borrowing for which we could speak to a major economist, but we've had an email from Margaret who says that her shopping bill has increased by £15 in the last 6 months so we'll talk about that instead.

If I was that interested in the views of a random selection of time-rich people I didn't know on the big world events I'd rather just walk down the street stopping every third person and asking them what they thought about the current situation in Palestine. But I'm not. I watch you to be informed and educated. But news is now edutainment. A funfair ride. A serious of headline buzzwords, followed by shock, horror, outrage and the fact that 'something must be done'. It's like watching Daily Wail the Soap Opera.

I'd listen to the radio instead, but it doesn't get rid of the fact that what is going on with the TV news is wrong. Yes. Something must be done.

I was beaten to the ferris wheel tonight.... (dammit I'd be planning this for ages and only just got the time to stop tonight).

It was almost this one.