Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Television, as we know it, is on its last legs. After a few early morning and evening dips into the schedules while staying in a hotel and killing time last week, I’m convinced it’s past its sell-by date.
I’ve been away watching some cricket and staying in a hotel that offers TV. Which means either endless repeats or the dross that is breakfast TV and the One Show. Take your pick, they’re equally mind-numbingly awful.
I would never make a telly critic. I haven’t watched soaps since Meg Richardson was running the Crossroads Motel and the idea of a good plot in Emmerdale Farm was grandad whittling wood in his shed.
Indeed Hunter Davies once got the sack from the Mail on Sunday, where he was TV critic. He wrote a piece admitting he’d just watched EastEnders for the first time and the editor, so enraged by this lack of engagement with the favourite programmes of the hoi polloi, promptly despatched an executive 360 miles to Loweswater, chauffeur-driven Jag and all, to deliver the chop.
The telly, one of the great inventions of its generation, has fallen behind the times. Everybody is streaming these days, watching stuff online and inseparable from their smartphones. Bargain Hunt, housing repairs and endless foodie shows just don’t hack it.
Gosh, the thrill of that day when we got our first set. You could barely make out the picture, in a little postage stamp in the middle of the tiny screen, but it was a revelation in home entertainment and we sat round that box as a family in wonder.
Then it got more sophisticated and we had Corrie and Neighbours and documentaries and we didn’t have to sit watching the test card in the afternoons.
But it’s peaked. I’ve just renewed my TV licence. For the first time ever the words “should I?” came into my thinking.
People have seen remarkable inventions. They will always want something new, something different. And watching what I can only term drivel on my hotel television I realised that TV is on borrowed time as a younger generation gets used to AI and other rather scary marvels that will inevitably follow.
For once the police were standing up for the rights of the majority
Ever since that big coronation procession, when the police mistook a royal superfan for a superglue user, and half a dozen rather odd types belonging to anti-monarchy group Republic were arrested though never charged, protesters of various hues have been forecasting our descent into fascism.
Policing that day was no-win. Either the cops stood by brewing tea and doing the hokey-cokey or they got a bit heavy with so-called peaceful protesters who think yelling into a megaphone in front of nervous horses is a peaceful protest.
In the end tens of thousands of onlookers were safe and their right to enjoy a joyful event was not disrupted by a selfish few who believe they and they alone know all truths in the world.
By all means keep a watchful eye on a Government that believes it can play fast and loose with our rights, but a descent into totalitarianism? Not really.
Other countries do fascism a lot better than us, but our protest groups wisely stay at home. It shocks them when for once the police stand up for the rights of the vast majority.
Crumbs, I missed World Biscuit Day
While all that coronation palaver was going on, we missed some much more important events.
National Password Day on the first Thursday in the month. The promotion of better password habits that could prevent you being scammed. It’s incredible that 123456 remains the world’s most popular password. Popular with criminals that is.
We missed World Bee Day, International Turtle Week, National Doughnut Day, something about towels, oh and World Biscuit Day. All going on while we watched that interminable service in the abbey.
As it was also International Tea Drinkers’ Day, I will dunk a Rich Tea in homage.
How would today’s children cope with the 11 plus?
Those stiff upper lips are trembling above loose, flabby chins as the nation’s 10 and 11-year-olds descend into the abyss of tears and mental health issues brought on by a few stiff questions in their SATs test.
Someone should tell these weaklings about the 11 plus that we had in days of yore. Your whole future could be decided by one day’s exams. We were ruthlessly divvied up. Many of our pals were sent to a different school.
Standard Assessment Tests are designed to measure English and maths skills. It was “really hard” whined one head teachers’ union official.
Well, lips will never stiffen and there will only be a trail of damaged kids if we keep giving them the kid glove treatment.
Andy to know
Here’s a worry. A poll shows that the most popular of our royals are William and the ubiquitously talented Catherine. William got more than 60 per cent of the vote.
But Prince Andrew scored 11 per cent. Which means one in nine think he’s a good role model. By that token several of them are running the country and sitting on juries. The judgment of the great British public does sometimes keep me awake at nights.
