Broadcasting The Wrong Message

Cast your minds back to your school days.

Come on...it's not that long ago!

Remember play time? Remember the big loud mouth bully who prowled the play ground in search of victims, usually smaller, quieter and more vulnerable than anyone else?

You remember him or her as this was certainly not a male domain and how they tormented and annoyed and generally did what they wanted for they knew that they were also the top scorer in the football team or the bruiser in the pack at rugby or in a lot of cases the star pupil, so they also knew that the staff and more importantly the head teacher would continually overlook their "banter" and "horseplay" because if they were disciplined or expelled the school would suffer, stuff the victim, save the school.

So, have you all got that thought in your head? Sadly it doesn't stop at school.
Colleges, universities, industries, factories, shops, NHS, schools, the list goes on, fortunately in more and more areas these people are being dealt with, I did say more though, not all.

It seems that in the world of "entertainment" the popular person with the biggest mouth and full range of small minded little England "banter" and apparent "horseplay" is allowed to do whatever from the governors, who put ratings before decency and who are encouraged by people who really should know better ignoring the offence or rather offences...in favour of their "hero".

And this has nothing to do with political correctness, it's all to do with fairness. If any of you who added a signature to an online petition today acted like your hero in your own work I'm afraid you wouldn't be working today because, quite rightly, you would have been disciplined, and if on a final warning, once investigated and proven, dismissed.

Going back to our playground bully, I can't imagine him/her dashing to their laptop to sign a petition on your behalf, they would probably be eagerly waiting for your replacement so they can start their "banter"all over again...

A Short Space Of Time

This week I celebrated a significant birthday.

Depending how you look it I am now 5 decades old, 50 years old or half a century old.

I think we can get rid of that last one but it got me thinking about the different ways looking at things can influence how you feel and your outlook on life. I'll try and explain through some pictures and comparisons on how far we have come in such a short space of time, there's the first positive.

 I was born in this street, Wilson Street St Helens Lancashire on the 2nd February 1965. This shocked my mum who was in hospital at the time...

The house was a 2 up 2 down terrace house, two bedrooms and two rooms downstairs, the two downstairs rooms didn't include a toilet, that was about 20 yards away from the back door at the bottom of a yard. That's the first change, fortunately in the UK outside toilets seem to be a thing of the not so distant past...thank goodness. 

The downstairs front room had,until I was around the age of 4, an open coal fire, the coal was stored in a hole adjacent to the previously mentioned outside loo. 

The advent of North Sea or natural gas was a massive step forward though gas vans seemed to take 

up loads of my playing out space in the street for a long time as fitters installed gas fires and changed 

pipes to cookers etc... Another big change. 

Something else that some readers may not recognise is this piece of furniture above. This is a radiogram and we had one very similar. It was fantastic with speakers that would be the envy of anything today. It had a great function on it that enabled you to stack 7 singles or albums if you were brave and it automatically played the next single once the current one had finished, no shuffle mind or skip function but revolutionary for its day. 

When I think about how I listen to my music now and the fact that it is stored digitally in a cloud somewhere the short time span seems incredible.  

Speaking of digital technology, this is a picture of a 500mb hard drive being lifted on to a plane in the 1960s...500MB! I am writing this on a 16GB iPad resting it on my knee on the sofa...now that's progress in a short space of time! 

One more example of progression, this was the first video player I used back in 1979, it weighed a ton! And had tape recorder buttons as you can see. I remember having to save up to buy blank tapes as they were around £9.99 for 3 hours! We were lucky as well as had expert advice on choosing VHS rather than Betamax or Phillips...picked the right horse there. 

The short space of time was again illustrated in conversations with my son when he was around 4 or 5 and watching the first cartoon network channels and getting into Scooby Doo et al. "Did you watch Cartoon Network dad?" 

"No son it wasn't around then" "

 you watched Scooby Doo though? " 

"Oh yes every Tuesday after school"

"What if you missed it? Bet you had to tape it or watch the reaper"

"Err nope, if you missed it, you missed it, no repeat and no videos either"

Silence,  as this concept took some thinking it was only around 30 years since I had been that age! 

I could go on about the many many different changes that have happened since 1965, colour tv, satellite TV, man on the moon, the Internet, medical treatments, the list is almost endless.

Not all have been good or as useful as they could have been and there are still areas where improvements need to be made and are frustratingly slow in coming particularly in medicine. 

However the changes that have occurred have been amazing and have happened, I'm glad to say, over a very short period of time...I wonder what I'll put into my centenary blog? 

Spare A Penny For The Karaoke Guv'nor

Over the past months I have had the chance, if that's the right word,to visit and witness the sights and sounds of a good few towns and cities.

It is with the sounds that I would like to concentrate on.

As a music lover and a former amateur tunesmith I have noticed a real and unfortunate decline in the traditional art of busking.

If you cast your minds back just a decade or so ago the streets,subways, alleys, in fact any spare piece of pavement was occupied by a chap or chapess and their guitar, open case,if they were lucky, on the floor or maybe their hat strategically opened to be able to hold the odd bit of change their efforts rewarded them.

Now at this point I'll repeat part of the scene, the person and their guitar...period.

What you heard was either their talent or their need to practice a bit more but it was them!

Various songs presented with varying degrees of success but you admired the effort and in a lot of cases the talent.

Let me bring you up to date and I'll use the example of my nearest city, Liverpool, though I could pick any of a dozen visited over the past months.

The main musical noise to be heard now in Liverpool, home of the Beatles and some of the greatest exponent of the guitar ever, is that of a cheap and tacky backing track which wouldn't seem out of place on the earliest singalong computer games.

In front of these machines are people who wouldn't know one end of a guitar from another and pretend to play and unfortunately not pretend to sing along to the tape.

Novelty at first, pain and sad now.

The voice and guitar can't really compete with extra volume generated by the karaoke kings.

It's like that worse nightmare at a party when the karaoke comes out and you know that the same person will hog it all night pausing only to remind everyone that they should be on The Voice.

Live music seems to have been relegated to the certain pubs or rooms with participants regarded as enthusiasts...real shame.

And it's not just live music that is suffering.

My other old hobby of DJ seems to be in the doldrums as well, a wedding I attended had a DJ armed not with discs but yep you guessed it a karaoke machine into which he and he alone sang all night, it was truly awful.

Karaoke was fun when it first arrived but now it seems no one can do anything without the backing track to support them...hardly surprising I suppose when TV programmes such as X Factor are just a glorified karaoke night.

It's time for our guitar toting musicians to hit the streets early, grab the best spots, grip your plectrums and get playing again, let's push karaoke back to where it belongs...behind closed doors.

Keeping Abreast Off The News

Now as those of you who have had the misfortune to stumble across or even read these rambles will know I am no prude.

So it may surprise some people to read that I was not totally disappointed to hear that the nations favourite alternative to Andrex is seemingly ditching the image usually reserved for the first inside page of its daily comic. 

So why I hear you yawn are you not disappointed? Well I am looking at this from a slightly different angle which is my want.  

This publication is thrust upon the public every day under the guise of being a newspaper, it isn't, so let's get that out of the way first. It then aims itself at the so called working man, another myth, but, a little closer to the truth, a word not normally associated with it, as males are in the vast majority the ones attracted to the image. 

It then in many cases takes the moral high ground and lectures to its masses, whilst looking to take their minds off their drivel by distracting it with an image that goes against what they preach. 

Images like these can be found everywhere on the Internet, so I'm told...ahem...so would there be any other reason to continue this practice? Maybe that is why it will continue on their online edition. 

But it may now challenge the printed copy to raise its game. There is no distraction, there is no skipping the front page and the pointless comment and opinion to gawp at something before turning to the back pages and read about Chelsea or Man U, it may now have to put something reasonable and dare I say accurate inside its pages...I live in hope, but I can't help feeling they may have boobed. 

Happy New Year?

Well...is it 2016 yet?

I write this at the end of the first full week of 2015 and what a week! 

I mentioned at the end of my final blog of last year that we went into 2015 hoping for better but I had my doubts...within days those doubts were confirmed.

It has been a horrible week.

I am not going to linger on the horrific events across the channel as we have all seen and heard more than enough of those scary 48 hours...and thoughts go out to all who lost their lives. 

What I will say though is surely now it is time to for everyone to stand back, take a breath and realise that unity is the biggest weapon we all have...

Just as sickening in my opinion were the attempts by some to use the tragedy for their own ends and promote the devision that is so dangerous. Blogging and tweeting about immigration, multiculturalism and putting it forward as a cause of what happened is truly loathsome. 

Creating even more fear, paranoia and mistrust is really useful isn't it? 

And if anyone is being swayed by the tasteless self promotion have a read of this from Dickens and ponder over it...

There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit, 'who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

On a more trivial topic the new year has started for myself with someone giving me a late Christmas present of some kind of virus...apparently there are around 5 different virus' doing the rounds at the moment which is a bit scary as I have only had the one...so I was encouraged to read that there could be a new anti biotic on the way...all we need now is to be able to see someone who can prescribe it before the virus goes on its own. 

I did make a kind of resolution to make these blogs less of a rant in 2015... So I will always try to include something trivial but factual...so last Sunday before the virus invaded I was heading into town in the old horseless wagon. 

My route includes several roundabouts. 

I reached the first roundabout at an unfortunate time as I had to wait for at least 15 vehicles of various descriptions, sizes, colours and drivers...all different but with one thing in common...their vehicles appeared to all have either, no indicators, or all their bulbs had gone, what a coincidence! Or is  the cynic in me correct in thinking that they weren't being used? Perish the thought...although as 80% of them were also in the wrong lane for the exit they were taking I do tend to believe my cynicism. 

None of us are perfect drivers, I have been driving now for longer than I care to remember 30years+ and what I am going to suggest frightenes me as much as anyone...but could it be time for a refresher session every 10 years or so? 

I realise that this would exempt drivers of BMWs and Audi's as I am aware that their cars are not fitted with indicator lights at all. 

Happier New Year to you all...

  

Looking Forward In The Rear View Mirror

Around a year ago I decided to make several resolutions for 2014, I succeeded with 3 out of the 5. 

One of my successes was promising myself a little spare time each month and put some ramblings to the digital equivalent of paper and write a blog.

This was the first time I had done anything like this and I would like to thank the 400+people who have opened and hopefully read about my take on things.

The subjects have varied wildly depending on what caught my eye at the time, they have ranged from Groundhog Days, to Good and Dark Friday's. From musical opinion to poignant anniversaries and social comment. A lot of the subjects are still valid today, which brings me to this particular ramble.

As this is, more than likely, the final blog of 2014 I thought it would be good to share some hopes for 2015 and relate it to some of the topics covered.

One of my early attempts was written at a time when thousands of people were being affected by serious flooding caused by exceptional storms and aided by poor planning and even poorer investment. The British "blitz" spirit was shown as the poor people rowed up high streets in anything that floated. I can't help thinking they would have preferred their river to have been dredged more or having the correct number environment agency staff doing the job they do so well rather than reduced numbers, or more money channelled if you excuse the pun to prevention rather than a single rail line reducing one journey by 20 minutes.

There was also a hope that lessons had been learned about planning so weather wouldn't bring chaos as easily as it did...this hope is extinguished because I write this twenty four hours after a few inches of snow practically brought the Midlands and North of England to a stand still, a disgrace, for a so called top table nation. 

A highlight of 2014 from an entertainment point of view was the reunion of the remaining Python's. Though it was never going to be anywhere near their younger days, it was a pleasure to have them and their comic genius in the forefront once again. 

As I stated in my blog at the time though the small mindedness of the  politically correct minority almost ruined it with senseless censoring. Can't the great British public think for themselves? If a show with a reputation for adult humour is being shown live then guess what? You will get some adult humour, if you don't like it turn it off...I am hoping that this kind of nonsense ceases in 2015 though I very much doubt it, I fear as we move into election year what we see and hear will be as controlled as ever. 

On that subject as a follow up to another blog I really do hope that the sleeping giant known as the "voter" will rise from its decades of slumber and meander down to its local polling station in May and give the country a true reflection of its feelings rather than the tiny, and I mean tiny, percentage of potential extremists seizing their moment, the consequences this time of saying I can't be bothered are very dangerous indeed. 

When I look back over my ramblings this year I am disappointed that the majority seem like a rant. But as unimportant as my views are its vital that opposing views are aired to the minority driving the agenda at the moment. 

One resolution from me would be to be able to write about more positive things in 2015, to blog about normal everyday stuff...I have a feeling though that this would one resolution I would fail to keep. 

I hope you all have a great New Year and happy and peaceful 2015 and thanks again for reading. 

Seasoning Reasoning

Now before I start I need to say that this is not a rant against depression which is a serious and debilitating illness and should never be taken lightly.

My point here is the annual moan in by people saying " oh aren't these dark nights awful?" Aren't these dark mornings awful?" Isn't it depressing? Etc etc etc... As if this is a rare event.

Allow me to explain why it happens...and how lucky we are.

It all stems from elementary geography...

This is the planet Earth...where we live

We are here...

Now as you will notice we are quite northerly...in fact very northerly...

It gets better...billions of years ago the Earth was knocked a little skew wiff and ended up at a slight angle...

This slight leaning is what gives us the seasons and as we are northerly between October and March our days are shorter and nights longer but...guess what? In the summer we have very long days and hardly any night...but that tends to be forgotten...I said at the start that we were lucky...here's why...if it wasn't for the natural weather phenomenon that is the Gulf Stream we would have extreme Siberian type winters most years...instead we have what we have and considering our position on our planet that justifies the word lucky.

So the next time you feel like moaning at it being dark at 4 or not light until 8 think about the dawn breaking at 3:30 and sun setting at 22:30 in just s few months and enjoy the special atmosphere that is Autumn and Winter.