The Obscurer

Monday 19th September 2005

A Cross Post

(cross posted at Biased BBC)

Not content with sometimes showing Muslims in a fair light, rather than portraying every last one of them as the evil jihadists we know them to be, the BBC has now decided to try to rehabilitate the failed doctrine of communism; and what’s more, to target pre-school children in their despicable plan.

How else can you explain the new segment Summerton Mill in the children’s programme Tikkabilla? For there, in an animated feature that purports to be a simple tale of rural nostalgia, you will find a cat, called Mao Tse-tung! This character is depicted as a sleepy and somewhat benign figure; a far cry from the former ruler of communist China, responsible for the Cultural Revolution and complicit in the deaths of millions through famine. Furthermore, is it any coincidence that the cow in the show is called Francois? Named after Francois Mitterand, former socialist president of France, no doubt. I have yet to work out a leftist connection for the main character of Dan, or the dog Fluffer, but I’ll bet they’re there somewhere, and given a few hours spent in my darkened room in a twisted rage I will come up with something.

It must all seem so very amusing to the metropolitan Marxists in their ivory towers at Broadcasting House, as they plot new ways to indoctrinate our youth and spread their pervasive plans for a communist international. Realising that they have been thwarted time and again by the keen eyes of Biased BBC as we battle their worldview across the adult media, they have decided to switch tactics and get at our children. Who was it said “give me the child at two and by screening BBC propaganda I will show you a communist as an adult”? Actually, I’m not sure anyone has ever said that, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Well tough, BBC, because we have spotted your game, and we will fight. And win!

To make matters worse, Summerton Mill appears to have replaced Bonny, Banana and Mo, which was my bestest, most favourite part of Tikkabilla. Just what do I pay my license fee for?* In fact if I wasn’t secretly in love with presenter Sarah-Jane Honeywell I wouldn’t bother watching Tikkabilla at all anymore.

* I don’t actually pay my license fee, being so old and curmudgeonly that I get one for free, but if I did have to pay then I wouldn’t anyway, as a protest against the Biased Broadcasting Corporation and their unfair telly-tax, which you have to pay regardless of whether you watch the BBC or not, although I do, a lot. But you get my point.

Update 26/9/05: A big thank you to whoever nominated this post for inclusion in Tim Worstall’s latest BritBlog Round-Up. It is nice to know that I struck a cord (chord?) with someone, and that there are others out there equally frustrated by the BBC’s one-eyed prejudice!

8 Comments
Saturday 17th September 2005

I Didn't Lose Myself In The Crowd

By now you either already know, or aren’t interested, that John Band’s blog Shot By Both Sides in no more. I don’t know the full details, but apparently someone took exception to something he had written and chose to respond through blackmail and threats, including contacting John’s employers. John B felt he had no option other than to pull the plug.

I was never a regular reader of SBBS; it was one of those annoyingly prolific blogs with posts coming out faster than I could read them. He was a bit hit and miss, a bit near the knuckle and provocative at times (obviously too provocative in the opinion of one particularly twattish individual) and I can’t say I agreed with everything he wrote; but when he was good he was brilliant.

One post I remember reading a few months back concerned his views on pseudonyms for bloggers; unless you were employed by the government he couldn’t understand why people didn’t write under their real names. I suspect he is reviewing his opinion on this matter, and may well reappear soon with a different blog under a different name, perhaps with a different Magazine song as its title. I hope so, and wish him luck.

When I started The Obscurer I hadn’t read another blog, and so I just thought it was natural to write under an assumed name. No, in case you havn’t guessed I’m not called Quinn; who refers to themselves by their surname for God’s sake? It isn’t even my surname; I picked it as it is the name of both the central, enigmatic character in one of my favourite novels (Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy) and of a former City hero (Niall). Since then I have toyed with writing under my own name, but decided against it. Other than the slight egotism of seeing my name in “print” across the internet I can’t see any advantages. There are, however, some definite disadvantages; for example, I haven’t yet, but I may want to write something scathing and critical about my employers whilst simultaneously keeping my job. A pseudonym is great for that, allowing more room for manoeuvre when it comes to such self censorship.

John B will still be writing over at The Sharpener, apparently; and I will keep my eyes peeled to see if he does start up a new blog; The Pseudo-nym Magazine, perhaps?

2 Comments
Thursday 15th September 2005

A Pub Crawl

Despite cricket’s recent boost in popularity, football is not dead yet; certainly judging by the scenes round my way last Saturday. Does Sky have a financial interest in some of the companies that sell illegal satellite equipment to pubs so they can receive live football from foreign television channels? Whether they do or not, the somewhat odd decision for Sky not to televise the Manchester derby a few days ago certainly gave a fillip to that black market industry. So it was that at the unusual hour of three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon (a crazy time to hold a football match) I went out with my dad to try and watch City versus United, beamed live from Old Trafford.

Our first stop, the George & Dragon, was quickly dismissed. A true blue City pub that I knew would show the game (it was there that I watched our victory over Sunderland, live and illegal thanks to some Danish broadcaster) I was not wholly surprised to find the beer garden with its huge outside screen totally mobbed; the bar was five deep, at least. It didn’t look too much fun, so we decided to hop in my car and go on a tour of our locality.

I suspected The Greyhound would be showing the match (last season I stumbled upon them showing our game against Arsenal live from Highbury), but many other people had obviously thought the same. The car park was chocker, and as I couldn’t immediately see anywhere else to park we decided to try the British Legion, which I had been told would be showing the game. Surely the Legion wouldn’t be that busy, would they?

Wrong; we actually got turned away as they were so full, probably the first time anyone has been turned away from the Legion in the entire history of the organisation. With that my knowledge of pubs likely to have access to the game was exhausted. Where next?

We decided to give the Kenilworth a go, and we were in luck, of sorts. There was no doubt they were showing the game; you could tell by the way people were standing in the car park looking through the doors, craning their necks for a view of the big screen. The car park itself was also full, so people had been forced to liberally abandon their vehicles here, there and everywhere, blocking junctions and driveways. Let’s try somewhere else, we thought.

We thought we’d give The Greyhound one last drive by to see if there was anywhere to park, but on arrival, when we saw it was now as packed as the Kenilworth, we decided to sack it. Clearly anywhere that was showing the game would be ridiculously mobbed; we parked the car back at my house and decided to pop into the Red Lion where we knew we could just follow the City game and the cricket on Sky Sports News while having a drink.

When we got there The Red was busier than expected, and it instantly became clear why; they were also showing the game, but fortunately for us they didn’t appear to have advertised the fact so that while we had to stand to watch the match we were at least not crushed. The pub gradually filled up a bit during our stay, as people phoned their mates to tell them where the game was on, but it remained bearable. While there I learned that The Weavers was also showing the match; they must have only recently invested in the criminal equipment, as they didn’t show the City-Sunderland game a few weeks ago. In fact, at the moment, I haven’t got any solid evidence that there is a single pub in the land that didn’t show the derby match; does anyone know of an exception to this rule?

So it was that last Saturday the purveyors of illegal satellite gear to Greater Manchester were left laughing all the way to the bank, and I was able to enjoy a few pints while watching the most dreadfully boring derby match of recent years.

Good result, though.

3 Comments
Tuesday 13th September 2005

Stumps

I’m glad I’m not a betting man. One of my best mates is, and I am forever bemused by his enthusiasm for absurd spread bets. This summer, however, when he said he had backed the Aussies to win the Ashes I almost felt like joining in; despite the recent improvements in the England cricket team, and the shaky performance of the Australians during the one-day series’, I felt that come the five day game their undoubted superiority would tell and there could only be one winner. It seemed like easy money to me; but I didn’t succumb, and so had a lucky escape. My mate has lost a small fortune.

All the way through this test series I have thought that the Australians would eventually show their class and turn us over. Even going into the last day at The Oval I would have put my money on Warne spinning the English batsmen out, followed by the Aussie’s rattling together their rapid fire winning runs; and yet it never happened. I still find it hard to take in, but looking back objectively at the whole Ashes series (or as objectively as I can) I have to say that England have not just been the better side but have largely dominated this series and have been superior in all departments (with, I guess, the specific exceptions of spin bowling and wicket keeping). Gaining a first innings lead in four out of five tests, even making the Aussies follow-on at Trent Bridge, illustrates this well; that we have simply batted and bowled better than the opposition. But I still can’t quite believe it.

Where does cricket go from here, and can the recent popularity the sport has gained be built upon? Much has been made of live test matches now leaving terrestrial television and “disappearing to Sky”; but as Sky is present in over 30% of homes I doubt disappearing is the right word to use. That said, I do feel that part of the decline in the popularity of the sport in recent years has been down to the way the matches have been split between Channel 4 and Sky, making many games unavailable to the majority of the public. When the BBC had exclusive rights, and showed every test and one day international, as well as the NatWest cup games and some Sunday league matches, cricket seemed to be more a part of the fabric of national life. I was more than happy when cricket first moved to Channel 4 and their coverage has been excellent, a huge improvement on the BBC’s efforts, and with a few exceptions (Mark Nicholas’s occasional embarrassing hyperbolic commentary, sounding like Alan Partridge reading a Batman comic; those two buffoons who do the BetFair adverts at the breaks, better known to passive Cbeebies viewers at “the twats from Big Cook Little Cook“) I will miss the way they have covered the sport; but I do think the decision to put one day matches and some tests on satellite TV did overall lower the profile of the game. Similarly I feel that the Rugby Union missed a trick after the success of the England team in the World Cup in not trying to get a regular prime time Zurich premiership show on terrestrial television. There may have been all sorts of practical problems preventing them from doing so, but if they had then I think they could have capitalised on the publicity from the World Cup victory and increased the popularity of the game; instead interest seems to have waned back to pre- World Cup levels.

Then again, I don’t have Sky; if I did then perhaps I would still feel that Cricket and Rugby have a good presence on television. Perhaps the best way to build upon the surge of interest in cricket is to have a successful cricket team; after all, that is the reason more people are suddenly interested in the game again today, and perhaps Sky’s money is the best way of ensuring that this success is consolidated and built upon. By the same token perhaps the decline in interest in Rugby Union is more down to the decline in the success of the England rugby team than anything else. But if success of the national teams is a factor, how do you explain the continued popularity of football in England?

Update 14/9/05: The Daily Mail is hilarious (unintentionally, of course) on this matter today. There is their leader, “Hijacking the Ashes heroes” that complains about Labour leaping on board the cricket bandwagon; when in fact all the Mail are doing is hijacking the Ashes to bash the Labour party. While making a fair point about Duncan Fletcher having just been awarded British citizenship, stating that “New Labour hate everything cricket stands for” is plainly absurd, and complaining about “the disgraceful sale of school playing fields” is an incredibly hypocritical statement for a Tory paper to make. But hypocrisy is their stock in trade as their front page story “Labour’s great cricket sell-out” makes clear. Yes, it is all Labour’s fault, for conceding to the the ECB’s own request to remove test matches “listed status”, and for then failing to prevent the ECB from signing an entirely legal contract, approved by OFCOM, with Sky to televise cricket over the next four years. Don’t look surprised; this is classic Daily Mail in action; a fierce proponent of free markets and the scourge of the nanny state…until such a position provides a result they don’t like, or an alternative standpoint can be used to bash Labour, and then their fine principles are jettisonned in the blink of an eye.

I would call it a silly newspaper, if it weren’t so nasty; but I have just spent the past few minutes of my life criticising the Mail, and I feel cheapened as a consequence. I don’t want to be dragged down to their level, so I will shut up now.

4 Comments
Wednesday 7th September 2005

Mr Clarke Goes To Strasbourg

In a moving speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke declared

Our strengthening of human rights needs to acknowledge a truth which we should all accept, that the right to be protected from torture and ill-treatment must be considered side by side with the right to be protected from the death and destruction caused by indiscriminate terrorism, sometimes caused, instigated or fomented by nationals from countries outside the EU.

This is a difficult balance to get right and it requires us all as politicians to ask where our citizens – who elected all of us here – would expect us to draw the line.

Well, at least he is prepared to defer to the electorate, and you have got to hope that they will want to draw the line the right side of torture; but is he really saying that the very principle of torture is now up for grabs?

Unbe-fucking-lievable.

Update: NoseMonkey covers this better, and in far greater detail here.

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