As of the start of this paragraph, the eager eyes of umpteen million political car-crash loving viewers are only thirteen minutes away from seeing Britain's most popular fascist appear on BBC One's flagship political debate show. The previous sentence was never one I foresaw myself typing during my short and anteillustrious blogging non-career, but there we are, I've been forced into it by the moronic actions of a million protest-vote cretins. If not for them, GSGC could have continued to wallow in internet obscurity.
So, our Question Time players for tonight, shortly to be introduced by BBC super-stalwart Dimbleby, include Demon Headmaster clone and Justice Minister (surely a job for a Demon Headmaster itself) Jack Straw, woman who appears in the Guardian and the Indy a lot Bonnie Greer, generic Lib Dem Chris Huhne, Conservative something-or-other Baroness Warsi (didn't she write the Scarlet Pimpernel?), and a room full of angry hippies and BNP supporters on their best behaviour. Oh, and a fat racist.
And we're off! To answer Mark Lawson's question posed in the G2 this morning, Griffin's been sat second from the right, with Bonnie Greer on one side and Dimbleby on the other. I note she's got her back to the racist swine, in quite a fantastic gesture of pretending he doesn't exist. She keeps this up throughout the show, even when addressing him directly, and sometimes when pointing viciously at him. Her eyes are locked directly on the studio lights, presumably so she can blind herself and not have to see him at the end when she gets up.
First question about how shit the BNP is goes to Jack Straw, who says yes, they're well shit, because they define themselves on race. He goes on to talk about how the World Wars were won by so many black and asian soldiers. Griffin bats back with "Churchill hated Muslims" and "my Dad was in the RAF while yours was a consciencious objector." That was, of course, fucking cheap, and the audience ain't buying it. Dimbleby calls him on his bullshit, which he pretends to ignore.
A black bloke in the audience asks why Griffin won't acknowledge the contribution immigrants like his parents have made. Racism-chops reckons he's been misquoted, but won't say which quotes in the media were false. Not even the one about holocaust denial.
Baroness Warsi digs out a quote from a (presumably former, by the way fatty denies it) communications type calling Churchill a "bleeping bleep" (bless the BBC compliance department) who shouldn't have joined the war. Griffin splutters. He'll be doing that a lot tonight.
A bloke at the back of the room has just noted that Enoch Powell had the same attitudes as Griffin. He seems to be reading it as given that the room liked Powell, for some mad reason. Then it's Huhne's go to have a dig at the racist nobhead, finding his own quote-of-evil. I couldn't really concentrate on it, mind, because I just realised how much Chris Huhne looked like the deputy head at my primary school.
Anyway, just tuned in on Dimbleby observing that he's on Youtube hanging out with the head of the KKK. Griffin denies it, saying he was only the leader of "a Ku Klux Klan, an almost totally non-violent one". He's looking ever more blustery, even trying for a rabble rousing "why should anyone trust any politician" line, normally the kind to make the QT audiences scream with approval, but the best he gets is a don't-try-to-play-us murmur. Jack Straw calls him the Dr. Strangelove of British politics, which was actually a fucking nice comparison.
What the hell IS an ethnic minority, asks some girl, in the audience, followed by why did you deny the holocaust from an unfortunately stereotypical Jewish-looking lad. I can't explain because of the law! claims Tubby, shot down by the two people in the room who pretty much make said law. He stutters and blusters on, and then Dimbleby says its time to move on.
"Why is Islam a wicked and vicious faith" asks an audience chappy. Griffin replies it's because a
literal interpretation of the Koran would be well bad, with the stoning and the whipping and that. Britain should remain a Christian country, he claims, rather missing all those nasty things in the Christian holy book. Warsi gets another dig in, and says he brings Christianity into disrepute.
I'm going to stop mentioning when people get a dig in, otherwise this will be a long read. Bonnie Greer's coming in with a nice speech about how selective Nick Griffin is about British history, which in his book seems to start at 700AD. Later, Fatty Grffin reckons the English have been here for over seventeen thousand years. Bonnie Greer corrects him, pointing out that the only humans present at that point were Neanderthals. She's too classy to point out the obvious gag, mind.
We're 35 minutes in, and it looks like the whole thing's descending into a BNP-bashing circus. Obviously the panel can only work with the questions they're given, but nobody wants to get off the subject of what a bunch of shits they are and how wrong they are to be racist. Obviously, none of this needs saying, and everyone spending an entire political panel show reiterating it gives too much attention to them. Having said that, we are now onto Labour's immigration policies, and Warsi's taken the opportunity to point out her lot would change immigration for the better. But not in a racist way. But for the better. But not racist. Ad infinitum. Tubby seems to be taking notes, so look out for a recycling of this bit for future misquote purposes.
Good ol' Jack Straw. He's almost certainly espousing some kind of clever policy on immigration now, but I can't for the life of me concentrate on his hypnotically boring voice.
A bloke at the back shouts out that we should kick 'em all out, or similar. He's wearing a horrible yellow jumper, and he asked the question about Enoch Powell earlier. Another bloke sat in front of him goes yeeurrr. I can see where the dickhead contingent's sitting, now.
Chris Huhne's dropping a classic Lib Dem trick now, by dissing things that any previous Tory or Labour government's done. It's one of those that only a party which hasn't been in power since the fifties can't pull off, unless Jack Straw later intends to have a go at past Liberal policies on gramophone ownership or mangles.
A bloke now has a question for 'Dick' Griffin. There's a cheer, like you'd get in the school cafeteria when someone drops a plate.
"Under ten minutes left, and I didn't want this whole programme to be about the BNP" - Dimbleby there, demonstrating how little control he really had over proceedings tonight. Still, we now have a question about whether the Daily Mail should have printed the Jan Moir article about Stephen Gately. Is this a weak parrallel for racism on Question Time I spy? Of course it fucking well is, and Bonnie Greer is so damn careful to not look Captain Racism in the eye while she approves of Jan Moir's right to write the article while at the same time knocking her prejudice. Chris Huhne has a go, too, but drops the ball by mentioning the racist elephant in the room. Damn it, man, try to emulate some Greer-class!
Tubby has a go at the teaching of "homosexuality... indeed, any sex, to primary school children", which would indicate that breeding rates in a BNP-led Britain would be likely to shoot through the roof. He also claims "there is no head of the Christian sect in Britain" which rather makes me wonder what exactly the Queen's job is, then.
"The British people have too much common sense" says our Bonnie, with regards to being swayed by Griffin's appearance on QT. Judging by the standard of common sense I see out in the street, the average BNP voter must have less than most doormats.
And so, with a little more bluster and racist-dissing, Dimbleby calls a halt, and the credits roll. So what have we learnt tonight? That racists appear to melt under studio lights, and that members of the Big Three political parties are always willing to climb all over each other to point out how not racist they are. We've learnt that Bonnie Greer is the epitome of class, while I'm quite the opposite, choosing to refer to a man's unsightly waist a little too often for humour. It's alright, he's a racist; racists don't have feelings. We've learnt that grey hair and headmastery appearances are de rigeur when it comes to putting down bigotry, and that my usual style of televisual blog-review doesn't work as well with political hot topics as with glossy entertainment shows. This is almost certainly because Nick Griffin doesn't have a very good tan, what with needing to look whiter than Daz.
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The Box of Judgement
Yes, folks, just when you thought it was safe to return to an obscure part of the web with fewer pageviews than Harold Shipman had Facebook friends, GSGC returns to blither inanely for slightly too many paragraphs at the same time as fan favourite Shipwrecked (Channel4, 1230, Sundays) saunters back onto our hungover screens.
Ah, Shipwrecked! Where else can the hungover of our fair isle go to witness a band of poshos, fucktards and cavemen-from-the-stupid-ages argue about whether to build a shelter to protect them from vicious storms or lie in the sun all day? Where else on British television can such a high dose of self-involvement and ego be present in one location? No wonder these throwbacks are sent out to a desert island in the Pacific - at some point all those shoulder-chips will explode in a bloody, horrible mess, and nobody wants to have to clean that up in Luton town centre.
Anyway, things kick off especially nicely this year, since the tribes have been forced to elect a leader, resulting in Thug #1 and Bint #2 being elected leaders of their respective isles. Bint #1 is less-than-happy at Thug #1's plans to maybe do some work at some point, and the whole thing kicks off in a joyous explosion of what-the-fuck.
Television nowadays has turned the corner of Reith's inform/educate/entertain mandate and has overriden the whole thing with 'judge' instead. Judge idiots on game shows! Judge parents for having fat kids! Judge foreigners for their crazy ways! Judge poshos, fucktards and cavemen for having the temerity to be poshos, fucktards and cavemen on your telly! How dare they? Then, when you're done with all that, the shiny box in the corner of the room can judge you right back. Why aren't you recycling more? Eat healthier food, fatso! People are dying and you're just watching television! You make us sick!
Anyway, back to Shipwrecked for a moment, where aggressive Bint #1 has just screamed in the face of Thug #1 in the rudest way possible; "who are you to tell me I don't have manners?"
I love to judge strangers.
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Bitchanca!
How does that Bianca Jackson do it? Not only has she starred in what is possibly EastEnders' most ill-concieved TV trailer ever (and if you haven't seen it, be grateful and make sure never to turn on the Beeb at switch-over time for the next week or two, just in case), turns out she's also the business world's most evil bitchmonster on the side.
This week's Apprentice has to rank as one of the best ever, alongside that one with the cheese. Beautiful juxtapositioning showed us the awesome power of an Apprentice team at full pelt, with Raef (wittily retitled Lawrence of Araefia by his team of wags) leading the boys through that rarest of things, a perfect game. It looked like maybe there was some tension as the poshos took their time getting to the laundry to help out the Johnny Commoners, but then they did get there and they did help out, much to the chagrin of the programme's editors.
Thank fuck for Bianca, then, who cunningly disguised herself as sales manager Jenny Celerier and proceeded to give a room full of salespeople a one-hour lecture on selling before pissing that away when she offered to iron a hotel's pillowcases for a fiver a pop. Luckily, though, she'd already spotted her scapegoat, and dragged the poor girl kicking and screaming into the slaughterhouse with her by ignoring everything she offered then making her cry for not offering any help. Grade A bitch material indeed, particularly because she picked the clearly-quite-lovely-but-clearly-no-Apprentice-winner Lucinda as her target, who, bless her cotton socks, was taken aback by the fact that she was given no real orders from the off and never recovered. She didn't really make that good a showing of herself in the boardroom, alas, which meant the ire of Alan Sugar had to be directed on Shazia, a mostly-innocent, who just happened to be there because she'd opened her trap.
Much as the Bianca from hell deserves to burn at the stake for her evils this night, I'm confident that her punishment will be justice enough: when she finally pops her boardroom clogs, she'll have to face the audience on The Apprentice: You're Fired which the rather genial (and increasingly ubiquitous) Adrian Chiles gets to host on BBC2 straight after the main show. For one of those low-budget reality show discussion bits, it's actually rather good, in part because every week the Chilester points out all the funny bits you'd already pointed out to the rest of your living room, thus making you look witty and that. Anyway, it also involves the just-fired contestant getting to say their bit in front of an audience who've just watched the main show, so by rights Bianca ought to be set upon like Pope Joan was.
This week's Apprentice has to rank as one of the best ever, alongside that one with the cheese. Beautiful juxtapositioning showed us the awesome power of an Apprentice team at full pelt, with Raef (wittily retitled Lawrence of Araefia by his team of wags) leading the boys through that rarest of things, a perfect game. It looked like maybe there was some tension as the poshos took their time getting to the laundry to help out the Johnny Commoners, but then they did get there and they did help out, much to the chagrin of the programme's editors.
Thank fuck for Bianca, then, who cunningly disguised herself as sales manager Jenny Celerier and proceeded to give a room full of salespeople a one-hour lecture on selling before pissing that away when she offered to iron a hotel's pillowcases for a fiver a pop. Luckily, though, she'd already spotted her scapegoat, and dragged the poor girl kicking and screaming into the slaughterhouse with her by ignoring everything she offered then making her cry for not offering any help. Grade A bitch material indeed, particularly because she picked the clearly-quite-lovely-but-clearly-no-Apprentice-winner Lucinda as her target, who, bless her cotton socks, was taken aback by the fact that she was given no real orders from the off and never recovered. She didn't really make that good a showing of herself in the boardroom, alas, which meant the ire of Alan Sugar had to be directed on Shazia, a mostly-innocent, who just happened to be there because she'd opened her trap.
Much as the Bianca from hell deserves to burn at the stake for her evils this night, I'm confident that her punishment will be justice enough: when she finally pops her boardroom clogs, she'll have to face the audience on The Apprentice: You're Fired which the rather genial (and increasingly ubiquitous) Adrian Chiles gets to host on BBC2 straight after the main show. For one of those low-budget reality show discussion bits, it's actually rather good, in part because every week the Chilester points out all the funny bits you'd already pointed out to the rest of your living room, thus making you look witty and that. Anyway, it also involves the just-fired contestant getting to say their bit in front of an audience who've just watched the main show, so by rights Bianca ought to be set upon like Pope Joan was.
Imageless Telly? Egads!
There are times when we all despair of the kind of cock that Radio 4 puts out under the banner of 'comedy'*. Dear audience mine, the current 1830 slot on a Wednesday blows all that despair out of the water. Series two of Look Away Now was trailed as a comedy sports quiz, and thus made me worry for the wellbeing of my teatime ears, but it's possibly the most fun I've had in any thirty-minute slot over the past week. Actually, it's an awesome sketch show, with highlights including commentators reporting on the action in this week's crime dramas, Fabio Acapella (the unaccompanied singing tribute act) and the secret identities of Britain's all-conquering cyclists. This is, to be frank, pitch-perfect stuff, and, despite its sport-based subject matter, doesn't need any kind of in-depth sports knowledge to have you rolling about. I understand it'll be on again tomorrow night at 11, and there's a podcast for the next seven days, too.
For all those hoping for some more unleavened hatred of all things broadcasty, I must apologise. You'll just have to wait till I've watched tonight's Apprentice and finished this in-depth discussion of M*A*S*H I've got going on.
* - Feel free to put forward your own nominations for the award of 'worst radio 4 comedy' in the comments box and I may just force myself to listen to them and present some kind of vitriolic hate-prize to the worst.
For all those hoping for some more unleavened hatred of all things broadcasty, I must apologise. You'll just have to wait till I've watched tonight's Apprentice and finished this in-depth discussion of M*A*S*H I've got going on.
* - Feel free to put forward your own nominations for the award of 'worst radio 4 comedy' in the comments box and I may just force myself to listen to them and present some kind of vitriolic hate-prize to the worst.
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Alan Sugar Wants YOU
Ah, yes, there are few better ways to kick off a cliched knockoff tellyblog than to talk about what everyone else in the talking about telly world already talked about this morning; The Apprentice kicked off for a fourth bout last night on BBC One. See that? It was in bold, like in the papers and everything.
This year, Sir Alan appears to have obtained his wannabe apprentices from the books of a low-grade lookalike agency. Already, David "yah, call me Dave" Cameron, in his less known but even more toffy guise as Nicholas de Lacey-Brown, barrister, surname embellisher and suspicious facial hair grower, has been given the Sugary boot. Chief among his crimes, and let's not kid ourselves on this, was publically acknowledging that he was in school for longer than Alan "call me Sir" Sugar. Possibly the array of poshos paraded into the boardroom every year should be given a cheat sheet advising them not to bring up class, education or an inability to discuss football when defending their business decisions. I imagine mentioning shoddy electronics and ridiculous telephones wouldn't go down too well either. He'll never let anyone forget that he's got less education than a barnacle and still has zillions of pounds.
The best thing about the whole affair is the fact that this left-school-at-sixteen, done-it-all-meself, ain't-never-needed-nothing-from-nobody-and-anyone-who-did-is-a-sissy overgrown barrow-boy is so fond of his knighthood that he insists on having everyone else use it all the damn time. You'd think he'd do the courtesy of returning the favour and addressing everyone else by their formal titles, too, but does he fuck. It's all Raef this, Claire that and Alex the other, although in the latter case that's probably a blessing in disguise, because there'd be too much cracking up if he turned to the boys' team and asked Mr Wotherspoon* what went wrong. I look forward to the day he has a baronet or an honourable on or something, so's he can learn what a dick he looks when he gets people to massage his ego like that.
It's shaping up to be a pretty fun series, as it generally is, and I'm looking forward to Lord Snooty and his Pals being recreated before our eyes courtesy of the likes of Raef "hair like a tunnel into eternity" Bjayou and Michael "I *sniff* thought we were friends" Sophocles while the rest of the lads form up into an hilariously incompetent version of the Bash Street Kids. Possibly even the Jocks and the Geordies, should we manage to squeeze another schism out of them.
Raef for the win, incidentally, mostly because Sugar would quickly come to loathe having to work with him.
* - Anyone else picturing a chain of kuh-razy pubs, where everything is topsy-turvy and nothing is what it seems?
This year, Sir Alan appears to have obtained his wannabe apprentices from the books of a low-grade lookalike agency. Already, David "yah, call me Dave" Cameron, in his less known but even more toffy guise as Nicholas de Lacey-Brown, barrister, surname embellisher and suspicious facial hair grower, has been given the Sugary boot. Chief among his crimes, and let's not kid ourselves on this, was publically acknowledging that he was in school for longer than Alan "call me Sir" Sugar. Possibly the array of poshos paraded into the boardroom every year should be given a cheat sheet advising them not to bring up class, education or an inability to discuss football when defending their business decisions. I imagine mentioning shoddy electronics and ridiculous telephones wouldn't go down too well either. He'll never let anyone forget that he's got less education than a barnacle and still has zillions of pounds.
The best thing about the whole affair is the fact that this left-school-at-sixteen, done-it-all-meself, ain't-never-needed-nothing-from-nobody-and-anyone-who-did-is-a-sissy overgrown barrow-boy is so fond of his knighthood that he insists on having everyone else use it all the damn time. You'd think he'd do the courtesy of returning the favour and addressing everyone else by their formal titles, too, but does he fuck. It's all Raef this, Claire that and Alex the other, although in the latter case that's probably a blessing in disguise, because there'd be too much cracking up if he turned to the boys' team and asked Mr Wotherspoon* what went wrong. I look forward to the day he has a baronet or an honourable on or something, so's he can learn what a dick he looks when he gets people to massage his ego like that.
It's shaping up to be a pretty fun series, as it generally is, and I'm looking forward to Lord Snooty and his Pals being recreated before our eyes courtesy of the likes of Raef "hair like a tunnel into eternity" Bjayou and Michael "I *sniff* thought we were friends" Sophocles while the rest of the lads form up into an hilariously incompetent version of the Bash Street Kids. Possibly even the Jocks and the Geordies, should we manage to squeeze another schism out of them.
Raef for the win, incidentally, mostly because Sugar would quickly come to loathe having to work with him.
* - Anyone else picturing a chain of kuh-razy pubs, where everything is topsy-turvy and nothing is what it seems?
Monday, 26 March 2007
Great Goolies of Guatamala!
Well, folks, welcome to yet another episode of 'I just watched something on TV and like to delude myself that other people care.' Today's rant subject is possibly the best episode of Wife Swap USA (More4, 8pm) ever. And I mean ever.
With the UK's version of the show, you pretty much know what you're getting: common, poor types who like to spend money and get pissed swap with middle-class self-employed types who sit on their pile of cash so's they can be buried with it like an ancient Egyptian Pharoh. The rich types learn to loosen up a bit, the poor types learn that children aren't just a ticket for free dosh from the DSS, and everyone goes home happy.
Wife Swap USA, however, is a far more beautiful beast. This particular episode runs thusly: middle class family from the middle of some city or other who love to hang around the city and be all swank swap with a family of farming hicks who believe that cooking meat makes it less nutritous and therefore eat nothing but raw meat every five hours, brush their teeth with a mixture of butter and clay and believe that God wouldn't put anything on the Earth to harm us, therefore bacteria are good things and that they shouldn't clean anything at all, ever.
Some fine choice lines available: "your children are being brainwashed by the schooling system, so I'll be unschooling them" claims hick lady, pointing out that school is a waste of time, since you don't learn anything of any use. Nobody opted to point out that most people do, lesson one being "for fuck's sake, cook your meat, you cretin" followed by a swift burst of "Jesus, you force your children to live like the cavemen you clearly wish you are? What the hell? Seriously, how inbred are you?"
A week on the cooked food diet proves difficult for crazy hick lady, who claims that since she stopped brushing her teeth with butter, she's found it hard to concentrate without any cholesterol or fat on her brain. She's also shocked that these city slickers don't have any contingencies put aside for disasters, and insists that they stock up on a week's worth of emergency rations, just in case of giant tornadoes, nuclear war, or, of course, God bringing about the End of Days as punishment for us all refusing to acknowledge the humble e.coli baccilus as our brother and kin.
The worst bit is the way that these hick morons have actually managed to produce spawn whose digestive systems have adapted to a raw meat diet such that cooked food actually causes them to fall ill, whether psychosomatically or because their twisted parents have performed some form of genetic devolution, I don't know, but these are kids who actually have a use for their appendices. Science-tastic, and by which I mean, not science-tastic.
It's a shame, really that the producers couldn't find a similarly mental family to match them against, but, alas, all they've found is a group of city-bound residents whose only failure is a slight squeamishness about knowing where their food comes from. Deploreable, yes, but rare, alas no.
I forget what the point was; I'm not even sure that there was one. Except maybe that certain people are absolute morons who don't deserve the school education they've so kindly rejected, thus clearing a seat for someone else. If only the state could sterilise them and prevent their passing on their demented seed, we'd all be happy.
This rant was brought to you by the mood 'restless' and the state of unemployment. Accept no imitations. Unless they're good ones, in which case, what the hell, you're only young once.
With the UK's version of the show, you pretty much know what you're getting: common, poor types who like to spend money and get pissed swap with middle-class self-employed types who sit on their pile of cash so's they can be buried with it like an ancient Egyptian Pharoh. The rich types learn to loosen up a bit, the poor types learn that children aren't just a ticket for free dosh from the DSS, and everyone goes home happy.
Wife Swap USA, however, is a far more beautiful beast. This particular episode runs thusly: middle class family from the middle of some city or other who love to hang around the city and be all swank swap with a family of farming hicks who believe that cooking meat makes it less nutritous and therefore eat nothing but raw meat every five hours, brush their teeth with a mixture of butter and clay and believe that God wouldn't put anything on the Earth to harm us, therefore bacteria are good things and that they shouldn't clean anything at all, ever.
Some fine choice lines available: "your children are being brainwashed by the schooling system, so I'll be unschooling them" claims hick lady, pointing out that school is a waste of time, since you don't learn anything of any use. Nobody opted to point out that most people do, lesson one being "for fuck's sake, cook your meat, you cretin" followed by a swift burst of "Jesus, you force your children to live like the cavemen you clearly wish you are? What the hell? Seriously, how inbred are you?"
A week on the cooked food diet proves difficult for crazy hick lady, who claims that since she stopped brushing her teeth with butter, she's found it hard to concentrate without any cholesterol or fat on her brain. She's also shocked that these city slickers don't have any contingencies put aside for disasters, and insists that they stock up on a week's worth of emergency rations, just in case of giant tornadoes, nuclear war, or, of course, God bringing about the End of Days as punishment for us all refusing to acknowledge the humble e.coli baccilus as our brother and kin.
The worst bit is the way that these hick morons have actually managed to produce spawn whose digestive systems have adapted to a raw meat diet such that cooked food actually causes them to fall ill, whether psychosomatically or because their twisted parents have performed some form of genetic devolution, I don't know, but these are kids who actually have a use for their appendices. Science-tastic, and by which I mean, not science-tastic.
It's a shame, really that the producers couldn't find a similarly mental family to match them against, but, alas, all they've found is a group of city-bound residents whose only failure is a slight squeamishness about knowing where their food comes from. Deploreable, yes, but rare, alas no.
I forget what the point was; I'm not even sure that there was one. Except maybe that certain people are absolute morons who don't deserve the school education they've so kindly rejected, thus clearing a seat for someone else. If only the state could sterilise them and prevent their passing on their demented seed, we'd all be happy.
This rant was brought to you by the mood 'restless' and the state of unemployment. Accept no imitations. Unless they're good ones, in which case, what the hell, you're only young once.
Tuesday, 13 February 2007
On The Highly Comprehensible English Legal System, And Telling Jeffrey Archer To Fuck Off
Via the handily lotterial (I don't care what you may think, it's a word. Put your hand down and pay attention at the back there) method of rant generation, BBC2's prime-time, nail-in-the-coffin-of-judicial-process controversy farm The Verdict gives ample opportunity to hate all kinds of things and still come out at the end of it all looking all intellecutal and clever-like.
To summarize, for the benefit of those who had the foresight to pull out their own brains and then cauterize the vestigal stump that remained for fear of infecting themselves with this guff: a convicted perjurer, three individuals of varying talent who all linger under the moniker of 'actors', two musicians, one of whom sees fit to name himself after a Japanese manga craze and still thinks he ought to be taken seriously, the CEO of a well-known high-street purveyor of knickers and hilarious inflatable animals (erm, so I've heard, anyway), a footballing-type fellow, a woman who wasn't very happy when her daughter got murdered, some stripling of a lad of twenty-one who's too successful for his own (or is it my own?) good and a former Shadow Chancellor all get together to decided on the guilt or lack thereof of a made-up group of defendants accused of raping a made-up woman. So, just your average jury, then.
Oh, but wait, it's not. It's actually not a legitimate jury at all, containing as it does at least one man with criminal convictions who's served jail time within the last ten years, and at least a good few grounds for objection by even the most half-witted of barrister smattered around the place. It's also, let's be fair, so astonishingly unlikely that all twelve of these vaguely-known individuals would all a) be called for jury service at the same time, b) all be within the catchment area of the same Crown Court and c) all serve on the same jury that we may as well give up now and call in Darth Vader as the foreman.
Ah, but, say the programme's advocates (the puns! Oh, the terrible terrible puns!), that's the point! We get all these people together to crack open the nature of the jury and show everyone what the law's all about! Then it's not a big mystery any more and we all go home happy, discussing last night's episode of the case over the water cooler and on the BBC message boards, presumably with gusto. Well, here's news to you all, chumps: you can't have both, and, to be frank, you shouldn't have either. If you want to treat this like a real case, and if you want to watch what a jury go through as they take the agonizing decision between possibly locking up an innocent man and allowing a guilty one to walk free, while learning how the law that frames all this works, then fine. Go ahead and do it, you ghouls. But don't be surprised if I come round and bash your smug little heads together when at the end of the week you congratulate yourselves on guessing correctly whether or not she was lying. If you want Archer and his cohorts to treat this deal as though it was the real McCoy, you need to be doing that yourself, too. Of course, you've probably stopped reading by this point, because it's a long paragraph and mostly it flies over your head a bit with all the legal talk. Well, it gets thicker from here, so we'll have a Tourette's-style outburst so the stragglers can catch up.
Boobies!
But, much as I'd love to blame Jeffrey 'Perjurer Mcperjury Perjury Perjuryface' Archer and the whole damn programme for the whole mess, it really isn't their fault. If we've got to the point where a programme like this actually becomes plausible, then somewhere down the line someone's put a foot wrong, and I think I can guess who. Hint: it's quite a lot of people. Quick pop quiz: which piece of legislation defines the offence of murder? If you answered anything other than 'none, it's covered in the common law and always has been, you charlatan', possibly substituting 'charalatan' for your own highbrow insult of choice, then I'm not at all surprised and don't think any the worse of you. Unless you're a legal professional of some kind, in which case you'll understand if I don't hire you to defend me against my forthcoming lawsuit from made-up PhD lady 'Doctor' Gillian McKeith, with 'Doctor' here rhyming with 'not a doctor'. But I digress.
The only reason I have any particularly decent knowledge of the English legal system is because I chose to study it at A-level. Had I not done so, I'd probably be in the same boat as everyone else, which is mad: I actually had to elect to learn the law as a purely academic and university-attention-grabbing qualification to know anything much about it at all. Compare with the United States, and their schools' undying devotion to their beloved Constitution. Sure, it creates obsessively silly patriotic zeal of the kind that should've died out with all the rest of the Nationalist movement about seventy years ago, but at least it gives the little 'uns, and by extension, the big little 'uns, at least the vaguest grounding in their laws and how they come about. And then they go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like televising trials.
Citizenship lessons, that's the key! To most Johnny Commoners on the street, courts and laws and parliaments are all just a load of blokes in silly wigs talking in code while occasionally one of them sees fit to appear on the news and talk down to them, thus making the football late. Thanks to Law & Order and its brood, I'd hazard most English citizens have more idea how US criminal law works than does their own. Probably best not to dwell on what goes on on the civil side of things. Teach little Jimmy Commoner about Magna Carta, the blowing up of shit all over the world for the Campaign For This Sort Of Thing (as it was never known) and about a thousand years' worth of blokes with swords shouting at each other and getting quite huffy over the whole affair and you've suddenly got a whole new ball game. Probably best to leave out all the boring stuff, and quite right, too, but all little Jimmy needs to know is the beautiful balance of nature which has somehow fallen out of a constitutional Monarchy being ruled by a democratic assembly and a convention of aristocrats under a joyously simple set of legal frameworks and he'll leap for joy. Well, probably not, but possibly the little bastard will stop kicking peoples' bins over and laughing.
This rant was brought to you in conjunction with the letter 'K' and the number 7.
To summarize, for the benefit of those who had the foresight to pull out their own brains and then cauterize the vestigal stump that remained for fear of infecting themselves with this guff: a convicted perjurer, three individuals of varying talent who all linger under the moniker of 'actors', two musicians, one of whom sees fit to name himself after a Japanese manga craze and still thinks he ought to be taken seriously, the CEO of a well-known high-street purveyor of knickers and hilarious inflatable animals (erm, so I've heard, anyway), a footballing-type fellow, a woman who wasn't very happy when her daughter got murdered, some stripling of a lad of twenty-one who's too successful for his own (or is it my own?) good and a former Shadow Chancellor all get together to decided on the guilt or lack thereof of a made-up group of defendants accused of raping a made-up woman. So, just your average jury, then.
Oh, but wait, it's not. It's actually not a legitimate jury at all, containing as it does at least one man with criminal convictions who's served jail time within the last ten years, and at least a good few grounds for objection by even the most half-witted of barrister smattered around the place. It's also, let's be fair, so astonishingly unlikely that all twelve of these vaguely-known individuals would all a) be called for jury service at the same time, b) all be within the catchment area of the same Crown Court and c) all serve on the same jury that we may as well give up now and call in Darth Vader as the foreman.
Ah, but, say the programme's advocates (the puns! Oh, the terrible terrible puns!), that's the point! We get all these people together to crack open the nature of the jury and show everyone what the law's all about! Then it's not a big mystery any more and we all go home happy, discussing last night's episode of the case over the water cooler and on the BBC message boards, presumably with gusto. Well, here's news to you all, chumps: you can't have both, and, to be frank, you shouldn't have either. If you want to treat this like a real case, and if you want to watch what a jury go through as they take the agonizing decision between possibly locking up an innocent man and allowing a guilty one to walk free, while learning how the law that frames all this works, then fine. Go ahead and do it, you ghouls. But don't be surprised if I come round and bash your smug little heads together when at the end of the week you congratulate yourselves on guessing correctly whether or not she was lying. If you want Archer and his cohorts to treat this deal as though it was the real McCoy, you need to be doing that yourself, too. Of course, you've probably stopped reading by this point, because it's a long paragraph and mostly it flies over your head a bit with all the legal talk. Well, it gets thicker from here, so we'll have a Tourette's-style outburst so the stragglers can catch up.
Boobies!
But, much as I'd love to blame Jeffrey 'Perjurer Mcperjury Perjury Perjuryface' Archer and the whole damn programme for the whole mess, it really isn't their fault. If we've got to the point where a programme like this actually becomes plausible, then somewhere down the line someone's put a foot wrong, and I think I can guess who. Hint: it's quite a lot of people. Quick pop quiz: which piece of legislation defines the offence of murder? If you answered anything other than 'none, it's covered in the common law and always has been, you charlatan', possibly substituting 'charalatan' for your own highbrow insult of choice, then I'm not at all surprised and don't think any the worse of you. Unless you're a legal professional of some kind, in which case you'll understand if I don't hire you to defend me against my forthcoming lawsuit from made-up PhD lady 'Doctor' Gillian McKeith, with 'Doctor' here rhyming with 'not a doctor'. But I digress.
The only reason I have any particularly decent knowledge of the English legal system is because I chose to study it at A-level. Had I not done so, I'd probably be in the same boat as everyone else, which is mad: I actually had to elect to learn the law as a purely academic and university-attention-grabbing qualification to know anything much about it at all. Compare with the United States, and their schools' undying devotion to their beloved Constitution. Sure, it creates obsessively silly patriotic zeal of the kind that should've died out with all the rest of the Nationalist movement about seventy years ago, but at least it gives the little 'uns, and by extension, the big little 'uns, at least the vaguest grounding in their laws and how they come about. And then they go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like televising trials.
Citizenship lessons, that's the key! To most Johnny Commoners on the street, courts and laws and parliaments are all just a load of blokes in silly wigs talking in code while occasionally one of them sees fit to appear on the news and talk down to them, thus making the football late. Thanks to Law & Order and its brood, I'd hazard most English citizens have more idea how US criminal law works than does their own. Probably best not to dwell on what goes on on the civil side of things. Teach little Jimmy Commoner about Magna Carta, the blowing up of shit all over the world for the Campaign For This Sort Of Thing (as it was never known) and about a thousand years' worth of blokes with swords shouting at each other and getting quite huffy over the whole affair and you've suddenly got a whole new ball game. Probably best to leave out all the boring stuff, and quite right, too, but all little Jimmy needs to know is the beautiful balance of nature which has somehow fallen out of a constitutional Monarchy being ruled by a democratic assembly and a convention of aristocrats under a joyously simple set of legal frameworks and he'll leap for joy. Well, probably not, but possibly the little bastard will stop kicking peoples' bins over and laughing.
This rant was brought to you in conjunction with the letter 'K' and the number 7.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)