New Speaker
Caught a bit of the election last night where one reporter stated that the MPs were voting for the person they wanted as Speaker, hmm shouldn't they be voting for who we want as Speaker? I mean the MPs want someone who's going to appear that they're doing something while at the same time not rocking the boat and asking pointed questions such as "Why are the refreshments in the House of Commons subsidised by the taxpayer at the same time that MPs can claim £400 of food receipt-free each month?" or "Why do we have a smoking room when we've banned them for everyone else?".
Anyway John Bercow won and I caught the end of an item on BBC Breakfast with someone called Nicki (I think) who said that he might relax some of the arcane traditions such as not being able to refer to another member by their name or by using the pronoun "you". Seriously where do they dig these people up from - there's a bloody good reason that you can't refer to another member in this way and it's an attempt to maintain a civilised level of discourse rather than tit for tat ad hominem attacks. If you restrict certain 'natural' phrases in a conversation it forces the speakers to think about what they are saying rather than just spit out "You're an arse!"
Anyway I could guess the same person who put them on the sofa was behind captioning the American female emergency worker at the train crash as "Paul Murphy North Lincolnshire".
No wonder the online community is turning to blogs; they're becoming one of the only places to find informed discourse.
6 comments:
…becomming?
You make it sound as if it were not always so. ;-)
Heh believe it or not the MSM used to do something called investigative reporting until they realised it was cheaper to sack those teams and buy freelance upskirt shots of celebrities; or to just wait for someone to knock on their door offering them a story on a silver platter.
Somebody left a copy of Hello magazine in the tea room at work. Now I know where the title comes from; every time I read anything from it, I'm standing there goig “Um, Hello? Are you mental?!”
Ditto for OK magazine…
I have to agree, I just don't get these magazines. Gosh Katy Hill is pregnant again, oo photos of Joe Cole and Carly Zucker's wedding and Amanda Holden in a hat must buy Hello! to find out more; wait OK! has that wedding and Wes Brown, and Suzanne Shaw's weddings along with pictures of Katie and Andre, and the Rooney's in Barbados. Oh but Heat has a fat Kerry Katona and a Lucie Cave interview. Damn it how to choose I'll just have to buy all three.
Who are these people? Okay yeah I know who some of them are, but why the hell should I want to see them swanning around in Barbados or at their weddings, or in a hat? I mean I know who some of them are, but I don't know them so why would anyone expect me to pay to find out?
Now "Kerry Katona's 2 stone weight gain leads to low voter turnout" that would be something important.
It's like… hey, I don't have a life of my own, so I must waste my life reading about somebody else's.
…My God. I almost fit the stereotype for this readership. Except that since I don't have a life, I waste it reading about the least fixed-point of a lambda function and other such nonesense. I'm not sure that's any better.
Well there's always been gossip about the 'stars' whether caused by envy or idolatry. It's just that the definition seems to have fallen to 'starred in Big Brother and was first evicted' through to 'used to sing, did some adverts'.
The only reason they're still famous is because these magazines keep printing stories about them because um they're famous?
Scary thought of the day
Readership of Private Eye in 2008: 818,000
Readership of OK! magazine in 2008: 2,447,000
Satirical headlines about politics I'd rather read Lindsay Lohan's views about hair.
Data here worth a look.
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