Do I care?

I started a new blog because Blogger stopped working and, hey, Blogger is back! Maybe the threat to run off to Wordpress was enough to shake Blogger into action! 

I filled in a survey yesterday. I do these regularly because (1) I am self-opinionated and (2) companies pay me to do it. This one was about the TV stations I watch. I don’t in fact watch live TV very much. I pre-record everything so I can whip past the adverts, most of which are moronic. I regard TV adverts in the same light as nuisance phone calls. And anyway have you ever bought something after seeing it advertised on the telly? I haven’t. Pre-recording makes it tricky when I have to guess which stations I’m watching most or having to identify adverts. However, I persevered.

Right at the end of today’s survey, there was a wee sneaky page asking if I did or didn’t know the identity of the ‘celebrity couple’ who have been involved in a threesome and are trying to take out a super-injunction down south to stop the tabloids telling people about it. These people apparently want to protect their children. One way I can suggest they could do that would be to avoid getting involved in dubious sexual shenanigans that will hit the front page of the tabloids. But what I really wanted was a third box to tick in the survey page:

- I know the identity of the people involved

- I don’t know the identity of the people involved

- I don’t give a rat’s arse about the people involved.

I wish the great British public would learn how to defuse the power of the tabloid press.

1 Don’t read the tabloids. That approach has worked very well in Scotland, where the circulation of the Daily Record has dropped by almost half in recent years, ever since readers worked out in the independence referendum that this newspaper prints lies.

2 If you must read newspapers, regard what’s written in them with the same cynical eye as your horoscope. And remember they are mainly owned by billionaires who regard their readers as thick and will tell us anything to make a pound.

3 Don’t pass on tabloid poison via social media like Facebook. Someone tried to persuade me last weekend that postal votes were crooked. The source of the information given was the Daily Mail. Yes, that Daily Mail, the one whose owner was a Fascist in the 1930s.

Oh, in case you haven't noticed, you can be equally suspicious of TV news: Sky, RT, BBC and ITV – they all have a political agenda that goes way beyond telling us what’s happening. (See much sign on TV news of the 100,000 people who matched on Downing Street at the weekend demanding Cameron’s resignation?) Only C4 has a decent news service and – guess what? – the Tory government wants to privatise it.