How to save money...

I no longer watch broadcast television programmes.  That is, none of them from the start to the end.  The quantity of poor quality amazes me.  So I channel hop.  A lot.  I spend more time inspecting the electronic programme guide than I do watching any TV show.  It's all crap isn't it?  Programmes about improving homes, improving gardens, about antiques - buying stuff for £20 and selling it for less?  All of them finding fun in it?  Brain numbing material innit?  

It’s like everyone is being sedated via their eyeballs.  As though someone somewhere is in overall control of the people, sat in some Orwellian dungeon in front of a huge social mixing panel turning the volume knob down [and keeping it turned down] on our society.  With people going comatose whenever they sit and watch TV.  Interspersed with loads of adverts, mostly about death - you know - how to avoid it and what to do before you get there.  So that’s buying life insurance and funeral plans innit?  An ultra low impact peloton type programme guide for those who can’t be arsed to ride a bike.  Aw gawd.  I canna stand it!

The news channels are horrendous too.  Every single morning I turn the TV on and within 5 minutes I've been around every single news channel I have; groaned loudly at the crap BBC and their guffaws at their ‘in’ jokes, gotten angry with Sky and even angrier with GBNews.  I can't be arsed looking at ITV even though Piers Morgan has gone and after 3 rotations just in case I just might have missed something that meets my needs, hit the power button to turn the blasted thing off.  Grrr!

The programming is so bad that as soon as there is any sign of an advert I go channel hopping, using the unwanted 5 minutes to desperately see if there is anything better to watch.  And fail miserably.  I always give up, slump backwards on the sofa and with a groan turn the TV off and come here.  

In fact I watch significantly more stuff via PooTube nowadays.  Proper news items, science programmes, tour cycling, you know, the stuff I want to watch.  For example, 2 hours of a lecture on how to build a thermonuclear bomb!  What with and just why terrorists struggle to do it.  It’s all there on T'internet you know.  I can be selective at what I want to watch and NOT just accept the schedule of shite that the BBC and others try to push down my throat every single minute of the day.  

Now being a Yorkshireman I find it significantly harder to spend a penny than any Scott might.  Having a satiated wallet moth wrapped tight in bundles of tenners fast asleep with a smile on its face surrounded by unmolested credit card walls in its leathery home is a nice feeling.  To some it’s like looking at ones child tucked up nice and warm in bed after a particularly happy day playing with a kite on a windy beach.  I stand at the end of the bed every night looking at my wallet with a smile on my face.  So it positively irks me whenever I see waste.  

And there it is.  I turned the TV on and up popped the BBC by default.  Slapped in the face with a wet kipper as I thought about the waste within THAT organisation.  Yet they still groan and moan about how they have insufficient funding.  So let’s take back the free license offer to the older folk shall we say the execs.  Incontinent people who have no option other than to sit in their powered 'lift-and-sniff' high chairs watching ITV.  Forced to watch the delights of life insurance and funeral commercials.  The former now out of their reach and the latter a little bit too close for comfort.  

So they're forced to watch commercial free TV.  Guess which.  Unable to access the delights of T'internet there are no other options.  For sure captives, unable to escape the misery of having nothing of interest, or even worse - Bargain Hunt - to feed their eyeballs.  Like I’m in some dystopian old fogey's home staring at the face of Malcolm McDowell in the film 'A Clockwork Orange'.

Oh, don't get me going.  Ok then, lets.  

Specifically, how about the BBC NON News channel?  An inwardly navel gazing spectacular full of non-hope; folk who whinge and moan a lot are guaranteed to get a slot.  Repetitive codswallop of mini Panorama type non-news slots of how best to scrape the bottom of a barrel to find something to broadcast.  For sure the precursor channel before people flip across to ITV; where they accidentally shoot themselves with life insurance and funeral adverts that are full of extras from the film Logans Run with huge happy smiles on their Arian faces like the end of this life is something to look forward to.   Repetitive non-news reports full of dung presented by folk who just had to get the first class flight to Kyiv (Kreev not Keeev!).  So that they can tell their grandchildren, should natural selection allow them to get that far, about the day that grandaddy day care went to WAR!  

So there's BBC1 with it's Strictly Numb Prancing and Dancing on Mice (squeak!) before the latter fecker went across to ITV like dormant microbes wandering randomly through the vacuum of space trying to find a life.  Full of programming designed to make Mumsnet look like a horror show.  Then BBC2 which is just an outlet for Brian Cox programmes innit.  You know, shite none scientific nonsense designed to fill the hours and minutes of ones life with loads of imagery and orchestral sounds that take 60 minutes to simply say that the Sun is at the centre of the solar system.  "The-Sun-is-at-the centre-of-the-solar-system".  There I did it.  Took me less than FIVE seconds!  Grrr!

BBC3?  Move all the weird crap on T'internet where the weirdos live.  End of.  BBC4?  Some stuff passes as watchable here for us baby boomers but the absolute best bit about this channel is that it is the one I normally land on when channel hopping during the day.  A blank screen.  FINALLY something that I can watch without screaming like I've just had my liver removed without the use of anaesthetics!  

Here's Brian Cox singing about the Universe just after I've finished making a personal donation to the Bargain Hunt toilet. So that's the Monty Python crew back in the day doing Cox's mega long Universe programme in 4 minutes flat!  MUCH more entertaining eh?  :-)

And just how many radio channels?  Radio 1, Radio 1 Extra (extra what exactly?), Radio 1 Dance, Radio 1 Relax (Grrr!), Radio Poo, Radio 3, Radio 4 - (designed to help folk achieve their personal end goals after coming back from the adverts on ITV), Radio 5, and so on.   Oh I could keep going with all the specialist and regional channels but for sure I would lose the will to live.

Dear BBC, save yourself a fecking million pounds in time-wasting by simply winding back the clock.  Cut out all the faux channels full of the stuff one would normally find in a sewer and whittle all the detritus out of your shows.  That includes the overpaid men and women folk.  You wanna be able to afford to live like other financially constrained people do you?  Get the scalpel out and start to cut out the crap.  Cut?  Nah you could strap a Russian barrel bomb to your body and post the ultra large KABOOM(!) salvage only the worthwhile bits from the remains of that little non-reportable incident and use that for your schedules.  Voila! License fee is decimated!

No, you are not obliged like a vacuum to feel the need to fill empty space with shite!  Even your programme VT editors now look forward to the day that they can jump ship and produce an insurance or funeral advert which for sure will be so so much more entertaining to do than your POO!  

I produce rather shit cycling videos and even then I don't feel the need to go work for ITV.  Yes it really IS that bad in the BBC.  Gahhhh!

Oh to look forward again to the sound of the National Anthem at the end of the evening...

And to see the little white spot on the TV screen again....

Ciao for now