Don’t annoy a dragon, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup
Which of these is more suitable for children?
This:
Or this:
Yet Venezuelan TV has decided that Baywatch is more suitable, saying that The Simpsons have flouted a regulation that prohibits “messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents”.
So what exactly is Baywatch teaching young boys and girls? Apart from how to run in slow motion and play with themselves?
Series 4 of the new Doctor Who is starting very very soon! Saturday 5 April at 6.20pm. Just over a week away.
I can’t wait! It looks so so so good! All of the new series companions are back Donna [from the Christmas Special before last], Martha, and even Rose! It’s so close, and I just can’t wait.
The series 4 trailer is fantastic. Watch it below:
Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series of books has been “updated” in a new Disney cartoon.
It just doesn’t - and can’t - work.
I read the Famous Five series when I was young. They were great books, set in a simple time before materialism and technology. The Famous Five is about a time when children could roam the countryside without neurotic parents wondering whether they had been snatched by paedophiles. When children weren’t wrapped in cotton wool and bubble-wrap and kept in doors all day long. When they were free.
This, however, just appears to make it all about gadgets and computers rather than just being outside and having fun. Besides, children should read the Famous Five books rather than watching yet another cartoon.
BBC Sport. They broadcast far too much of it.
I mean, 17 hours of sport over one weekend on BBC 1 and 2 - with a few hours on Sunday when they overlap! Just way too much, especially when it is repeated every single weekend.
What about the rest of us who don’t want to watch sport? The BBC just aren’t providing the service we pay them to.
At least put it on the digital channels. Or, even better, create a BBC Sport digital channel and put all the sport there to save the rest of us.
Ruth Kelly has a deeper voice than Alan Duncan.
There’s no real point to this post, it’s just an observation.
But it is actually extremely disturbing to listen to and watch.
Especially since Ruth Kelly has grown her hair and actually looks slightly feminine. Well, until you hear her talk anyway.
Yeah, like this is going to work.
You can hardly “ban” people from the internet. That is absurd in so many ways. And it won’t work, no matter what they do, in this way. By banning - or, rather, trying to ban - “pirates” from the internet they are trying to force the ISPs to police the internet and break contracts with their own customers.
Yes, they’re going to love doing that.
Also, why is it up to the governemnt to control this kind of stuff? It really isn’t. The internet is far too complex with its global structure to have specific national laws passed against it. Unless they are proposing to do a China, they have no chance of making it effective.
Internet piracy is best combated by the cost of the things that are most routinely downloaded reduced significantly and/or making them available online. Then it becomes nigh-on pointless. Much music piracy has undoubtedly been reduced by the availability of buying songs relatively cheaply on sites such as iTunes, and the availability of TV programmes to be watched “on demand” online after they have been broadcast, such as with the BBC’s iPlayer or Channel 4’s 4oD, will cause a massive drop in the illegal downloading of those programmes.
Instead of lobbying for laws against it, media companies would be far better advised to harness the potential and offer downloads of their own, on their own terms. Then internet piracy will die of starvation. Otherwise it will just change form.
Sources: BBC, The Telegraph
Chris Dillow makes an argument that Konnie Huq in her decade as a Blue Peter presenter has cost the economy around £3.9bn:
But Blue Peter doesn’t start until 5pm! It’s perfectly possible to work a full day and then watch Blue Peter, especially now that BBC iPlayer is up and running. Blaming Konnie Huq for the £3.9bn cost to the economy is rather unfair. She’s attractive, but not that attractive!
Many of the people on benefits could work if they wanted to. How else can so many immigrants find work? Because so many Britons aren’t doing them, preferring to sit on the dole. That premise is by no means wonky. The idea that Konnie Huq and Blue Peter persuaded them not to go to work is, though. That reason is down to benefits being too high.
UPDATE: Matt Sinclair also responds to Chris’ post.
University Challenge is being urged to restrict the numbers of older students - or ban them completely - because it is claimed that they have an unfair advantage due to their age.
To a certain extent they do, especially considering some of the questions asked on the programme. The claims that this is balanced by their lack of knowledge of popular culture holds some, but little, water, since popular culture is far easier to pick up than that of the past!
However, what benefits a team far more is if a wide variety of subjects is represented. Since questions range from classical music and art, to science, history, geography and many more subjects. Age makes very little difference in the end - and I know this because I, my father, and my older brother sit down and watch University Challenge most weeks and try to answer the question, usually ending up with pretty similar scores.
When it comes down to it, the age of a team is far less important than the range of subjects represented.
And for some comic relief, here’s the Young Ones on University Challenge:
Quite right too. You can’t force Parliament on the people. Few even watch PMQs, the most lively part of parliamentary activity. Even people who are actually interested in politics don’t much. I certainly don’t. I don’t have the time, for one thing. Who does?
You can’t strengthen democracy by forcing it on the people. Making them watch it is both illiberal and ultimately counter-productive. Instead of any compulsion for news companies to include parliament, reform parliament itself and politics as a whole so that the people of Britain actually choose to watch of their own volition.
The idea that the news should have to show parliament is arse about face. Parliament should attract the people, rather than force itself upon them.
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