Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

I don’t live in Birmingham, and this bit of news won’t affect me personally in the slightest, but for some reason I’ve been trying to keep up with various news stories surrounding the cuts made by the Birmingham City Council.

A few months ago, I wrote about the handsome pay rises that the council’s bosses had awarded themselves, shortly before making some big job cuts for council employees. The hypocrisy of it all amused me.

Amongst those cuts, it was reported that “workers in the children and young people’s department are expected to bear the brunt of the losses”, a total of 2,000 job cuts across the council.

This week saw the release of a report criticising Birmingham City Council’s children’s department, stating that it was failing to protect children, and showed little capacity to improve. The councillor in charge of the department, Len Clark, said he was leading an immediate “re-alignment” of the service.

Yeah, a re-alignment that is going to leave the department much weaker because you’re going to be firing so many people, and yet you’re still going to be collecting a cushy salary that saw an inflation-busting increase recently.

But please excuse most of the media for not covering this story; I hear Kerry Katona has a new boyfriend…

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Hear’Say - Pure And Simple

30 Day Song Challenge - Your Least Favourite Song

I wouldn’t say that this song itself is one that I hate, as it’s merely a fairly bland pop tune, but it’s the wider concept that it represents which makes me dislike it so much.

Hear’Say were the first musical act to become famous as the result of winning a talent contest on TV in the UK. They were formed of the five winners of Popstars, with the five runners-up also forming a pop group: Liberty X (who had more success as a group, although the individual members of Hear’Say have probably had more subsequent success).

This, their first single, was a massive hit, becoming the quickest-selling single in history and topping the charts. Obviously, this made an absolute fortune, and it wasn’t long before two Simons copied the format in the following years: Fuller and Cowell.

As each series and rejigging of the format resulted in ever more viewers, and an almost certain Christmas Number One single (until the groundswell of support for Rage Against The Machine last year), the genre grew and grew, until the point where you can’t move for celebrity judging panels and talent contests.

Yes, it’s Popstars that we have to blame for such monstrosities as Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing, and all manner of other crap. It’s to blame for middle-of-the-road, bland pop that seems only to be capable of producing ballads and not much else. It’s to blame for Simon Cowell’s smug fucking face being in the newspapers for weeks on end, and it’s to blame for a convicted thug being venerated as the nation’s new sweetheart.

Hear’Say never were the problem. It’s what they spawned that I dislike.

Pure and simple.

20 plays

Whenever I returned home from disappointing England experiences one unshakeable, overriding thought pushed itself to the forefront of my mind, no matter how much the rest of the nation mourned. “At least it wasn’t Liverpool,” I’d repeat to myself, over and over. The text messages of consolation I received on the coach [after missing a penalty against Portugal in the 2006 World Cup] included one from Kenny Dalglish. “I would rather miss for England than LFC,” I wrote back.

Jamie Carragher in Carra: My Autobiography.

I think I speak for a lot of England fans when I say that it is a fucking disgrace that Jamie Carragher is back in the England squad for this year’s World Cup. This man deliberately retired from international football after the last World Cup so as to concentrate on his club football, and then “wrote” this in his autobiography.

Fuck Jamie Carragher. He’s not even good enough to play for us anyway: his positioning is dodgy, he’s slow, his attempts to recover are clumsy, and all he can do is hoof the ball 40 yards forwards in an aimless fashion whenever he has the ball at his feet. It’s only the ability and willingness to run of Torres up front that makes him look anywhere near good at passing the ball.

Fuck Jamie Carragher.

And this is why we shouldn’t let media outrage and fear-mongering dictate such sensitive issues as government drug policy:

A few months ago, there was a whole flurry of hand-wringing in the media after a few people died after allegedly taking mephedrone, a legal high drug. In particular, two teenagers were among those deaths, and their parents were amongst the most vehement in calling for a ban on the drug.

Despite the lack of real scientific evidence as to the dangers of the drug, the government swiftly banned it, with immediate effect. A number of arrests followed for those continuing to sell it from websites and in clubs, and talk has risen of further bans on other legal high products.

The government basically took a completely kneejerk reaction to some fearmongering headlines, and now we have another drug added to the extensive list of illegal substances that really don’t have as much of a lethal effect as alcohol and cigarettes.

Oh, and the reason why reacting in this fashion is wrong? They didn’t have all the facts.

The toxicology reports released today for the two teenagers above have shown that in fact they had not taken any of that drug prior to their deaths.

This reminds me so much of the panic around swine flu, when a few people died at the start of that outbreak. There was a ridiculous amount of coverage, with screaming frontpage headlines proclaiming the apocalypse, for each death, but when those deaths were later shown to be entirely non-flu related, that news was relegated to page 94.

The fear had been put into the populace, and to be honest many won’t even have noticed the corrections or follow-ups. The media’s view of the story thus becomes the one which the public believes to have actually happened, despite that not being true.

And we’re seeing the same again now with mephedrone: a couple of scary headlines, and things change. The government’s reaction to swine flu cost us millions in buying Tamiflu and staffing a swine flu hotline. The new drugs policy has instantly criminalised thousands of people.

And this is why we shouldn’t let the media dictate government policy.

lapetitefigue is absolutely correct about the three wives already being the subject of many column inches, all of it totally irrelevant to the election. The most vicious has been the Daily Mail’s attacks on Sarah Brown, most notably her feet.

Yes, her feet.

They followed this up with an analysis (and I use that word in the loosest possible terms) of Samantha Cameron’s outfit, saying that her black-painted toenails show little has changed since a teenage goth phase.

Heaven forbid that the Daily fucking Mail should actually write any articles about the merits of each party’s policies. Not when it’s much easier to point and laugh at women in their 40s for a supposed lack of sartorial nous, or slight imperfections.

What an absolute joke some of the election coverage is, not just in the Daily Mail.

lapetitefigue is absolutely correct about the three wives already being the subject of many column inches, all of it totally irrelevant to the election. The most vicious has been the Daily Mail’s attacks on Sarah Brown, most notably her feet.

Yes, her feet.

They followed this up with an analysis (and I use that word in the loosest possible terms) of Samantha Cameron’s outfit, saying that her black-painted toenails show little has changed since a teenage goth phase.

Heaven forbid that the Daily fucking Mail should actually write any articles about the merits of each party’s policies. Not when it’s much easier to point and laugh at women in their 40s for a supposed lack of sartorial nous, or slight imperfections.

What an absolute joke some of the election coverage is, not just in the Daily Mail.

Now, there’s nothing I love more than some absolutely rank hypocrisy from those who we elect to govern us. One of the news stories that caught my eye today involved Birmingham City Council making 2,000 workers redundant in an effort to balance the books.

This is despite saying in October last year that only 800 jobs would be lost, and that these would be through natural wastage, not redundancies. Of course, the latest news is that voluntary redundancies will be a big part of the 2,000 jobs to go.

It got me thinking about whether those at the top of Birmingham council are planning to undergo similar financial hardships this year, as a sign of solidarity with their underlings.

A little investigation later, and it turns out that council leader Mike Whitby and his fellow councillors aren’t exactly in step with their comrades.

Last June, Whitby and three other senior councillors awarded themselves an extra £15,000 for attending a few more meetings each year. Previously, attendance at these meetings came with no extra salary.

A mere two weeks ago, Whitby joined the board of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, which I’m pretty certain isn’t an unpaid role.

I hate to link to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, despite their well-placed apostrophe, but in June they looked at Chief Executive Stephen Hughes’ pay packet: a whopping £200,000+ per year. This is as a result of an 18.2% pay rise over two years, way, way above the inflation rate. Not exactly a minuscule salary, is it?

To cap it all, the council’s auditors have refused to sign off on the 2008/9 accounts, citing a number of shortfalls in the budget. Most notably, the council claims that their property assets amount to £6.6 billion, whereas the auditors value them at £5.5 billion.

This has lead to a “black hole” in the council’s finances of around £60 million, resulting in the job cuts.

There’s been no statement from either of these senior councillors that they will take any pay cuts or forgo bonuses because of the perilous state of Birmingham’s finances. No doubt they’ll quietly award themselves various bonuses for meeting targets…

Things that really, really annoy me:

  • Handles facing towards you on ‘push’ doors.

That is all.

I think I’ve done everyone a favour.

Simon Cowell, responding to criticism that his X Factor and Pop Idol shows have lead to a series of bland, poor Christmas Number One singles.

He says that the years of novelty Christmas singles reaching the top of the charts in that week were “a tradition of quite horrible songs”, and that the music his shows promote is much better.

Far be it from me to point out rank hypocrisy (oh who am I kidding? I fucking love pointing out rank hypocrisy!), but this is more than a little rich coming from the man who was responsible for:

  • The Teletubbies - Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh

  • Zig & Zag - Dem Girls

  • The World Wrestling Federation - Slam Jam

  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - The Official Single [Big bonus points for creativity in naming that song…]

How the fuck can he sit there and say that he has “done everyone a favour” in moving away from this type of song at Christmas, when he was fucking responsible for the existence of some of the worst travesties in the history of music throughout the 90s?!?!

Gah!

And it’s not as if there’s much variation in the music his shows put out nowadays. As the Times article linked to above points out, the latest winner’s “pop-cultural usefulness will span all the way from singing ‘sad’ ballads to singing ‘reflective’ ballads”, no doubt with the odd power chorus thrown in.

It’s aiming for the middle of the road, trying to be bland, non-offensive, and featureless, so as not to reduce its appeal to any group at all. The power that the X-Factor has over the British music industry is worrying, particularly for any up-and-coming singer-songwriters, as this show (and its brethren) has reduced pop music to cover versions, to a motherfucking karaoke contest.

And in the middle of it is this hypocritical fuck, raking in the millions and falling in love with his ego so much that he’s prepared to re-write history should it so suit him.

And that’s really, really depressing.

Ever have one of those days when everything you do is second-guessed? As if people expect nothing more from you than a mistake and a fuck up, like you can’t do your job properly.

It’s really, really fucking annoying and demoralising.


Reblogged from: tomorrowonlyknows
Originally posted on: No, I Get It

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Londoner, thinking and writing far too much about far too many random things. Wannabe photo-/videographer of my life. More likely to be found propping up a bar somewhere.

I also write about football.

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