May 2010
31 posts
Anti-coalition chattering foamers
It is fashionable amongst the ex-Britpop and new media generation to be right-on New Labour supporters. All that’s vulgar about this rich selfish binge drinking coke snorting middle-‘new money’-class who are now in their mid 40s was epitomised in New Labour when it swept to power in 1997. The ‘spin’ lunatics had taken over the asylum, and so started the reign of...
What is "Loving Awareness"?
The words ‘Loving Awareness’ have featured on Radio Caroline broadcasts for over 30 years. Radio Caroline devotees will sign letters and e-mail with some reference to ‘LA’ and occasionally mutter words about ‘love’. The more devoted will also refer to ‘DA’ as if it is the opposite of ‘LA’. As in, LA = good, DA = bad. The underlying idea...
Are TV News presenters and reporters mad?
Someone somewhere (probably in America) started a really really stupid trend. Now they are all copying it. Have you noticed it? It is very very silly.
This is bizarre, but the reporters won’t stand straight in front of the camera. Yes, somehow or other they will twist their head so it is squarely to the camera, and they can appear to look directly at you as they speak. BUT, they leave the rest of...
“I don’t see why the people of Britain in these financially extremely...”
– Christopher England just said that!
Why 'scallies' all smell of old lady's wee
It’s dead easy to spot the destroyers in Liverpool’s urban areas. The ‘scallies’, as they are called, all wear the same caps and same dull grey or charcoal black monochrome ski-wear, even in the hot summer, and can be easily seen hanging around off licences intimidating and abusing people who are brave enough to refuse to buy them their cider. It’s not proven whether...
Cool summer ahead
The Met Office, despite having Millions of Pounds worth of computer modelling equipment paid for by us the public, has spent a number of years giving us some strange mixed messages. They tell us how accurate their “5 day forecast” is (although I proved this completely wrong here), and how long range forecasts are always unreliable. Except, of course, they are able to...
Adverts of the Outside
Aren’t people stupid when it comes to advertising? Especially so when it comes to selecting a house or a car. Take a house, for example.
We, as humans, live inside the house, not outside it. We see the outside of the house as we arrive from being somewhere else. Most of the year those of us working ourselves to death for really long hours each day (probably to pay for the damn house) don’t even...
Proof that we can't trust journalists
I’m supposed to be able to trust my local (well, regional) paper to tell me the truth and to be accurate about stuff. But I can’t.
Newspapers are written by journalists who are dominated by the intellectuals and chattering classes who’ve been bred to have centre-left to left-wing political beliefs. Rarely are they ‘Conservative’, instead usually aligning with the...
Radio Caroline down the John
Offshore radio back in the 1960s is credited with changing everything radio wise. The one station that is named by the public to ‘represent’ all the offshore radio stations seems to be ‘Radio Caroline’. Ronan O’Rahilly, the wealthy Irish Chelsea set hustler and entrepreneur of the day is on record as saying that he named Radio Caroline after the daughter of President...
What was Offshore Radio?
Over half a century ago people used ships to broadcast pop music from. It was called ‘offshore radio’ or ‘pirate radio’ or ‘free radio’. There was never anything that special about it, it was just the way to do it before commercial radio stations were licensed in the UK. However, for some strange reason it did seem to attract fanatical devotion and obsession...
Moaning old farts
Is this country top-heavy with moaning old farts that actually have no logic to whatever it is they are moaning about? I think so. No wonder the younger generation feel so isolated and under-valued. It seems that anybody older than 40 has an axe to grind about other people doing this or doing that. Yes, it doesn’t matter what others are actually doing, but if they appear to be having fun, then it...
Why I hate old songs
Why do I tend to hate old songs more than anything I have ever hated? Because I have heard them before. The limited number you get played on the “gold” radio stations, or at an oldies night in a pub, or in a jukebox, or on compilation CDs are all drawn from the same safe batch of say 2,000 songs. I have heard those 2,000 songs. I don’t want to hear them any more. Please take them...
I've been outed as an anorak!
In my real life I accidentally let it slip that I am also a (mad) radio anorak of the old stylee.
Unfortunately this was at a rather large gathering of media types that I work with and it became the topic of curiosity and conversation for what seemed like hours but was probably a mere 10 minutes. My Christopher England persona is different to who I really am and it refers mainly to the past...
“Yay!
I’ve found the one square metre of pavement in Liverpool with no dog pooh...”
– Christopher England just said that!
“Oh… my… god…! Look what you’ve done! You had an...”
– Christopher England just elected to say that!
Vote! Vote! Vote!
I live in one of those constituencies where one party has a very safe seat with an extremely comfortable majority, so unless that party just happens to be the one I wish to vote for, I could sit here and say my vote is pointless or ‘wasted’ should I want change. Indeed, if this party is my party, I don’t actually need to vote and can be pretty sure they’ll still be there...
“What’s this? “ASDA Greeters”, NOOOOOO! What mad person from mad land decided to...”
– Christopher England just announced that!
An apparently true story from the Daily Telegraph:
Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, “We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It’s possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.”
Dirty Water
Yes, Dirty water…Just been reading about how a few years ago, January was the driest January for 2 million years, and how this meant there were water shortages throughout the UK come the August and September of that year. So, why the delay between when it rains and when we get water to the taps? Hmm, let me get this right in my mind’s eye: Fresh rain comes down from the sky. It goes...
April 2010
30 posts
The decline in radio production standards
When I was a lad in radio I was taught that your headphones were the most important tool you had. Not only would you hear if some audio was playing that shouldn’t be playing, or if something wasn’t playing that should be playing, but by actually ‘listening’ you could hear if your voice was too quiet compared to the music, or even if the music itself was too quiet or too...