Off with the local

Sometimes you can be fooled the British public have elected suicidal tramps to run the country, change and cuts are the big issue and it seems like the Conservatives have already soiled the trousers of the British economy.

Inflation has rocketing well above 5% in the last quarter, the BBC is going to find it hard to manage over the next few years with the license fee being on hold. BBC Trust are currently dressing the wounds with the motto ‘Delivering quality first’ and one victim seems to be local programming.

‘Inside Out’ is a regional magazine show that the audience regularly gets mistaken for an extended version of The One Show, the show has been scaled back to only seven shows every now and then (I have no internet so I’m going to be very vague and incorrect). The cut backs have really shown in just this programme alone, the Yorkshire version ended with a segment about campsite cooking where all the budget was spent on Scallops (not the potato ones) and a camera lenses that empathised the bad weather.

I have no problem with TV done cheap and cheerfully but the show had one regrettable scripting error when the presenter signed off with ‘…the good news it’s only a few hours till dinner…’, how can the BBC broadcast a regional show and complete ignore that in Yorkshire (and almost everywhere else out of the M25) that dinner means the meal just after noon? My blood was boiling, I wanted heads rolling. How can the producers let something like that slip through?

As much as I love the BBC I feel the infrastructure is clogged up with too much bureaucracy. At the moment many independent production companies have the advantage when making shows, the phrase ‘too many cocks spoil the brothel‘ comes to mind. Being an indie allows the team to not compromised creativity to a mass mess of chipping thoughts (granted that most shows made for the BBC would have a few executive producers from the Big British Castle).

I have attempted to gain experience at pitching a show to many people including down at Television Centre for a bit of fun. In all of these meetings people have said to me ‘there’s no such thing as bad input’ this was normally after I raised an eyebrow during someone else’s thoughts on trying to improve the ‘idea’. Of course there’s such a thing as a bad idea, look at Owen Wilsons career or the decision for certain people to breed during a Halloween party on LSD.

Although we are not in a state as the states where not only the production team have input but the network executives and advertisers have their say, ‘amongst other transatlantic remakes ‘Life on Mars’ proved too much fiddling of a show from all levels took away the original qualities (what’s with it being a period piece without using music from that era?), I think ‘Episodes’ with Joey from friends in it tried making this point just as badly.

The late David Croft said in his autobiography “I don’t think any of my shows would get the go-ahead today because it’s so complicated. There are several levels of executives and they all want to put their penn’orth in.” I can imagine if Dads Army was made with the same level of bureaucracy today it wouldn’t get made, maybe if Channel four was around back then but some tool would have deemed it too soon and offensive towards domestic war heroes.

However my argument seems to have fallen flat when I think about that Jasper Carrott sitcom ‘All About Me’ where he had an Asian wife (don’t worry, I’m not offended by that) and a son with cerebral palsy who spoke with a Stephen Hawkins voice box machines thingy. For anyone who ever saw this it was probably one of the most offensive pieces of ill thought out programming ever and it was shown in a pre-watershed slot. The most shocking thing about this show (excluding cheap laughs at disability and Brummies) is that it ran for three series and was a BBC in-house production.

My message to cut costs at the BBC? Well I can't really say but I bet they spend a bucket load on consultants. Give me time and I will come back with a few theories. Why not watch this ace sketch from Big Train?

Lady Bullyshit

We have all been told Blogs are good, despite being a cringe worthy word its a medium which allows you to broadcast your work and thoughts. I've recently read a blog wrote by a girl who studies photography (but only seems to take pictures of her wonky face) who shared useless facts about herself like how she had months off school because she was bullied and how she used to cry at other peoples birthdays because she was jealous ...and she wondered why she got bullied 'its because your a dick!'.

I'm not promoting bullying at all but social media has opened up a new dimension of harassment, like those celebrities who say 'whatever haters! you just want to hate 'cos thats all haters wanna do!' like a crossbred version of a Morrissey and Fred Durst. Those kind of people like to think people hate them but in reality people just despise them because they are dicks.

In the last few days Twitter has been overdosing on a Lady Gaga quote "bullying is for losers" which is funny because as I typed that a Blue Peter presenter was bullying a Muslim girl on TV by calling her a "Loser" whilst demanding for her purse (not the first Blue Peter presenter to force themselves into degraded girls purses *ahem* John Leslie). Without going too far into the psychological theories behind bullying I feel Lady Gaga is bullying bullies, surely bullies need to be loved like self-involved attention seeking pop stars? Anyone who has once followed Steve Brookstein on Twitter would know that past it centres of attentions are bitter and vile people, no one is paying him attention so he decides to pick on 16 year-old lads with daft hair (and fans of).

I have no problem with insulting stage school kids and questioning the pop cultural taste of teens with good humour but when it comes to resentment and brutality by a middleaged man something slightly depressing and unsettling occurs. In reality the internet is full of anonymous pussies or as people like to call them these days 'trolls'. Before Twitter et al people used to go on message boards just to insult each other and celebrities but no one ever seemed to act with tact or ethics. The large majority of these trollers are either dejected grown men and frustrated teens comparing everything to Hitlers between sessions of pornography binges.

The days of internet Anon has gone, I can hunt down anyone online and find anything out about them but at the time I will leave that for another time as I understand this blog entry is quite poor on several levels but can't be bothered to delete it. Next time I will share some decent stories involving work, getting sacked, and other tactless social networking occurrences.

Here's the first Blue Peter from Salford involving the bullying presenter scenes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbbc/episode/b015f3rq/Blue_Peter_26_09_2011/

http://twitter.com/#!/stevebrookstein

Mellow yellow

It's that time again, the time to start a new blog. The third generation of documented thoughts and torturous theories of general things. Like Peter Kay I can remember my first blog, full of spelling errors, grammatical gaffs, and the ramblings of a teenager completely frustrated with the world and everything held within the cesspit.

Obviously nothing much will have changed apart from the crushing hackneyed hoops the hierarchy has placed has made me a restrained rational being too jilted and jaded to challenge the status quo of British society.

Lets take a look Britain's main industry finance where incompetence runs a muck and the workers are rewarded for being failures. That situation sums up this country, we (the public, not me and hopefully not you) voted in a man who was the Director of Corporate Affairs at ITV Digital to be our Prime Minister. Let us also remember this failed business man didn't even win an election without forcing political rohypnol upon the Lib Dems.

The UK is in a complete state of inefficiency, I am always placed in a situation of Yosser Hughes. I feel I could do a better job than most people in areas I have no expertise in. From my experience the most inept workers are the ones who have been in their job for years, where they gotten so comfortable in their position they think they are invincible in their own role like a useless cheese on toast faced dictator.

This view is something people often say I'm a hidden tory about. I don't think anyone should take their job ever for granted, if everyone is on the tip toes about losing their jobs you will get a better performance out of them. A large majority take their positions for granted playing it safe and being non-threatening to the beings above in fear of destroying the one purpose in life, mortgage repayments.

As my hour is up (the maximum duration I give myself per entry), I will leave you with one last political rambling. I was walking in Sheffield the other day and was rudely diverted by massive fences around the city hall, as it happens these fences were for the Lib Dem party conference. During the joy diversion I started talking to a woman who said 'There's going to be trouble this Saturday, those protesters are going to be trouble, a woman in John Lewis is really scared they going to smash up the shop'. I reminded her that protests are not mindless thugs willing to smash up every shop especially a shop where the workers get a share in the profits. "But they smashed up topshop didn't they?" I told her Phillip Green gives his Swiss-based wife each year a present of £700 million, "oh isn't that nice?".