Grumpy?

I seem to be getting grumpier the older I get. Not with my friends and family you understand but with the world in general and the people who inhabit it and run it. I find myself shouting at the radio more and more when some idiot says something stupid, which I'm afraid to say is happening more and more. Whether it is the Daily Mail/Express brigade texting, emailing or ringing in to BBC Radio Five Live, or some of their ludicrous presenters saying inane things about tragic events, it doesn't seem to matter. It pisses me right off and I go into rant mode.

I'll give you an example. Someone has just lost their possessions and very probably their home in a natural disaster such as the floods we incurred recently. Inane presenter/'journalist' asks said person "How are you feeling" strangely the person on the end of the question doesn't say "Fuck me, I'm brilliant thanks. Losing my home was just what I have always dreamed of. It's opened up all kinds of opportunities for me for a start. I've always wanted to be on tele/radio and now I can look forward to a couple of days being interviewed by fuckwit presenters asking stupid questions on news programmes".

You get the picture. However, my grumpy old man syndrome doesn't end there. More and more things are winding me up. F'instance, why do people insist on walking on the right in corridors, on staircases in railway stations etc. When I last looked we drive on the left in the UK so it isn't a great leap to work out that we should walk on the same side. It is amazing the amount of people stroll along on the right and expect me to move!!!

And another thing whilst I'm here, British terrestrial TV is shite. Thankfully the obsession with fly on the wall TV is slowly waning but it has been replaced with either celebrity 'talent' shows or audition TV. I remember a time when if you wanted to go on a talent show (and thankfully I never did) you had to go to an audition and all the really bad people (as opposed to just the bad ones who made on to the show) were weeded out. Not any longer they're not. They are actually given air time. It has bred a whole host of people who just want to be famous regardless of the fact that they are being ridiculed. I can't watch this car crash TV and find it hard to understand why anyone would either want to be on it or watch it.

I believe there is an agenda to make people look stupid so that it attracts viewers. Television producers are going out of their way to find the really bad people so that overpaid nobodies can slag them off and make them feel bad in front of millions of people. Some might argue that people have a choice whether they go on these programmes or not, but I don't think that is the point. People always did enter things like this but they were not publicly humiliated if they failed miserably.

Programmes like 'Dragons Den' and the 'Apprentice' are make TV stars of people whose job it seems is to be rude and intolerant of others. On the one occasion I have had the misfortune to watch 'Dragons Den' I saw several people whose 'products' were so ridiculous that it beggared belief They were still allowed on though so some nasty businessman could rip them to shreds and tell them they were morons. Obviously they were chosen because they were crap and were going to get ripped apart and that is unacceptable. The press are always harping on about the youth of today having no respect for anyone or anything yet they champion TV programmes that perpetuate this kind of behaviour. You'll probably say that I have an off button and don't have to watch any of this. Well I do use it and I don't watch any of it. It is nasty and brain numbing and I'd rather do almost anything else.

Well that was strangely cathartic. I feel much better for getting that off my chest. I might even turn the telly on in a minute, or walk down a corridor or even turn on the radio...