Google

[conceived while lying in bed one night, trying - in vain - to sleep.] – with apologies to John Betjeman Whatever will rhyme with Google? There’s only the Scottish name ‘Dougal’; Why! in Scots I shall try With my words to get by, If I give them a shake and a shoogle. I’d love to say more about Google, But your rhymes are annoyingly frugal; Whilst searching for ages Through nine billion pages The best you could offer was 'bugle'. What else can I couple with Google? If I cheat, p’rhaps I can use wriggle; But in vain at my chair Do I stare, and I pair, For my brain is all higgledy-piggle. My eyes are now square-shaped to ogle, At pages all footered with …oooooogle, But how many ‘o’s Are out there? Who knows! And thus my rhyme endeth with Gooooooooooooooo…ooooooooooooogle. By Annie Copland © 2009 Annie Copland. Not to be reproduced without the express permission of the author.

This debacle (for it is a debacle) about MPs' expenses has left everyone practically foaming at the mouth. How can so many so-called professionals make 'mistakes' with their finances - financial acumen being one of the things for which they are supposed to be employed? It beggars belief. So history repeats itself. I very much doubt whether today's scandals are any more ripe than those of the past. The scary thing is whether today's electorate really do have any more power to do anything about it than they did in the past - for the MPs today seem beyond reproach; they make up their own rules as they see fit; they seem to have no raison d'être other than to cling to the rungs of power for as long as physically possible. In many ways their megalomania makes us even more powerless than ever before. The question is: what should be done about it? I have spent much of this week churning over the facts along with possible solutions to the political mess. Paying back their expenses is a very short term solution. It is a childish act and possibly makes the guilty MPs look even more idiotic and backboneless than had they held on to each penny they'd embezzled. No - what we are actually lacking these days is true leadership for our country. After all, that is what we are supposedly paying them to do. And as we all know, leadership involves trust, taking responsibility for one's own - and others' - actions, and authority. Today's insipid, fawning MPs demonstrate none of these qualities. They've had their chance, but they've well and truly blown it. It pains me to say it, because it's wholly undemocratic, but the answer I feel is to go back the past: to have far fewer MPs, quadruple their salaries, and just have the ridiculously flamboyant, louche landed gentry running the place. Get more retired brigadiers, army generals, majors and sirs, lords and barons leading us: telling other people what to do while having fun: it's what they do best. Get these pathetic, drivelling nobodies out of the House of Commons and back to their desk jobs; if they feel like 'glorified social workers', then let them become social workers - heaven knows we could do with some more. Wheel the eccentric, the brave, and the altruistic, the monied, the financially self-sufficient, out of their country estates, and back to the steering wheel of the country. For it has been shown that paying 'ordinary' people (by which, they mean, people like us) a pretty meagre salary of £65,000 has just attracted the dregs. You could earn more being a GP or a head teacher, or in private sector management. Needless to say, these people want to claim as much extra money to line their own pockets as possible. They are self-serving and they have shown they have a lack of respect for the people they represent. This much was pretty inevitable. It may be different if these MPs were actually doing a great job - but they're not. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that democracy is somehow morally superior to great leadership. I don't - necessarily - want more women, more ethnic origin, more gay, more OAP, more young, more humble background MPs being paid for out of my taxes if they're first, dishonorable, and second, unable to lead convincingly. It doesn't matter a hoot who they are: surely it's what they do that counts. And anyway, if we bring back the Rotten Borough, would our country be any more rotten than it already is?? Annie

NANS. No, not those sweet, silver-haired old ladies we like to call Granny. NANS. Short for, “Not Another Networking Site!” Help. My life has become a constant battle with keeping myself* up to date: I am already at online interactivity overload. Just when I think my poor little fingers have got up to speed with typing away at my MySpace, bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts – then along pops another social networking site into my inbox. Ping! Your new account is ready to use! Sign up, sign on, get blogging, get tweeting. Help! Just the other day, claims in the news were made that social networking may be detrimental to our mental health. Apparently evidence suggests that the more time we spend on such sites, and the less time we spend interacting ‘face to face’, the more isolated we become and the more harm we are doing to our biological systems. This may be true. I know I only converse face-to-face with about three or four ‘real’ people these days. All the rest of my contacts have been relegated to ‘online chat’, followed up by a biannual ‘real life’ visit if they’re lucky. I wouldn’t mind all these so-called ‘networking’ sites if I thought the benefits:time ratio were a bit higher. But it isn’t. I can spend several hours a week online-networking and come away at the end of it thinking it might have been simpler if I’d just phoned a friend and gone out to grab a coffee for 30 minutes. My mum has the right idea. And then all the profiles need so much updating! At the last count I had at least nine accounts; each with statuses to update, moods to select, contact details to provide, interests to specify, friends to invite, etc, etc, etc… These sites don’t save us time - they ROB us of all our free time. I work from home, which means that if my computer is on from say, 8 in the morning to, say, 9 at night, then that’s a potential thirteen whole hours to be dabbling in and out of social networking sites. A peek here, a browse there, who’s doing what, who’s said what to whom, what wit can I post online now? And as I don’t have one of those website blocking filters like some people do in the office, there’s just no stopping me. And yet, if it is so time-consuming and tedious, why are we all so into it? Simple. Firstly, because we’re addicted. We’re addicted to staying in the loop, and the internet provides the possibility to embark on one enormous, effortless journey through a virtual circular street with infinite virtual doors to knock on. Clever advertising makes us think we need it. And secondly, because we are ultimately a lazy people. Given the choice between going into town to meet someone in a bar or café, and just sitting in front of the computer screen, most of us would rather do the latter. So this latest social networking site I’ve been invited to join will provide me with another opportunity to befriend people I don’t actually know, to post all sorts of facts and miscellany about myself into the infinity of the web, and to remember another goddamn password. Great. Will this be the last I hear of the NANS? No. What do I think will happen next? Facebook, I suspect, is just the tip of the iceberg. From where I’m standing these interactive tools look set to multiply, rendering each of us ‘over-networked’ (i.e. the ultimate endgame of all social networking sites is surely to have each and every one of us on the planet ‘linked’ to the next person: infinite linkages. That seems to be the way it’s going anyway. And how workable will that be?) Will what I have to say have any real bearing on people using Facebook et al? No. Why? Because we’re scared of being left out. *I am no longer myself. I am My Profile. Is it just me or is there something quite masochistic in referring to oneself in criminal-records-speak? ANNIE

I got a fright the other day as I was walking down the toiletries aisle of the supermarket looking for some girlie sanitary products. There it was, emblazoned across the shelf, in large bold type, a sign advertising: “Digital Tampons”. What?! For one scary moment I actually thought (it was still well early in the morning; I was probably half-asleep), ‘Well blimey me! What the HELL are they? They sound painful.’ For one very strange minute I had this completely freaked-out mental relapse where I was not in a supermarket aisle at all but in some bizarre, freaked-up horror film where some pervy psychopath does things to you with probes and crocodile clips that are simply unmentionable. Digital tampons, digital tampons….Come on girl, think! - All I could come up with though was the thought that perhaps I’d been cryogenically preserved for decades and had accidentally woken up in the year 2065. Where everything had gone digital. We had digital clocks these days…digital handsets…digital thermometers…surely…..Nooooo…they can’t be….! Not wee things that now glow up in the dark or which automatically pop in and out according to your body’s menstrual whims, surely? Not things with little flashing LEDs and microcomputers in them which you can pre-programme with a remote? Perhaps it’s a novelty Christmas gift idea. A cotton mouse that’s also a barometer-cum-anemometer-cum-sat-nav. Jings! Ach, dearie me…not like those old cardboard cotton woolly things you used to have to ram up there yourself like they had back in 2007…. Perhaps it’s a Japanese technology…they always were pretty good with developing their micro-gadgets…But this! This might have gone TOO far… Seconds later, I was, thankfully, snapped out of my daze as I was reminded of the origins of the word ‘digital’ – coming from the Latin ‘digitus’, meaning finger or toe. Phew. I was back in the real world after all. Oh it means FINGER. As opposed to cardboard. Into the shopping basket with those, my familiar old friends! But on second thoughts, if ever I WAS going to steal a patent for something, well….. Annie

In this blog post I’m going to be discussing some of the reasons why (if any) there are certain people on this planet that just seem to go OUT OF THEIR WAY to look unattractive. The opinions expressed in this particular post are purely personal, so I don’t expect everyone necessarily to agree with me on this one. However, some things need to be said. Controversial? Perhaps. What I’m getting at here are those people – and who, I admit, are mainly female - who apparently leave the house in the morning with not a hint of preparation having gone into their morning routine. It’s like they’ve just rolled outa bed, dah-dahhh! - just like that. Terrible dress sense. Unflattering clothes. Greasy, unstyled hair, scraped into a limp ponytail. Not a trace of make-up. Nada. Couldn’t give a hoot. It’s like, Why would you WANT to make yourself look that unattractive? Now I’m no Elizabeth Hurley, but for goodness’ sake, women! Have some shame on yourselves! People who don’t take any pride in their appearance are, to me, people who have given up on the joys of life. Looking good makes you FEEL good about yourself, and after that then the day just seems to swing along with a buzz – plus it makes the streets look full of beautiful people and we’re all happy. Which is a nice thing. Now if there was a scale of mingingness from 1 (gorgeous) to 10 (ultra-ming), then I’d be the first to admit that I’d probably be nearer the higher end of the scale; I’m not vain! – but taking just a BIT of care over your appearance can do wonders for your self-esteem, and can bring your mingingness down a grade or two. I’m entirely with ‘What Not To Wear’ on this one – a tiny bit of daily preening and maintenance can really make the difference between being a butch-looking hermaphroditette and a beautiful thing of glamour. It’s not about wearing a mask. It’s not about being a fashion victim. It’s not about trying to emulate Jordan Katie Price or Pamela Anderson, who both swing too far in the opposite direction. Nobody wants to go out feeling uncomfortable or looking like a drag queen. But a simple bit of pressed powder, mascara and lipstick, plus at least an attempt at some kind of hair "style” – I mean, come ON! Is that really too much to ask? It’s as if these people (namely: some mums, so-called “practical” women, lesbians, and other “I’m too busy for appearances” sorts) feel they have some god-given right to look plain. Actually I think it’s more than that: after a while it’s self-indulgent. It’s as if they’re saying, “Uh! Think I’ve got time for dressing up? Think I’ve got time for twiddling my hair into shape? Think I need make-up?” – in that holier-than-thou, appearances-are-just-for-slappers kind of way. As though looking plain makes them better than the rest of us or something. I disagree with this brazenly cocksure attitude. As a matter of fact I would deem myself to be a highly “practical” or – what’s that euphemism for unattractive? – “outdoorsy” sort of bird. I have my minging, no-effort days (at weekends). Everybody does. But not EVERY day. During the week it’s not only good to look good, but it’s fun, and, I’d say, it’s even a public responsibility. I’m also a feminist but that doesn’t necessarily make me want to look like a tomboy or like someone out of McDonald’s. Fact: Nobody likes mingers. Fact: You’ll have plenty of time to look as unattractive as you want when you’re six foot under and lying in a coffin! So get with the program! – You’re only here once; you’re only going to have this face, this body, ONCE; you’re only going to meet/smile at/make an impression to certain people in this world – ONCE. So make the most of it! Make an effort. Stop looking like a Neanderthal and make people take notice of your assets. And ditch those ugly pills once and for all, will you! Annie

…No, not the song by Radiohead. I refer to those communication “experts” who have, for mind-baffling reasons, seen it fit to allow the virtual eradication of the comma from the written word in the English language. These days, commas in text are about as sparse as hens’ teeth, and it’s not only unfashionable to have them in your document or letter or whatever; it’s actually deemed to be WRONG. Just look in any “official” document, any business letter or e-mail, and – if the Comma Police have had their hands on it – I bet you will struggle to find more than about two commas in it. (Word “Wizards” and so-called computer ‘Help’ don’t do much to help either.) They’re becoming extinct – I tell you. Personally, I love commas. [Sorry – Personally I love commas.] Actually, I think this might be, of all my rants so far, the one which irks me most of all, for unknown reasons! [Sorry - Comma Police Transcription required: Actually I think this might be of all my rants so far the one which irks me most of all for unknown reasons!] GAD. Not only does it sound ugly but it looks ugly too. I’ll tell you why we need commas, and why the eradication of the humble comma is a bad thing. Firstly, commas do for the sentence what phrasing does for a piece of music. It’s all about breathing and timing; making sense of a random string of words, and, ultimately, bringing them to life. At each comma, we, as the reader, are expected to slow down, to pause, to HALT, before proceeding to the next phrase. It gives personality and voice to the words, introducing subtleties of rhythm, and tone, and even gravity that the Comma Police wouldn’t get if it belted them across the ears. Probably the invention of computers and everything having to be done online and automatically without thought these days has contributed to the demise of that gracious pause in the flow of words. See? These days everything needs to be done now now NOW and there is just no time for pausing – or appearing to pause to catch one’s breath hence the lack of punctuation and phrasing. Phew! But no. We’re no longer supposed to use commas. They’re bad form. According to the communication experts, if we have to put loads of commas in a sentence, then obviously our sentence is too long, and needs to be broken up into a few, simpler, shorter sentences, all for the reader’s benefit. “Cut out the commas!" we’re told, “They’re so last century!” – Or is it, as is my suspicion, that we are merely – YET AGAIN – having to pander to the lowest common denominator, that is, to people who can only read sentences of 10 words or fewer; people who can only understand monosyllabic words? I.e. Readers of The Sun. If it is, then I resent this fact. This “dumbing down” is to the implicit detriment of ALL written work, in my (humble) opinion. Some of the most enjoyable stuff I’ve ever read has been absolutely littered with commas, with sentences going on for days (e.g. Dickens), but we still get the gist of it because there are natural breaks, and pauses, and the sense spins out through the writer’s careful use of phrasing. And correct phrasing is an art form. Why would we actually WANT to make our words sound like a computer-generated monotone, instead of something hand-carved and lyrical? No. The REAL illiterate, in my view, are the Comma Police, those bland punctuation Nazis, who cannot understand a sentence if it is a paragraph, or even if it spills over more than two lines (oh, the horror!). It’s like we’re being penalised for pausing, or for having an attention span. I really, really resent this demise of the comma (among other punctuation extinctions). I shall continue to use LOADS of commas in my written work as long as it remains unfashionable; in fact, the more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. Annie

I LOVE supermarkets. They’re an experiment in social behaviour just sitting right in front of you, awaiting analysis. Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a direct correlation between poorness and the number of loaves of white bread in the supermarket trolley. A few days ago I happened to be in a branch of a certain love-it-or-loathe-it supermarket chain which takes – what is it? – one pound out of every eight pounds spent in this country and rhymes with al fresco. Good grief, it was an enlightening experience, I tell you. I think it’s actually possible to discover more about our fellow countrymen and women by noseying into their supermarket trolleys than by reading tables of Government statistics. Some of the sights astounded me. I saw one woman who was about the size of a hippopotamus, and her face was a picture of ill-health. All flab and folds, pink and flaccid, rolling over the top of her tight fitting clothes. I think the Government calls it – obese. And in her gargantuan trolley was, neatly perched one on top of the other, about 20 loaves of white bread. She had a small bread mountain in there. She appeared to have very little else in that trolley. I began to wonder how many she was feeding back home. An army of little blighters? Or – let’s give her the benefit of the doubt here - did she perhaps run a Bed and Breakfast? Perhaps she owned a sandwich delicatessen? But then, why wouldn’t she buy straight from the wholesaler? I looked around me and began to see that she was not alone. Several people, each portly and panting, appeared to be buying nothing but loaf upon loaf of bread. Was there a war on? I wondered. Some rationing that no one had told me about? They couldn’t get enough of it. Not granary, not multigrain, not even French baton, but extra extra white, factory bleached, no-bits, nutritionally-devoid BREAD. Starch. Carbs. The “healthy” alternative to chips, one presumed. Now I like a bit of bread, and it has been around for a few thousand years after all – but seven identical loaves all at once? – That’s pushing it, even for the biggest of families. That’s more than just a round of sandwiches and even a hefty-sized bread-and-butter pudding for afters. These people seemed to have more than a bread fetish. This was a bread eating disorder. And once home, what are people DOING with all this bread? Are they building houses with the stuff? Feeding it to the ducks and squirrels? Stitching it into quilts for winter? No, I’m afraid not. I’ve asked people and I know some who think that a nutritionally balanced diet consists of breakfast – “toast!”, with nought but butter – then lunch – a chip sandwich – followed by dinner – soup, plus “loads and loads of white TOAST” to polish it off. Perhaps then a Nutella sandwich before bed to really put an end to their hyperglycaemic day. Mmm. Yummy! Further, my no-Government-funding-required research then went on to hypothesize that there is a direct link between yellow-to-white foodstuffs and gargantuanism. You can analyse this for yourself the next time you go food shopping. Just scan the contents of each trolley and look out for one rich in all the yellow-white hues: for example, chips, potatoes, white bread, “baps”, pastry, Supanoodles, macaroni cheese, milk, chicken dippers, fish fingers, vanilla ice cream, waffles, crisp multi-packs, frozen alphabet letters made of piped potatoes, spaghetti hoops, pasta. It’s all low-grade starch fuel at the end of the day. Then quickly look up from the trolley to the person pushing it around and you can bet your bottom dollar that they will be obese. You can also bet there will be little in the way of green hues in that trolley, a fact further demonstrated by the lack of vitality and vigour in the trolley pusher’s face. Think of this next time you look down at your trolley and find yourself nursing a single tin of beans on top of a veritable bouncy castle of loaves – man cannot live by bread alone! Annie

As a pedant and a lexophile, I have been increasingly troubled lately by what I see as the sad disappearance of simple words like ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Especially in the world of business. And in these humble words’ place, a new proliferation of polysyllabic verbal effluvium seems to have taken over. All nonsense words. This therefore is a subject on which I am only too keen to rant. Have you noticed, recently, that everything has to be ‘Absolutely!’ to indicate a response in the affirmative – instead of the plainer-sounding ‘yes’? E.g. ‘Hello Margaret! Are you well today?’ ‘Absolutely!’ Or, ‘Can we achieve all this in the space of a week?’ ‘Absolutely!’ Or, ‘I think I need to take a holiday. Maybe next week…’ ‘Absolutely!’ Do you do it? Are you afraid of sounding too plain? Another one that gets my goat is this current fixation with the word ‘Perfect!’ as a euphemism for the much humbler sounding ‘OK’ or ‘That’s fine’. Are you guilty? E.g. ‘I’ve sent you that document by email just now so it should be with you any second.’ ‘Oh! Perfect!’ Or, ‘I’ll meet you at the plaza at 1pm then, Mark.’ ‘Perfect! See you there!’ - When what they mean is anything BUT ‘perfect’. They mean, ‘Alright, that suits me.’ It’s not perfect. Perfect is something untarnished, something without soil, something divine, and you rarely know about it. Another one used in place of simple, old-fashioned ‘yes’ is ‘Correct’ – or, even, ‘Cor-RECT!’ Why? Why the fixation with this odd, Magnus Magnusson-sounding catchphrase? Is it to sound more pompous or more ‘computer-like’ than the rest of us normal folk? To give the tone of your approval more gravitas? E.g. ‘I think we need to speak to our suppliers first before we go any further.’ ‘Correct.’ ‘Absolutely!’ ‘Perfect!’ Or, ‘I don’t think I need dress up too much tonight. We’re only going to the pub down the road after all.’ ‘Correct!’ Correct? In the sense in which they use it (the computer-binary, affirmative/negative sense), ‘correct’ is the opposite in meaning of ‘incorrect’, and while it might not be a good idea to dress up to the nines just to go down your local pub, it can hardly be, technically speaking, INCORRECT. So this language is just nonsense. Do we WANT to sound like computers, or like people? Do we WANT to end up sounding like those imbecilic American science geeks in all the movies who go, ‘Negative, sir!’? Eh? So let’s get rid of the sickly superlatives and the hyped-up hyperbole and stick to good old Yes ‘n’ No. Annie

Media fascinates me. It’s interesting to see where we’re going next in terms of the way we communicate. But two facets of the modern media really irk me. One is this perma-gravitation towards everything being “online”, and the second, following on from the first, is this arrogant presumption that everything is inherently better or superior because it’s “on the Internet”. Is it? Consider this for stupidity. I’ve seen people walk into a room where the telly is on, and announce, proudly: “Hey! You don’t need to do that. I can switch on my computer and watch it online, you know!!!” – whereupon they have to power up yet another kilowatt-guzzling device in the same room as the already-on TV. The compu’er invariably has inferior sound and visual output to the TV, which was designed for prolonged periods of watching. Then there are people who hover around with their laptops strapped permanently to their side who seem to take great delight in walking into a room where the radio is on and going, “Stop! Turn that off. We can listen to that online!!!” Then someone has to go and find the remote to turn off the radio (usually left on standby), then wait while the computer powers up before “clicking on” the website from which the radio station can be listened. Backward? No…! These days everything must be “online” or it isn’t worth a look in, apparently. Simply everything has to have a website attached to it. I wager these days the most common letter in the English language is not ‘e’ but ‘w’. Double-you-double-you-double-you; that’s all you ever hear these days. As if that makes it smart, or cool, or something. Newspapers – online. TV reports – online. Board games – online. Telephone conversations – online. Socialising and catching up with friends – online. It’s fast becoming a sedate old life. The only things I don’t think they’ve discovered how to put online are Sleeping, Eating, and Urination. But watch this space. I went to a library (the ones that stock books, not computers - remember those?) the other day, and my browsing led me to stumble upon a lovely book of pictures. It was a book all about architectural sketches through the ages – from Leonardo da Vinci right the way through to modern day designers such as Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava. The style of drawing and the techniques used varied dramatically over the centuries but the most fascinating thing about all the designers featured was that each used a simple ‘pen and pencil drawing’ to “work things out”: to see, to think, to design. And from the initial sketch came the great building. The most basic act of human creativity is almost always most naturally carried out with these simple tools. Tool 1: pen. Tool 2: paper. Writers, artists, engineers, architects, inventors, illustrators, carpenters: basically anyone worth knowing does all their ‘thinking work’ using these simple tools. No computers, no mouse, no keyboard, no fancy peripherals – and certainly no fancy digital software. People who think they need these things to come up with the goods are sadly lacking in inspiration. The book showed me that. Yes, we’ve got fancy software to help us refine designs and to “mess about” with our initial idea or concept, but too often I think we use technology and modern media as an excuse for ‘a poor sketch’, or indeed, no sketch at all. I made the horrible realisation that I had ‘no sketch at all’ in my life when I saw that book – it’s too easy to do everything with ‘the click of a mouse’ without ever really seeing anything; to ingest everything but simultaneously to produce nothing useful at the end of my mouse-clicking labours. And the simple reason for this being that the Internet and the advent of ‘online everything’ was quite literally sapping me of (a) my time, and (b) any creative energy I had. I wanted to go straight home and lob my computer out the window! You see, the Internet revolution means it is now possible to spend no time being truly creative or original at all. We tend to think (or are led to believe by ‘The Media’) that being online is going to make our lives better, more culturally rich, more easy, more efficient – when the reality is, it can rob us of all our ‘creative’ time. Computers can therefore be the very enemy of creativity. For one thing computers are designed and based around logic – lists, formulae, series, things in sequence. People who interact with computers tend to exploit them for these idiosyncrasies. Creative, holistic thought on the other hand tends to come from the opposite side of the brain – the right side – which doesn’t deal in lists, programmes, sequences, and so on, but in pictures and ‘wholes’. In other words computers are by their nature very left side of the brain-centric. I am not a Luddite or a technophobe – computers and onlineness can help us and can save us time – but too often I think that we are fast migrating in the wrong direction, moving further away from what it was that computers were originally designed to do. At work I’ve seen people who think they “aren’t doing work” when they aren’t physically strapped to their computer, and who seem at a loss as to what to do without one in front of them. Certainly from my own experience, it is now possible to spend a whole day strapped to a computer without learning anything you originally set out to learn nor really having been inspired by anything worth being inspired by. Sometimes our most lucid moments are those when we just sit with everything digital switched off and a pencil and paper in our hands. Unfortunately what the e-revolutionaries have failed to realise is that there is still a gaping disparity between what we are led to believe is the place we live in these days (the ‘digital age’, the ‘e-world’) and the actual reality of the thing, which is a deeply explorable physical world. A world of trees, muscle, sky, flow, birds, boats, metal, soil, pen, and paper. Well, it was the last time I looked anyway… ANNIE

Back in March of this year... I have just finished watching the BBC Six O’clock News for the first time in about a year, and all I can say is…"What???!!" It seems that times have changed both in broadcasting and in the way we speak and address each other. It was like watching something in a foreign language. I thought: Ah, this’ll be good – I’ll watch the good old BBC News for half an hour and get an idea of what’s going on in the world, with pictures for a change. Well, if that was the News, then I don’t know what sort of people make it up and I honestly don’t think I’m missing much by not having a TV. The supposed 'top' news item was pictures of truckloads of turkeys being taken to some warehouse to be slaughtered, and a minister telling us that "as long as we cook the meat to at least 70 degrees then it’ll be perfectly safe to eat" (! Excuse me! I think I’ll be the judge of that!). Next it was pictures of a man standing on a dark road watching loads of traffic go past, followed by pictures of a computer screen close-up, showing "1,455,692 signatures – no! Now 1,455,891 signatures!" on an ‘online’ petition by drivers campaigning against a proposed new road tax. Everything has to be ‘online’ these days or it’s not worth reporting. Riveting! Also, I object to being announced to as though I were in the same room as the newsreader. I don’t want to be talked down to, in that "Now, if you’ve ever considered eating turkey without first checking the cooking instructions then you might want to listen up to this! Because…" tone. It is demeaning, it isn’t interesting, and it doesn’t make me feel any more ‘engaged’ with the news item or the giggle-eyed newsreader. Then there was an interview in a sandwich shop where a plump and burly lady who made sandwiches all day was complaining about the new campaign to offer employees flexible working – "We do most our business in rush hour so I need all the employees I can get at busy times to make sandwiches – I can’t have people waiting for hours to get a sandwich, they’ll go elsewhere," she commented. Very incisive. The bit of footage that followed showed - I kid you not - two halves of a sandwich – one of which was fully laden with fillings, the other with a mere wafer-thin slice of ham. The reporter then used the sandwich analogy to explain to the viewers that while some employees can get lots of flexible working, others have very little. I also watched as the same reporter then went on to quiz an ordinary woman in the street about the new proposals for flexible working hours. Her response? "Oh yeah, I mean, that would be great, if you had a hen night or something then it’d be good if you could use it for a bit of recovery time the next day, you know, to come in a bit later the next morning…ha ha ha!" Still, in this politically c'rect world, everybody's opinion counts. Next I had to watch about 7 minutes of footage going into all the detail of Camilla Parker-Bowles’s supposed planned hysterectomy, in which doctors and reporters and ‘experts’ told me how long she would be off work, and how many other women have had the operation this year, and how soon she could expect to get back to her regular ‘schedule’. - All this despite the fact that the op itself was a good few weeks away. Is this all I am to expect in the way of News? I asked myself, about halfway through the bulletin. A petition, a womb, and a sandwich? But there was more. A good ten minutes were devoted to the next item, which was all about The Police (the band, not the Constab) reforming as a group. Wow! A sentence would have sufficed for the avid music fan, but no – they had to string it out with interviews with a bunch of fawning Americans jumping up and down with joy, and old footage of Sting back in the '80s, then they appeared to turn the whole item into a mini music feature all about boy bands reforming to make money. A new figure emerged on screen. Who’s this? I thought. It was Phil Collins from the band Genesis. Apparently they (or ‘it’ as the reporter insisted on calling the bands, in the singular – he may have a point…) are reforming too. So is/are Crowded House. So has/have Take That. Brilliant. I honestly wasn’t sure now whether I was watching the BBC News or just some MTV '100 Greatest Bands' documentary. Then there was more – this time a piece on how we "like to book our package holidays on the Internet now rather than go to a travel agent", along with a reporter taking us through the steps on a white computer just in case we didn’t know how. Apparently more and more of us are taking more exotic holidays and booking not the whole package but flights and hotels separately, or even just flights themselves. Some of us are even taking more than one such holiday each year. Wow. The reporter grinned at me as though he was enlightening the human race with this item that was deemed to be 'newsworthy'. My patience by now slightly thinned by the fact that I was wasting 28 minutes of my time watching this, I cringed as the reporters made the all too common hilarious banter between themselves about going to see The Police … “And will you be wearing your tight jeans, George?” - “A-hah-hah-hah-hahh…!” GET ON WITH IT AND TELL ME SOMETHING I NEED TO KNOW, YOU CRETINS! Some other pictures showed Kate Winslet on a red carpet shaking hands with ordinary punters as she "denied claims that she had ever been on a diet". Again, highly important stuff. Then the weather ("Get your brollies out! It's raining folks!" - etc, etc, don't get me started...), then more inane and totally unnecessary ‘witty exchange’ between the newsreaders before I was told that that was the end of the Six O’Clock News. Excuse me? Have I missed something? Twenty-eight minutes of celebrity non-news and some total nobody with a tie on the telly telling me how to book a flight on the Internet! More like: chit-chat, pointless speculation, and dull social commentary on some of the most banal facets of human life: this truly was BBC NewsLite™!