The Grumpy Old Blog

Well, the commercial terrestrial television stations want the government to allow them to compete with overseas programmers by allowing them to operate the model whereby we see consistently appalling advertising interrupted by some programming. This is rather than the current average of seven minutes of advertising per hour across the day under current regulations. There can be no doubt that TV advertising has taken a turn for the worse over the past decade, especially now that it is infested with gormlessly irritating reality stars as the faces of the brands. More so when one organisation comes up with a new product or service and immediately there are six other companies offering an identical product. I’m all for healthy competition, but…. Can you imagine seeing the simply awful Domino yodel or its copycat (sorry, “creative agency” produced) Celebrations “whoop-whoop” advertisement six times an hour.  Or Purple Bricks reminding you that anyone over the age of 70 needs to ha...

Do you remember when: - Christmas festivities, the switch on of lights, the putting up of Christmas trees and the arrival on Santa was on 6th December, Saint Nicholas Day - the first two weeks of January were completely Valentine Card free - comedians on TV didn't swear - a world without Greta Thunberg - a world without airport security - you didn't need an Equity card to be a professional wrestler - Bohemian Rhapsody set the bar to reach for popular songwriting - people had to speak English correctly to get a job on TV - you had to go out to get a takeaway - there was no ITVbe or Metro 'newspaper' - people used only "he" or "she" to describe other people - Christmas TV was watchable - people didn't use "super" as their sole adjective - there were no soshul influenzers - people didn't say "I follow him/her (him/her being an otherwise useless, self-publicising nonentity) on Instagram - drivers of Mercedes and BMW's used the...

  Grumpy old man strikes again. Decided to have a go at the clueless in the NHS who seem to have great fun at the expense of the hard-pressed angels at the sharp-end who are on a quarter of the salary being offered for this non-job.     Dear Liz   I hope you are well.   https://www.mpft.nhs.uk/joinus?ref=LinkedIn#!/job/v4828381   Nice to see £110,000+ salaries on offer in the NHS for frankly ridiculous jobs (well, I for one cannot understand what on earth you need a "bridge-builder" or "amplification specialist" for! You can't conduct heart surgery, or ask severely underpaid nurses to change bed-pans on a bridge using a microphone).   And does the "lived experience" title imply the past and that we're talking about the hospital morgue, or is it just that the post-holder is expected to work in the the HR office and juggle out-of-body experiences?   Perhaps it might be better for your Trust to concentrate on allowing life-saving nurses (rather than...

  I have just read a disturbing and rather ignorant post with people saying they would not support the RNLI because they pick up immigrants from the sea. Sorry all. It's not the RNLI's fault at all, and those comments are shameful. The RNLI is competely unfunded by the government, yet their volunteers go out in all weathers to rescue thick, implanted-teethed, tattooed, TikTok plonkers, brains enlarged by steroids, who think its alright to go off sailboarding in a force 7 gale off the coast of Scotland.   Have they ever been out in a RNLI lifeboat to rescue British plonkers such as above who are just braindead, thoughtless asshole themselves?   I have! And it's not a night out in the pub shouting obscenities at 22 spitters with ridiculous hair on a giant TV screen while you wear a gambling company-emblazoned team shirt, made by a half-blind child in Bangladesh for $4 that you paid £85 for!   Will you be sitting at home in Tenby, settling down to watch King Charles on ...

People have a real habit of typecasting/pigeon-holing themselves when expressing their “individuality, inner being and artistic selves”. They all look and act the exact same! I have just been out on one of Greater Manchester's finest omnibuses, none other than a wonderful specimen of mechanical magnificence provided at vast private expense by Diamond. On the one hand, it was nice to see the normality of a rather full bus; on the other, I had to immediately plug in the ear buds to drown out the great unwashed who plainly have zero notion as to how awful they sound when speaking on their mobiles in public. I’ll give them this; their self-embarrassment threshold must be incredibly high. It was a bus-full cacophony of very-badly speaking Paddy McGuinness’s. I ambled upstairs to the gods to allow a very dextrous mother with her two mobile phones and perambulated snot-machine argue with the bus driver as to why she should not get preference over a young lad in a wheelchair (who was alre...

January •    eBay crashes under the weight of unwanted Festive gifts •    Easter eggs appear in the shops •    The summer sales begin •    A new Amazon holiday is declared – Black Wednesday - which will last until April •    Elon Musk opens his wardrobe, which reveals a lion and a witch inside February •    The world will end once more, this time on the 29th February, despite it not being a leap year •    A contestant on “Tipping Point” will answer “Heil” to the question “What was Hitler’s first name?” •    A participant on “Dickinson’s Real Deal” will sell a Renoir for £27million •    Christmas cards will go on display in Home Bargains •    Eddy Izzard discovers that “Leica Screw” is actually how lenses for that iconic camera are described by photo experts March •    As the world hasn’t yet ended, it has now been postponed...

"Yes, the advertisement did say "Free TV", but we didn't feel we needed to mention it's only an unboxed, 28-inch customer return, and you do have to buy a new kitchen to get it" "The brand-new car in the advertisement is indeed only £4000, but we didn't feel we needed to mention the wheels, which you have to also buy, that are £8000" "Yes, the advertisement does say "50,000 Airmiles free", but we didn't feel we needed to mention it's only valid for a holiday to North Korea. Be warned before reading any further. Family and friends have told me on many occasions in the past to take the bonnet from my head and allow the bee that often sits there to escape. I am man enough to admit that they are not too far wrong. But some things do fester. Very heavily. And this episode is one of them. Also, should you consider yourself a politically correct frump, please stop reading - some of the content may cause unintentional ...