I’m a bad bad blogger…

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Actually, I just read my post over, and it was so mind numbingly tedious, it should all go below the fold.  I’m writing about being criticised by someone else for not writing about something. Then I go on to say that we get obssessed by micro-trivialities. Mote, beam etc.

Read it if you want to, but it’s pretty pointless (apart from the rant at the end about paper reviews, which is reasonably amusing.)

 

 

…according to Iain Dale, who thinks that my duty as a blogger is to watch the Sunday morning political shows, applaud the utterances of the leader of their party and proclaim inevitable triumph in the near future. (or perhaps, heaven forfend, slag off the leader of the party and be quoted by eager Tory bloggers, which I’m sure was never Iain’s intention in scouring the left wing blogs on a Sunday morning, oh no). This duty to blather report is only trumped by actually going on the Sunday morning political shows and doing a TVBP about it, ldo*

I have a slightly different perspective. I couldn’t be bothered watching the Sunday morning shows when I worked for a political party and I can’t be bothered now. It’s Sunday so I spend the time reading a book, lying in bed, going for a run or playing internet poker. I am a proud member of the “keep Sundays special (for Hopi)” campaign, which involves other people working but me having the day off, so I can sleep in and still go to the shops.

So sorry, Iain, didn’t watch the Sunday shows. Rarely do. They bore me. What fills me with tedium about them is how it fuels this sort of micro-obsessiveness about politics is that misses anything important while at the same time being utterly predictable.**

Of course the PM had to go on the Sunday shows to take the election results on the chin, and of course, because the conventional wisdom is that Brown’s in trouble various commenters will deride his performance.  Then other commenters will comment on their reaction and we’ll all end up where we were.

As it happens, what Gordon was reported as saying seems both sensible and mature (for which in the language of todays media read “boring and old hat”) and I can’t imagine what anyone could think I’d add to it. Perhaps i should get a flag that says “YAAAYYYY GORDON!!” and wave it occassionally? Would that help matters?

*TVBP - thinly veiled brag post, a speciality of Iain’s, ldo. (ldo stands for “like..duh..obviously” You’ll all be using it next year.) 

**  Also I hate paper reviews, which the news channels and Sunday shows seem obsessed with.  On what basis are the papers being reviewed? It’s not like it’s a restaurant review, designed  to open your tiny mind to a fabulous little local newspaper in Harlesden, which does the most fabulous food columns, they’re to die for, just like Jay Rayner but a fifth of the price.

 No, “paper reviews” seem to exist in order to highlight stories that each of the newspapers have written about the same thing “Well, obviously Jeremy, all the newspapers are full of stories about the Cellar business in Vienna, most of which look poorly sourced and probably made up by an Austrian stringer who had to be woken from an alcoholic stupor to cover the story, but I thought this article by Terry Thomas was insightful because it very much chimed with what I thought about the subject already.  Oh, and there’s an amusing pucture of a duck on page 34 of the Mail”

Even if there’s a news story featured in the paper review which isn’t covered by other papers, I’m left wondering why, if it’s important enough to be brought to my attention, why the fricking news programme I’m watching can’t be bothered to report on it. If they can’t, the review is redundant, if they can, the review is also redundant.

 So for what meta-level reason do TV stations review newspapers? it’s not as if people are going to  rush out the next day and say  ”I understand there’s a simply fabulous piece on ID cards in yesterday’s Observer by Seamus Milne, I must get hold of a copy”. 

It tilts me.  Just review a book instead, kthxbye. 

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