The Cheryl Cole of Reading
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There are some news stories that are too irresitible for me not to comment upon, even in the Daily Mail. In these revolutionary times, I do feel the urge to comment upon such tragedies as the massacre of civilians in Libya, however I am resisting such urges as I am trying to keep my blog relatively light-hearted and amusing. Instead, I focus my attention on persuading the government to take action/stances against such abuses, and leave such reporting to professional news reporting outfits.
However, abuses of society, such as the so-called “Cheryl Cole of Reading”, I cannot help but comment upon. It is too easy to blame the young girl herself, who is the product of UK society, circa 1997-2010 (thanks Labour). I will leave that to the Daily Mail readers who seem to think that she looks more like Mark Owen in a wig.
She walked out of several jobs because she had to get up too early, or she got bored. Hello. Welcome to the real world, love. I did say that I wasn’t going to pass comment upon her, didn’t I? Oops. Thinking back, when I was 20, I also thought the world owed me a living so I am perhaps being a tad hypocritical. Although I kept my job and found ways to amuse myself through the boredom of repetivity without requiring the state to pay me £800 a month to keep me in a nice flat.
The real questions have to be around the state though – why do we give benefits to someone who walks out of jobs because they are bored? And why do we give benefits to someone whose mother gives her £1,200 a month to live?
Thankfully, I see two ways out of this. Either the current government’s benefit reform will resolve such anomalies in the system, or she will now become a television star. Given the state of television, I expect the second is the more likely outcome, especially as she has come to light on a show about to be broadcast on BBC3 called Working Girls (3rd March – get it in your diary!). I have this feeling that I might strangely end up admiring her after watching the show, we shall see.
Speaking of which, does anyone think Andrew Marr is really worth £580,000 a year? Apparently he works very hard, and if he worked for a private broadcaster, such as Sky, I could perhaps understand it. Firstly, he is immensely dull, and quite a lame interviewer. But, more importantly, the state broadcaster, the BBC, forces this upon us, and if you do not accept to pay towards his lucrative salary, you can be fined or put in jail.
Hardly Libyan standards of dictatorship, I appreciate, but surely this is not right? The license fee should be scrapped, and replaced with a pay-as-you-watch system to download BBC programmes (many of which are of excellent quality). Such programmes should also be made available worldwide. Then I believe that the BBC would be able to flourish even more. Yes, this is a privatisation model of the BBC, but one which I believe would work. I think out government has too much reform on its hands at the moment to dare suggest it, but I reckon one year, they might just suggest some BBC reform. But for now, we are stuck with our dear monolith.
One final thing, a potential bit of good news, in my opinion, is that the government are considering bringing clocks forward an hour. Which in the summer, will mean an extra hour of light – and an extra hour after work to enjoy the sunshine. I think this is a truly excellent idea.