I really detest the telephone voting shows that currently pass as Saturday night ‘entertainment’, but my wife watches Strictly Come Dancing. What I do find funny, is the continued survival of John Sergeant (often misspelt ‘Sargent’) and how it’s really starting to annoy the judges.
However, it got me wondering – what if you wanted to intentionally sabotage one of these programmes? What better way to do it than to use their over-reliance on telephone voting against them.
Remember Eurovision 2006 in Athens, when Finland group ‘Lordi’ famously won with a heavy metal rock track? Thousands of viewers across Europe saw the chance to tip the result in favour of the outsider. Whether this was the otherwise silent number of hard rocks fans or Eurovision-skeptics looking to make a fool of the competition, it is not known, but the result was a resounding win for outsider Finland.
What if John Sergeant’s survival is not entirely down to his fan-base, but is in fact due to a long awaited backlash against this kind of show? What better way to discredit Saturday night pseudo-talent-judge-vote shows than to make a complete farce of the selection process by making the judging of any actual skill irrelevant. John Sergeant even alluded to this last night, when he pointed out that they were only playing by the rules – the judges only account for 50% of the vote.
Whether John’s votes come from a disparate number of ‘mischievous viewers’, simply trying to throw a spanner in the works, or an organised number of people intentionally trying to tilt the vote (Top Gear maybe), Len Goodman’s comments last night about people voting for John making a nonsense of the show, have only served to help John’s cause by keeping him out of the bottom two for yet another week.
There is a local street that is regularly used by dog walkers as a toilet for their dogs. Now before any dog owners get wound up, I know that most owners are responsible, but for some reason this particular street has a problem. The council have painted ‘no fouling’ signs on the pavements but, as you can see, some people just don’t seem to care, or maybe they have completely misunderstood the sign and think it means a designated spot for this purpose.
Britax have been making child car seats for as long as I can remember, and I have always pronounced it “Brit-axe” as in British. After all, didn’t they used to have a Union Flag as part of their logo?
According to the Dictionary of Trade Name Origins, the name does in fact come from a contraction of ‘British Accessories’.
However, if you call their customer helpline, they answer as “Brytax”? Has it always been this way or is it because they are now German owned and want to lose the British connection?
More crazy nanny labelling. Here is a box of eggs from Asda, remember eggs, got that? It is an egg box after all, so what else would you expect it to contain?
Inside is the obligatory nutritional information, including some less than useful allergy advice:
Look closely – Yes, you read that correctly, it says “Contains egg”.
Kind of reminds me of Wonko the Sane and the toothpicks in Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If you’re that stupid that you need to be told that eggs contain eggs then you’re hardly likely to be able to read this on the box. What drives food producers to put this sort of blindingly obvious stuff on packaging? What stops them sitting back and saying “Wait a minute, this looks stupid”?
No doubt most people are aware of the current story regarding John Darwin faking his own death in a canoe in the North Sea five years ago, and his wife moving to Panama on the proceeds of the life insurance.
Now if only he’d tried faking his death on a canal boat, he would have been re-enacting a famous palindrome: A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama.
So close…
I recently got a 30″x20″ print done at Photobox while they had a special offer, but now that I’ve come to buy a clip frame for it, I can’t seem to find a 30″x20″ frame. All frames seem to be metric. There is one size close (750 x 500mm), but it would mean trimming an unacceptable amount off the photo and losing part of the border on the print. (30″x20″ is 762 x 508mm)
30″x20″ is a standard photo size, so why does no-one make a frame to suit?
Saw an advert by the Conservative Party yesterday. Simple white background with the text “How hard can it be to keep a hospital clean?”
I guess they think they can do without the votes of every hospital worker in the country. Someone obviously didn’t screen that advert.
And before anyone asks, I have no political leaning – I think they’re all as bad as each other.
Just seen one of the many ‘Accident Claim’ adverts where people get paid out for being stupid.
This guy was working off a ladder (Stupid Mistake Number 1) drilling the wall when the ladder slipped because it wasn’t footed or secured (Stupid Mistake Number 2). Yet this guy claims and gets paid out £7000! It was his fault on both counts, yet someone else pays him out for being stupid! Guess who that is – everyone else by paying increased insurance premiums.
How have we come to this culture of ‘somebody else’s fault’?
Why are people refusing to accept responsibility for their own actions (or inactions)?
Why don’t the courts throw these cases out with “It was your own stupid fault – you got what you deserved”?
