Monday Moan 64

TOO BRAINY? TOO AGGRESSIVE?  OR JUST GOT A BOOK TO SELL?

Interesting piece in the Daily Mail last week from Kate Mulvey, wondering if love had passed her by because she was too intelligent.  She confesses to being challenging and wanting to let everyone know how well read and clever she is, and how she has an opinion on everything.  She admits she has been told she is intimidating, scary, difficult and opinionated, but her interpretation of this is that men think she’s just too clever.

 

Here’s a great quote  - “Unlike the canny girls who learnt how to flirt with men from an early age, the brainy ones, like me, were too busy with their books to master the art of flattery. Instead we challenge rather than charm, we control rather than compromise.”  

 

Not for me to comment – you can make up your own mind.  But it’s also interesting to see that she’s about to have a book published on the ‘humorous’ guide to the ‘art’ of being single, so maybe that’s all we need to know.

 

 

PLEASE LET ME FINISH!

I can’t be the only person in the country who sometimes watches a film or programme on television and wants to read the credits in order to find out who that actor was that I recognised, or what that music was, or something similar.  Sometimes I just want to use the time watching the credits as a means of absorbing what I have just seen, particularly if the programme has been emotionally involving or challenging.

 

Fat chance of any of this, as the scrolling credits are compressed and pushed aside in order to allow a picture of what is usually some completely unrelated programme to be plugged, complete with the continuity announcer’s voice exploding out of the TV destroying whatever atmosphere has been created.

 

Please STOP.  If you want to plug a programme then do so once the current one has finished and give the viewers the opportunity to reach the end of the programme they have just been watching.  I cannot believe there is any serious market research that says that viewers welcome this loud and intrusive action, or that many have ever said how grateful they were that they were told about the other programme.

 

 

AND WHILST I’M ON THE SUBJECT …….

Why do the TV companies insist on messing with the volume control all the time?  It’s not just that the adverts or programme plugs are so much louder than the programmes themselves.  Even within programmes the volume seems to be altered far too often.  There I am with volume level set at, say, 12, and then I find I can’t hear what’s being said, so up it goes to 14 – and then it will suddenly get louder so I have to put it down again, perhaps as far as 7 before I am fairly confident that my neighbour won’t be disturbed by it.

 

Why are the local and national news bulletins set at different levels, or the local and national weather reports?

 

And in cases where there is more than one presenter, please can they be encouraged to speak at similar volume levels?  Julie Etchingham on the ITV News, for example, is almost inaudible.

 

 

WHO SAYS MPs HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOUR?

It’s good to see that some of our MPs still retain a sense of humour whilst preserving the dignity of being elected as our representatives in Parliament.  Of course it’s important to talk about things like the economy, or Syria, or famine, or any of those other predictable and intractable problems that fill most of the Parliamentary timetable. But hey, we all need some time to lighten up, to relax, to talk about things just for the fun of it, don’t we?

 

That seems to be the approach of three Conservative MPs Peter Bone, Chris Chope and Philip Hollobone.  Between them they have been pushing a number of wacky ideas as Private Member’s Bills, including the Margaret Thatcher Day Bill, which seeks to have the August Bank Holiday renamed after the lady in question – yes, honestly it does!

 

Hollobone appears to have become something of a spokesman for this motley crew, appearing many times on television recently to talk about his Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, which would make it a criminal offence to wear anything that covered the face in a public place if the primary purpose of the garment was to obscure the face.  So, no more balaclavas intended to obscure the face when the intention is to burgle a property or take part in a demonstration.  But not quite clear about balaclavas intended to obscure the face as a means of keeping out the freezing winds in winter.  

 

Hollobone defended this Bill on the basis that covering the face was not the way we did things in Britain, where he says we all exchange cheery smiles and waves with each other as we go about our daily business. Oh really? 

And even if we were a friendly bunch and felt miffed if someone transgressed against this ‘code’ by covering up, what next – a ban on beards, or bushy eyebrows, or wide brimmed hats, or sunglasses?

 

Anyway, there will be many who, looking at the three MPs in question, might feel it more appropriate to have a Bill to require faces to be covered in public.