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Birvidik

Vessel Name: Birvidik
Vessel Make/Model: Victory 40
Hailing Port: Jersey C.I.
Crew: Bob Newbury
About: Liz Newbury
Extra: 11 years into a 10 year plan, but we get there in the end.
24 December 2023
22 November 2023 | Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
14 August 2023 | A farce in three acts.
14 August 2023 | Sliding Doors
14 August 2023 | The Game Commences
11 March 2023 | Joseph Heller, eat your heart out.
24 December 2022
26 August 2022 | or 'French Leave'
03 August 2022 | or 'Fings ain't the way they seem'
18 June 2022 | or Desolation Row
22 March 2022 | or "Every Form of Refuge Has its Price
28 October 2021 | and repeat after me - "Help Yourself"
23 September 2021 | Warning - Contains strong language and explicit drug references
23 September 2021 | or Everything's Going to Pot
04 September 2021 | or Out of my league
27 August 2021 | or 'The Whine of the Ancient Mariner
16 August 2021 | Found in marina toilet, torn into squares and nailed to door.
06 August 2021 | or 'The Myth of Fingerprints'
Recent Blog Posts
24 December 2023

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Those were the days, my friend...

22 November 2023 | Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right

As a fully paid-up Guardianista, I am fully aware that blanket, stereotypic statements along the lines of:

14 August 2023 | A farce in three acts.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles - Preface

OK, I admit it.

A wreath for Reith

27 March 2015
Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…
Funny how you get used to things isn't it. Humans can live the most aberrant lives and yet after a while, to them it just seems normal. We've noticed this as we're currently ensconced in a nice roomy apartment with all the conveniences of domestic life that non-nomads take for granted.

You know, things like copious running hot & cold water, a kitchen you can turn round in without knocking your corn flakes into the cat's bowl, an oven that will take something bigger than a flash-frozen sparrow and doesn't then burn one side to a crisp while leaving the other still encased in ice like a Siberian Wooly Mammoth; things like a toilet and shower that aren't 200 metres away down a dark, windy pontoon; things like a spacious freezer, a fridge that's accessible without your having to be lowered into it by your ankles and an electricity supply that will deliver more current than a couple of AA batteries without plunging the entire neighbourhood into darkness; things like being able to put on a duvet cover without looking like a failed escapologist in a strait-jacket and finally things like a living space that doesn't suddenly lean over at 45 degrees without notice.

When we first moved in here we were like kids in a sweetshop. Squeals and shrieks of delight rang out as we opened cupboards, bounced on beds, peered into fridges and cookers and danced around the bathroom doing matador impersonations with towels. It must have sounded as if we were a couple of twenty-somethings on honeymoon. No wonder the neighbours gave us funny looks when they finally saw a pair of geriatrics tottering out of the apartment.

It also has a television. Ooh, we were excited. We haven't had a television for ten years. It was at this point, however that we began to appreciate that shore-bound life is not all sweetness and light, and that there were certain aspects of this new lifestyle that we were, in fact, better off without.

We entered domesticity mode and settled down on the sofa with a cup of tea to watch the BBC news. This was not a no-news day. The day before, flight 4U9525 had crashed en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. On the day in question, the Government had apologised for the transfusion of blood contaminated with HIV and Hepatitis C into thousands of NHS patients. Jeremy Clarkson had been sacked by the BBC after thumping a producer and some wet 22 year old male had parted company with four other wet barely post-adolescents while two blokes in Westminster had dared each other to make some promises while a couple of hundred jeering onlookers gave a passable impersonation of the audience at a clandestine pitbull fight.

And they were just the ones that got onto the news.

The lead story was the plane crash. The problem with this was that very little was known, and what was known could have been explained in detail in about a minute and a half. They managed to drag this out for about six times that. They did this by a combination of repetition, wild and unfounded speculation, intrusive wallowing in people's grief and the statement and endless restatement of the bleedin' obvious. "How do you feel?" they asked friends and relatives of the dead. How do you bloody think they felt?

Solemn-faced so-called journalists stood in front of groups of shocked, uncomprehending children and trotted out a litany of platitudes and truisms while the cameras lingered in almost pornographic detail on desolate relatives and schoolfriends. Real life personal tragedy was cynically repackaged as soap opera for the cud-chewing masses wallowing in the guilty pleasures of vicarious emotions.

This was followed by a snippet on the Government's apology for the failings identified by the Penrose inquiry. This was potentially an important piece of news, affecting the whole of the UK. In Scotland alone, thousands of people had been infected with HIV and/or Hepatitis C via contaminated blood. Some 2000 are estimated to have died from this. Inquiry reports seemed to suggest that the major fault lay with the US suppliers of contaminated blood products, although the use of paid-for blood and blood from prisoners were held to be contributory factors. This was exacerbated by the failure to implement the necessary checks on blood donations.

Not that you'd have known any of this from the TV report. Here was a matter with profound implications for the health of the nation, the well-being of thousands of people, the trustworthiness of public administration and, ultimately, the governance of the country. This, obviously, wasn't 'sexy' enough for the broadcasters. Either it was too difficult and time-consuming to present an even superficial analysis of the issues involved or the editorial staff judged their viewers too thick and idle, too bovine, to grasp such matters.

Instead they plumped for two things. Firstly, they concentrated on the fact that David Cameron had apologised for the suffering caused, despite this being one of the few bits of suffering in the country that wasn't down, in part at least, to him. What is it with politicians? They are more than happy to apologise for things that have nothing to do with them, but even Torquemada himself couldn't get them to 'fess up for their actual mistakes and misdeeds. Tony Blair apologised for the Irish Potato famine for Christ's sake, and that took place in 1845. You try getting any expression of regret out of him for Iraq & Afghanistan.

The second string to the broadcasters' bow in this report was the fact that many of those affected considered the report to be a whitewash. It was all very televisual with shots of people burning copies of the report, although it didn't make for much of a pyre as it was around the size of a breezeblock and about as flammable. Here was an opportunity to present an analysis of the evidence and how it supported or contradicted the conflicting views. No chance. All you got were shots of people shouting things like "Whitewash" and "Bloody disgrace!" followed by vox pops of people looking into the camera and saying "It's a whitewash" and "It's a bloody disgrace".

The Clarkson and One Direction pieces, while hardly classifiable as news, did at least matter to significant sub-groups in the population, namely hard-core petrol heads and pre-pubescent girls. I think it's that way round. In contrast to many of those who share my political leanings, I quite like Clarkson. I find his iconoclastic approach quite funny, especially in his writing. Nevertheless, what else could the Beeb do? Extended verbal abuse and actual physical violence are a sacking offence in every job.

OK, except boxing.

Or politics, I suppose, where extended verbal abuse is compulsory (ask Andrew Mitchell to get off his bike if you want confirmation) and a few punches are excusable if John Prescott and Eric Joyce are anything to go by.

To Top Gear aficionados, though, Clarkson can do no wrong. My brother in law, Jeff, for example would continue to argue for Jezza's reinstatement even if he were shown beyond doubt to be Pol Pot in disguise, although he might consider a line to have been crossed if it were to be proved that Clarkson had been in a secret long term ménage-a-trois with Elton John and Gok Wan.

All of which brings us to the last, and probably most depressing part, namely the coverage of Prime Minister's Question Time. It was dispiriting enough to see a process whereby power should be held to account degenerate into a bout of childish name calling and petty point scoring. What made it infinitely worse was the boorish jeering and playground bully-boy mob behaviour exhibited by our representatives in government. Whenever Milliband got up to speak the assembled Tories behind Cameron shouted, booed, catcalled and made animal noises, effectively drowning him out and making communication impossible. Whenever Cameron stood up the Labour benches returned the compliment.

Parliament (noun) - Middle English from the Anglo-Latin Parliamentum - a place of speaking and discourse, a place of discussion. Discourse my arse. It's more like a bear-pit and about as ethical.

Did our broadcasters challenge or even point out this shameful phenomenon? No, they colluded in the whole charade, ignoring the pathetic posturing and simian antics of the MPs , concentrating on the political point scoring and offering no useful background or analysis on the whole taxation debate.

All the effort and expertise involved in the production of this news bulletin increased the sum of human knowledge and understanding not a jot. What was worse, this was on the BBC, which is still the flagship for balanced news reporting. God knows what the rest are like.

Small wonder then that Government ministers are at the bottom of the list of public confidence and trustworthiness, narrowly below politicians in general, who are only marginally worse than journalists. Sorry, but I just can't resist pointing out that teachers and nurses are near the top, despite the exhortations of the politicos and journos going out of their way to tell us how we're doing everything wrong. The BBC has an additional problem in that the aforementioned politicos, egged on by The Dirty Digger and other special interests in the media, have it by the short and curlies as they effectively control its funding.

Lord Reith, the first Director General of the BBC defined its role as 'To inform, to educate and to entertain' - in that order. However, the Corporation appears to have all but abandoned the first two. This is a shame as there is no direct commercial pressure on it to do so. It has no need to pander to the lowest common denominator in order to boost ratings for advertisers.

Still, at least it doesn't show Jeremy Kyle.

Yet.
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Photo Albums
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02 September 2013
21 Photos
SailBlogs Friends
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AURA