The Christmas Television Problem Solved
We have had the first snowfall of the winter. But worse is to come. We shall soon have the first newspaper Christmas television guides of the year falling through a million letterboxes. This is your last warning…buy packs of earplugs whilst you can, because the wailing and gnashing of teeth that "there is nothing on television this year" will soon be deafening.
To hell with the complaining. All television broadcasts should cease sometime after noon on Christmas day and not resume until December 27th. This move would be unpopular…but hell, you say there's nothing on? You ain't seen nothing yet…
Nobody needs television after their Christmas dinner. Before dinner there has to be a morning of good programmes for the sake of the cook, and for one day only the watershed should be revoked. Anything can go on Christmas morning…think of it as a present. Children will be surrounded in wrapping paper and the old folks will stink of sherry, unable to comprehend the time of day let alone the filth on the television screen. Which leaves the cook to haul the television into the kitchen. Imagine the poetry, the sheer rhythm of stuffing a turkey along to some sweaty and pounding sex scene, or watching Sharon Stone being interrogated in Basic Instinct as you wrap the turkey's legs together and start drawing some uncomfortable parallels…
What? Nobody wants to read that. Besides, the morning is fairly unimportant in my scheme. Indeed, the afternoon is when the real fun begins. All television channels will cease broadcasting at 1.00pm on Christmas Day, but at 3.00pm a new channel will begin to broadcast, and this channel will be called the Democracy Channel.
For eight hours the Democracy Channel will show live floggings of every MP who has cynically and greedily screwed up his role as representative of the people. Politicians with disagreeable policies are not at fault here…it is the politician who, in the past year, has bent democracy over the stove and shafted it until it bleeds who should have the Fear right now. That will be a mighty Christmas present for us all, payback for taking our votes and pissing on them for the sake of a few bungs, a million fallacious expense claims, and the right to feather their corporate friend's nests in return for a seat on the board.
To many people this will hardly matter. The people who have received expensive new plasma televisions won't have managed to wire the damn thing up by New Year's Eve, let alone December 27th. Those who are busy shooting the breeze with the family over a hundred glasses of mulled wine won't even notice the static on the screen. And if you're spending Christmas alone? You can pour yourself a generous gin and tonic and enjoy David Blunkett's screams puncturing the evening as he is thrashed repeatedly on television with a novelty six foot long identity card.
Meanwhile, the Queen will have discovered her Christmas message is not being broadcast. So she will have to find her own way of broadcasting her message. She will have to work for the right to cough up her annual flem, to bombard us with the royal equivalent of a round-robin Christmas card letter. So, this year, if you find a bunch of balloons floating past your house with a royal stamp on the jolly red exterior and a scroll attached to the string, you can choose whether to indulge your false interest in this baffling family, or break out the BB guns and give your children some target practice. Now that's democracy.
Besides, who needs Christmas television when you have these?
To hell with the complaining. All television broadcasts should cease sometime after noon on Christmas day and not resume until December 27th. This move would be unpopular…but hell, you say there's nothing on? You ain't seen nothing yet…
Nobody needs television after their Christmas dinner. Before dinner there has to be a morning of good programmes for the sake of the cook, and for one day only the watershed should be revoked. Anything can go on Christmas morning…think of it as a present. Children will be surrounded in wrapping paper and the old folks will stink of sherry, unable to comprehend the time of day let alone the filth on the television screen. Which leaves the cook to haul the television into the kitchen. Imagine the poetry, the sheer rhythm of stuffing a turkey along to some sweaty and pounding sex scene, or watching Sharon Stone being interrogated in Basic Instinct as you wrap the turkey's legs together and start drawing some uncomfortable parallels…
What? Nobody wants to read that. Besides, the morning is fairly unimportant in my scheme. Indeed, the afternoon is when the real fun begins. All television channels will cease broadcasting at 1.00pm on Christmas Day, but at 3.00pm a new channel will begin to broadcast, and this channel will be called the Democracy Channel.
For eight hours the Democracy Channel will show live floggings of every MP who has cynically and greedily screwed up his role as representative of the people. Politicians with disagreeable policies are not at fault here…it is the politician who, in the past year, has bent democracy over the stove and shafted it until it bleeds who should have the Fear right now. That will be a mighty Christmas present for us all, payback for taking our votes and pissing on them for the sake of a few bungs, a million fallacious expense claims, and the right to feather their corporate friend's nests in return for a seat on the board.
To many people this will hardly matter. The people who have received expensive new plasma televisions won't have managed to wire the damn thing up by New Year's Eve, let alone December 27th. Those who are busy shooting the breeze with the family over a hundred glasses of mulled wine won't even notice the static on the screen. And if you're spending Christmas alone? You can pour yourself a generous gin and tonic and enjoy David Blunkett's screams puncturing the evening as he is thrashed repeatedly on television with a novelty six foot long identity card.
Meanwhile, the Queen will have discovered her Christmas message is not being broadcast. So she will have to find her own way of broadcasting her message. She will have to work for the right to cough up her annual flem, to bombard us with the royal equivalent of a round-robin Christmas card letter. So, this year, if you find a bunch of balloons floating past your house with a royal stamp on the jolly red exterior and a scroll attached to the string, you can choose whether to indulge your false interest in this baffling family, or break out the BB guns and give your children some target practice. Now that's democracy.
Besides, who needs Christmas television when you have these?
posted by Jamie at 11:37 AM
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