Wednesday

Worked hard yesterday - same story today.

Made the mistake of watching a Chanel 4 program on the computer last night, the one where they took 3 people who live on the state back to a 1940's style regime. It was incredibly dishonest, everyone came from central casting, and aside from entertainment value - bore no relation to reality and had no real context whatsoever - if you want to see something more thoughtful, catch Ken Loach's 'Spirt of 45'. There was an article about it on the Daily Mail site - but i avoided reading it. It couldn't have been any more constructed. The cheery, hard working pensioner, wracked with sadness and loss, putting on a brave face but falling to pieces on the inside, the handsome, curly haired, tragic cripple - struggling to make his way through the world as every door lams in his face, and the fat, angry, selfish ogre-woman. Groomed outlandishly, vulgar and brash - with no intention of working and every intention of making the world pay for her life of leisure. To top it all, she was even mixed-race. You couldn't make it up - it was pure Dickens. I have to be honest, the ogre-woman did herself no favours - right at the very end when she railed against the pensioner who felt that the poor Tiny Tim character deserved the most help - I was grinding my teeth ( it's not an accident that they made a hero of the boy who actually received the least help and gained the most ). I was very suspicious of the unnamed scheme which must have been Remploy but was never named, considering how poorly the government funds it now, but then I, like everyone else was fighting back the tears when the boy was given a job at the end. Next week - Bleak House.

I forgot to take a charger home on Monday night - so it was an analogue evening - read a book, listened to the radio... tried to send an email on my phone but the screen is the size of my thumb so I just went to bed. Quite liked it.

The whole Paxman/Beard bollocks suggests that there is no news. That's not true - there is plenty, but nobody seems interested.