I just had the pleasure, or rather the heady mix of pleasure and pain, at watching “Grannies Guide to the Modern World”. A program on Channel 4, which rehashes various internet sensations into a real TV program featuring chumly old Bernard Manning.
It was delightfully funny, perhaps mainly as I watched it with my Dad who was recently noted to be less progressive than  Perito Moreno. The silly old cunt.

While we laughed our socks off, all too literally, I couldn’t help but notice the ugly tone of the show which matched something I’ve noticed in other things on the TV. While, the light-hearted grannies ripping bongs in amsterdam is something to behold, the old codger going up to ethnic minorities to ask whether they were offended by racial slurs was just bad. Perhaps, at 92, he doesn’t know any better but the producers, writers, directors, camera men, sound men etc. obviously do. And it is their job to help him if he is confused, or stop him if he is just fancying a bit of a laugh.
The show does raise a good point, political correctness is moving very quickly, but that is not an excuse to not try and keep up. I’d have preferred to see something informative  rather than snigger and exploit the inevitable like the Lad Bible.

This tone has found its palette since the catastrophic Brexit vote. It’s an ugly individualism which can be seen in the new National Lottery advertising. Instead of the usual dream spinning they have changed their tone completely, “Please not them.”
It’s not the desperate “Please not them” you may think of in a terrible crisis. It is a “Please not them” out of avarice. Rather than consider ourselves winning we must first will someone else to lose. The same type of thought process which must have entered the managers brain at Byron Burgers recently.( A franchise which I will be Byronically boycotting from London, Edinburgh or wherever I end up.) The Lottery is something which I am socio-economically placed to avoid anyway.

These incidents are just snippets out of a larger insidious network. The rolling news, bus slogans, murdochs and trumps of the world seem to have been gaining momentum and not the type which the PLP don’t approve of.
The lumbering machinations of politics in a digital age is a whole other story.
How can a party rebel against the people who vote for it?
How can a country vote to rid itself of an unelected leader and gain an unelected leader?
The whole farcical system has become worse than any car crash, the appropriate metaphor would be too disgusting to write.

SO…

I’m moving to London. That will make me feel better.

Mr Hummels

P.S
Lumber and fail, dear machine,
Lumber and fall at my feet.
Don’t expect me to know your systems,
I don’t expect you to read my tweet.
Don’t expect me to try and fix you.
Don’t expect me know repairs,
don’t expect us to wash you down,
don’t try to do self-repairs.
You are broken, machine,
You are spent,
Your warranty is over,
Now get …
crushed and reused.
Hashtag fucking sad face.

These are portraits of some of our most influential politicians, if you can guess who is who then we’ll send you a used French tickler straight to your goody bag. You have been warned.