I like reading a lot.
I loathe the media, and stopped reading/listening/ watching (nearly) all of it at the beginning of this year. By "the media" I mean: all the national newspapers (Times and Sun - Murdoch mouthpieces; Guardian and Independent - Liberal hypocrites; Mail and Telegraph - pious conservative hypocrites; the whole corrupt lot of them - designed for people with a mental age of 6), all the mainstream TV channels (BBC Two - once devoted to arts programmes, now the televisual equivalent of a Sunday supplement, obseessed with gardening, cookery and "lifestyle" [i don't need a lifestyle, I have a LIFE, and it involves not watching BBC Two]; Channel Four, once proud to show original and innovative programmes, now repository of any reality TV junk), the vast majority of (that's a marks and spencer term - see here) cable, satellite and digital channels - actually, no, that's too kind, all cable, satellite and digital except BBC Four which occasionally shows the odd half-decent programme. Radio comes off a bit better - BBC Radios Three and Four are worth listening to, and the others can be tolerated for their lack of ads (yes i know this site carries ads) - all the rest make me want to go mental in a box. The only national publications I read are Private Eye and the London Review of Books. I considered getting a subscription to the New Left Review, but was put off by a finely-detailed article on their website that gave a brilliant, perceptive analysis of their history and its major phases. Guys, guys. You are a magazine, not a continent.
Here are some old jokes:
What's the first item on the agenda of any left-wing group?
The split
Put three leftists in a room and you get four political parties (remember the Pythons - The Judean People's Front, The People's Front of Judea, splitters!).
This is actually true - I was at a march in Central London recently when a Socialist Party member tried to get me to join. Ahah, I thought, here is a chance for me to show off my extensive knowledge about the left.
"You mean The Socialist Worker's Party?"
"Oh, no, no, no. We're not them"
"Oh, so you mean Arthur Scargill's Socialist Party?"
"No, not them, we're older than them."
"OK, so you must be the Socialist Alliance?"
"No, although we are aligned with them."
Arghhhhhhhh! For the record, his group was Militant Tendency but with a new name to help you forget about the corruption. However, the moral of this story is that even the formidable erudition of Decca Clark is nothing when it comes to left-wing sectarianism.
I don't like irony - but I wrote a whole damn page about it here
I like brackets (parentheses?)
I
Coming soon - Sport and Politics
Agatha Christie and Inter-war Britain