The battle is on for Christmas number one. The gap is narrowing between the surprise entry Rage Against The Machine and X Factor winner Joe McElderry and everyone is having a lovely time talking about who will get it.
Let us look a bit deeper into how this all came about. So Simon Cowell, Syco Records and Sony have had a brilliant 4 years with the X Factor winners reaching Christmas number one year after year. Somebody, let’s say (as the papers do) an ordinary couple on Facebook, began a campaign to show that the British people would not stand for the likes of the manufactured karaoke of the X Factor any longer and that what people actually want to listen to over Christmas dinner is a song called 'Killing in the Name' which reached number 25 in the singles chart when it was released in 1992. I'm guessing that the choice of song wasn't given a huge amount of thought by the lowly Facebook couple and the idea of a song that they liked from a band called Rage Against The Machine would be a fairly good choice. Obviously the name of the band is pretty apt and the song of course is likely to appeal to the kind of audience who wouldn't exactly watch the X Factor or buy the winner's single so, in some ways it is a good choice, but I can't help but think that the whole thing is hugely manufactured and preying on the very people who are so strongly opposed to the Cowell machine. Is it just me who is a little confounded by how successful this movement has been? I'm not normally a cynical person but I think that strings are being pulled somewhere. I mean both artists are receiving such an enormous amount of publicity and yet has anyone actually noticed that both artists are signed to the same record label? What a happy coincidence for Sony.
Do the Rage followers know this? I would have thought if they were opposed to the idea of a man in a suit making an enormous amount of money from manufacturing the Christmas number one, then they would also not like the thought of a whole room full of men in suits drooling with glee over the prospect of two of their own artists battling for it. At the end of the day, into whose back pocket does the cash go? It's not the Californian rockers and it's certainly not the little geordie.
I'm sure Sony will be having a very merry Christmas.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Monday, 7 December 2009
Dear Mr Brown...
It's all about how we're going to pay back the £697.5bn Britain owes. Everyone has got their ideas. Simply put, the country needs to create jobs and get people spending. Here's my idea.
Raise the minimum wage.
It obviously would not completely pay off the huge sum but there are so many reasons why this would help. Firstly, as a part time worker myself, if I earned more money per hour I would work less hours. Presuming my colleagues follow this philosophy too, my employer would have to employ more staff to cover the spare hours, meaning that people currently unemployed would have a job and pay taxes instead of receiving benefits.
Secondly, one of the main problems at the moment is that many unemployed people find that they receive more money in benefits than they would if they worked full time. Lowering people's benefits would only make poor people sink further into poverty, but raising the minimum wage would mean that more people would want to work and keep their jobs because they are better off for it. This would also mean that jobs which are often taken by foreign workers would be more appealing to British people.You might not clean toilets for £4.83 an hour, but you might do it for £7.50 because by the end of the day you would have earned half again what you would have earned.
Another benefit of significantly increasing the minimum wage would be that people would be more likely to be able to pay off debts and not have to lose their houses or go completely bankrupt. It would also mean that people have more spare cash available to spend, which would mean that jobs would be created in areas such as manufacturing, distribution, retail, etc. This would affect a large proportion of people in the UK in different areas, different classes and with different skills, not just poor people.
I am also very strongly in favour of abolishing the 'development rate' for people aged 18-22. I would actually go so far as saying it is absolutely disgusting that a 21 year-old doing the exact same job as a 22 year-old would be earning a pound an hour less, roughly £150 a month. If the 'development rate' was brought into line with the rest of the country, then people aged over 18 with rent to pay or a child to feed would actually be able to survive and wouldn't have to live on benefits and those without responsibility would have a better chance of getting on the property ladder.
This would obviously be extremely unpopular with employers but I propose that changes are made to business rates, perhaps even getting rid of them completely in favour of a fairer system based completely on profits and business size without taking the size of the premises into account.
Raise the minimum wage.
It obviously would not completely pay off the huge sum but there are so many reasons why this would help. Firstly, as a part time worker myself, if I earned more money per hour I would work less hours. Presuming my colleagues follow this philosophy too, my employer would have to employ more staff to cover the spare hours, meaning that people currently unemployed would have a job and pay taxes instead of receiving benefits.
Secondly, one of the main problems at the moment is that many unemployed people find that they receive more money in benefits than they would if they worked full time. Lowering people's benefits would only make poor people sink further into poverty, but raising the minimum wage would mean that more people would want to work and keep their jobs because they are better off for it. This would also mean that jobs which are often taken by foreign workers would be more appealing to British people.You might not clean toilets for £4.83 an hour, but you might do it for £7.50 because by the end of the day you would have earned half again what you would have earned.
Another benefit of significantly increasing the minimum wage would be that people would be more likely to be able to pay off debts and not have to lose their houses or go completely bankrupt. It would also mean that people have more spare cash available to spend, which would mean that jobs would be created in areas such as manufacturing, distribution, retail, etc. This would affect a large proportion of people in the UK in different areas, different classes and with different skills, not just poor people.
I am also very strongly in favour of abolishing the 'development rate' for people aged 18-22. I would actually go so far as saying it is absolutely disgusting that a 21 year-old doing the exact same job as a 22 year-old would be earning a pound an hour less, roughly £150 a month. If the 'development rate' was brought into line with the rest of the country, then people aged over 18 with rent to pay or a child to feed would actually be able to survive and wouldn't have to live on benefits and those without responsibility would have a better chance of getting on the property ladder.
This would obviously be extremely unpopular with employers but I propose that changes are made to business rates, perhaps even getting rid of them completely in favour of a fairer system based completely on profits and business size without taking the size of the premises into account.
Monday, 16 March 2009
Red Nose Fest
The Saturdays didn't get to number one, yet somehow 'Barry Islands in the Stream' did. I don't know how that happened but I think it's right. Ruth Jones and Rob Brydon released the single for a laugh, to raise a bit of money. I may be being a bit cynical here, but The Saturdays blatantly did it for publicity. Not that that's really a problem, but they picked a song that's just ok and did a version that's worse than the original. So last week, Flo Rida made it to number one. Originally I wondered why people would actually buy that song. I mean, yeah I'd definitely dance to it on a night out but I wouldn't listen to it on my iPod. However, my very humble opinion has been changed by Top of the Pops on Friday. The performance was actually really good and now I would probably download the single (illegally for free obviously - I wouldn't pay for it). I'm well into Jai Ho for this weeks number one though. I'm not really a fan of the Pussycat Dolls but I love bollywood and their vocals sound really good on the track.
So anyway, back to Comic Relief. Me and James got pizzas in. We ordered them online, paid by credit card and had them delivered so we really only had to move the length of the hall to collect them. Embarrassingly lazy I know.
I think I have previous Red Nose Days on a podium because I really didn't think this one was that good. The Kilimanjaro programme was on the night before (how cute is Fearne Cotton without make-up by the way?), as was Comic Relief does the Apprentice and it seemed like a lot of the night was filler. I didn't watch Let's Dance for Comic Relief because we don't actually have a TV but I wished I'd have watched it on iPlayer or something because I've seen bits of it and it looks like it was really funny. I went youtubing today and looked at some clips. Robert Webb appears to be the best, which explains why he won. I find this clip really very funny and I'm gobsmacked at his dancing ability.
In contrast to this, Little Britain and Catherine Tate were very very bad. Little Britain are so out of touch it is unbelievable. They just think that we laugh at anything. Someone needs to tell them they're not funny anymore. I bought the first two series of Little Britain on DVD, back when they were still good. They've definitely lost it now though. Catherine Tate doing her old lady bit was a solid effort. She milked it a little towards the end but even then, it was actually funny.
James Corden's sketch with the England football team was good. I don't really like football and I have never seen Gavin and Stacey but I thought he was brilliant, considering what he had to work with. Nobody expected much in terms of acting from the players but they just about managed to pull the right faces, bless them. It worked.
I didn't stay up to the end. It seems a shame to put the really funny stuff at the end because it all really gets too much and everyone is kind of too tired to watch it. I saw a bit of the Kate Moss thing on iPlayer but it was kind of painful to watch because her acting is terrible. She looks great in clothes though.
So anyway, back to Comic Relief. Me and James got pizzas in. We ordered them online, paid by credit card and had them delivered so we really only had to move the length of the hall to collect them. Embarrassingly lazy I know.
I think I have previous Red Nose Days on a podium because I really didn't think this one was that good. The Kilimanjaro programme was on the night before (how cute is Fearne Cotton without make-up by the way?), as was Comic Relief does the Apprentice and it seemed like a lot of the night was filler. I didn't watch Let's Dance for Comic Relief because we don't actually have a TV but I wished I'd have watched it on iPlayer or something because I've seen bits of it and it looks like it was really funny. I went youtubing today and looked at some clips. Robert Webb appears to be the best, which explains why he won. I find this clip really very funny and I'm gobsmacked at his dancing ability.
In contrast to this, Little Britain and Catherine Tate were very very bad. Little Britain are so out of touch it is unbelievable. They just think that we laugh at anything. Someone needs to tell them they're not funny anymore. I bought the first two series of Little Britain on DVD, back when they were still good. They've definitely lost it now though. Catherine Tate doing her old lady bit was a solid effort. She milked it a little towards the end but even then, it was actually funny.
James Corden's sketch with the England football team was good. I don't really like football and I have never seen Gavin and Stacey but I thought he was brilliant, considering what he had to work with. Nobody expected much in terms of acting from the players but they just about managed to pull the right faces, bless them. It worked.
I didn't stay up to the end. It seems a shame to put the really funny stuff at the end because it all really gets too much and everyone is kind of too tired to watch it. I saw a bit of the Kate Moss thing on iPlayer but it was kind of painful to watch because her acting is terrible. She looks great in clothes though.
All in all, good fun. It raised loads of money for mosquito nets (as they kept saying) so job well done. For now.
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