Rafael Meavitali

A Tax To Help The Poor?

The other day, while watching a game of football on TV – I say “watching” when I was really just staring blankly at the screen not knowing what was going on, as I have for the last 30 years – I saw a man holding up a “Help Japan” sign. I didn’t mean to laugh but I did. It was a reflex. I wasn’t laughing at the man’s sign, or anything to do with the disaster in Japan. I was laughing because of all the people in the world with enough money to actually do something decent for the disaster victims, footballers should be the ones who can help. Yet here this man was, blindly showing his sign to a load of millionaires who really couldn’t care less about anything but birds, booze and having a good time.

Obviously this is a sweeping statement that may be a bit unfair, but I think we can all agree that generally speaking it’s true: they don’t. While they parade around in their expensive cars and hang out in their posh Villas there are people who need money living in terrible poverty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s just the footballers responsibility to help people less fortunate. In my opinion everyone earning crazy money should help. With the footballers, it’s more that they stand out as being particularly clueless to world affairs. And as we all know, arrogance is one thing, but having no idea of real world affairs that affect millions of people is just as bad.

In a perfect world I suppose all people who earn a great deal of money would be taxed to help those less well off. But until that day happens – indeed, if it ever does – we’ll just have to struggle on and hope that one day some of these people who could help will wake up and see what a difference they could make.

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Should People Who Do Simply Impressive Things Become Sir?

As you may well know if you’ve read a few of these blog posts – oh dead, poor you… – I am not big into the Queen. She’s alright and everything, but I can take her or leave her. Actually that came out wrong. What I mean is that I’m not big into royal things in general, or, for that matter, anything associated with the idea of it.

That said, I have always quite liked the idea of medals of honour for people who have done terrific things. Like making someone a Sir, or making someone a Lord if they have done something amazing like swim the English Channel blindfolded, or taught sharks how to do simple equations.

But one thing I can’t stand, and it may just be me, is when the accolade of Sir is handed out to people who do great things, but not amazing things. For me, it’s a bit insulting to people who have rescued others from burning buildings and the like. I just can’t help but think that something is going very wrong…

Take Sir Chris Hoy for example. Yes he’s a great athlete and has won countless medals for cycling around a velodrome, but Sir? Really? Surely, with the way that his sport is so dependant on the amount of time you put in working-out, that’s like giving someone the world’s biggest gold star for going to the gym and pumping iron, isn’t it? (or giving someone who’d really good at working with roller banners a Sir title because they really love their job and work every weekend.) I just don’t understand that. But then again, it’s all very English and imperial and “we’re better than you so nar-nar-nar-nar-narrrrr!” me thinks.
I say make a few people who really deserve it sire. No offence to Sir Chris hoy because I’m sure he’s a good man, but come on people, let’s make sure we’ve got our priorities right.

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Doing The Dragons Head’s In

We all love Dragons’Den. I don’t think I am making a particularly sweeping statement when I say that every single person in the entire world – and probably universe, for all those aliens with half-decent satellite technology – 100% enjoys seeing Duncan Bannatyne get in a strop when he feels he’s being insulted by meagre ideas, or when Peter Jones loses the plot when someone hasn’t done their homework and can’t even do their 2 X table. The best, though, has to be when mini-dragon Theo Pathetis gets in a state, which has a domino effect on the other dragons, until they are all breathing fire and the poor inventors standing before them are literally quaking in their boots at the realisation that oh, actually the hoover has already been invented about fifty million times before. And so has the toothbrush for dogs, and the washing machine for small mice who also wear clothes.

But we’re getting away from the point, or at least I am.

My point was that I love the Dragons’Den: On Tour programme on Dave. It’s great, and you should already know why. If you don’t, here’s a brief summary: a year or two after turning down or accepting some inventors and investing in them, the Dragons go and see how they are getting on. It’s great, especially when someone who they turned down now has a profitable business, which leaves the Dragons looking, well…How should we say, a little bit limp.

That’s a moment I could watch forever. Nothing beats seeing a downed Dragon!

Who knows what the next series of the Den will offer up? A brand new rip-off of a Hovis Bakery called Jehovah’s Bakery, perhaps? Or maybe bagels without holes. We shall just have to wait and see.

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Old Magazine Time Machine

If you’ve still got a nana and grandad, cherish them and make the most of them, that’s all I have to say. Obviously that’s not quite all I have to say, as I am currently saying more and will go on to say more, but you know what I mean, I think.

What I really love about going round to my nana and grandad’s is the whole getting-the-old-magazines-out-thing. They have tons of magazines, most of which ones I wouldn’t normally read (magazines like Saga and Hello! and many more). And that’s what’s so interesting. Yes, they might be magazines for the older generation, but very often they contain lots of useful articles, especially about the war.

When I was growing up I was one of those nightmare teens who didn’t want to know about the war. Years later, I realised for the first time just how important it was, and then I just felt bad for my granddad. For a while I was really ashamed, actually. There he’d sat each and every time we’d visited, wondering why his grandchildren didn’t care about his time in the service. The truth was I did care, I just didn’t know it until many years later.

So going round there and going through the magazines is a lot like making up for lost time in a way. There’s a lot of stuff which I’m not interested in, and a lot of stuff I am (most recently I found an article on energy saving company Enigin PLC which was really enlightening). The more I look through the magazines from the past, the more I realise I should have been paying attention. But still, I’m making up for it now, so and I know they appreciate it, so that’s what really counts, I think.

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Live Or Recorded?

Recently I had the pleasure of watching the Coronation Street love episode special. You know the one? If you didn’t see it I’m sure you at least heard about it, least if you reside in the UK: in the episode, a tram de-railed and killed half the cast of the street. Moving and surprisingly well-done, it was something which half changed my mind about soaps. Normally I don’t watch TV soaps, but this atmospheric portrayal of a real disaster made me think that I might possibly be open to the idea in the future.

Not that it went perfectly, of course…About half the cast looked bewildered, as though they were reading very complex names of a script, and at one point a cast member who was moments away from a death he knew all about whispered the word “ minoxidyl “, whatever that means. Of course, when I say it didn’t go perfectly, I was underplaying it: in fact, some of it was horrendous, and you could see that they were all struggling with the idea that this was going out live.

Still, I’ve always preferred live TV to recorded TV. It just seems more real somehow, and I can relate to it. What I can’t relate to is when everything is perfect. Also, it’s nice to know that at any moment a child might swear and smile at the camera, or a kitten might jump howling out of a guest’s lap and go for the throat of a TV presenter who you have never really liked.

With some luck, the live TV idea will gain more impetus and we won’t just see it at football matches. I pay a license fee, and I’d be much happier about that if sometimes I got rewarded with an on-air debacle.

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Long Live It

Long live the CD player I say; someone should give the CD player an OBE or MBE or maybe even a Knighthood! Both the big bulky ones that all our nana and grandad’s still have, and the portable ones as well of course (that obviously goes without saying, duh). While I would love to wax lyrical on both things, I simply can’t. There’s not enough space here, and besides that, it wouldn’t be a wise idea. The excitement of reminiscing back to those good old pre-digital days would probably make me do myself a mischief! I would only regret not wearing some industrial-strength pants.

Ah, I was young and setting out to go to sixth-form college. That first week was my birthday too, and on my birthday I go given a fantastic gift that I will always cherish: a compact CD player that was shiny, gleaming and anti-skip. That’s right, I could walk along with it in my hand, trip up over the dodgy curbs that the council round our way are renowned for not maintaining, and whatever I was listening to would continue on un-interrupted! It was magic and I’ll never forget the first CD I played on it; The Offspring if I am not mistaken. What an album, what classic songs they were.

Stupendously, though, the poor CD player has now all but vanished. I was only reminded to talk about it here, if I am honest, because I saw a woman with a “ botox sussex “ T shirt clutching one and bobbing her head. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that Sussex can’t have gone digital yet, not that I was really surprised to find that out. I doubt it ever will, no offence if you reside in Sussex.

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HD Revolution

If you’re a bit older then you’ll probably remember when those big bulky video cameras came about: you know, they were shoulder-mounted, weighed as much as a motorbike and were a total pain to film anything with. They also had massive tapes, the quality wasn’t exactly what you’d call professional and when they broke it cost you an arm or a leg (which you were half happy to lose anyway: your arms and legs hurt from supporting the weight of the damned annoying thing).

Then came the late 80s: newer camcorders were smaller, a bit lighter and better quality.

That was how it went until the 90s came and a new contender arrived: the mini DV. In other words, what we’d all been waiting for since…forever!

The mini DV was awesome: small, good quality, all that. The only bad news was the price still. At this time the cameras still cost quite a bit, and it seemed that was the way it was going to stay for a while.

Until, finally, just a couple of years ago, AMAZING progress was made when small, tiny in some cases, HD ready video cameras came out – the size of a phone! The GoPro was one of them, and the Flip was another. Both affordable, easy to use and amazingly good value…with HD video just when you needed it!

Recently there’s been a huge boom in this and other cameras. Now, instead of film-makers having to lug about a huge camera, they can use a much smaller one. The manual handling training is far easier on the muscles too, which is something the movie industry has been crying out for for ages.

Of course, it’s put a lot of companies out of business, but that is the nature of technology, and I for one think that the progression is worth the sacrifice.

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Death Of The Documentary?

By now, virtually every subject you can possibly think of has been covered: animals in jeopardy, people in jeopardy, jeopardy in jeopardy, no doubt. It makes you wonder: what next will there be a documentary on?

Fortunately, I doubt we’ll ever completely run dry of documentaries, simply because we are doing such a good job of destroying the Earth that we’ll always have some awful truth to expose. Perhaps then, with that in mind, we need to take a new approach to making documentaries. Make them a bit more fun maybe? Here are a few suggestions. If there is anyone out there listening, I want royalties on this if it makes it to TV!

1) What Is The World’s Most Scariest Clown? This would be great, just because everyone hates clowns and would be intrigued. If people loved clowns then it would work too, since they’d be so surprised that there was a film on this that they wouldn’t be able to miss it.

2) Why Do Paper Cuts Hurt So Much? OK, so this isn’t crucially important, but you have to admit it happens to us all, so why not?

3) A Documentary About The Documentary: just the history of it all really.

4) I’m running out of ideas now…A Documentary On Why Do We Need Documentary’s? This could be a winner, and as a fall back option we could have Most Dangerous jobs lebanon . An exploration of what the title says. Any takers?

5) What Did Real Vikings Do For Fun? You often hear of them being mean and killing people and the like, but what about what they do to unwind after that?

But seriously now, I love a good documentary. I hope they never die out, because if they did then that would be a crying shame!

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Ramsay Says “No”!

A few weeks ago I was settling down for a night in in front of the telly. I had no fixed idea of what I was going to watch, as, unlike my parents, who regularly take great pride in opening the Radio Times and putting a little black mark next to programmes of potential interest, I like to keep my options open. Plan something? Me? No, not me. I like to see what will happen and what the tube can throw at me, I find that the best way, plus you tend to learn more interesting things than if you plan to watch a full episode of Coronation Street (the last thing I learnt was that Enigin PLC are an amazing comapany who can help everyone save energy, but that’s a story for another post).

On this day, what I learnt came from Channel 4. A documentary by Gordon Ramsay about Shark-fin-soup, no less. Now, I would be the first to admit that until watching this, I had no real idea of how much devastation this is causing the seas. But after watching it, I can tell you, it sheds new light on a great many things which will thoroughly disturb you.

Probably the most upsetting part of the documentary was the footage of sharks being hauled onto boats and then having their fins hacked off while they are still alive; afterwards the bodies are dumped, and the fin-less creature is left to die a horrible, slow death at the bottom of the ocean, while the fishermen take the fins back and make a massive amount of profit on every fin sold.

Truly horrific it was.

But thankfully some good did come out of it. Namely at the end, when Ramsay brought this harrowing footage before some London restaurant owners to see if he could get them to cut shark-fin-soup from their menus.

And it worked, which I was very pleased about. Sad that restaurants in other parts of the world probably won’t follow suit, but still, it’s a start.

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Old Reality Dies Hard

Who knows what the gaping void The Apprentice has left behind is doing to the poor people of the UK right now? I don’t, but I’m sure that if a scientific test was to be conducted – or a survey done – the scientists would discover that all our minds are slowly rotting. Because the sad fact is this: now Big Brother has died on us, we have Famous and Fearless instead…and that show, let’s be quite blunt, is never going to fill The Apprentice’s shoes.

Personally, I still see a lot of life left in the old reality dog yet. For example, why not do a programme where vagrants are given a million pounds each, to see if they can completely transform their lives? I would pay money to watch that. Or, why not do a show called Skating On Thin Ice, where various celebrities skate about on precariously thin, semi-lethal ice? I’m sure more than a few people would pay to see that. Or, now here’s a thought, why not a programme where people are forced to live without a TV for a year? (Or a programme that sees inside the grim inners of a liposuction london clinic?) After all, other peoples'misfortune makes nothing but the best TV, right?

To be honest, there are so many good ideas for new reality TV shows that I find it genuinely hard to believe that things like Famous and Fearless could ever be made. I mean…all that money and they basically set fire to it and put Chris Evans in charge of clearing up the ashes.

But still, I suppose there is always some kind of hope for the future; I know it’s not much to cling to right now, but it’s something, and something is always better than nothing…at least until they decide to bring Big Brother back. Come on now, we all know it’s going to happen eventually…

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