General Rantage
Two things I have to get off my chest, neither of any importance:
1. The Snow
Get over it, UK! News programmes, move on! London and South East, stop crying and get back to work! Teachers, you spend enough time on holiday as it is - also get back to work!
I cannot believe the fuss today and yesterday about a bit of snow. Britain 'struggles to cope', apparently, with a few centimetres of frozen rain. Instead of actually trying to leave the house and behave as normal, half the nation just uses the weather as an excuse to bunk off. Kids I can understand, and it's not their decision anyway, but the ridiculous parents interviewed on the news who kept their children at home because of 'health and safety' beggar belief! I think it's safer in a classroom or the playground than hurtling down a hill on a sledge! Of course, the real reason that most schools closed is that teachers don't need much of an excuse to stay home. And don't get me started on the drivers who 'couldn't get out of their drives' - get a bus!
2. Neighbours (Aussie soap demoted from the BBC to Five)
Who writes this pap, and in which decade is the show set? For a tea-time slot, it's getting harder to stomach. Current 'major' storylines (after finally 'dealing with' raves and the HIV virus twenty years too late): three teenage school 'girls' - and I'm not sure how old that is, because they like to keep the girls in those kinky short dresses and knee-socks for as long as possible - all might be pregnant. One of them even stopped taking the pill to 'bring her closer together' with the boy she's been dating for three weeks. This is the mental or indeed social maturity of a programme that I assume is aimed at young girls. And when it is revealed who is in fact with child - because the teenage mother is a staple of this show - then all will be well, and she won't have ruined her young life. Far from it! Abortion won't be considered, and after a nine months gestation period filmed using time-elapse photography, she will be blessed with a human doll to shove around Ramsay Street. Then, when said child shoots up to toddler age in record time, she can stow him in a drawer or a cupboard while she returns to being a 'boys and make-up' vacuous ninny. Like the rest of them.
Subplot (emphasis on sub): two grown men fight over a woman. And that woman is Libby Kennedy, she of the less-than-attractive goldfish pout. (There must be a lack of available women in the Street.) Why are they fighting? Who knows - except maybe because she slept with both brothers in a sort of 'two can play that game' gesture, and now thinks that she is some sort of incredible prize to won by the best man. How are these Sensitive New Age Guys to solve the caveman conundrum - by racing their motorbikes. Wow.
And this is the general level of the soap. The boys play rugby-football, or whatever they play down under, and hang out at the gym - now that they have a new set - and the girls talk about their men. And use words like 'pashing'. White weddings and babies a-go-go. It's like the 1950s on tranquilisers.
There, I'm done now! (I know I don't have to watch Neighbours, but it's either that or Anne Robinson - gotta have the background noise!)