Rant Round Up

So, caught up in World Cup fervour and the heatwave, as I've been lately, I've neglected to rant about a whole lod of other stuff that's been going on and has annoyed me.  To compensate, here's a brief 'rant round up' to try and cover some of the lost ground.  First up: no, Elon Musk, the rescue of twelve Thai boys and their football coach from flooded caves is not an opportunity for you to stroke your ego by turning up with more of your crazy but utterly pointless contraptions.  Jesus, fucking billionaires!  You'd think that being fabulously wealthy would be enough to satisfy anyone - the knowledge that you will want for nothing for the rest of your life would surely make you feel incredibly secure.  But apparently not -  so many of these wealthy fuckers spend their time (and money) doing all manner of stuff to garner publicity and boost their insecure egos: building mini subs to rescue kids from caves, flying balloons across the Atlantic, you know the sort of shit I mean.  look, if you want to do something worthwhile people will remember you for, try giving away all your worldly wealth to help address issues like global poverty, homelessness and general deprivation.  Christ, bearing in mind that the personal wealth of some of these bastards is bigger than the GDP of some small countries, they could even resolve all these problems by only giving away 99% of their money and still be multi-millionaires.

Talking of billionaires: Donald Trump - go home.  He really excelled himself this week, declaring a politically awkward interview he'd given to the Sun 'Fake News'!  But don't worry, he thinks that ordinary Britons love him.  Sadly, there actually are some utter ball sacks out there who apparently like this bell end.  And I don;t just mean that currently unemployed sack of shit Boris Johnson, (OK, I know that he's still an MP, but I doubt that he sees that as a proper job).  We've had the likes of the abominable Nigel Farage and the despicable waste of space Katie Hopkins gushingly tweeting their support for the orange knacker.  I mean, really, if that's the best you can muster in terms of support - the utter dregs of British society - then you should be ashamed of yourself.  Damn it, if I found that Katie Hopkins supported me, or even agreed with anything I'd ever said, I think I'd contemplate suicide, so shameful would it be.  Aside from rich dicks and publicity hungry arseholes, the other thing which irked me over the past few weeks was a newspaper story about the fire on Saddleworth Moor, bemoaning how such a major incident wasn't being reported nationally because the 'southern' dominated media wasn't interested in anything going on in the North.  Really?  For a while that fire was all I bloody read or heard about in the media.  I really do get sick of this fake Northern self pity at being ignored by the media, 

I live in the South and I get the bloody North rammed down my throat at every turn: the oly football teams we hear about are fucking Liverpool and Man Utd/City, every sodding drama series seems to be set in the North, every TV presenter and commentator has a Northern accent.  The South is badly unrepresented in the media (no, Eastenders doesn't count, it is set in London, which isn't the South) - I rarely hear a proper West Country accent, for instance, unless it is being parodied.  Since Howard's Way, I can't recall any major drama series being properly set in the South.  (Again, Inspector Morse doesn't count - Oxford is part of the Midlands and Midsomer Murders is filmed in the Home counties which, like London, isn't really the South).  Where are our dramas, set in Southampton, Portsmouth, or even Bristol, (even Casualty has moved production to Cardiff)?  Or Plymouth and Exeter, for that matter?  Where are our rural soaps?  I'd venture that Wiltshire is better farming country than bloody Yorkshire, so where's the Southern Emmerdale Farm?  Part of the imbalance, I know, is down to the fact that, when ITV was a series of regional franchises, the Northern, Midland and London broadcasters tended to be the better funded ones, contributing more programming to the network.  The main sSouth of England franchise, Southern, was traditionally content to rake in the ad revenue and pay it out to shareholders rather than actually make decent programmes, (cheap daytime fare like Out of Town and House Party and various kids shows don't, in my opinion, count).  But the BBC has no such excuse in this department.  Anyway, that's the rants rounded up for now.