Which of these is more suitable for children?

This:


Or this:


Yet Venezuelan TV has decided that Baywatch is more suitable, saying that The Simpsons have flouted a regulation that prohibits "messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents".

So what exactly is Baywatch teaching young boys and girls? Apart from how to run in slow motion and play with themselves?

Series 4 of the new Doctor Who is starting very very soon! Saturday 5 April at 6.20pm. Just over a week away.

I can't wait! It looks so so so good! All of the new series companions are back Donna [from the Christmas Special before last], Martha, and even Rose! It's so close, and I just can't wait.

The series 4 trailer is fantastic. Watch it below:

Enid Blyton's Famous Five series of books has been "updated" in a new Disney cartoon.

It just doesn't - and can't - work.

I read the Famous Five series when I was young. They were great books, set in a simple time before materialism and technology. The Famous Five is about a time when children could roam the countryside without neurotic parents wondering whether they had been snatched by paedophiles. When children weren't wrapped in cotton wool and bubble-wrap and kept in doors all day long. When they were free.

This, however, just appears to make it all about gadgets and computers rather than just being outside and having fun. Besides, children should read the Famous Five books rather than watching yet another cartoon.

Ruth Kelly has a deeper voice than Alan Duncan.

There's no real point to this post, it's just an observation.

But it is actually extremely disturbing to listen to and watch.

Especially since Ruth Kelly has grown her hair and actually looks slightly feminine. Well, until you hear her talk anyway.

Yeah, like this is going to work.

You can hardly "ban" people from the internet. That is absurd in so many ways. And it won't work, no matter what they do, in this way. By banning - or, rather, trying to ban - "pirates" from the internet they are trying to force the ISPs to police the internet and break contracts with their own customers.

Yes, they're going to love doing that.

Also, why is it up to the governemnt to control this kind of stuff? It really isn't. The internet is far too complex with its global structure to have specific national laws passed against it. Unless they are proposing to do a China, they have no chance of making it effective.

Internet piracy is best combated by the cost of the things that are most routinely downloaded reduced significantly and/or making them available online. Then it becomes nigh-on pointless. Much music piracy has undoubtedly been reduced by the availability of buying songs relatively cheaply on sites such as iTunes, and the availability of TV programmes to be watched "on demand" online after they have been broadcast, such as with the BBC's iPlayer or Channel 4's 4oD, will cause a massive drop in the illegal downloading of those programmes.

Instead of lobbying for laws against it, media companies would be far better advised to harness the potential and offer downloads of their own, on their own terms. Then internet piracy will die of starvation. Otherwise it will just change form.

Sources: BBC, The Telegraph

Chris Dillow makes an argument that Konnie Huq in her decade as a Blue Peter presenter has cost the economy around £3.9bn:

But Blue Peter doesn't start until 5pm! It's perfectly possible to work a full day and then watch Blue Peter, especially now that BBC iPlayer is up and running. Blaming Konnie Huq for the £3.9bn cost to the economy is rather unfair. She's attractive, but not that attractive!

Many of the people on benefits could work if they wanted to. How else can so many immigrants find work? Because so many Britons aren't doing them, preferring to sit on the dole. That premise is by no means wonky. The idea that Konnie Huq and Blue Peter persuaded them not to go to work is, though. That reason is down to benefits being too high.

UPDATE: Matt Sinclair also responds to Chris' post.

University Challenge is being urged to restrict the numbers of older students - or ban them completely - because it is claimed that they have an unfair advantage due to their age.

To a certain extent they do, especially considering some of the questions asked on the programme. The claims that this is balanced by their lack of knowledge of popular culture holds some, but little, water, since popular culture is far easier to pick up than that of the past!

However, what benefits a team far more is if a wide variety of subjects is represented. Since questions range from classical music and art, to science, history, geography and many more subjects. Age makes very little difference in the end - and I know this because I, my father, and my older brother sit down and watch University Challenge most weeks and try to answer the question, usually ending up with pretty similar scores.

When it comes down to it, the age of a team is far less important than the range of subjects represented.

And for some comic relief, here's the Young Ones on University Challenge:

Quite right too. You can't force Parliament on the people. Few even watch PMQs, the most lively part of parliamentary activity. Even people who are actually interested in politics don't much. I certainly don't. I don't have the time, for one thing. Who does?

You can't strengthen democracy by forcing it on the people. Making them watch it is both illiberal and ultimately counter-productive. Instead of any compulsion for news companies to include parliament, reform parliament itself and politics as a whole so that the people of Britain actually choose to watch of their own volition.

The idea that the news should have to show parliament is arse about face. Parliament should attract the people, rather than force itself upon them.

I have just been watching the European Dance Contest. Well, I say watching, but rather it was just on in the background. But anyway, it the dancing was not really all that interesting, - unless you happen to like watching dancing - and not really all that quirky.

Like the song contest, however, the voting is as politically motivated and essentially predictable, certainly so at the top end of the scores. The best part of the show for me was Graham Norton's very slightly sarcastic put-downs to the foreign presenters, along with the slightly Wogan-esque voice-over. They were very good. Just a pity that the actual contest is a complete waste of time, even more so than the song contest, which is at least fun [especially when drunk].

Is TV dying?

I watch very little TV, mostly because it's utter rubbish. Far more than ever before, people my age are turning off the television - and booting up the computer instead. I already stream most of programmes I watch from TV Links or watch them on DVDs - that way, I get what I want, when I want it. I am not dictated to by TV schedules or anything else. It also has a great selection of old programmes which are no longer shown on TV, so I have a far greater choice over what I watch as well as well as when I watch it.

I don't even watch the TV news very often any more. I get my news from the internet sites of the BBC and newspapers and from blogs rather than the half-hour condensed version that you get on the television. It is again about choice - I read the news I am interested in, and not the stuff I'm not, and I can get far more information on it as well.

On this same issue, Mike Rouse has written an excellent guest post over at the Wardman Wire*:
So even as the traditional TV is dying, a new more on-demand style is rising from the ashes. Internet TV stations, like 18 Doughty Street, are providing a 21st century solution to the end-of-TV dilemma. TV is dead, long live TV!

* I am also a guest poster there while Matt is away, but I'm current suffering blogger's block on the posts I want to write! I'll get there eventually...

So, gambling adverts now to be allowed to be shown on TV. Even though there are various restrictions that are going to be applied to them - such as not before 9pm except during sporting fixtures - surely gambling is worse than, say, junk food, which is banned during children's shows, on children's TV channels, and on general entertainment programmes watched by a "higher than average" number of under-16 year olds? It is fair to mention, however, that in return for this, no gambling-related adverts are allowed to be printed children's replica football shirts.

The new gambling advertising code can be read here. Some of them are simple, such as no adverts before 9pm, but "[a]dverts must not link gambling to seduction, sexual success or enhanced attractiveness"? Does this mean that only ugly people can be used to advertise gambling? The trade-off that James Purnell, the Culture Secretary, "won" between allowing gambling TV ads for the removal of gambling ads from children's replica football shirts is absurd. Children certainly don't care about whose advert is on they shirt, and they are far more likely to be affected by a pro-gambling TV ad.

It is hypocritical to ban one type of TV advert because it promotes something that is bad for the individual, and then let another that can ruin entire families be shown. Personally, I think there shouldn't be all that much restriction on any non-pornographic adverts, or adverts for pornographic services. People aren't completely stupid. They know that junk food can make you fat if eaten in excess, and that gambling is a mugs game.

Source: The Times

Little Britain is to go to America. Matt Lucas and David Walliams are going to remake the sketch show set in contemporary America, with some of the existing characters making their way accross the pond, and some new ones being created.

Little Britain is hilarious [most of time - the apparent vomiting fascination they have is annoying and unfunny], but I'm not sure whether the Americans will really "get" the whole premise of the show and the jokes that they make - aimed, as they are, at tendencies we all have, although taken to extremes, and stereotypes.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the outcome is!

Source: The Telegraph

According to breaking news on the BBC, the Dutch TV programme in which a terminally ill ill woman selects one of three patients to receive her kidneys, with advice being sent in by viewers via text message, which I posted about here, was a hoax designed to raise the issue of the shortage of Dutch donors.

"The "donor" in the show was in fact an actress - though the three people vying for an organ were real patients in need of a kidney transplant.
The three knew that The Big Donor Show, which aired on Friday, was not real. The producers say it was made to highlight the shortage of Dutch donors." (BBC)

I'm glad that it was a hoax. To actually have a game show on that would be taking reality TV a step way too far. But it certainly did raise the profile of the lack of organ donors, even though it was quite an unconventional way to go about it.

Hopefully due to this more people will be willing to sign up as donors and to give blood. Human life should not be wasted when there are ways of saving it. When we die, our organs just rot in the ground. If we act as donors and let our death allow others to live, we are doing good even after we have died. No-one can possibly say that that is not something that we should not want to do. Life is sacred, after all.

The issue should be seized on over here as much as in Holland. And go beyond signing up as donors for when we die, but giving blood whilst we live - unless you're gay in which case the National Blood Service doesn't want your blood. Truly ridiculous in my opinion. Why cut around 10% of the population out immediately? If they're concerned, why not put the blood through extra tests? If you refuse to allow gay people from giving blood, then don't complain that there isn't enough in the banks. But that's off the point.

The donor system should be reformed - it should be a opt-out rather than opt-in system. If you have a religious, moral or any other objection to donating organs after death, fine. The vast majority don't have any objection, but can't be bothered to sign up - just like I was (but no longer). That would be solved by the adaption of the system, and more would people be able to live.