{"id":909,"date":"2012-04-19T11:35:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T10:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=909"},"modified":"2012-04-19T12:31:17","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T11:31:17","slug":"is-melvyn-bragg-the-most-boring-person-on-the-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/thoughts\/is-melvyn-bragg-the-most-boring-person-on-the-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Melvyn Bragg the Most Boring Person on the Radio?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a rainy morning here in Wales (no scoffing about the Welsh weather it has been remarkably dry up until now and our newly planted trees<\/a> are enjoying a watering) so no need for us to rush to get up. When we did it was time for a leisurely breakfast of home made bread and home made marmalade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Being a creature of habit I flicked on the radio which is pretty much pre tuned to BBC Radio 4 (which probably is the standard behaviour for middle class ‘old farts’ like us). Actually I don’t know how to retune it as nothing yet has grabbed my attention so much that I must<\/em> listen to it. So generally I listen to a bit of the Today program to keep me vaguely attuned to what is going on in the world outside our valley. But of course, being a ‘prickly old git’ I tend to end up turning it off, or at least hurling verbal abuse at it, when yet another slime ball politician is given air time to feed the population more bullshit. Wouldn’t it be great if just one of the tossers\u00a0 was honest for once and said something like; ‘We’ve been enjoying lavish lifestyles on the backs of the poor in the ‘third world’ for years and borrowing way beyond our means to fund it. Growing of GDP (as presently worshipped to get us out of the shit) in the future is impossible in a world of finite resources. With the oilfields depleting and Peak Oil somewhere close by, cheap oil is a thing of the past. We have a large population living on a small little island, we owe huge amounts of money, have unsustainable lifestyles and basically we’re fecked. So you better get used to having less. Meanwhile us (politicians, bankers, royalty etc.) are keeping our indexed linked pensions, massive bonuses and palaces etc) because we’re worth it and you mugs can keep paying for them’?<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Thought for the Day’ is also guaranteed to have me reaching for the off button as there is no way I can stomach having to listen to some ‘believer in some super tooth fairy’ spouting on about their thoughts and ludicrous beliefs. Even if I was being really generous and agree that these ‘nut jobs’ should be able to spout this bollox at least give us Atheists an equal platform.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I digress, as it was still raining I made more fresh coffee and spread more marmalade on yet another piece of toast (yes readers this is the life of the retired) just as the clock ticked past 9.00 a.m. and Melvyn Bragg came on the radio muttering something about Plato. For fecks sake does that man sound boring or what? He may be intelligent (I’m not clever enough to know) but he could be prescribed on the NHS for insomniacs (take 5 minutes of Melvyn ‘nocte’ and you’ll be out like a light). Holy cow; I’d rather listen to ‘The Archers’ and that should have been put out of its misery years ago.<\/p>\n

At this stage just before reaching for the off switch yet again I had a short fantasy about being in an episode of Farther Ted.<\/p>\n

\"Father
Ted, where the feck is Melvyn when you need him?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
Father Ted<\/strong>: Who’s got the most boring voice?<\/dd>\n
Billy<\/strong>: What?<\/dd>\n
Father Ted<\/strong>: Of the lot of us, who’s got the most boring voice?<\/dd>\n
Father Fitzgerald<\/strong>: (extremely dull voice)<\/em> That’d be me, Ted…<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Me<\/strong>: (extremely pissed off voice)<\/em> That’d be Melvyn Bragg,\u00a0 Ted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a rainy morning here in Wales (no scoffing about the Welsh weather it has been remarkably dry up until now and our newly planted trees are enjoying a watering) so no need for us to rush to get up. When we did it was time for a leisurely breakfast of home made bread … Continue reading “Is Melvyn Bragg the Most Boring Person on the Radio?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[65],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}