Matt’s Journal

GM-TV and the like…

Posted by Matt under Rant, TV

Every weekday morning, as the clock strikes 7am, myself and Katie wake and start getting ready for the day of work ahead. The usual ritual is to snooze for fifteen minutes, Katie then rises and gets into the shower and I power up the laptop and read some early morning feeds. As Katie comes out the shower, she requests that I put the TV on, nine times out of ten it’s straight to channel three, GM-TV.

GM-TV as it goes isn’t too bad, it is a little more varied than your straight up BBC News and it helps get the news, weather and odd reports in before you leave for work.

The one thing that really gets to me is the sensationalist reporting. Two days ago it centred on a piece of council-estate scum who had “been given a criminal record” for overfilling his outside bin. I could imagine, as they said this, millions of viewers were shocked at council bureaucracy gone mad.

What we weren’t shown was that the council had merely fined the man for overfilling his bin, something that he would no doubt have received correspondence through the post when the action came into place. He proceeded to ignore the letter, letting the courts issue a court order against him and charging him for the whole thing. In my house, if there is not enough room for something, you have a council recycling plant probably two or three miles from any house that you can deposit your rubbish in. This man was just lazy. GM-TV made the viewer think that the man was unfairly punished for something I think he could have stopped dead in it’s tracks.

Yesterday was even better. They told viewers a million times that an American woman had come home and heard noises in her kitchen, only to find an 8 foot crocodile! (zOMG!). They proceeded to interview the woman, asking silly questions like “Will you leave your back door open now?!” and stating things like “You must have been very scared!”.

Granted it’s background TV, some of the crap that TV stations are allowed to get away with now is just plan wrong. At least GM-TV arent hurting anyone.

Car Tax

Posted by Matt under Car, Rant, Spendage, Wedding

I have had my Hyundai Coupe for a year now and this month my car tax has come up for renewal. Last week our Home Secretary announced his budget, punishing the more “polluting” vehicles. Guess what I was labelled…….a pollutant!

My car tax was quoted as being £300 on the renewal form for a year, very high but doable. The budget last week changed all that though, it went up to £400 for the year! A smack in the face for me, I will be doing my utmost to get a good deal for my car, trade it for a very economical smaller car……just what the government wants.

After declaring war on smoking, the amount of money they get from the tax concessions has considerably lowered. If we can’t tax smokers, lets tax the road users and pretend we are doing our bit for the environment!

It’s been an expensive weekend. I also bought our wedding rings ready for July and bought currency for our holiday. I need to win the lottery……..fast.

I’ll Sack Them

Posted by Matt under Rant, Work

10pm last night, I am laying in bed dozing and dropping off to sleep. Im falling into a deep sleep just as my Matrix Revolutions ringtone blares out and scares the crap out of me. It’s a phone call from a private number. In these sort of situations, I think one of two things:

• Someone in my family is in desperate need of something and it can’t wait til morning.
• The f**king cleaners at my workplace have set the bloody alarms off at work.

So, yeah, the cleaners had decided to set the work alarm off and as I am the office manager, I am the mug who needs to go sort it out.

I get there, walk into the building with my tracksuit bottoms and my fleece jacket on looking like a homeless guy, to find three cleaners going about their business as if nothings happened. I ask them why the hell the alarm went off, getting massively aggressive that cleaners even think about cleaning at 11pm at night and then ring the alarm engineer to get it sorted.

Unless they work at more socialable hours so that if the alarm is triggered a person isn’t in the midst of sleepy time, they won’t be cleaning here again!

Overreaction

Posted by Matt under Rant

The nature of people these days is to look at situations and only see something that can influence themselves in some way. Even if the event has nothing really to do with us. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t stand on the top of my blog’s grassy knoll and look down on everyone else, I just do what geeks to best, observe society and then moan about it on my journal :P.

Let me tell you my observation.

It’s my friend’s birthday this weekend, he is going to be a grand age of One Hundred and Twenty Four. He lives in a two bed flat with his girlfriend, they have no children, he is an accountant and she is a teacher. For said friend’s birthday, myself and Katie have gone halves on an NFL jersey for him, a replica of the NY Giants shirt with Eli Manning blazoned on the back. My friend’s girlfriend had done really well and booked a football pitch so that we could all play football tomorrow with a group of his university friend’s (mutual friends of mine also) whilst the girls stayed home and nattered.

She had also had an idea to get a cake with a picture of her and my friend on it, a great idea you would think, a nice touch. Well the dozy mare decided to (bearing in mind his birthday is tomorrow) take the picture into a cake makers yesterday, yes, two days before the big event. Unsurprisingly the cake maker informed her that such a cake would not be made in such a short timeframe.

She rings up Katie, crying her eyes out down the phone. Katie’s mind wanders as to what might have happened, had he been caught texting filth to another woman? Had they split up? No……..her planning skills had been shown to be non-existent. I thought she was upset that the idea would be a wasted one, she was upset that because the last few weeks had been tenuous between them, she had pinned all his potential happiness on his birthday on the hopes that the cake would show how much she loved him.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea and it would have been a lovely touch, but after she had planned for his mates to play football with him, have a meal out, organise a minibus to escort us everywhere and then go bowling, I was quite shocked to hear of her distress that a cake couldn’t be made.

Besides, Tesco do it in ten minutes.

My perception of it was that it was a reflection on her that she couldnt get the cake done, it was a “I did all this and aren’t I a wonderful girlfriend” PR exercise. She replaced the cake with a standard Manchester United cake, I am 100% sure he would have been happy with a Mister Kipling lemon slice.

It struck me, it was the culmination of years of similar behaviour she had exhibited. Myself and Katie are due to go on holiday, she remarks she has never been on a holiday with my friend as they can’t afford it. We decide we are going to start running in the evenings, she can’t run because her feet are high arched. Going to America? She’s been to America and seen every kind of city, animal and event. Know someone famous? She knows a friend of a friend who’s mother taught his sister back in primary school. Death in the family? It’s nothing in comparison to her father’s death.

I’m a bastard aren’t I? It’s just one of those things that when it’s forced in your face so much, you can’t do much else than react to it. Granted some of the things that have happened to her are tragic, I’m at a loss as to many times I need to hear it.

I don’t doubt tomorrow will be a great success, I just wonder if the joy is my friend’s or it’s short-lived before his missus rolls out her own plaudits. If she cut the “Woe is me” attitude and just enjoyed life, I wouldn’t have to blog about it

Beat Me Sideways With A Sandal

Posted by Matt under Rant

I got ill, damn it.

If you saw the amount of people who were ill around it wouldnt have been a surprising resolution but judging on how little I tend to bow to illness, it annoys me.

I’ve had this am-I-cold-am-I-hot? temperature (where Katie tells me that it is my body fighting the virus so I should keep my clothing on so my body isn’t having to work harder), runny nose and a banging headache……..for the guys out there, we call it a cold and women; Man Flu.

I did however buck the trend of Man Flu sufferers, I trudged on and went to work, my body is still thanking me for that. Monday and Tuesday required me to set-up a live web event so slacking off and having some duvet time was not really on the table. Getting home about ten last night, I crashed into bed, lasted three quarters of the day today and headed off home to get my head down.

I’m still ropey but hope to be a bit clearer for Salsa tomorrow. Snake Hips they call me, probably because I glide effortlessly across the floor…….or maybe because I too am something that people are scared of .

England Fail To Qualify For Euro 2008

Posted by Matt under Rant

Am I surprised? No.

For years the English have lived off the back of our famous 1966 win……shame it was 41 years ago now. The recent championships that England have attended have seen them stuggle to get past the group stages only to be knocked out on penalties. The masses get excited, purchase the flags, bunk off work to watch the games and with real expectation that this year could be it, watch England fail.

There’s no excusing England, they drew with the likes of Macedonia and then went off to Russia and lost. Israel even threw them a lifeline by beating Russia, all we needed to do was secure a draw against an in-form Croatian team (who incidentally had already qualified).

Watching the first half last night, I watched as the new England keeper Scott Carson throws the ball into his own net, I watch Joleon Lescott and Sol Campbell panic everytime they get the ball and depise the whole of the midfield as they get completely outplayed by a more organised outfit.

It’s not that the players don’t care, I don’t believe even someone on £100,000 a week is prepared to shrug off a dismal qualifying campaign. The manager shifted the team around far to many times, relied on big names and not in-form players and basically set us up to lose. England when they did play, tried to hard and didnt let the football come naturally, everything seemed forced and laboured.

McLaren is gone, hopefully so will a few players like Owen, Lampard and Beckham when we get a new manager. Who do you think? I think its going to be Mourinho, possibly shading Capello.