“I think you are sometimes really offensive and use swear words far too often. You should tone things down.”

A single line of a comment made earlier today (and one which I have declined to approve) by someone I’ve never heard of but who, I believe, has visited on many occasions – although this being the first time they have decided to leave a comment (hence it being held in the moderation queue for approval or otherwise).

Now, I find it interesting that someone can come here – MY blog – and make judgement and/or tell me what I can or cannot say. Some people seem to forget that they are visitors here. Guests, if you like. As such, when they come here, they should respect MY standards and opinions, my rules and little quirks. How dare they think they can lord it over someone elses place?

Of course, everyone is more than welcome to question or challenge anything I have to say. That’s the whole point of this – it’d be rather boring if everyone was a nodding dog. But don’t come here and tell me I’m offensive or should swear less when you have a choice to go elsewhere and not return here. Some people don’t mind my abuse, offense and swearing – it’s what makes me ME.

Remember, you are a GUEST here. If you don’t like it, you can fuck off somewhere else!

£1 in the pocket.  It used to go such a long way.  I remember the big smile on my face on a Saturday morning as my dad gave me my pocket money for that week.  I also remember then getting it again from my mum, but the less said about that, the better.

Way back then, that single quid got me a bus into town, a few comics, possibly a cheap toy, a visit to the Saturday Morning Cinema, a few sweeties and the bus home again at the end of the afternoon.  Ah, they were the days.

Fast forward to the present day.  Bloody hell, what’s happened?  Just a trip to the cinema is an absolute rip-off!  How on earth do they justify £10 to see some crap film?  And that’s before that bloody nonsense with the hot-dogs and/or popcorn.  Seriously, charging £7.50 for a carton of popcorn is just taking the piss.  Add in a hot dog and a fizzy drink and the total before even sitting down (cinema ticket, popcorn, hot dog and a coke) turns into a nice little earner for the cinema – a total of £26 before your arse is even on the seat – and before you discover that the film is shite.

Same thing with almost any tourist or visitor attractions – rip-off, rip-off, rip-off.

Taking our favourite theme park as an example – Alton Towers – we’re seriously thankful that we are Annual Pass holders.  Easily the best value £100 a year that we spend and allows us unlimited entry for a whole year (as well as 20% discount on almost everything from food to merchandise inside the park).  Not bad value at all considering that standard entry for visitors is £40 a time.

That ‘value’ disappears, however, once through those gates – the first thing to greet you is an Alton employee with a flashy looking camera badgering you to have a photo taken.  “Collect it at the end of the day”, they say.  What they don’t say is that it’ll cost you £8 to do so.  This happens within seconds of entering the park.

Next up, you discover the queue times for the rides – in some instance up to 2 hours, depending on how busy the park is.  It’s disheartening after spending hours travelling to get there, paying a quite high entrance fee and then having to queue for hours on end.  But wait!  If you PAY EXTRA, you can jump the queues!  Another £14 buys you the right to walk past everyone else and almost straight on to the rides.  The looks on the faces of the weary as they queue is almost worth it in itself.

But it’s also grossly unfair.  EVERY visitor to a theme park should be equal.  Pay the money, enter the park and queue like everyone else.  But no, Alton have seen fit to treat those with more money a bit better than the rest.  My thinking is that it’s unfair.  Not to forget the fact that for everyone with a ‘fast-track’ pass allowing them to jump the queue, it simply lengthens the queueing time for those without one – “Sorry.  I know you paid £40, but you’ll just have to wait.  These people paid another few quid to get ahead of you”.

Then there’s the food.  How the fuck do they justify £6 for a scabby hot-dog in a stale bun?  Or £2 for a bottle of Coke?  The worst one of the lot has to be the Burger King – luke-warm burgers (after a lengthy delay) at a premium price – £8 for a Whopper!  Just who the hell decides those prices?  And why the hell do the punters put up with it?

But it’s not just the theme parks.  Almost every visitor attraction is on a mission to extract as much money as possible from the visitors.  They are businesses and exist to make money, we know that.  But there comes a point when they cross the line from making a healthy profit to displaying nothing but greed.  Ripping off the consumer is rampant and it’s beginning to reach a level that makes me really, really angry.

From theme parks to museums.  From ‘Wheels’ (such as London Eye) to Waxworks (like the biggest rip-off of all, Madame Tussauds).  All the same – set the prices at the highest level possible.  All ripping everyone off and seemingly without any sense of shame whatsoever.

The most annoying one of the lot?  The £5 charge that Alton Towers make you pay to leave!  After paying £40 to get into the park, then spending outrageous sums for crap food, queueing for hours to get on rides… after the day is over, the greedy bastards then have the cheek to charge another £5 for your car parking!

Oh and don’t forget that £8 for the photo they snapped as you arrived (you remember, taken just before you realised how much you were about to be ripped off and the smiles disappeared).

Not a very nice post title, but one which aptly describes the way that the media think of us, the consumers.  By way of explanation, ‘Dumb fucks’ are the words used by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg a few years back at the inception of the Facebook project – and was in reference to the amount of personal information that the public were prepared to divulge on their profiles.  Yes, the very same Facebook that the vast majority of the worlds population are seemingly addicted to.  People like you.

But it’s not just Facebook, is it?  The TV is the same recently.  Actually, it’s been going on a while – mainly in viewing area’s such as the U.S – where the advertiser is king.  Product placement is everywhere.  What may have been quite subtle a few year ago certainly isn’t any more.  And it’s happening over here in Blighty now too.  Permission has just been granted by the broadcasting authorities to allow product placement for the first time.  Gawd help us.

But that’s not the point of this post.  This post is about the general dumbing down of TV.  Filling our screens with repeat after repeat.  Programming that makes me wonder if I’ve been transported back to 1970.  The only alternative being wall-to-wall celebrity this, celebrity that, home decorating programmes and talent shows.

Take a look at this.  This is whats currently on TV here in Blighty as I write this (I cant be arsed saying the channels or the numbers – trust me, the list illustrates exactly my point):

Restoration Roadshow
The Great British Bake Off (a breadmaking competition!)
Judge Judy
World Worst Police Car Chases
Police, Camera, Action!
America’s Next Top Model
More decorating programmes
More police chase programmes
More celebrity ‘reality’ programmes
And even more shite…

Now, I know that short list probably isn’t the best example of what I mean, but if you consider for a moment that these very programmes (along with about 500 others) are repeated day after day, even throughout the day on the +1 channels, I’m sure you’ll get my drift.

New programmes – actual NEW programmes are few and far between.  Everything is a rehash of something else.  There’s an obsession with ‘celebrity’ programmes which is sickening – I really don’t give a toss about Paris Hilton or who her new best friend is (and I pity the old best friend who obviously wasn’t that much of a best friend as they’ve been dropped).  The TV schedules are stuffed to the gills with, as I already said, with re-runs of stuff from the 70′s (think about it people, that’s 40 year old stuff) and ‘reality’ shows.

Flicking through the listings make me so annoyed that I often think my head is going to explode.  It’s all so fucking BORING.  There’s nothing of interest, nothing challenging or thought provoking – well, nothing that hasn’t been filmed over 5 years ago, at least.  Yes, Discovery Channel and things are thought provoking – but everything is 10 years old!

And the TV/cable companies are charging us a fortune to watch this shite.  Over here in the UK, it costs us on average £50 a month for this diet of repeats, etc.  And we’re also subjected to levels of advertising that drive us insane.  I don’t know how much it is in the U.S, but imagine it’s at a similar level – just with even more advertising, from what I’ve heard.

Why the hell do we let them get away with it?  Where the fuck is the ORIGINAL and NEW stuff?  When will the dumbing down STOP?

400 channels and nothing to watch.  It’s pathetic.

But there’s always Facebook when there’s nothing on telly, isn’t there?  It’s always there waiting for you to share your latest boring as fuck status with the world.  Slowly gathering a shitload of info about your life to eventually profile you and your thousands of friends before sharing the whole lot with those with an interest in targetting their advertising at you – making money out of YOU without you even realising it.

And who’s to blame for allowing all this to happen?  Well that’d be YOU.  Just accepting everything as it happens without complaint.  A grumble here and there, sometimes.  But nothing more than that.  The media in general and the advertisers are taking the piss out of you and you either don’t realise it, or don’t care.

As Zuckerberg said… Dumb fucks.