Britain's Got Talent - Hate To Say I Told You So...

Well I've had a highly eventful couple of weeks and so keeping to my resolution to write 2 blog posts a week has been something of a struggle, but here I am once again. It's sad though that I'm writing on such a sour topic today, but it's something I really feel the need to write about.

Towards the end of last year, I wrote a pretty vitriolic post about how Simon Cowell thinks every member of the great British public is a blithering idiot. He sits in his huge, supervillain palace, shaped like a giant X, strokes his fluffy white cat named Louis and cackles maniacally as he sucks money out of our pockets year after year. Anyone with half a brain cell has been able to tell from day one that his "talent shows" - beginning with Pop Idol and now stretching to Britain's Got Talent and its American counterpart - have been nothing but manipulative business moves. But recently I read something which added a whole new, sickening dimension onto the devious git's empire.

Simon Cowell may not be a judge on BGT any more, but the show is still part of his media empire, SYCO. So he's still top dog. I recently read an e-mail, published here anonymously, from an executive of Sony Music UK, who's worked closely with SYCO in relation to BGT.

In it, he reveals how current contestant and hot favourite Ronan Parke, a 12 year old singer, was fist discovered and SIGNED by SYCO two years ago at the age of 10. Over the past two years, he's been groomed to a terrifying degree, trained and controlled in every area in order to get him ready to win BGT 2011. And, as far as the writer of the e-mail is concerned, he WILL win. Simon Cowell has made sure he's been groomed and given a sexualised image to impact on the public and, at the end of the day, to rival Justin Bieber in the pre-teen market. The vote is already rigged apparently, which isn't something that doesn't surprise me and shouldn't surprise you either.

The thing that really gets me here is that, in the 21st century, a company run by a man who has for years been the face of Saturday night FAMILY entertainment, has groomed and sexualised a 12 year old boy. Apparently, young Ronan's always been a bit fey and effeminate, but some kids are at that age. The marketing appears to have been "we can't man him up, so let's start firing G-A-Y on all cylinders". I mean, watch his "audition". What 12 year old kis dresses themselves like that? Children - and yes he is a CHILD - should never be settled on their appearance at that age, and they certainly shouldn't be shoe horned in to a sexuality they're not comfortable with. They've twisted this poor kid's entire life and personality into an image that they want to sell. Regardless of what your views on sexuality are, it is never right, in any circumstance, to take a 12 year old boy who is nowhere near coming to terms with his sexuality, and to purposefully groom his personality, mannerisms and image. It's wrong do that in ANY fashion, not just a sexual one. And it's all made fine and dandy by the fact the Michael Macintyre is a few feet away, bumbling around with his fat, yellow grin like Mr Blobby on a good day at the races.

It was conditioning like this that turned Michael Jackson into a frekish, lonely, highly disturbed man-child. Pressure like this that hooked Judy Garland on pills when she was barely out of her nappies. The 21st century music business is a devious, unscrupulous place, but I really thought that THIS would be below even the scuzziest lizard in a suit these days. But it appears not.

Glamorous child abuse will be pumped into your living room each night this week, surrounded by flashing lights, crocodile tears and two bumbling Geordie idiots who have Simon Cowell's feelers so far up their anuses that he could pull out bush tucker they ate four years ago.

So happy viewing folks.

Simon Cowell Thinks You're An Idiot

Simon Cowell does not like you. Simon Cowell does not care about you. He does not care about you as a person. Simon Cowell does not want to make your life better. He does not want to make you think, grow, rejoice or change in anyway.

Simon Cowell thinks you are stupid.
Simon Cowell thinks you are weak.
Simon Cowell thinks you are easily pleased.
Simon Cowell thinks you have no taste.
Simon Cowell thinks you have low expectations.
Simon Cowell thinks you don't have a brain in your head or a soul in your chest.
Simon Cowell thinks you have the memory span of a goldfish.

To Simon Cowell you are not a person.

Simon Cowell only cares about your money. Via the whole X Factor brand, every year, Simon Cowell and his massive gang of producers spend all of their time and energy working out how to get as much money as they can out of your pockets as possible.

Every year, a dozen or so vaguely "talented" people are trotted out onto our TV screens on Saturday nights for live performances for eight weeks or so. On their way there, they are hyped up everywhere - radio, TV, posters, magazines, newspapers - so that you are fully aware, fully prepped and informed for their arrival. All of it is an attempt to draw you in, to make you feel as if you have to be involved in this, you have to be informed, you have to have a say in how it all pans out.

PLEASE think about it. How many X Factor contestants from the live shows can you remember? Half a dozen at most. Nearly EVERY X Factor contestant is painfully, heartbreakingly AVERAGE. There are a million and one backing singers, musical theatre performers, cruise ship entertainers and more, all around the world, who can sing just as well and probably better than the dull, mediocre zombies who are slapped in Topshop gear week after week and shoved into your face. And because they're so average, and Simon Cowell KNOWS that they are average, what does he do?

He puts on the biggest, most absurdly over the top stage shows he can afford. He advertises them everywhere he can. He underscores every moment of the contestants backstories with Take That hits to tug at your heart strings. Why?

Because all he wants is your money. And Simon Cowell think that you are so stupid, so weak minded, so uninspired, that you will be willing to watch, pay to watch a dozen painfully average, unoriginal, uninspiring, uniteresting individuals "perform" a narrow group of pop songs every week just because he's battered you round the head with flashing lights and media coverage.

Simon Cowell thinks that you don't deserve good music. That's why he insists on putting on a TV program that has produced a tiny amount of sub-average pop "stars". That's why he gets his contestants to perform covers of songs that are ALREADY in the charts so that you then go and buy those songs which are put out by record labels which he has shares in.

Simon Cowell doesn't want you to start thinking independently about the music you listen to. He doesn't want you to develop your own tastes which could stray away from the charts and his own label. He wants to numb all of your musical tastes so that you only end up recognising and listening to the songs and "artists" that he puts out. He doesn't care about making music that can stir your soul, make your overjoyed, make you really dance like your feet are on fire, make you leap and jump around like you don't care because you're so happy, make you roll down your car windows and belt your voice out with your friends because that song on the radio is so awesome. Simon Cowell doesn't care about any of that. He wants to control you, and what you like and what you buy. Most of them time, when a person votes for someone on the X Factor, it's not really their choice. It's not them controlling the program. It's Simon Cowell and his whole empire controlling them.

Simon Cowell thinks you're so stupid that he's changed the name Matt Cardle's dire cover of Bify Clyro's "Many of Horror" to "When We Collide", so that the title matches the chorus. Because that's what the kind of uninspired, reproduced, cheap pop songs that he puts out do. He didn't think you were clever enough to handle a song that had a title that wasn't related to the first few words of the chorus. He thinks you are that stupid. To him you are a big, throbbing wallet which he just wants to take money from. His view of you is no better than a mugger's, a con artists, or any other devious little criminal you can name. To him you are a big, fat cow that he's doped up to the eyes with tranquillisers, and he's viciously and deviously squeezing your tired, weary and bruised udders.



People who slag off the X Factor nowadays are normally fobbed off as indie/rock/metal/whatever snobs, and called old misery guts who just can't switch off and enjoy some pop music. But this shouldn't be what pop music is like. Pop music shouldn't be something that treats you stupidly. "Pop" comes from "popular" - music of the people. But it's not popular if it's not really chosen by the people. It isn't. It's chosen for you by a bunch of greedy, selfish businessmen who want to batter you down and make you submit to their own selfish plans. Plans which involve creating "music" that is easy to replicate, control, reproduce, digest and cover in cheap gloss. "Music" that disappears within weeks and leaves no real imprint on your life - just an empty space in your wallet.

Please, don't give Simon Cowell the satisfaction this year. Don't buy Matt Cardle's appalling, soulless cover. He'll vanish overnight, and next year some other talentless bloke or blokette will find themself in the same position. Don't let Simon Cowell and his money grabbing empire get the better of you. That really is what it will be and I'm not exaggerating. Simon Cowell wants to make you a dumb little zombie who is entertained by whatever he decides you will be entertained by. Because he wants your money.

I don't vastly care if you join one of the various "Get such and such to Christmas #1" campaigns. Just don't let Simon Cowell con you out of your money. Because that's what the whole thing is.

A filthy con.

Predictions for the Decade

Technological prophets, political commentators, inventors, software developers, film reviewers and radio presenters have all been making their forecasts for what lies head of us in the next ten years. I think we can safely say that a lot of them are wishful thinking, aimless stabs in the dark and some perhaps the results of interpretting the entrails of birds. Whilst never claiming to scale the dizzy heights of a modern social commentator, I, as a humble blogger, would like to hazard a few guesses (and point out a few inevitabilities) of the coming decade:

1. Collective Devices
We're already well on the way to this. If you're not immediately sure what I mean, I'm talking about the gradual collection of different devices- cameras, phones, mp3 players, personal planners, maps, games, internet access- into one simple device. Like I just said, we're well on the way to this, and it's a branch of tehcnological development that is inevitably going to become a huge battle between different technology companies in years to come. And gradually, more and more devices are going to be integrated into what I reckon we will still refer to as phones. Maybe we'll have real-time TV, on-demand films, remote controls, perhaps even our primary games consoles, and even more, until all entertainment appliances are replaced by one device.

2. Conservative British Government
This is almost certainly inevitable. Even in the (unlikely, but more likely than you think) event of Labour staying in power in the upcoming 2010 elections, they will most certainly be voted out in one of elections we'll have this decade. Even without New Labour's atrocious debacle of a record, the British public has never kept one party in power for more than four successive terms in the past 100 years, and it's nearly impossible that THIS government will break that trend.

3. The Continuing Decline of the British Music Charts
The charts of the latter part of the Noughties are a virtual epitaph on the British Music industry, resting above the grave of a once exciting and dominating behemoth which died bleeding boiling liquid plastic and wheezing out it's last tortured autotuned breaths. In a few years, all of current the "big names" - Taio Cruz, T-Pain, TI, Chipmunk, Chris Brown- and other talentless autotuned minions of extortionate and shallow svengalis, will have faded from public gaze and memory, but more identical looking and sounding clones with 3 semitones and one repetitive hand-clap-rhythm between them will fill their unremembered graves.

4. Big Reality TV Will Sink or Swim
Big Brother is nearly over, RATM4XMAS#1 showed that there is a silent majority of people with taste, common sense and individuality hidden in Britain, so the big names that dominated reality in the Noughties are on their way out. Reality TV is here to stay now, but it will either have to get seriously inventive if it wants to maintain its monopoly on Saturday night TV or be relegated to the side roads of TV, to channels like Living.

5. The Fall of Facebook Within 5 Years
Hey Guys! Are you on Bebo?! Yeah it's awesome! It's for sharing pictures! Cool right? Ah now you can create a profile! You put all your details up and connet with your friends! Wow! Hey guys, have you seen these applications?! Yeah they're so cool! I'm gonna fill my pages with them! Oh wow, "groups"! This is so cool! People who share my opinions! Now all I need to do is join these groups my friends have rather than enter into meaningful and interesting talk abbout our shared interest! .... *a few years later* Guys, I'm tired of all this clutter and crap in my feed and profile on Bebo. Hey Guys! Are You On Facebook?! Yeah it's awesome! It's for sharing pictures!

Those are the five biggies. Make of them what you will, and feed back to me please! There's plenty more I can predict. Women in advertising and "music" will gradually wear less and less and eventually perfume adverts will become short art-house porn productions. We'll have a major newspaper crisis thanks to t'internet. The British Government will try to launch a definitive crackdown on file-sharing, just AFTER most people realise it may actually not be such a great thing. Apple will continue to produce great handhelds and terrible computers. Britain and America will cease to have ANY vestige of a "special relationship".

Roll on the 2010s.
Feed back to me please!
God Bless you this year and decade.