Hopping Mad

"Bet now, bet now, bet now!!!!"


I've just listened to a wireless programme which turned out to be the most pointless, nauseating, foot-gnawing pile of rectal evacuations I have heard since.....well......since the last steaming mound of aural botty droppings it was my misfortune to tune into.
Get this. Some fucking genius at the BBC (there's an oxymoron if ever I wrote one) came up with the idea of getting a panel of complete and utter no-mark fuckwits to consider two historical "things" and decide which of them was the most culturally worthy. Ain't that just Thatchair's (sic) Britain all over? Reducing all that is beautiful, uplifting, spiritual, artistic and socially significant to just commodities, like oil or cornflakes, which can be hogged, logged and flogged? Too much of a leap in logic for you? Well, consider this:
Imagine yourself one of Thatchair's children for a moment, if you will. That will give you a mindset which will enable you to Bastardise Darwinism (almost everybody incorrectly defines the word "fittest" in Chaz's theory) and insist that EVERYTHING HAS to compete against EVERYTHING else, and not just against local and immediate pressures. If everything competes then everything can be ranked in some kind of order. If you have some kind of order you can convert the seemingly ethereal concept of "value" into an empirical measure. Once you've got loads of "things" with different empirical measures what have you got? My child, you have a "market" and markets are where "things" can be bought or sold. This modus operandi allows EVERYTHING to be marketed, from art and nature to beauty and health.
Whereas those of us inoculated against Thatchairism would just marvel at the perfection of, say, a polar bear and a gorilla, both miracles of creation which just "are" and whose relative values it is impossible to judge, the "market" would have us believe that they each have an intrinsic, empirical measure and so, by the reverse of the argument above, are in competition with each other. The fact that one lives in the Arctic, freezes its butt off all year round and eats fish and seals while the other lives in Rwanda and other dwindling sites in Africa, gets piss wet through most months and is vegetarian is neither here nor there.
The uselessness of the market is just as evident when trying to compare and evaluate works of art. Is the Venus de Milo "better" than the Mona Lisa? Is St Paul's Cathedral "more valuable" than the Parthenon? More ridiculously, is The Night Watch by Rembrandt "superior" to Stone Henge?
Sorry, I went off on one there - the plate in my head just shifts from time to time. Where was I? Oh yes, that radio programme. Would you believe, it tried to pit (pardon the pun) Chatterley Whitfield Colliery near Stoke-on-Trent, the world's largest remaining although derelict Victorian coalmine, against Puossin's paintings of The Seven Sacraments (which actually only comprise five paintings, one having been destroyed and the other being in a separate collection). THEY got some dickhead supposed "expert" to give each one a score under various headings, such a local significance, historical importance etc. The pointlessness (this time excuse the irony) of the exercise was highlighted when said dickhead gave them equal marks overall. More waste-of-timery was exhibited by the "prize" on offer to the winner, namely £80 million to be spent either on the purchase of the Poussin works or on restoring the colliery. The only problem was.......there was NO money on offer. It was just an imaginary £80 million!! What's the fucking point in offering a prize which doesn't exist? It's like telling the winner of the men's 100m at the Olympics that there is, in fact, no gold medal for him, it was all just a joke and no-one was watching him run anyway!
Then we come to the panellists asked to give their views on the supposed merits of these competing works of man. One was that hideous, smug, vacuous excuse for a human being (I use the term loosely) Edwina Currie.

Question 2. Evaluate the usefullness to the universe of these two.

Bearing in mind it was "her" fucking Government which closed down all the pits in the first place, the more cynical could have argued that she was a little biased as a judge. Another on the panel was Simon Woodroffe, the millionaire founder of the sushi chain Yo! Sushi (come the Day of Judgement he's going to be able to really fucking impress St Peter, isn't he?). This tosser was invited along to give his views on the business merits of both competitors (see everything argued above). Fuck off!! Currie at one point, would you believe, even said she thought it would be a good idea to have a sushi bar at the colliery!!! I have long argued that if you are a complete fucking idiot (reference: thinking John Major was shaggable, telling the world that one of the industries you are responsible for is shite and could kill customers) then keep quiet - don't open your trap and thereby give the game away immediately!!
You can just envisage the sort of chinless, "daddy's-got-a-Porsche-mummy-won-the-National" young Sloan at the BBC (they're all they employ these days) who came up with this abortion of an idea for a programme. This may seem a little harsh but I am in favour of gassing the fucking lot of them.
National Treasures, the programme was called. Well, like all treasures it should be fucking buried! Failing that, the townsfolk of Grantham fully deserve it.