New Schedule, Old Rubbish

Hot on the heels of recent televisual calamities such as Charity Lord of the Rings - RTE has released its 2009/2010 new season schedule. Let's examine how RTE will squander our licence fee over the coming year:

News, Current Affairs & Factual.
RTE will kick an already depressed nation in the nuts with an assortment of digital downers such as:

• Addicted To Money - Presented by David McWilliams
  "David McWilliams surveys the wreckage of the global economy and points to the worrying, but potentially transformative challenges ahead"
  Sweet Jesus - that's all we need. Another exercise in smugness and misery brought to us by the Harry Potter of Irish economics. How many different ways can McWilliams say "I told you so". We know the place is wrecked - the last thing we need is to do is send him all over the world to point out the bloody obvious.


• The Frontline - Presented by Pat Kenny
  "...will instigate lively debate on the most important news stories of the week between selected guests and a studio audience."
  Surely associating the word "lively" with Pat Kenny is a bit ambitious. This "new" current affairs program will undoubtedly follow the same nauseating format as its predecessors: The usual connected politicians and journos will answer preselected "questions" from an audience of party hacks and toadies. Allowing Kenny to present this pantomime is akin to feeding sleeping pill sandwiches to a pilot before a transatlantic flight.


• Elsewhere in this category most of the old reliables such as Nationwide, Ear to the Ground and Crimecall return to bore us into submission. There are a few potentially interesting programmes unveiled in this category. The 90 minute special If Lynch Had Invaded examines how Jack Lynch handled the crisis in 1969 and explores what would have happened if he had ordered Irish troops to cross the border in protection of the nationalists being victimised in Derry. And there's a three part documentary about Charlie "Dirt" Bird's year in America. I wonder if this will involve a thorough analysis of his expense account?

Entertainment.
If ever a programming category was misnamed it was this one.

"..some of Ireland's top comedians are let loose on RTE Two and are amongst the talent in nine brand new and nine returning entertainment shows."
Fan-bleedin-tastic! We get to have our intelligence insulted by overpaid muppets like the Ryan sisters (Gerry and Tubridy). We pay for Maeve Higgins to give her a sister a job in another RTE nepotism special: Fancy Vittles. A new "10 O'Clock Show" promises "audience participation, new comedy inserts......and a lot of messing about." Odds on that this will involve the usual suspects like Neil Delamere, Ed Byrne et al. laughing at their own feeble attempts at humorous commentary on weekly events. RTE will also continue to broadcast cringefests such as The All Ireland Talent Show and Up For the Match - leprechaun TV at its best.

Lifestyle.
RTE's "Lifestyle" offerings are predictably gag inducing:

The king of sanctimonious tree hugging, Duncan Stewart, returns for a 10th season of the fantasy building programme About The House. Off The Rails continues to lecture our women folk about outrageously expensive and unattainable fashion and beauty solutions. RTE give Baz Ashmawy yet another opportunity to humiliate himself at considerable expense to the licence payer in Baz's Culture Clash. Meanwhile human thunderbird Dr. Mark Hamilton hits the streets with a mobile clinic in Health of the Nation. And we'll be needing to avail of Dr. Thunderbird's services after RTE have offended our eyes and ears into submission through programmes presented by Richard Corrigan, Shane McGowan and Neville Knot. Thanks be to jaysus that Lucy Kennedy is on maternity leave so we don't have to put up with her crimes against consciousness for a few months!

Sport.
Nothing noteworthy here. As long as they keep employing Eamo and Gilesie we'll be guaranteed some entertainment from the Sports Department! In fact RTE should consider replacing their stock "comedians" with sports department personnel. Some of George Hamilton and Jimmy Magee's one liners belong on a sketch show rather than a sports commentary!

Acquisitions.
This is the category which allows RTE to spend bags of cash on successful American TV series. RTE will be showing proven hits such as Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and The Mentalist. New series such as Flash Forward, The Good Wife and Nurse Jackie will also be aired in 2009/2010. It's a certainty that RTE will also continue to broadcast a large proportion of these "acquisitions" at times when most of its target audience will be in bed. Entourage, 24 and Brothers and Sisters all suffered this fate last year. But should we expect any better from an organisation that doesn't have to give a damn about customer satisfaction due to its protected and pampered standing and the undeserved licence fee it receives.

Religious
It seems that when RTE needs to justify the salaries of a couple of complete wastes of space it creates a few religion programmes for them to present. Enter Joe Duffy and Marian Finucane. Joe and Marian have turned radio into a thought free zone during their trashy radio programmes. Now they get to do the same on the telly through their religion programmes on RTE. Joe will be presenting his Spirit Level religious magazine programme. Let's hope that the show doesn't require any intelligent input or sincerity from its host! Marion will be presenting a four part series entitled Does God Hate... Well Marion, you can bet your life that if God was a licence payer he would truly hate RTE!

Making the Dáil look like good value for money.

Have a read of this interesting little article. It pretty much confirms what we already knew - RTE is a badly run organisation where tax payers money is routinely wasted. This makes the Dáil look like good value for money. The following facts even make FAS look like a bastion of frugality:

• Village idiots like Joe Duffy are earning more than the highest paid politician and public servant in the land!


• Marian Finucane earns more than €400,000 for two mornings of week-end work for about 8 months annually!


• It is costing us at least half a million dollars a year to keep Charlie "Dirt" Bird in Washington.


• RTE steals about €200 million of our money every year and wastes it on executive salaries and asshat presenters such as Gerry Ryan. They then take the remainder and buy up prime time shows and put them on late at night just so their unsubsidised competitors can't have them.

We should be marching on the streets about the way this organisation is pissing our money down the toilet. And it's not like we can opt out of paying the licence fee. We'd have that multilingual baldy TV licence guy round persecuting us as soon as we cancelled the direct debit!

Interestingly enough the newly elected messiah for Dublin South, George IToldYouSo Lee, thinks that RTE is run very well. He said so on Today FM a couple of days before the recent elections. So Fine Gael's newest Hobbit spent years preaching about waste, irresponsibility and greed yet he worked in an organisation where all these things were endemic. And now that RTE has been run into the ground and its staff are facing pay cuts IToldYouSo Lee has decided to jump ship. Interesting timing there George - you obviously didn't fancy a pay cut did you? Well runty Lee has now found his true calling as hypocrisy and greed are traits that will serve him well in Dáil Eireann. And he can continue to piss away taxpayers' money - just like his mates over in RTE.

They Think it's All Over!

Welcome to the inaugural DáilOfTheDead Political Penalty Shoot-out.

Today's Contestants
Representing truth, justice, revenge and anger - DarkPassenger.

Representing hypocrisy, rhetoric, greed and waste - George Lee.

Pre-match Preamble
George "IToldYouSo" Lee's entry into the Dublin South by-election marks a new low in Irish politics. The announcement of the "celebrity candidate" has been greeted with a chorus of triumphalist bullshit by the blueshirted masses. Their little keyboards are on fire - posting gigabytes of cyber-diarrhoea on political discussion sites such as Politics.ie. You would swear that Jesus H. Christ himself had donned a blue shirt and gone up for election.

I hope that the people of Dublin South will see Lee for the snivelling, treacherous little runt he is. He spent the last 10 years talking the economy down and sermonising about public sector waste while he worked for the monetary black hole that is RTE. He claims that he will take a significant cut in pay if he is elected a TD - proof that he has had no problem screwing the state out of millions in the past and that he intends to carry on doing so if elected to Leinster House.

Match Report
So what does "IToldYouSo" Lee plan to do to rescue us all? He outlined his master plan in an article in the Evening Helard. This blueprint of hypocrisy promised the following:

The Shootout Begins

1. He would finance a massive job-intensive investment programme in green energy, broadband and clean water, financed in part by selling off state companies like Bord Gais and parts of ESB that the State no longer needs to own.

DarkPassenger says: Are you a bit thick George? Have you not heard of Eircom? We have all seen how disastrous it was when the state sold vital infrastructure into the hands of private companies. What could be worse than handing our communications infrastructure over to foreign companies who continue to rape us for phone and broadband services? Duh.....we'll sell our natural gas and electricity infrastructure off too. George you are a clown.
1-0 to DarkPassenger.


2. He would fight for a fairer sharing of the burden of rising taxes. Middle income families on an average wage should not be paying 51pc in tax on every extra euro earned (41pc income tax, 4pc PRSI, 4pc health levy, income levy 2pc), while non-resident millionaires who creamed it during the boom years pay nothing. This is hardly the strategy needed to encourage people to put in the effort and initiative needed to create new jobs and economic opportunities.

DarkPassenger says: To coin an Enda "de road" Kennyism - POPULIST NONSENSE. We would all love to see taxes cut. We would all love to see non-resident millionaires pay their fair share. But how does IToldYouSo Lee plan to extract this money from tycoons such as Denis O'Brien? Especially since the likes of the afforementioned O'Brien are (or were) financial backers of Fine Gael. If IToldYouSo supports DarkPassenger's plans to form a Mossad style unit to abduct these millionaires and "extract" the money they owe us then I'll defer to his wisdom.
Given that this is an unlikely course of action for a wimp like IToldYouSo it's 2-0 to DarkPassenger.

3. He would reverse the increase in the VAT to 21.5pc announced by the Government last October, which has combined with the weakness of sterling to see a deluge of hard-pressed Irish shoppers crossing the border, at the expense of thousands of Irish jobs and hundreds of millions in lost tax revenues.

DarkPassenger says: A poxy half a percent reduction in VAT will not stop my friend Devoted Dexter embarking on more adventure's up north! What else have you got IToldYouSo? Will you dispatch a platoon of blueshirts to the border to attack any cash-strapped Free State citizens and send them back south?
He shoots, he scores...3-0 to DarkPassenger.

4. He would cut the reduced 13.5pc rate of VAT to just 10pc between now and the end of 2010. This would stimulate labour-intensive services like construction, help the tourism industry through the downturn, and give a huge incentive for first time buyers to bring forward purchases of new houses, helping to resolve crises in banking and the public finances.

DarkPassenger says: I can't really argue with this one too much. However, reducing VAT does not even begin to address the massive oversupply of housing stock in many areas of the country. The biggest problem that the construction industry has is that the demand for housing has peaked - the industry needs to refocus on other areas. But not the worst of policies all the same. IToldYouSo is on the scoreboard.
3-1 to DarkPassenger.

5. He would freeze local authority rates for at least five years.

DarkPassenger says: Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Funny this one. Now my views on local government have been made clear in my last post so anything that causes local authorities to loose out on money makes me happy. However I'm not sure IToldYouSo's colleagues sitting in the council chambers of Ireland will be so enthused. Local government in this country is already a joke and any plans to reform this situation will require serious sums of cash. IToldYouSo hasn't presented any proposals on providing alternative sources for local government funding - I'm guessing he doesn't expect too many people to question his "wisdom". Must try harder here George.
4-1 to DarkPassenger

6. He would legislate to make upward only rent reviews for small businesses illegal.
DarkPassenger says: Can't disagree here. Another score for Ireland's most treacherous journalist.
4-2 to DarkPassenger.

7. I would exempt employers who take on additional staff from additional employer PRSI obligations until the end of 2010.

DarkPassenger says: Not nearly enough detail provided here oh sanctimonius one. Any sweeping plan which sees en mass PRSI exemptions will be abused big time. There is no doubt that many businesses that haven't been badly affected by the recession have been taking the piss of late, using the downturn to justify cuts in pay and conditions for their staff. Profitable businesses shouldn't be entitled to any more reductions in costs. IToldYouSo's hasn't identified this most basic of points.
5-2 to DarkPassenger.

8. He would make sure that taxpayer support for banks is used only to support new lending to small businesses and families, not to nurse along dodgy property related debts to Fianna Fail's developer friends. The banks, the professional investors who funded them and developers should between themselves take care of the mess they have created. They made the big profits in the good years. They should now eat the losses.

DarkPassenger says: Fair enough. But the tone of this smacks of political opportunism. Everyone would like to see the banks and the property developers having to take it in the ass for the damage they have done. However, let us not forget that it was Fine Gael who bailed out the AIB/ICI in 1985. Leopards don't change their spots - anyone who believes that George of the Bungle or his fascist colleagues would really let the captains of industry loose is a fool.
6-2 to DarkPassenger

9. He would fight to make performance, accountability and thrift core values of our public service once again, starting with the political system itself, and cut top-end public sector salaries, including those of TDs, by at least 5pc.

DarkPassenger says: OH MY GOD! A case study in hypocrisy this one. The man who spent 17 years working for one of the most unaccountable, wasteful and poorly managed organisations in the country is now talking about accountability and value for money. IToldYouSo has shown his true colours here. By his own admission he was overpaid in RTE. He had no problem raking in the cash for 17 years - but now he wants value. And he will cut top-end salaries by at least 5 percent. WOW 5 whole percent - how radical, how brave - how bleedin' sickening. TDs and senior public servants deserve a paycut of at least 20%. Anyone who suggests anything less is a moron. Quoting a figure of 5% is an insult to the people of this country.
7-2 to DarkPassenger.

10. He would overhaul the massive public sector quangos like the HSE, CIE and FAS and expose them to more competition in order to deliver vital health, transport and training services more effectively and at less cost to the taxpayer.

DarkPassenger says: It doesn't take an MSc in Economics to see that the HSE, CIE and FAS are a disgrace. Most people would rather see them exposed to lethal doses of radiation rather than "more competition". How about adding RTE to your list George - there's not much competition or value for money to be found amongst your mates in Donnybrook. You spend 17 years sermonising on the economy in an organisation that is rotten to the core. Now you have the temerity to point fingers at every state supported agency bar the one that facilitated your 10 year campaign for a seat on the Dáil gravy train. Shame on you!
8-2 to DarkPassenger.


So the next time someone tells you how great it is that someone of the status and calibre of George Lee is going to enter Dáil ask them if they've bothered to examine his "policies". Point out the sickening hypocrisy surrounding his entry onto the political stage. Point out the total lack of depth and sheer stupitidy of some of his policies. Whether Shay Brennan, Alex White or George Lee wins in Dublin South matters not. The net result will be the same - another money-grabbing hypocrite will enter the Dáil. But let us not pretend that George Lee is some kind of patriotic economic crusader. He is as greedy a charlatan as anyone else in Leinster House.

They think it's all over.....It is now!


Full Evening Herald article where IToldYouSo outlines his policies:How I would fix the economy by George Lee

Choose RTE

For those who are unfamiliar with the fantastic book and film Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - some prerequisites:

• Trainspotting Intro (youtube)
• Choose Life - John Hodge

Choose waste. Choose overpaid executives. Choose nepotism. Choose a f#*!king big ego, Choose €12k per year to drive your car to work, Choose outdated programming formats, crap comedy, and appalling scheduling. Choose to waste the licence fee, Choose 24, Rescue Me, Brothers and Sisters - Choose to put them on when most people are in bed. Choose embarrassment - Choose Failte Towers, Katherine Lynch's Wonder Women, Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels. Choose humiliation, Choose broadcasting a grovelling apology after caving in to political pressure. Choose to spend the licence fee AND advertising revenue, Choose to have your cake and eat it. Choose jobs for the boys - Choose Lyric FM. Choose broadcasting cringeworthy calls on a daily basis - Choose "yeah..yeah..yeah..yeah.." Choose "Ah jaysus Joe" Choose Liveline. Choose Duncan Stewart droning on ad nauseum about unproven and expensive "energy saving" technology. Choose "bong, bong, bong, bong, bong" at 6pm every day. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows. Choose "Mass on Sunday". Choose the multi-lingual TV licence inspector. Choose to pay pompous old farts salaries which make even TDs envious. Choose George "I told you so and I'm loving it" Lee. Choose to be patronised, sickened and embarrassed all at once. Choose your national broadcaster. Choose RTE... But why would I want to do a thing like that?