Meeja Hoors
New show brings reality TV to govt agency
The UK Department of Health is reducing its compliment of staff by one third. Rather than go through a tedious round of voluntary redundancy, early retirement and competitive selection, it has been decided instead that the restructuring process will take the form of a reality TV show.
The department is funded out of the public purse so it seems entirely fitting that the general public should have the final say on who does and doesn't get to keep their job. It has been recognised that reality TV shows are mostly watched by the non tax-paying lumpen proleteriat but enough of the chattering classes watch these shows to justify this approach.
Each week the shows will focus on a different section of the department and viewers will be informed how many staff at each particular grade face eviction from the show. In true Big Bruv style, employees of the department will be filmed as they go about their everyday tasks. The show will be broadcast live on the BBC Parliament Channel with edited highlights shown each night on a BBC3 show presented by Johnny Vaughn and Denise van Outen. Viewers will get the chance to vote on Friday and the unsuccessful contestants will receive the news that they have lost their job live on air. A senior civil servant will be on hand to sign involuntary early severance cheques to the (un)lucky contestants. Cack your pants with delight at each bitter reaction to the dismissals.
Participation in the show will be restricted to administrative and junior management roles as senior management are far too busy monitoring Government ‘targets’ to ever be considered for the chop.
TV controllers luckily haven’t gone as far as this yet, but for the legions of DoH staff left downgraded, demoted or just plain redundant after a vicious round of restructuring, this may sound like a more humane option. For the real story see the main pages of the Cull in the next few weeks.
Spreadsheet cancer
“For the white-collar worker, the office is a parallel reality to home and family, a place at once accepted as the norm – it’s how you earn your money – yet crammed with an inner strangeness. So much arcane ritual and so many baffling posts and personalities are stitched into a kind of living tapestry describing a monolithic mythology. Once through the swing doors of reception, your identity card flashed to a guard who already knows perfectly who you are, the office worker has entered a whole new universe, filled with contradictions and reversals of personal status... once to your desk and the coffee machine, the prospect of another eight hours in an essentially unnatural habitat will begin to play strange tricks with your brain.” -
Michael Bracewell
The odious office is still game for comment as it dominates most of our century 21 lives. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant killed off The Office in a disappointing crimbo two-parter, while
an exhibition of the same name has just finished at The Photographers’ Gallery in central London.
WhoreCull, need we remind you (yes!), was commenting on the moribund sterility of the milieu in a piece entitled
‘The new factories’ in the very first fanzine.
The rabid reality of the office environment is worse than any of these projections, however, as these aural culls from a business park off the ‘M4 corridor’ prove
Day 1
Colleague describing a friend’s flatmates and their sexual orientation:
'He shares with a gay couple, so he has got that to deal with'
Day 2
‘’The guys’ were discussing the 'Rugby playing man’ brand new sports bag:
'It’s the daddy of sports bags...'
Day 3
An update to a manager regarding some IT development work:
'To cut a long story short, my back end works.'
Day 4
Asking a colleague as regards to their job moving back to the US:
‘Still transitioning then?’ – Strictly corporate chat...
Day 5
Crisis! Disaster! As a cleaner was emptying out a corporate dishwasher, she discovered a human turd. She downed ‘stools’ and raised attention with Health and Safety. Subsequently the area was cordoned off by Security. Talk turns away from strategic thinking and spreadsheets.
Day 6
Colleagues returning from a week’s skiing…
‘The powder was out of this world...’ – nice appropriation of narcotic terminology there.
Day 7
Manager praising a fellow new manager’s approach...
‘She is already thinking outside the box on this’... – great initiative gal!
So we praise the filching former Goldman Sachs PA, who allegedly stole four mill off the senior directors of the bank (Financial Times, 21 January). But we think the turd-in-the-tub trick was a safer means of alleviating office ennui.
Film
Lost in Translation
Ft. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson
Dir/writ/prod. Sofia Coppola
Lost in Translation features two Americans adrift in the different culture of Tokyo, one a middle-aged millionaire film star, being paid two mil for an advert, and a mid-20s NYC sophisticate sustained by her husband’s photographic career. A central theme seems to be one of decadent capitalist ennui. So many things to do; so little interest in them. And then neither of them can get to sleep so insomnia comes into fuzzy play. One scene has Johansson positively lost among hubby’s airhead actress amigo from LA, hotel bar chanteuse and a wigger talking about his ‘next-level’ beatbox shit. Having studied philosophy, she then can’t decide what she wants to do with her life. This doesn’t come across as a metaphysical crisis but the standard whine of a demotivated middle-class. With the slow pace of the film, sometimes you are as bored as they are.
Sofia Coppola’s sub theme ‘Everyone wants to be found’ is dealt with in two strands. First there is the alienation of being a stranger in a foreign land. A frequent image is of a solitary Johansson perched on her hotel window surveying the exotic intoxicant of a city down below. Hey, why not learn some language and customs? Oh we’re dealing with white westerners. Early on this alienation seems to be an excuse for incredibly cheap gags on the Japanese language, how the letter r is pronounced like an l and the way the complex language takes longer to explain things, and its sometimes over-courteous culture. Yet the best time Murray and Johannson’s characters have is in a private karaoke suite with their Japanese pals. Then there is the unspoken erotic tenderness between the two protagonists (Murray goes instead to the flame-haired hotel singer for sexual satisfaction). Credit is definitely due for sticking to realism and avoiding big emotional traumas inconsistent with the rest of the script, although as the film climaxes you felt the desperation and desire between them would lead to bigger overtures in the packed Tokyo street.
Yet despite the soft-focus racism and effective ennui there is a beguiling, benign nature to the film. This is due to impressive wide-screen cinematography, revealing in all its frenetic madness the Tokyo landscape (as well as the Shintoist still of other, older sights such as Mount Fuji and various Kyoto temples), as well as a good soundtrack featuring Peaches and Squarepusher and led by original compositions from MBV’s Kevin Shields (though not of Loveless’ lure). That street scene ends with the saccharine screech of JAMC’s Just Like Honey.
Perhaps a reverse flick showing the US in all its inanity would go down well in Japan.
Man of excellence maps out 2004 for the ignorant
Annus ahead of us
By Jeremy McClintock Phd - JournalistIn the year ahead I fully expect a number of quite fascinating domestic and international developments and extensions to existing events. I’m already upset that I won’t be able to cover them all for the public that have come to rely so heavily on my fair and balanced reportage.
Tony Blair will move from strength to strength and finally break the historic link between the Labour Party and the prehistoric unions. Even if the Hutton Report proves him a liar, the wheels, I predict, of union ejaculation are already coming in motion. It’s about time these career agitators were denied the luxury of legitimate political representation – something which even Maggie couldn’t achieve (for the record, I am a Lib Dem and always have been – even before they existed).
I don’t expect Iraq to trouble us hacks (apart from party pooper Pilger) much in the year ahead. One of Syria, Iran (an early bid with the earthquake – which my respected colleague David Aaronovitch has correctly identified as an engineered loss of life by the Ayatollahs), North Korea or Cuba will feature in terms of despot toppling, whether by their own hand or the helping American one that’s always available for the safety and security of the world.
It’s vital for the US to score another hit in the war on terror. My friends in the intelligence community have suggested to me that any more attacks on US soil will result in a nuclear strike against an ‘evil axis’ member state – bring it on!
On a lighter note, Pop Idol was a real highlight of 2003 and I expect it will get bigger and more global in 2004. We got a taste of the global opposition over Xmas and if Michelle can wipe the floor with that bastard Simon Cowell then she can take anybody. Also, Ant and Dec are a couple of smart Geordie cookies – unlike Newcastle’s soccer fans. Do they really need that many shirts?
Philip Schofield has been on the light entertainment sidelines for too long and I am confident that the BBC will offer him some big screen possibilities. His handling of the National Lottery Draw and spin-off game shows has demonstrated his mastery of this essential prole-control brief. The right mixture of boyish charm and cool control of live broadcast is always evident in Schofield’s work and I believe that he’s ready for the next step – a consumer rights show in the early weekday evening (Nicky Campbell takes Watchdog too seriously and, anyway, he’s a DJ).
Head of state the Queen of England will continue to rule with her imperious manner. The useful contributions of her sons may dwindle every month but Her Majesty will stride on with formidable commitment to her challenging role – that of the real force behind this country. Talking to us from those barracks in Colchester on Christmas Day said to me (and all of us, I am sure): “Stand aside Blair and let those who know govern this once feted isle.” I hope that day arrives soon.
Crime and asylum seekers will continue to plague Blair’s Britain and tax the patience of law abiding taxpayers, as the number of young offenders and young immigrants continues to rocket, the calls for faith schools provided by the state will grow louder. This is certain and welcome.
Olympics year means a big test for our guys and gals of the track ‘n’ field fraternity. Greece isn’t too far away, so I fully expect (and await) a well behaved and polite number of Brits to be waving their Union Jacks to greet many British victories (like the jolly souls who turned out in their impeccable thousands to greet the returning rugby heroes). As on the battlefield, as in the stadium.
Speaking of Greece, homosexuality will no doubt continue its meteoric rise up the social scale. Good luck to them, as long as they can control themselves in public. Personally, I’m happy with Beth, Charlie and Sam (the last two are the names of my children).
Robert Mugabe’s reign of terror is ended this year (by any means necessary) and Zimbabwe is free again. My friend Peter Oborne should receive a knighthood for his fair and balanced reports from inside Africa’s Hitlerian state. Also, my other friends Mike and Carroll will receive their African land back – property that had been rightfully theirs for the past 23 years, before that tyrant reverted to type.
Finally, one of my major investigations will be picked up by all news stations and will challenge the way we think (as I’ve always said, I don’t want to change anything with my work, just challenge). My report into the ease with which asylum seekers obtain legal representation in this embattled country is my best work to date and I fully expect strong financial support from Associated Newspapers to continue this vital work.
Happy 2004 to you all and your families.
Jeremy McLintock 2004 ©
Mr McLintock knows more about more issues than you, so check out
issue 4 on the main zine for a hit of pure wisdom
