A tax on personal freedom

I can't have been the only one to have noticed something rather obvious about the much trumpeted switchover to digital tv. Specifically, what a load of shit digital tv is. Having invested £19.99 of the hard-earned Gitt household budget on a freeview box, I was sorely dismayed to find nothing on there but endless reality tv shows about policemen chasing drunk yobs up and down the High Street, pathetic American daytime tv shows and endless re-runs of ancient episodes BBC shows like Have I Got News and Top Gear. So ancient, in fact, that they are still taking the piss out of Prime Minister Major.

Most nights, I follow the same ritual: Sit down in front of the box, switch on, flick through the channels from beginning to last, pausing briefly to mutter the odd profanity, and then turn the fucking thing off again. Occasionally, I might run across something worth watching. But that's very much the exception rather than the rule. And it's so nonsensical: I used to quite enjoy UKTV History until they decided to cease programmes after 6pm. So what's the fucking point of that? Is there some graph somewhere that shows the history-loving viewing public gets up at 6am, watches for 12 hours and then fucks off to bed? I don't think so.

There's no denying it - the freeview channels that we will all be stuck with post 2012 are absolute shite of the first degree. Is it any wonder that the viewing public are switching off in droves in favour of more meaningful content?

In August last year, an IBM survey found factual evidence pointing to the decline of TV as the primary media device.

The global findings overwhelmingly suggest personal Internet time rivals TV time. Among consumer respondents, 19 percent stated spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus nine percent of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing. 66 percent reported viewing between one to four hours of TV per day, versus 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.

Driving this switch was consumer desire for... "consolidated, trustworthy content, recognition and community". To find it... "Consumers are increasingly turning to online destinations like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, games, or mobile entertainment vs. traditional television." So, it appears I am not alone in rejecting a brain-rotting diet of regurgitated dross and purile, piss-poor programming. But with audiences drying up, so is the advertising and therefore the programming budgets.

Surely, if you want to attract viewing audiences back then the obvious answer is to make programmes people wanted to watch. Ah...but Labour and their media bum-chums have spotted there's money to be made here. In a move that really displays what a totally cynical, fucked-up bunch or arseholes they are, new proposals to tax ISPs are being discussed. The revenue would be used to support "public service" programming that nobody wants to watch and still less people want to advertise with. For "public service" read "Labour propaganda". Bollocks.

The cost of broadband services, as the government cagily admits, "may rise as a result". In his usual restrained narrative style, Devil's Kitchen points out:

They "may" lead to higher charges? You think? What planet are you living on, you thick bastards? Of course they will lead to higher broadband charges, you arseholes.

This government never misses a trick to get their fucking hands in our wallets - now it's a tax on information technology. What's next? a thought tax? Bastards.