h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is an excellent entry, which I see has generated a lot of discussion. I am a fan of Michael Moore, though I have found him a bit over the top - I remember an episode of 'The Awful Truth' about TV licences, which of course we had here in NZ - I just didn't see why he had a problem with that...
I have read Stupid White Men with great enthusiasm!

Thank you very much, Adelaide. I'm really glad you enjoyed this entry, and I hope you like the separate ones I did on Mr Moore's books, films and TV shows too. I seem to be spending a lot of my h2g2 time arguing about Mike at the moment, so it's great to get some appreciative feedback.

I don't agree with him 100 per cent either, but it's great to have an American pundit who is so funny and entertaining and who generally seems to be on the side of the . Hearing from the kind of people who hate and fear Moore most just makes me appreciate his courage all the more.

'The Awful Truth' was shown here late at night, (old episodes) in 2000. We watched it when we had time, and my brother was a big fan of Michael Moore, often going to his website.

The issue about TV licence fees is that they represent a large tax on those who have small incomes if they wish to access documentaries, news, educational, pre-school and general interest programmes for themselves and their children. If people do not pay the licence fee and still watch TV they can be liable to prosecution. The fines which are higher than the licence fee and therefore less likely to be affordable can be strengthened to jail sentences for non-paymeny of fine.

A high proportion of those who end up in jail for such offences are women, this means that for a non-violent crime they end up in a violent institution. Not only this but if they are single parents it will mean seperation and if no suitable family is available that the children will spend time in care.

one love

It does seem a bit unjust that the licence fee is a flat rate for everyone except old age pensioners. It's a lot of money to find if you're reliant on welfare benefits.

However, I would absolutely hate to see the BBC forced to take advertising. I think we're very lucky in the UK to have a major multi-media corporation that does not have to tailor its output to please commercial concerns.

Advertising is exactly the point! Since the licence fee was abolished in about 1998 here, the level of advertising has gone up, up and sky high here. (We always did have advertising, which means when we had a license fee, we had the worst of both worlds. Even the extremely expensive Sky TV - subscription telly) has a high level of advertising.
Blicky, I was always a solo mother, since we had television. I mananaged to pay. (It wasn't easy, but I'd rather not have TV beholden to corporates!).

The point is that single parents with dispoable incomes of less than £100 a month have to pay the same amount of levy as those with 10 or more times that amount of disposable income.

Many people think this sort of one size fits all sort of taxation is very unfair. Especially when its levied on what are pretty much essentials. Some dont see TV as an essential but access to news, current affairs, educational programmes is an essentital for a modern society and no one should be excluded from such an important information media due to ability to pay.

Whereas I can see your point about a flat rate regardless of income, Blickybadger, I cannot agree with you that television is an essential! For news and current affairs, radio is far superior in my view - newspaper also. I was without television from 1971 when I first left home, until 1991 when Jimmy was 4. I am happy now that he has the first few years of my life without television - he has always had a higher reading age than many of his peers, and reads all the time - he also writes (as I do) and has much less of a superficial and aggressive view of life than many of his peers.

I watched lots of TV as a kid, Open university, pre chool programmes, nature documentaries, cop shows, sports and documetaries like "Everyman". Stuff like "Roots" changed my life forever and made me understand why people treated me differently and why it was wrong, watching Muhammed Ali made me see I could be better than people wanted me to believe I could be.

TV helped me to grow-up with a broader view of the world and learn things I might not have easily had access to. Such that I always had the highest reading age in my class (doesnt come through in my typing skills though)

There are too many influences in peoples lives to say one thing or another is the cause of much at all. A persons personality is the product of intricate interactions between nature and many different influences in nurture. Before TV was even invented some people were violent and illiterate you know.

Maybe you are right an unquallified "essential" is wrong but for appreciating the shared influences that create the zeitgist and accessing information the most inportant, though not always best, medium is TV.

one love

One thing is, that you had access to better television than we had here when Jimmy was a child (1987-98)...Open University, documentaries - I wish! Now, we watch the occasional doco, Stargate SG-1, CSI because it's fun... Our 4 or so channels are clogged with reality shows, house renovation shows, sport (in which, but for Formula 1, we have no interest) and American sitcoms and dramas. Mostly Jerry Bruckheimer cop shows, at that.
I grew up without television, and I think we were all the better for it...
TV can be good, but it is not an essential - especially now, when as someone said to me the other night "there's nothing but cr*p on!"

Hmm.

I say Im better off because ot TV and you say you're better off because you had no TV.

As I always say in relation to work. There is no such thing as a "bad example" when you are dealing with children. Even a good example is nothing without understanding of why the example was good.

TV was a major component of my education. I dont htink TV is bad, some shows are and some arent. Even watching a bad show and having someone explain to you its failings is important, perhaps more important than good shows.

If a child grows up knowing that space ships should not go bang when they explode, people who sleep around as much as they do in soaps in realife would get clap, actors can be in another shows when they are shot dead in one but real people cant, that sort of thing allows growing people to understand the medium.

The media at large has become increasingly interested in its self rather than what it is actually conveying. Hence the rise of celebrity. Hence the rise of reality TV. We see people throwing themselves at the altar of TV, they maybe sacrificng their privacy and dignity, but atleast they are being real being, even when they try to be fake it is so transparent that we can see right through it and gain an insight into media manipulation as carried out by celebrities.

The near toal immerssion that TV offers, unlike a book which only carries ideas, it brings often false stories next to real news, sounds and pictures into our living rooms, this can be very deceiving if people cant identify them for what they are. This is not TV's fault though.

If a child throws stones at a wasp's nest it will get stung. Educating young people about how to handle and view these beguiling and beautiful images is an important life skill. As important as dont put your fingers in the socket. TV is a great tool it has spawned the internet in a sense. It feeds our thirst for news and knowledge and allows people in Burma to watch Othello on the stage of the NewYork Met. little boys in Smethwick to see the migration of wilderbeast, the inside of an nuclear reactor and men walking on the moon.

If people are taken in and beguiled by it then they have inpart themselves to blame. Like a wasp it can be both beautiful and dangerous it is how you treat it that matters.

one love

Im trying to defend TV and all I need to mention is one show to sink any anti-TV argument and I forget all about it.

You know the one over stuffed and odd looking front character/presenter. A programme thats both entertaining and edifying. A show unafraid to deal with issues like violence, race issues, sexual orientation and breast feeding amongst others. That in the words of its creator, was meant to "help teach kids to read who might otherwise have no acces to books"

Long live Sesame Street and Jim Henson's vision

Even today it is a ground breaking and important programme in so many ways http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/02091902.shtml


How remiss of me not to mention the best TV show ever. One so good it makes up for all the awful dross ever shown. Even the "sport" where grown people drive riduculously expensive fuel wasting vehicles round and round till enough of them are dead that they stop the race, they reach a pre-determined amount of laps or after the umpteenth re-start everyone gets bored they cut the race short anyway.

And thats a sport

Oh people say, it takes endurance and can last hours, it risks life and injury, the people taking part lose litres of body fluid in sweat.

Well so does giving birth but we dont call that a sport.

And while we are on the subject many people too infirm to access the cinema or attend sporting events rely on the TV running things that will entertain them to help fill the day. While other people complain about things they dont like being aired constantly on TV. Well here's an idea these people should get off their jacksies and visit an old or infirm person and have a conversation that way everyones happy.

We began talking about the licence fee and its effects regarding enforcement of payment. The licence fee for all its short comings does help stave off the degradation of programming that you talk about Adelaide by providing a revenue that does not demand high viewing figures to ensure advertising revenues. It means that in the UK at least documentaries are not soley the preserve of pay to view channesl and can go out free to air, likewise sport can be seen for free as a public service (which it surely is) because it can be screened on terrestrial TV.

one love

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/02101002.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/02101002.shtml

Officials believe other envoys could follow Mr Brahimi's example. "If there is an opportunity to do more we would do it," says Manoel de Almeida e Silva, UN spokesman in Kabul. "The secretary-general has participated in Sesame Street, anything could happen."

The show has always been great and I loved it as a kid! The more I find out I just love that show more and more

Sunny day
chasing the
clouds away

You have a very good point here, Blickybadger, when you say <>
I was reading last night about a reality show with Jessica Simpson and her husband.
I agree with you about Sesame Street, and the Moon landing! We heard about it at school, on the radio, but then saw it on TV at home that night.
Still, I don't think that Jimmy suffered growing up without TV for the first part of his life - or me having the same experience.
I envy you the Open University...

You have a point about people who are elderly or infirm... there are a lot of places for people with disabilities around here...I'd hate to have to try to get out in an electric whee;chair with rhe cold, rain and state of our streets (as some of them bravely do.)
You're certainly right about documentaries.