Bitchiness
This week the gloves have come off the other foot in the big pay TV battle. In the blue corner, there’s BuyTV owned by Austrian money lover Ronald Murdochs and in the red corner Virgins Melua owned by money-hating, peace-loving, prancing beard Richards Bramstead. And it’s getting nasty.
It all started about 20 years ago when Murdochs came to Britain and decided to buy everything. He bought toothpaste, cars, weed killer, newspapers, roads, polticians and pickle. After about a year he owned most stuff and he started trying to think about ways he could own stuff that couldn’t be bought. At the time British people, known popularly all over the world as ‘The Roast Beefs’ paid about sixty English pounds a year for a “TV licence” and for this they received 4 channels, three good ones and ITV. Some people opted for free TV by not buying a TV licence and then just never opening their front door. It worked for them.
Murdochs saw this and said “aye curumba” and “eat my shorts, if I owned TV people would cower in their houses from me, I want in.” So kind old uncle Ronald set up BuyTV and told the Roast Beefs that as well paying for their TV licence they could now also pay £30 a month for even more TV.
Quite understandably the good old Roast Beefs said “No, old boy, we’re quite happy watching Wimbledon at the moment. If it rains Cliff Richards is going to sing a song, that’s why we won the war.” Murdochs was well pissed off, there was not much point in owning something if nobody want to buy it. So Murdochs started building an army out of all the things he had spent his first year in Britain buying. The toothpaste and the pickles didn’t prove very effective weapons, and he didn’t want to poison everybody with weedkiller because then there would be no one left to buy his BuyTV. In the end he used the newspapers he bought to tell everybody what to vote for, and because everyone knows newspapers are a kind, benevolent force they did it.
Soon the politicians and pop singers realised that Murdochs could make anybody do anything and they started saying things like “I’ll do anything for you Ronald Murdochs, anything at all.” Ronald thought quietly for a while and then said, “all I want is to own everything and control everyone, is that too much to ask?” He looked really sad and all the politicians and popstars felt really sorry for him and they pledged to help. They devised a plan to help make everyone want to buy Murdoch’s crappy BuyTV. The problem they said was that instead of lots of programs all he had on his BuyTV were about 3 shows that he showed round the clock on repeat. They told him that if he could take all the good TV programs from the terrestrial channels then people would have buy BuyTV to watch them. This for the Pirhanna brothers was the turning point.
Soon everybody had BuyTV and Murdochs could control people not only with his newspapers but through his TV. He was well happy. But he didn’t bank of Bearded Bramstead.
Richards Bramstead was a gypsy that lived on wild berries, danced naked and listened to rock music. Everybody loved him. He spent his working days trying to save the environment and make people happy, and in his free time he presided over a multi-billion dollar industry that included space travel, aeroplanes and cosmetics. When Murdochs started buying everything people said to Bramstead “hey Bramstead turn your music down we’re trying to get brainwashed here.” But after a while a few left wing people who were too middle class to watch television came to Bramstead and said “look, can’t you beat Murdochs up or something, he’s frightful.” At first Bramstead was all like “yeah, but no, but, I’m mean how can I maaaaan, I’m just a simple dancing naked hippy, innit.” But then they pointed out that his hobby of running a multi-billion dollar industry might stand him in good stead, and he was all like “yeah, wow, gravy man!”
So Bramstead set up Virgins Melua (in part named after his favourite rock singer Katie Melua) and offered a service called fourplay, which meant you could get TV, mobile, broadbands, and home phone all from one place – kind of like centralised communism, except with all the bad bits of capitalism as well.
Murdochs was sad again. “why can’t I just own everything!!” he cried, but Bramstead wasn’t giving up that easy and done some crazy naked dancing and said “virgins are great at fourplay!!”. So Murdochs stated telling everyone that Bramstead was gay, and Bramstead started telling everyone that Murdochs hated gays. And the Roast Beefs were all like I don’t care I’m watching Lost. Then Murdochs stopped selling Lost to Virgin Melua so the people who had choosen to go with Bramstead couldn’t watch it any more. So Bramstead hit back by calling Murdoch’s news channel “Buy Snooze” instead of Buy News. It didn’t really make up for the fact that no one could watch Lost.
So now the Roast Beefs have a decision to make – they can go with Bramstead safe in knowledge that he will always advertise in the Guardian and his son is surfer, or they can go with Murdoch’s who is a version of the devil himself but does have Lost. It’s a tough one, but the Roast Beefs on the whole are an ignorant, selfish, cold-hearted nation of poorly educated zombies, so they’ll buy Murdochs.
Whatever the end result, one thing is for sure – Bitchiness is zeitguyst right now, and we’re only just getting started.
