I’m a whole bundle of vexed this morning. Not sure what a bundle of vexed would be like but I suspect it to be like the creature in Brett Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park. If haven’t read that, imagine Gnasher trying to eat himself. That’s probably about right. Why such rage oh Tiernan? Well blogees, let me tell you. Are you sitting uncomfortably? Good, that makes me feel slightly happier. So let’s start with selfish reasons to be a mini Zack De La Rocha:
Last night I had a mediocre gig. Yes, this could well be my fault. There have been several occurrences where my own incompetence or lack of experience has meant I’ve delivered a less than perfect show, and last night my slightly muggy head didn’t put me in as competitor for the best Friday night comedian awards. However, the main reason things weren’t stupendous and brilliant was because the room I was in was not at all suitable for comedy. There’s very little you need to get comedy right and while the audience may have had the things they need – good viewpoints, ability to hear – the comedians didn’t. From the stage it was impossible to hear anything the audience said due to acoustics, meaning as a compere I struggled to hear any responses often giving retorts that were way off the mark and a total inability to deal with heckles. On top of this, the lighting was so bright I could only see the front row, and every time I spoke I could hear my own voice echoed back at me three times. Essentially this gig was an ambush trap for MCs. The only way to play it was to do material out to the crowd completely ignoring them and making the whole event feel like we were just reading scripts out to a brick wall, as the laughter dissipated around the audience and not at all back to the acts. Yet this place runs comedy every Friday and Saturday night, knowing full well it should never have comedy in it. If you want comedians to give a good show, you have to at least let them have the tools they need to do that, rather than let them play with a handicap. I’ve got to compere again tonight, which is a shame. At least this time I’ll know not to give a shit, plough through and get off, feeling sorry for the audience that has to endure that.
Right, anger making thing number 2. Slightly less selfish this one:
Cameron and Osborne today have stated that the Eurozone crisis will affect the UK, warning that cuts will get harder. This is, once again, a huge bullshit tactic to make everyone accept another series of awful ‘money saving’ strategies that the government wouldn’t be able to get away with without an excuse. The Eurozone crisis won’t affect the UK in a way that will need to take cuts from the public sector. The UK is donating £40bn which it has from a reserve and has made concessions for as part of its overall cuts plan. Aside from that we still have to remember that while some countries in Europe are suffering that the UK still has its triple A credit rating, something even the US doesn’t have, as our debt is still far less than most Western countries. In fact investors are still very keen on pouring money into the UK, not least because of our tax avoidance system. The trouble is that the government don’t want to make that clear otherwise they would receive a much larger objection to their destruction of the welfare system, British education and public sector jobs, nor would they be able to allow the private sector to barge in and fill their pockets in quite the same way.
We have had, in one week, news stories about cuts to the army, William Hague receiving money from an oil company to bribe investment in Libya, MP’s telling the workers they can have a ‘token 15 minute strike’ – which is the most patronising thing I’ve ever heard, like telling a child they can have a sweet if they just calm down, an NHS hospital being privatised (which it appears, was actually introduced by Labour under Blair, and has been carried on by this government, proving that all the parties have the same selfish interests at heart) at the same time as we’re being told NHS patient treatment is poor. At no point are we told that the NHS would have better treatment if it was given better funding and care, and staff workers weren’t so overloaded with patients. At no point is the direction of the news in defence of our healthcare system. It’s just getting very tiresome hearing again and again why we should tolerate all these actions and yet the excuses and reasons are holding less and less water. I hope on November 30th all the union workers strike all day and damage our not as bad as you’d think economy as much as they can to make a mark.
Steam released. There will be jokes again tomorrow. Unless tonight’s gig sucks them from my soul.
