Fuzzy Bore.

Watching GB News, the new war-on-woke news channel for British right wingers who don't have a voice. They barely have a voice GB News either, as the sound is has the ambiance of a swimming pool. The lighting is gloomy and overcast too, as if the whole thing were filmed under a cloud, and of course it is - the cloud of oppression. The yoke of woke is a tyranny too far, and the British people are sick of being silenced. I mean, they already have all the press and Talk Radio and the TV (BBC News appeases right wing views like Chamberlain twiddling a blue fiver at the bar. No one is serving you, Neville, it's not going to happen) but that's literally it. The entire nation is forever under the cosh of The Mash Report (deceased) and The Guardian and may never recover.  That said, the comments under any article on The Guardian do seem to be a bit choked by enraged Tories too, suggesting even there they have a voice, an unaccountably splenetic one, given they keep getting everything they want, and their King for Life, Johnson, is still way ahead in all the polls. 

"This one's called "Life In A Northern Town"..."

Still seethers gonna seethe, and now they have to wear a bit of cloth over their mouths in the supermarket and their Viking cruise has been compromised, and that's someone's fault. So they have a whole new channel to tell them they're exactly right, in a series of cotton-mouthed flubs and gabbles. 

The channel often doesn't seem any more right wing than This Morning when Eamonn Holmes is on, but it looks like it was filmed in your aunt's conservatory. First up today was a middle-aged man talking over a much younger woman. He meandered, he mentioned his children, he strayed off-topic, and read things off his phone, while she gave tight smiles and hesitant readings from an autocue. Its a PBS version of This Time with Alan Partridge. They cut to enthusiastic regional reporters doing vox pops, but the sound on the outside broadcasts was even worse, and I didn't hear a word the disgruntled pub owners or charity joggers had to say. 

Later there are other gobshite middle-aged men and gushing blonde women. And then others. Then more. There is no difference between any of the segments or any of the presenters, its like a slow mid-week episode of The One Show: charity, consumer issues, holidays and house prices, and terrible young people demanding their chosen pronouns be respected, like Nazis would. 

I know the next presenter, because It's Michelle Dewberry: X Factor winner and Brexit Party candidate. Except here her strand is called "Dewbs and Co", as though she were presenting an unloved seventies dance troupe. She's desperate to get to the bottom of all the things: things like litter, freedom day, and do kids need expensive toys. (They don't) It's like catching a glimpse of a business meeting through the half opened window of a Marriott hotel. There should be a white board and a bowl of unsucked mints in grabbing reach at all times. 

Dewbs throws to a man called Julian on screen...there is an awkward silence "Did you mean me? My name is Cameron?" "Sorry, says Dewbs, thinking on her feet, "No idea who Julian is - that's just what it says on the screen."

If Dewbs is a bit stiff and awkward, Dan Wootton can barely read. He throws to a news report, but it isn't there. His guest is another presenter on GB News. He gets some low quality footage of someone from North Korea who claims America is much worse than North Korea because its so woke. Three people whose names I know from them saying awful things on Twitter, agree with her, but they contrive to argue with one another over pissy little pedantries, so it resembles balance or something. That's the real problem with this channel - there's no grist, no alternative views, its just arguing the toss. It's like being trapped forever at the bar of a country pub. The hosts, the guests and the audience all think exactly alike. I mean my Facebook page is a cosy little echo-chamber, with very little dissent, but at least there's that risk:  occasionally someone still calls me a prick from nowhere.* GB News is risk averse by its definition. It's built to gently waft middle-England's prejudices back into its face in reassuring way. Nothing happens.  

When Andrew Neil comes on things are at least professional. He can read a monitor with conviction. But this still looks like a Zoom call from his swanky pad in France, and it probably is. I missed Neil Oliver, the lost King of Scotland, offer his initial address, but I understand it was inaudible, and therefore a career high. Does he miss the days he was staring out to sea like the prow of a Viking long-ship in crystal clear BBC 4D? Because here he's a fuzzy bore, a mumblin' 'n' pixilatin' non-entity. That is the price of delivering the truth to the people, even in the people can't actually hear it. 

It's so relentlessly dull. Just endless non-stories from the regions, with vapid and unpracticed reporters. And there is still criticism of the government anyway, because...how could there not be?  But it's toothless, and mitigated - news for people who think Johnson is doing a difficult job under difficult circumstances. Look, the guys not perfect, but he's doing his best. And face it, he's a character. 

This channel is inept, its technically poor. Its journalists are filling time because they have no content. They look and sound awful and its boring as fuck. I hate it. It will therefore be a huge success. 

I take that back. If they can find a way to make it look and sound right on a really big telly, then it will be a huge success. No one is going to put up with this rubbish as it is. It's embarrassing. 

*usually because of something I said or did.