Nonsense we must resolve to get rid of this year
ANEW year brings a fresh start, with a chance to look ahead to the future and correct some of the bad habits picked up over the past 12 months. After all, what better time to draw a line in the sand while there’s still time to save ourselves from the following trends?
TV shows which pair up celebrities with random topics, such as ‘Alan Cumming’ and ‘free holiday’, or ‘Joanna Lumley’ and ‘champagne tasting’. This peaked last week when the BBC showed Judi Dench’s Passion for Trees. Unless someone plans to celebrate Stephen Fry’s love of wrestling lions, I think we’re done here.
Any sort of Big Tech smart device that pretends to look up recipes or sort through your favourite songs, but is actually spying on you and selling your preferences. Also any Alexa, Cortana, Siri or Echo, pictured, with voice recognition software that mistakes ‘What’s the weather in Paisley?’ for ‘What are peas?’ and books you a flight to Stornoway when all you wanted was to hear Karl Denver sing Wimoweh. Also, online technology really needs to stop trying to be cute: Amazon now lets you to open a shopping profile for your pet. Already Vladimir Putin has opened one for Donald Trump. And RT has created one for Alex Salmond.
The Nigel Farage biopic. A doomed project, especially after Kevin Spacey was mooted to play Nige. In any case, we don’t need to wait for a film about the consequences of Brexit when there’s a perfectly good shortcut that involves buying The Towering Inferno on DVD, and fast-forwarding to the moment where an electrical wire starts to fizzle on the 81st floor.
Printers that sulkily refuse to acknowledge your commands, no matter how often you plead for them to connect or try to tempt them to accept the finest vellum sheets. Forget spoilt kids – there is nothing more privileged and financially demanding than a printer. During an idle moment, I calculated that drop for drop, copier ink now costs more than some malt whiskies. Instead of trying to impress or seduce with Bollinger and diamonds, the person of your dreams is someone who can fire up a wireless printer and invites you round to watch them rattle through a ream of double-sided A4, in colour.
Scottish broadcasters banging on about snow. When the first snowflake of the season hits the ground, everyone gets a little excited, but nobody is quite as thrilled as broadcasters, who ask you to send in pictures of your snowscene, where you are. This year, they have started asking for photos on the radio. Also, while snow may come as a bit of surprise to Londoners or people on the Isle of Wight, Scotland is pretty much guaranteed a seasonal whiteout. Only Scottish broadcasters and Transport Minister Humza Yousaf seem taken aback by the ensuing traffic chaos and the moment our winter wonderland thaws a bit, then refreezes into a granite-grey slide of death.
Bitcoin. Och just send cash. Or set fire to your tenners.