The Thamesmead Grump

Make America Rake Again

A little while ago, US President Donald Trump was in Paris, hiding in the embassy so he wouldn't get his hair wet. During this stay he also met Sauli Niinistö, President of Finland who told him that the reason that they don't have huge forest fires, currently being experienced in California, is because they do a lot of raking.

Now the fact is that almost all of Finland is covered in forest, this would mean raking around 338 thousand square kilometres which would mean pretty much the entire population would be at it or they would need a bloody big rake. 

In actual fact, this conversation never took place. What we have instead is the President of the United States having imaginary conversations with foreign leaders. I have to wonder who else he is talking to who doesn't exist and what are they discussing?

Perhaps we will never know.

Exterminate

I've decided that I don't like the new series of Doctor Who. It's nothing to do with the fact that they have turned him into a woman; done properly, it would have been an interesting experiment. It's a number of things.

I don't like the scatterbrained, breathless way Jodie Whitaker delivers the part. It might have been all right at the beginning: it takes the Doctor a while to start firing on all cylinders after regenerating, we all know that, and we could imagine it was her way of getting her new personality together. But after eight episodes, she is still behaving as if the lift still hasn't reached the top floor yet and I have to assume that's how she is going to do it.

I also really don't like the fact that it isn't really a science fiction series any more. What we have is a fairly obvious anti-white/male/hetro-sexual/British political propaganda presentation with the odd alien monster tagged on as a sort of afterthought, just so they can keep calling it Doctor Who.

Did I mention the Sonic Screwdriver? Some while back, the Doctor's sonic screwdriver started to be used as more of a weapon than utensil. The David Tennant character was often seen posing with it aimed at the enemy in a way that was reminiscent of Captain Kirk with his phaser. Now it can be best described as a plot hole-filler. The Doctor needs to do/analyse/destroy, etc. anything and instead of thinking up something clever and Doctor Whoish, out comes the screwdriver and, lo and behold, it can suddenly do whatever you need.

I had rather hoped that the first scene in the new series where she loses the dammed thing might have been the last we saw of it, (it would have gone some way to redeeming the new series) but no, we have to have a new one, capable of even more miracles than the last.

Don't think I'll bother with The Christmas episode - oh! I forgot, they're not showing it at Christmas; it's going out on New Year's Day. They must be hoping that we are all going to be too hungover to notice what a dog's dinner it's managed to become.