Boxing Day ramblings

Boxing day is always a little of a anti climax.We wait so long for Xmas,then at a blink of an eye.....it's over.In this gap between supplies of food some ramblings

First of all something on last night's Xmas telly.Really was quite bad,the Doctor Who was turgid,70 mins of drivel.Catherine Tate was appalling,you could play guess the punchlines and what about the use of the F-word.Even though it was well past the watershed,how many kids would have been watching at 10.30 on Christmas day?

The only decent thing I have watched,apart from the Dad's army repeats, was the ITV,Xmas at the Riveria(Sky plussed from Xmas eve).A good old fashioned comedy farce,the ashes being put in the turkey and being pecked at by geese was something else).

The papers this morning are predictable,reports on the various speeches of our religious leaders and royal leaders and various tales of shopping sales,online trading etc.Why bother publishing?Give journalists another day off.

Read Allison Martin's piece on Press Gazette on how to survive the graveyard shift

The seemingly never-ending evening will be punctuated by pointless phone calls from drunk people with “World Exclusive” stories about spacecraft in Filey or with a bee in their bonnet about the number of repeats on TV, all of which would fail to make page 83 of a weekly local freesheet. However, these people are to be endured in the spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill to all men.

For a religious perspective at this time of year.check out Steve Borris writing on Xmas day who tells us

Modern Journalism has been typically skeptical, when not outright disdainful, of Christianity. In the movement’s founding work, Liberty and the News, Walter Lippmann declared journalism a new science for a new age when Man had finally come to his senses, no longer believing “that an omniscient and benevolent Providence taught [Man] what end to seek” and that it would now be “blazing arrogance to sacrifice hard-won standards of credibility” to such irrational beliefs

But we should be grateful because freedom of the press was first mooted in Genesis.That's the old testament,not the rock dinosaurs

which established that Man was created in God’s image, bestowing upon individuals a dignity that is not inevitably derived through use of reason alone.

The other purpose of the media in this time between xmas and New Year is to review the last 12 months.Jemima Kiss looks at what created the most traffic on Guardian Media and surprise,surprise it was reality Tv,no fewer than 10/20 entries,fuelled by the Shilpa Shetty episode back in January.

Anyway enough and back to eating and drinking