Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Who wants to live in Simon Cowell Street?
This nonsensical idea of having X Factor style votes on how to name local streets and facilities, really has to be knocked on the head now. All that will happen is the only folk who'll vote will be very young people, used to this style of voting and who will they vote for? Whoever happens to be the latest "celebrity". As one guy in this BBC report says celebrity is cheaply earned and short lived.
I remember a recent vote on Channel 4 looking for the 100 greatest songs of all time and do you know what was number 1? Actually I can't remember and that's probably the point, it was something too non descript to commit to memory. It was also something current which tells us it was very young people who think music was only invented this year. And that is precisely what will happen if we go ahead with this stupid idea.
Imagine we'd introduced this a couple of years ago, we could've had ..
Goody Gardens which when she was out of favour would have to be changed to Shilpa Shetty Street. (I had to google the Bollywood woman, proving my point I think.)
Michelle McManus Avenue; Shabhaz Drive; I could go on but I can't remember half these names - again, proving my point.
There are plenty of ordinary people who do so much for their communities. Celebrities may be lovely people, they may be very caring and I'm sure many would give up their seat to an old lady on the bus if ever they travelled on a bus, but getting rich and famous is about helping themselves not their communities and I'd say it's reward enough. If we want to recognise anyone, make it local people who do what they do for no reward. Personally I still prefer to recognise trees - there are no bad trees in the world and there's nothing nicer than a Beech Avenue or an Oak Walk :-)
Now that I think about it, I believe the greatest song of all time was "We like to Party" by the Venga Boys. Hmmmm, quite like that song actually!
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2 comments:
The Vengaboys played "live" at my graduation - oh yeah, how cool am I? I can tell you're jealous from here ;-)
I think though, if any of this is done online, you're just going to end with bloody Rick Astley Streets up and down the land!
These polls (and there do seem to be a lot of them these days) usually seem to reflect a curious mixture of the the deserving and the ephemeral, for example, Best Male Singer: Elvis Presley and That Bloke Who Almost Won X Factor.
As for the street names suggestion, well I suppose it would be better than Provost McNumpty Road, or whatever.
To be fair on the think tank (sic) that made the suggestion, I suspect that it didn't quite suggest the X Factor route to choosing the names, but it hardly seems worth digging for the truth!
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