Piers Morgan on Shanghai, apparently.

Hey,

I am a man who is interested in politics. This we know. People often ask me "why do you like politics? It's rubbish. Personally I prefer chicken". To me, though, politics is everything (chicken included).

Take for example, my job in a pub: the price of the Tennents that we sell is affected by Government laws; it costs money for the alcohol to be delivered, as lorry company's charge according to running costs such as petrol, staff wages etc; a VAT increase increases expenditure on near enough everything, and staff would be affected by National Insurance contributions and tax. What I earn has to be in correlation with the National Minimum Wage, which not all countries have. The World Cup is on the television, but it is on terrestrial (if you can still call it that) because in this country it is an A-listed event. This means that Sky can't buy the rights like they did with the Premiership, and other A-listed events are events such as Wimbledon and Formula 1. This means that people can watch these events without having to go to fine public houses such as the one I work in.

This, to me, is politics. I also find stuff such like Communism interesting, the (probable only) alternative to  capitalism and if it works. I studied the Soviet Union for a year and to see it's rise and fall was really interesting. Where the USSR collapsed under political reform, the regime in China was strengthened by changing the economic policy whilst keeping political freedoms limited.

So you can see that I was sort of looking forward to "Piers Morgan's Shanghai" which was on ITV last week.  Could Piers do some great investigative journalism about China? Whether the system which cracked two decades ago in the Soviet Union is showing similar signs of strain?

In a nutshell, no. What we did find out is the following;

* In Shanghai, there is a Tesco, where you can buy live eels.
* Some people drink wine with coke.
* They are rubbish at football.
* He couldn't get onto YouTube, which annoyed him.
* David Beckham is famous.

And that's about it, really. They had some shots of poor people, compared to some very, very, very rich people. But this could of been done in any city, not just Shanghai. I shouldn't really be too harsh though, this was ITV's filler whilst the BBC had a football match on. It wasn't intended to be a serious documentary, if you wanted that I recommend John Simpson's documentary about the fairly unknown city of Chongqing, which has a population of about 30 million yet ten years ago it was about half the size of three start hotel. You have to love state planning. I shouldn't be too surprised, really. After all, Piers Morgan's interview with the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown involved some Paxman-esque  questions such as whether he was part of the mile-high club (which was as awkward as the mental picture it created) and whether he got drunk at university. I don't need to know such details, not from him or anyone. Overall, it was interesting-ish in bits (the part about women having plastic surgery to look less oriental in particular) but I'm a cynical old git and it's easier to be grumpy.

DC
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