Cocaine killed the neighbourhood.

Stepping away from global politics you have X-factor. Normally the home of pre-pubesent children and people who have no idea of what music is, the show has finally rocked out and been prone to a cocaine bust. As it is family viewing and no rock and roll should be entered into, the guilty party has been axed from the show and will be replaced with a piece of monotone monotony. 18-year old Frankie Cocozza (Cocozza does cocaine) has been portrayed as a teenage Libertine, filmed drinking with girls and bragging about doing cocaine. The path to excess is paved with X factor ejection and Mr Cocozza has been given the boot to protect the innocent children who tune in looking for a role-model, not a rock star. One  X factor judge is not happy.

Louis Walsh has blamed Gary Barlow for Frankie’s descent into affliction.

“Gary made a mistake. I blame him for it all…..Gary told him not to behave from day one and gave him the free licence to act up from the start. Gary’s responsible…… He said that on camera and now he’s back tracking. Gary never wanted Frankie to behave”

There you have it. No mistaking where the blame lies in this particular grudge match.

Our ethos is simple, we are here to take the blame. Apparently we live in a blame culture; and in a blame culture there needs to be someone who you can turn to when there is nobody else who will shoulder your blame. Whatever the reason, whatever the occasion, we are there for you. From the simple and the transparent – be it stubbing your toe or spilling your tea; waking up late for work or missing the bus – to the arduous, perplexing, intricate and convoluted – your dog died; you hate your boss; the IOC decided to oust you from your abode and build an Olympic sized Ice-rink in your back garden and erect an athletes village in your once pristine street-market turning a once thriving local community into a dull and bland advert for a hotch-potch amalgamation of too much glass, no class and student residents. We are there. Blame us.

Politics, science, philosophy, food, revolution, environment, education, celebrity, television, crime, animals, history, love, money, relationships, family, sport, technology, travel, war, weather, health, business, birthdays, parties, celebrations, drugs, employment, nature………….and breathe…………..cybercrime, nuclear energy, credit cards, pornography, computer games, graffitti, hollywood. Kitchen sink. There is blame.

If you have anything you want us to take the blame for. Tell us. Let us know. Post a link. Send a letter. And we will publish an apology, allowing you to sleep soundly, safe in the knowledge that the blame rests with us. Go on, don’t be shy.

Lets be honest. American football is an anomaly. So is Christine Aguilera. So many things are wrong with this combination of characters that apologising for all of them would be more difficult than explaining the rules of American football to an, as yet to be discovered, Amazonian tribe and then, having explained the rules to their blank, non-comprending faces, getting them to sit down on Superbowl Sunday and enjoy the spectacle.  All four, advert filled, hours of it. So that’s not why we are here today.

That over 100 million people tuned into watch The Green Bay Wolverine Dragon Cubs overrun the Pittsburgh Killer Penguins by 7 thousand points to 4 thousand five hundred and sixty eight is cause enough for concern. Didn’t it begin at 1am? Shouldn’t these people have been sleeping? And whats with tipping orange Gatorade over peoples heads? It’s not funny and seems to be the only actual point of the whole shebang they have going on over there.

If you didn’t know, part of the Superbowl megaadvertisingextravganza is the half time show, where like it or not, some band you hate plays some songs you hate even more whilst gyrating about on a specially designed stage made to look like a pair of sunglasses. Our fault. Sorry. Even worse than this is the annual singing of the national anthem before touchdown at the start of the first quarter eighth 10 minutes.

Now you would have thought that singing your own national anthem wouldn’t be too much of a challenge to a singer. Well, it would appear that the pressure of doing it in front of 7 billion screaming fans got the better of dear Miss Aguilera and she forgot the lines. She didn’t forget the lines when she sang the same national anthem one year earlier during the NBA American basketball finals where she did it twice no-less. So why this time? Well, according to the statement released by her publicist it was because she “got so lost in the moment of the song that I lost my place. I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of its anthem still came through.” That is not an apology, it is an excuse. We at Taketheblame would like to do what couldn’t be done and apologise.

If all the BBC’s programming over the years could be stored on celluloid, like in the old movies, and put end to end, like they say, then you could tie a pretty bow around Jupiter and still have enough film to make a roller-coaster back to earth. If all their radio broadcasts could be sewn together into one big long bank holiday Monday ‘best of’ with Jamie Theakston drafted in to front the show whilst all the real dj’s went on holiday, then the broadcast would last longer than time itself. And you would get pretty bored long before that. In other-words it’s a treasure trove of material that documents the history of Great Britain and has material to teach generations. The cultural legacy of a nation, and its all under the watchful eye of the greatest broadcasting corporation the world has ever known and is ever likely to know. Which means that it will probably get lost, deleted, forgotten about or get accidentally left on a train.

Which is kind of what happened when the archives were opened up on the BBC iplayer, an Internet tool on the flagship website that allows viewers to watch programs online or download them onto a storage device and watch them at a later date. Obviously with such a vast array of material and parties involved in the making of said material, when the BBC devised the iplayer idea they had to adhere to and implement strict copyright procedures in order to protect the art. They did. And it can be breached in 12 minutes by any amateur computer hacker in the land.

Program after program is downloaded off the website and put onto peer to peer and torrent websites all around the world, minus the DRM (digital rights management) system that only allows playback for 30 days before the files self corrupt themselves. With no DRM there is no copyright protection and the programs watched on the iplayer can no longer be tracked by the BBC. Oops.

In the scheme of things I suppose that 36 million is not a great deal of money. A small bonus to a wealthy banker, an average footballer. You probably couldn’t get hold of a decent powerboat for that so for the BBC to go 36 million pounds over budget isn’t such a big deal is it? On a website? Yes, www.bbc.co.uk cost a staggering £110 in the 2007/8 financial year. Not bad going. Only they were apparently not strictly meant to spend that much cash. The budget was only £72 million with a buffer, if you like, of the base plus 10 percentiles, giving a lottery busting £81.6 million. So where did the extra wongar get blown? And who is responsible for such gargantuan over spending?

Maybe it got spent on some quality broadcasting on the television? You know, TV, what the BBC used to do so well before they sold Neighbours to Channel 5. On a thorough inspection of the TV listings, its still just a pile of crap with the odd token quality program slipped in. They channels still stop broadcasting at 11pm as unemployed people don’t watch the BBC. It still shows contemptible American trash through the day, boring antique and local news shows in early evening, reality drivel late evenings and 13 year old Hollywood “blockbusters at night. So no, the extra money didn’t get spent there.

Taketheblame couldn’t find the story on the BBC website, the extra 36 million obviously doesn’t accommodate news that close to home. Don’t shit where you eat or something. All we could find was some quality journalism/research on biscuits and how different varieties can influence the outcome of a business meeting.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7432092.stm

But still no money.  The BBC trust which carried out the report and found the over spend came out and said that the extra money was infact.

“was not overspend, but the misallocation of £24.9 million in overheads and costs to other budgets within the BBC, representing poor financial accountability”;

Hmm.. so poor accountability? But who do we hold accountable? Have they been fired, reprimanded, sent to prison? Someone must have done the accounts? Maybe they just gave it all to Jonathan Ross? Who knows. Liberal Democrat Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Don Foster said, on hearing of the report,

“This report is a damning indictment of the management of bbc.co.uk. Future investment will only take place if accountability is increased. Not only has the BBC lost track of a phenomenal sum of money, but this mismanagement will now directly impact on the future development of this popular service.”

So we all agree? So who is to blame? Anyone? TaketheBlame will shoulder this heavy financial burden, it is obviously us who are to blame. Its probably under the cushions on the sofa.

In no particular order, the top 5 most searched things on MSN today are…. drum roll please…. Indiana Jones, Jessica Alba, Denise Van Outen, Paris Hilton and Britain’s Got Talent… If Britain does indeed have talent, Indiana Jones aside, then where are they? And what are they going to learn by reading about Jessica Alba. No offence to Jessica Alba, I am sure she is a very nice person, but why do 50 billion people need to read about her? Paris Hilton ditto. Is this all the Internet is good for these days? Just a big shop and somewhere you can read about Indiana and the latest gossip on Jessica Alba. And Denise Van Outen?

There are 76 billion billion pages on the information super highway, each one a potential treasure trove of knowledge. Who is to blame for these five being the most thought after?

Why is all news bad? Just look at the rolling news channels, the millions of news sites on the Internet. The 9 o’clock news, the 10 o’clock news, even Newsround is just full of bad news. The news, or rather bad news, makes people sad, scared, angry and depressed.

There is a scene at the start of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the kids breakdown and as they sit on the side of the road pondering what to do the camera pans out and you can hear a fictitious radio news broadcast. It talks of civil unrest, murder, rape, stabbings, shootings, nuclear fallout, war, fighting in the streets, death, gloom and worldwide armageddon. Its a cunning ploy by director Tobe Hooper to set the disturbing, graphic scenes that follow against a world collapsing. The year was 1974 yet it could be a news bulletin from today.

Just a brief glance at any newspaper or news website today will tell you so. Ex kkk member goes to prison, woman dies after brutal attack, Gunmen and US forces clash in Iraq, more arrested in 11 year old slaying, soldiers die in friendly fire, Greece on fire, Kenyan politicians potentially steal billions, suicide bomber kills 2 near Kabul airport, Israeli freighter sinks, South Koreans in hostage situation, hurricane in Jamaica, fierce fighting in Congo, Brazil train crash, fighting in Darfur, North Indian clashes, Indian Maoist violence, Papua tensions. This is a snapshot gathered in seconds. It is like this everyday.

Maybe it is symbolic of bad news creating bad news. If you listen to sad music, you become sad. Perhaps good news would create good news. And by that string of thought, we blame the news media for the state of the country and the state of the world today. Its all good and well David Cameron blaming computer games for the evil deeds committed on the streets of England but that is just immature, weak, lameass propaganda. an excuse. If music and computer games are responsible now, in this country, what is responsible for the African subcontinent child armies? Grand Theft Auto?

10 years ago the news gladly waxed lyrical about how the UK was 10 years behind American gun culture. It appears their predictions are coming true. What should be happening is predictions of good. But until then, our apologies for all the bad news.

Why not go to www.goodnewsnetwork.org

It is nothing but good news.