NOSE, SPITE, FACE ?

I`m getting a little fed up with Sky tv.   I`ve had the `full package` for years, if you`ll pardon the expression, but apart from the news and the sport, I find it difficult to find much else from the plethora of channels to grab my attention.

I agree that their news and sport coverage is superbly done, both technically and editorially - especially so since the demise of the atrocious Keys/Gray axis.   But just recently, one or two annoyances have begun to take the shine off things.   One of the things I like to watch is the nightly press preview on Sky News, when `guests` are invited to select items from the next morning`s newspapers for discussion.  

With one or two exceptions such as the grotesquely self-important Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the reviewers are perceptive, articulate and presentable.   But more recently we have had to endure the inclusion of former Home Secretary Jaqui Smith giving us the benefit of her wisdom.   Now this is a failed and rejected politician who hoodwinked the taxpayers of this country for a shedload of dodgy `expenses` on such things as second home allowances, porn films and, more recently, having prisoners from the local nick redecorating her (second) home in Redditch - her main home, of course,  having being an upstairs room in her sister`s flat in south London.   I simply object to any part of my Sky subscription being used to pay this discredited self-serving poseuse.

On the sporting front, with the banishment of Keys/Gray to TalkSport, the quality of presentation, commentary and analysis of football has improved, whilst that for cricket could hardly be bettered.   But again we have seen Sky almost obsessed with the notion that when an ex-England international footballer retires from playing, then we punters will welcome him on to our screens with open arms as we hang on his every word.   And so it has come to pass that we now have to contend with the abrasive Gary Neville.

These events, coupled with the ongoing saga surrounding James Murdoch, the Parliamentary Committe and the unresolved hacking scandal, are making me begin to wonder whether to carry on with Sky tv or perhaps just reduce my `package.`  I know it will be cutting my nose to spite my face and it might simply be an exercise in individual futility, but it might just make me feel a bit better.