Interesting proposition. It is said that somebody once invented an everlasting match, when you had lit whatever you needed, you blew it out ready for the next time. Is is rumoured that the company Bryant and May bought out the patent, and the idea has never rekindled.

It is said there is already a way to run a vehicle on water but the petrol companies soon put a damper on that invention too.

Televisions, like most modern, low voltage electrical equipment have one fault that everyone involved in the electrical industry encourages you to exploit: they want you to turn it off. A television, video, DVD and all sorts of other electrical gizmos – including this PC – love being worked, I believe the electricity gives them a buzz. They hate being turned off as all the working parts cool down, and the charge of getting them going again is very wearing … sounds like me getting up in the morning. Odd as it seems, a modern television has very few individual working parts, they come as circuit boards they control all sorts of operations.

Your old television would have died of heart failure if it had been required to do the work expected of a modern machine, all it had to do was decipher an incoming signal and show the end result on screen, your modern television is almost super human, rather like comparing an abacus with a calculator. Now here is the strange part: in terms of value for money with the price being asked, the latest model is considerably cheaper than the old set of twenty or so years ago! So you do reap the benefits of technology and research … also cheap Asian labour.

Ann-marie, follow my example, don't think … sometimes it can be just too painful. 

My wife has to reboot me every morning: she kicks me out of bed.

I forgot another very commonly used item that hates being turned off, and it's said that you do more damage turning it on than at any other time. The answer: your vehicle.

Well done, Ann-marie. In our family circle my wife and I are thought of as oddities. We have a 42″ flat screen LCD television and our sum total of viewing is the one hour, evening news. I am not allowed to handle the remote: my good lady realised quite some time ago this would make a handy missile to throw at the screen when the adverts come on.

I am just a very ordinary person but I have an overly active brain. The adverts are simply more than I can handle and even the 'mute' button cannot get rid of those sanctimonious people who are insisting I must purchase their product … and save money. My brain insists that by not buying the product, I save a hell of a lot more.

Programme content is now at a banal level on par with first year kindergarten and an IQ value of minus. I can't believe the absolute &^%$ that is coming out of the UK, especially from the company I have always associated as being bastion of quality entertainment, the BBC.

I hasten to add, we have a large collection of DVDs and most evening we are either curled up with a good book (or each other ) or we watch a DVD … with no adverts.

Post edited 6:47 am – 29th May 10 by Me.

Hi Shazza, when I returned to the UK last year with my brother (our Mum had just passed away) top of his 'wants' list was a series of DVDs called Foyles War. I appreciate you will hate me but I had never heard of it.

I can't recall how long ago, at a guess I would say about twenty years, when I last watched a television series. However, I made an exception with one programme because I had read, and fallen in love with the book. I am referring to 'The Darling Buds of May'.

That's it, my sum total of enjoyable viewing. The only other exception being we may turn the set on ten minutes early to watch the news, and that ten minutes is usually quite enough. To show my complete and total ignorance, two months ago Tricia (my wife) and I were encouraged (taken) to the movies, we watched the movie 'It's Complicated', nothing special about that. The last time I went to the movies was to watch the movie 'ET', this when it was released. I really am a hopeless case.

We don't like any movies that have gratuitous sex scenes but violence is okay within the scope of a special story. Here I can give the example of the 'Da Vince Code' and 'Angels and Demons'.

I agree with you about the news but I do have an excuse. We don't take a newspaper and we don't listen to the radio, so television is our only means of knowing what is going on.

You may believe my wife and I to be unusual (we are) but we have a close friend who is exactly the same, as is my elder brother. I might add all three of us are busy people with active hands and active minds, so the television holds no appeal.

Please don't think I am anti television, I'm not, it's just not for me.

After I made the above post I realised people must wonder what on earth I do with my day, and it would be a valid question. I read a bit – not a lot – I love playing golf or being in the garden. Of course with our temperate climate it's unusual to get a day when you can't go outside. I love fishing, there is something very tranquil about simply sitting beside a lake, river or the foreshore. I love writing, which is why my posts are always too long, and I play the keyboard, I have a never ending love of music.

Shazza asked about the DVDs I have on the shelf, well I'm not going to list any, but it would be fair to say I have at least forty live music concerts which never cease to give me enjoyment, John Denver right through to the magnificent Dianna Krall and my all time favourite group, The Shadows.

I'm very much like you then Annmarie! I love SKY. I also watch CNN for wworld news. I usually roll my eyes at American news networks but CNN is different somehow. I no longer have a daily paper except on Saturday when I treat myself to a feast of crosswords.

I understand where you are coming from 'Me' as I too love to write so that's why my posts are a bit too wordy at times. What do you write? Is there a novel lurking there somewhere? I'd love to read anything that any poster has written. It's amazing what talent there is outv there in cyber world. On another website I became friends with a poster who had written a book on quiltmaking, simply amazing.

Me. said:

Programme content is now at a banal level on par with first year kindergarten and an IQ value of minus. I can't believe the absolute &^%$ that is coming out of the UK, especially from the company I have always associated as being bastion of quality entertainment, the BBC.

You should try living here, ME. Trust me, you get to the point of questioning YOUR sanity, YOUR intelligence.

I see we all suffer with similar programmes, Me. Speaking for myself, as I've grown older I find myself increasingly divorced from the world in which I live. I simply cannot fathom the attraction of such programmes, nor understand the people who watch them. And yet in that, it is WE who are the odd ones out, and WE who are made to feel strange because we don't watch them. Channel hopping one evening last week, I stumbled upon one of our great British classics, East Enders. Goodness me. I might have been on a different planet for all that the characters were saying to one another made any sense to me. I suppose they were speaking English, I don't know. Is that how we Brits really speak? Is that the way the rest of the world perceives we British? I bury my head in shame. Someone find me an island, you must have a few going begging out there

That'll do for me

What a lot of moaning Minnie's you are.

Television has a switch. On and off.

Of course  the world is in a mess, so just ignore it.

There are so many interesting things to do.

Listen to the birds singing.

In my garden I only have sparrows,  they spend their days quarrelling.

They make me laugh.

Today my new glass Terrarium arrived from Germany by van and delivered to my house.

It is going to be an Orchidarium. I know nothing about Orchids so I have to start learning.

Enjoy life, think positive.  It doesn't have to be Champagne and caviar.