Exhausted after climbing Mt Taranaki, we found ourselves wedging in front of our Motel television. All on offer was two hours of American Idol, with ad breaks every 10 minutes, but it was just the sort of intellectual-free reality TV drivel that I needed.
“You know”, says Beau during another ad-break, “Our taxes pay for the TV to be condescending to us”.
“You mean by telling us how to play with our children?”
“Yeah, and telling us how to eat vegetables”, he says, as yet another state-funded advertisement flashes by.
“So, we don’t have a TV”, he says, “maybe we should see if we can get our money back?”
There should be some kind of licence fee that TV owners should have to pay to cover public broadcasting.