Thursday 9 April 2009

Clueless old farts



These are construction workers in Dubai.

On average they earn about £120 a month, despite working 12-hours a day, six days a week.

During the day, they work on sites where health & safety and workers rights are unheard of. At night they live in specially-built, cramped-to-the-point-of-being-dangerous labour camps.

They are being exploited.



THIS is Pete Waterman.

He is the pop impressario ( a fancy name for a manager with notions above his station) responsible for the hits of such greats as Jason Donovan and Rick Astley.

Not content with polluting the airwaves with such gunge for profit, Waterman also ripped the heart right out of music by creating Pop Idol, meaning there are legions of youngsters who have never heard a song being sung by anyone other than a fame-craving, insecure reality TV 'star'.

And he's dishonest. When managing the group, One True Voice, during 'Popstars: The Rivals' in 2002, Waterman said he'd kill himself if his charges didn't make the Christmas number one.
They didn't and he didn't.
In certain societies, Waterman would be hung by his testiclay for crimes against common decency, but while gestating in our overly-liberal corner of the planet, he has instead ammassed a personal estimated fortune of £42m.

And yet, he puts himself in the same boat as the exploited workers in Dubai because Youtube won't pay him every single time one of his haemorrhage-inducing tunes is played on the site.

The clueless old fart was whinging this week that despite the popularity of 'Never gonna give you up' - which he co-wrote for Rick Astley - on Youtube, he has only received £11 to add to his mountain of cash.
Why, you may ask, has such a cringey song become so popular on the site? Well, for the only reason such a ridiculous ditty could become popular again really; comedic value.
The 'Rickrolling' phenomenon involved web users sending each other web links that appeared to be relevant to something they were discussing, but were in fact disguised links to the Astley song on YouTube.
According to RTE.ie, while discussing this gross injustice, Waterman said; "Panorama did a documentary on the exploitation of foreign workers in Dubai. I feel like one of those workers, because I earned less for a year's work off Google or YouTube than they did off the Bahrain government."'
Next week; Louis Walsh compares his plight with that of millions of starving Rwandans as he waits a full 40 minutes for a pizza delivery.
Read the whole gut-wrenching story of Waterman's exploitation here

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