It's "International TV Turnoff Week" - kill your TV and get a life!

I am not affiliated with WhiteDot.org - in fact, I only discovered it was "TV Turnoff Week" this week by chance, when looking for some related information on how TV affects children's concentration levels.

However, here's a few thoughts (some mine, some from other people) on TV, and why you should turn yours off - or better still, get rid of the thing altogether!

Aren't you sick of seeing TVs everywhere around you? In pubs, in shops, on buses and trains, even a giant one recently in Market Square. There is almost no escaping the screens - bombarding you with flashing adverts and interrupting your inner thoughts everywhere you go. (Ever tried reading a book on a bus or train with a TV on it? Almost impossible!)

Why do we need TVs? Would our lives be better or worse without them? What did people do with their time before TV? Are we happier and more fulfilled now?

Have you ever been in a room with friends when there's a TV on, and even when they aren't interested in watching whatever is on it, did you notice how much it distracts and interferes with something as simple as just having a conversation? A TV on in the room distracts from human interaction, and turns your friends into gawping zombies.

You are staring at a piece of furniture. What would your chairs point at if you got rid of your TV?

Would you pay a salesman to come and sit in your house, telling you about stuff you "should" buy every 15 minutes?

Using a digital TV to listen to digital radio (as 22% of Britons now do, instead of conventional radio) is releasing an extra 190,000 tonnes of CO2 each year in the UK.

If half of all British homes were to own a new plasma screen TV, two new nuclear power stations would be required to meet the extra electricity demand created (as opposed to older CRT televisions).

Since the UK government is switching off analogue TV transmissions (completed nationwide by 2012) - if you were going to "have" to get a new TV anyway, why wouldn't you go for a plasma TV?

Are the above two points compatible with the government's other commitment to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

If you were on your deathbed and someone could give you back those missing twelve-and-a-half years to be with people you loved, and maybe do things differently, would you take their offer? Or would you say, "No thanks. I'm glad I spent that time watching TV?"

So go on, kill your TV, get a life, and save the planet in the process!