2018
February 12 2018
I'm back and hopefully twice as grumpy but what should I focus on as I return. I thought about going over all the things which have annoyed me to a state of grumpiness since my last blog almost two months ago. That would need a novel so I decided to forget all that, it's history, and start afresh.
Except it's not afresh because it goes back to one of my familiar moans over the years: the growth of social mediocrity, sorry media, nope mediocrity. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone is free to express that opinion, I give many of mine here. The problem is that social media throws your opinion into my face whether I want it or not.
If you come to my website then you expect to see my views and thoughts. Facebook, twitter etc throw the thoughts of the mediocrity into the eyes of the masses. Yesterday there was a riot of opinions about an interview on the Andrew Marr show. Hundreds, possibly thousands I didn't bother to look, saw his thumbs up to a Conservative minister and the aside of “that was very good”.
My problem is that I am unsure how many of the people complaining have ever been interviewed on a live show. I have, several times and on at least two of the occasions the interviewer, after the cameras had stopped, said “that was good”. I did not think for one minute that he meant what I had said was necessarily good but that, overall, the interview was good.
In my mind, I have no doubt that Mr Marr was neither praising nor agreeing with the International Development Secretary. He was being polite, as one does. Sorry, as one used to do. Apart from anything else, none of us know what happened before the interview. Maybe Penny Mordaunt had confessed to being nervous and Marr was just letting her know it went well.
Unless you know what you are talking about, it's best to have your opinion and keep it to yourself. Otherwise all those “experts” who share their lack of knowledge believing they do know something, will end up fully qualified to be the next President of the United States, a man who has taken social, and indeed presidential mediocrity to a new level. Sadly, one way below old-fashioned mediocrity.
February 19 2018
Right, I have some ideas that top people have given me in the last few weeks. I'm driving down the road, perfectly safely, but inadvertently over the speed limit. Just a bit. A speed camera clocks me, the police send me a letter and I have to pay a fine and have points on my licence. I apologise unreservedly for my behaviour and explain that I am setting up a review to make sure it doesn't happen again. Obviously I am let off and head off to speed on a different section of public roads, maybe even in a different county.
Sadly, it doesn't work because I am neither a charity nor a politician. I am a great non-believer in an apology, even an unreserved one, putting everything right. By the way, including the word unreservedly in an apology is really pointless. An apology should be just that; if you have reservations about it, then it isn't really an apology. I'm sure people use it to make their apology sound more sincere whereas, in my eyes, it has the reverse effect.
Even among the smallest sections of society, children, the apology is overplayed. Too often I hear parents saying, “well say sorry” rather than condemning the behaviour and making sure the child is aware that they have done a wrong. Brought up that way, children grow to assume that simply saying sorry puts things right. It doesn't. Doing wrong is doing wrong. Of course, in a way, it's how we learn and, of course, we all make mistakes but an unreserved apology does not remove our wrongdoing. The important thing is to teach young people to know right from wrong not to simply apologise every-time they do something wrong and then continue.
If nothing to cause me greater grumpiness arrives in the next seven days, the review and the idea of holding one, will be next week's topic. One final thought; if children have been naughty and upset others or done something wrong, then those charged with looking after them often take their phones away. I haven't seen that many tweets from the POTUS recently. Just saying.
February 26 2018
It's going to snow this coming week. Apart from announcing that the Queen will abdicate, I can't imagine anything that the media seem to find more surprising. Snow, winter, surely not. Front page news, high on the items in news broadcasts, no doubt shortly to be covered by social media too, it really does amaze an old grump like me. We had snow too you know. We coped with it. It was news when it happened but not so news worthy a few days before and neither did our trains stop running before the snow fell.
I find it hard to credit that train companies and others were not aware snow might fall but even allowing for that failing, surely they should continue to try to provide the service they are supposed to do. I went to school when snow was over a foot deep, buses ran, trains may have done but I didn't use them, and life went on as near to usual as we could manage. I've lived in a country where winter temperatures were regularly well below -10 and life went on, roads were drivable on, trams ran and people survived.
I find this modern world, so clever with its technology, but so pathetic when it comes to coping with normal conditions for the time of year. Maybe I will be proved wrong and we will all sail through winter weather as though it never happened.........and maybe I won't.
