Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

You guessed it; it’s that time of year again: the summer holidays! The time when everyone jets off somewhere hot in search of sun, away from dreary middle England, where it rains in august and there’s a Lib Dem in charge. This year I’ve finally seen the attraction of going away for two weeks in search of some peace and quiet, I’ll briefly outline why.


I’d become so frustrated with Britain and its conventions that I was counting down the hours until I could be set free into the world of the French. I’ve always loved France, and always will. I’ve looked into higher education over there, and it is starting to become a serious possibility for my future to live there. “Why France you madman!” you may cry “It’s full of frogs and snails!” I love France because it has common sense. Sure they simply can’t negotiate roundabouts and don’t stick around in a war, but I love it all the same.

For example, the culture of alcohol is a different universe across the channel, kids as young as ten sit up at the table sipping red wine and socialising with their extended families. If this happened in the UK there would be public uproar, and no doubt, an enquiry, and not to mention a 4 page spread in the Mail. There may even be a prosecution. This is simply irrational from the British system; yes we hear stories of groups of teenagers getting severely drunk in fields, and behind closed doors. This only happens because we haven’t been introduced to alcohol in moderation, and see it as a commodity when we get our hands on it without an adult in sight, the French youth however, think it ridiculous to drink until you’re paralytic, and the excuse I seem to get from all my close friends is “it’s well fun, something to do”. I always laugh in their faces when they say this, and walk off.

I come back to the point about common sense; the French simply don’t care if you have a quiet beer while the sun is setting with your parents, because they know that responsible adults aren’t going to fuel their pride and joy with alcohol until they collapse in a heap, and put the snaps taken of the night on Facebook. They won’t however, serve a group of teenagers late at night; they know where to draw the line between responsible and irresponsible.

The other thing I love about France is that on the whole, people are friendly, civil, and nice to you. If you don’t look like you don’t know where you’re going, they’ll offer you a word of advice, and if you ask them very nicely, they may even speak a bit of English to you. Only if you ask very nicely though. Over here, people walk with their heads down, headphones on and bury their faces in their coats. They don’t go out of their way to acknowledge someone’s smiling face, and don’t put in a friendly “Comment ça va?” even if they really don’t expect an answer. It’s the gesture that counts.

So when I returned to this great nation in the early hours of a Saturday morning, I felt a certain anticlimax to the whole affair, I came home expecting messages saying I’d been missed, and acquaintances asking after me when I was away; none of this was present when I got back, and I immediately yearned to return to the land of the French, where people appreciated your existence, and always smiled at if you walked past, if you look someone in the eye and smile over here they look at you like you just said “hey mate do you mind if I just have a little play with your bollock?”

Paris looks an exciting prospect for higher education.

Pointing the finger

Everyone likes a good rant. There’s no denying it, be it the weather, our parents, food prices or the unfairness of life. We have a thirst for deploring, complaining and blaming that we quench by offloading our built up emotions at the nearest acquaintance whether they have a morsel of interest or not. That’s just the way we are. However in philosophical and political sense, it’s just got out of hand. What we would usually gripe about in private is splashed over the papers. As a result we have this culture of endless bemoaning, blaming and ridiculing where such phrases as ‘society’s going to the dogs’ and ‘broken Britain’ pop up here and there. As a result we have endless scaremongering with no backbone and a culture where it is mundane to castigate the police and other services at every opportunity.

When you bring up a child they say that praise is as important and condemnation and the effects of the balance between the two are evident in the adult the child grows up to be. Well when the police service is old enough to leave home its going to have some self esteem issues to say the least. In the last year crime has decreased by 9% and in the last 15 years crime has almost halved. So I think a firm pat on the back for the police service is in order. However there’s still this ludicrous perception that crime is sky rocketing. A survey for the BCS in 2008/2009 shows that 3/4 Britons think crime has increased. This warped discernment is truly startling but what more should we expect when you have to dig into the depths of cyberspace to uncover such stats. Just imagine for a moment that crime had doubled in the last 15 years? We wouldn’t hear the end of it, uproar and anarchy would follow. I’m going to give the media a taste of their own medicine by placing the blame firmly on their doorsteps. What causes this allergy to praise? Is it ideologically driven by journalists or is that we just don’t like to hear good news? Whatever the reason, it’s deeply, deeply unfair.

I mentioned the police service as a victim of unjust admonishing in the introduction but that does not mean the service doesn’t have its faults. Efficiency can be improved as can punishments however these are not the areas where the weight of the criticism falls. The strain of it is balanced on the broad shoulders of individual police officers up and down the country. It is not the system that is criticised but individuals and events. There is not a better example than the Raoal Moat incident not so long ago. This man had murdered his ex-girlfriend’s partner and killed a police officer. The police were in pursuit of him as you may well remember when he turned the gun on himself shortly after being tasered. In true Britshness the uproar was imminent; an enquiry into how the police dealt with the incident was demanded. How awful that such a good honest man who was loved by everyone in the community should be tasered. Our friends the Daily Mail were at the forefront of this with a headline screaming ‘Raoul’s death was a public execution on live TV’. Ok, fair enough if it wasn’t coming from a paper which seems to demand criminals are hung drawn and quartered.

Don’t get me wrong, our society is far from perfect, and we can better ourselves significantly. There are pressing issues that need addressing; anti social behaviour, equality, racism and many more but if we are to achieve our goals then we need to work together and not against each other. We need to take our finger out of someone else’s face and raise it in the air, do our bit, help out, offer up ideas, and if not, well, then we need to learn to shut up.