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.

The Youth of Today

I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so here it goes:


I know living as a teenager in the UK isn’t such an easy venture these days, everyone assumes you’re either:

• A Drug User

• A Smoker

• An alcoholic

• A criminal

• Or, if all else fails, you’re simply pregnant

Now, I’m sure every teenager (except the drug using, smoking, pregnant criminals of course) will agree with me in saying that they hate being seen in this way most of the time. A first class example of this is public transport, only yesterday I got on the bus, and an elderly lady (bless her heart) decides to put her shopping on her seat so I cannot sit there, as I’m sure you can imagine, this made me angry, so I pulled out my knife and killed her.

Even the BBC are in on this stereotype (the impartial broadcaster, who doesn’t take sides in ANYTHING), I sit here flicking through the channels on Sky (yes, I have sky television, call me upper class and we can continue the discussion), and I come across the trash that is “Young, Dumb, and Living off Mum”. For those of you not aware of this broadcasting genius, it is a group of early twenty year olds, with no job who simply live off their parents who provide their little darlings with cigarettes and alcohol in the hope they’ll end up in a high end job in Central London. The programme then gives the little pumpkins more money to spend on cigarettes and alcohol, and in exchange they work in a café for a couple of hours a day, hoping that they’ll grow up and learn something new in the process, I found it hard to watch and not laugh at a particular blond twenty something who struggled to work a coffee machine, damn caffeine these days, can’t it just be simple?! Then, after the STRUGGLE of a day’s work, they come home to the nice house that the license payer has provided for them in our nation’s capital, and settle down to get royally hammered and throw condoms out the window, and then refuse to clear them out of the neighbour’s garden; curse you condoms for not staying in the place you’re told. No fun for you.

As I can’t bear enough of this stereotypical, mocking programme of British youth, I flick over to the ten o’clock news to hear floods affection millions in Pakistan, and then mudslides in China affecting thousands, and suddenly feel a certain disgust for the western comforts that we, the British youth, are accustomed to. For example, in the past twenty minutes, I’ve complained that a burger is too dry, and that there is a lack of ketchup in the cupboard, now as I see a fifteen year old boy going on sixteen screaming of his mother’s death in floodwaters, and he is left to look after his four brothers and sisters, I wolf down my burger appreciating it to its full potential, and perhaps it’s not totally the end of the world if I go without an oversweet condiment. I feel the guilt plunge into my body like a knife and immediately wonder how the rest of the world can live with themselves after seeing the devastating trouble that mother nature has caused elsewhere, and yet I’m sure Mr Cameron, and Mr Obama will be concentrating more on slamming their opposition into the floor and making sure they cling onto power; that’ll show floodwater!

I decide I can’t bear anymore of the devastation on the ten o’clock news and boot up a new web browser to look for a donation website to the floods and landslides, and then realise that I spent the last of my money on topping up my iTunes library (Steve Jobs beats everyone ladies and gentlemen, even flood victims), and swiftly click away from the site to my Facebook page. Ah, Facebook, the joys. Where the youth of today can post where they’re going, what they’re up to, what a resource! I, for one, rarely post a so called “status” because I don’t care about anyone else’s. I apologise if you’re one of those people who goes “Just watched Inception, was awesome lol rofl   :P” because I simply couldn’t care less, I don’t care that you’ve got a new dog or that you’re going to bed or that you had a good holiday. Call me grumpy, and maybe I’m using the thing wrong.

I’m sure by now you’ve realised I see the dark side of things, and are probably considering why I bother writing a blog, the truth is, I get frustrated with the world around us, I get frustrated that people don’t see cultural beauty, or don’t read great works of art. I get frustrated that people instantly call a lesson “boring” and don’t appreciate what they’re being taught and that their only concern is the phone under their desk texting their girlfriend that they “love” (at the age of 15, love is not a reality, it is a mask).

The message is, appreciate what’s around you, and be grateful for what you’ve got. Call me old fashioned, but that’s the way I see the world.