SolarPlexus

“Young motorists are more likely than older people to take “extreme and life-threatening” risks while driving…”

Well I never! Really?

Non-news nuggets like this never cease to annoy me: the art of stating the bleeding obvious. It never hurts to highlight safety issues, especially in an area where there is a need for ongoing and drastic improvement. However, the smug complacency of whoever is driving the publicity smacks of an outfit that has so little passion for their ‘boggle’.

Public safety groups: if you’ve got an annual schedule of trying to promote your area of concern, please at least try to think about a new angle - you don’t have to do it that often, it shouldn’t be difficult.

Taking this piece as an example, it may have been more punchy to lead with the drug-taking statistics rather than, ‘young drivers take risks’.

I’ve never felt the need to storm away from my radio, for heaven’s sake, except for this morning. Nicky Campbell on Radio5Live had just started to cross-examine some blithering idiot representing a campaign against child poverty in the UK: Dare to Care. For once I was thankful for his ability to criticise Paxman-style, whereas normally I see this as a trait that makes complaints-where-none-exist for his TV vehicle, Watchdog. However, I saw red and had to scuttle away to my ablutions, treating the toilet cistern to a damn good thrashing whilst doing so.

Why? Because apparently the definition of child poverty in this country is the inability to attend a friend’s birthday party with a present.

The ‘logic’ behind this? Because as the world’s fifth largest economy our benchmark is higher.

Said blithering idiot tried to defend this position by saying that it was children who perceived poverty this way, and therefore as parents and adults we had to accept this, and more, we have to do something about it by raising awareness and supporting needy families. It was clear to me that this person had really rather cocked up by making this assertion, and at that point she wasn’t a particularly good evangelist for the campaign.

Any sane person could rebut with…

1. Children are not mature enough to correctly establish worth and value against a global scale. They may be intelligent enough to give the impression of grasping these issues, but need adult guidance to hone a system of values.
2. Children (and some adults, but that’s another bone of contention) will act like any selfish animal to obtain more of whatever they think they need. The adults’ task is to help them differentiate between ‘need’ and ‘want’.
3. Poverty is defined by the lack of the basics required for healthy human existence, and yes, this benchmark will change over time. 200 years ago we might have supposed the only prerequisites to be food, shelter and clothing. Nowadays we may sensibly add education, nurture and healthcare to that list.
4. Children may be victimised by their peers for not owning a mobile ‘phone, as I was victimised for not having Clark’s shoes or an Adidas sports bag. That does not mean that the victim is living in poverty. It simply means that the parents have exercised restraint against a coercive culture that seeks to make us all brand-ants. Or it simply means they’ve used their right to spend appropriately with limited resources.
5. Adults should be providing moral guidance, and helping children to arrive at a sensible value system - not the other way around! By all means listen to the views of children, but to recalibrate a poverty benchmark because of selfish, immature behaviour is clearly and demonstrably incorrect.

I could go on, but don’t feel I need to. Bottom line? This is just another example of the cart leading the horse: the problem is we have a culture that increasingly devalues basic, wholesome principles, and places undue importance on materialistic items of luxury. The answer is to educate, not shift the baseline.

I’m all for providing for the needs of children, and there are families in the UK that do need help for food, clothing, shelter and education - but if these things can be provided there should be no burden of responsibility to do more.

Just because I can’t afford to stump up £1000 for a school trip to the Italian Alps doesn’t mean our family is on the breadline. It means I’d rather put the money into a savings account to fund college education, or have to pay for a roof repair to keep us all warm.

The image sums up this evening’s mindset. So, um, I’d probably best let the pic do the talking. Catalyst for the thought process is the near-empty booze glass. Go on, do I have to join the sodding dots as well?

Today, the BBC reports on a call from teachers for Youtube to be shut down. The naïveté of such a request from a body that represents purportedly intelligent people staggers me.

The closure of a social networking site will not stop teacher/pupil bullying, though it will remove one outlet for it. So that’s good, the little sods will just resort to the old fallback of a turd through the letterbox. Let’s be clear: bullying is not on the increase because it has more outlets, it’s on the increase because of declining respect for authority, and a singular lack of discipline being applied to kids at an early age.

Youtube video bullying is the symptom, the disease is parental complacency.

It’s becoming typical of our society to call for symptomatic relief, rather than face up to the hard graft of long-term cures.

I’ve just visited my local Dollond & Aitchinson for an eyetest. I’d cycled there so was a bit warm but upon entering the shop the warm fog that met me wasn’t explained by my exertion.

Initially I thought the silly woofters had got the heating on. Yes, we’re having a crap July but it’s not cold. When I was asked to be seat myself in the middle of the shop I spied the culprit: a portable air-conditioner with it’s vent-trunk just lying across the floor!

I quipped that it was stuffy in the shop, but nice and cool in the square meter in front of the aircon. I was met with a puzzled stare - until I elaborated that they were chucking warm air back into the shop. At this point I decided not to explain that by using an electrical device to shift cool air from warm air they were making the air warmer because of the energy expended by the unit itself - that was an gcse physics lesson too far.

Their solution? Open the front door.
“…but it’s a noisy road out there!”, complained the receptionist as this was done.

Oh, for the love of Pete. We can get as many cars as we like off the roads, but if we don’t legislate against global aircon misuse (or just use?) then we may as well fart against thunder. I’m not dead against these devices - but I wish they’d be used sparingly and at minimum levels. What’s the point in getting the compartment temperature lower than you’d find comfortable in winter?!

The reverse should be applied to patio heaters…

Now, my radio station of choice for the morning just happens to be Smooth (nee Saga) so please don’t judge me too harshly. For waking up I like my news local, my music unchallenging, and my presenters subdued.

However, I’ve noticed that they’ve developed an annoying little format habit. Not content with a news bulletin every 30 mins, we get a summary of upcoming news every ten minutes or so. What? Yes, a summary. This takes the form of the newscaster saying something like, ‘…and in the news at 7.30 we discuss the three soldiers who died in Iraq last night…’. Yes, discuss.

Given that news bulletins on music stations are already terse little pockets of fact (and some may argue my use of the word ‘fact’ there), I find it hard to understand why you need to telegraph them with audio footnotes. I mean, they’re already bleeding summarised aren’t they? It’s not as if they’re going to give us a 15 minute news programme where there may be opportunity to get down and mucky with some real detail is it?

These stupid little precursors actually consume measurable airtime, to my mind wasting valuable music time on what is, after all, a bloody music station. I can just see the marketing meeting now, where some bozo suggested making the station sound more punchy, dynamic and with-it by plastering stupid space-fillers everywhere. Cobblers.

It’s part of the same malady we suffer when watching telly news these days. Sodding ticker-tape streamers at the bottom of the screen, optional multiscreen content, and all the time above this we have a ‘real’ programme that contains scant facts spun out over 30 minutes, repeat ad nauseum.

The next time you watch a TV news report amuse yourself by playing Count the Fact. Then measure this figure against how many minutes of spume were alongside it.

Heard recently on radio news - I can’t identify the source as my memory is crap, but trust me, it may be paraphrased but the sentiment is intact:

In response to the direct question, ‘…and how are you going to solve the problem?’, the useless answer was, ‘…we’re going to examine the problem, and then pursue the best way to solve the problem…’

What beggared belief was that this response was accepted as an appropriate answer, and the interviewer moved on. What shoddy times we live in.

Today, Paul Rainey’s excellent 2000ad Prog Slog raised a few points about meat rationing and so on. His phrase, “the plantation boss decides to punish his unruly staff by limiting the number of lumps of meat per portion of stew from ten to eight.” took my brain straight off-topic…

Brit cut-price food chain Iceland really needs to increase the lumps of meat in their pies to eight! The good lady MrsDelete purchased a box of their steak pies recently - for a £1. Don’t ask my why she thought this was a good idea, that’s another blog. But, however little you expect for a quid, I’d expect more from a product that claims to be “filled with juicy chunks of steak” than what you see here in the accompanying photograph…

And, hey! I’m being charitable, some of the gristle came from the pie MiniDoc was eating. So, one teaspoon of vaguely-meat looking stuff, and half a teaspoon of boingy bits. Nice.

I’ve nothing but sympathy for the British Navy personnel who are currently being held at Iran’s pleasure. It would seem that their captivity has become a lesser issue than that of which version of events is more accurate.

I noted with some surprise the language used in a service held in captive Faye Turney’s local church. The vicar was heard on national telly to say that ‘all our thoughts were with the captives and especially Faye Turney’. The BBC’s news page for this event doesn’t relay this part of the service.

I’m not against the idea of demonstrating support for a local resident but is it not odd for a Christian service to exhibit a less than Christian sentiment? The singling out of an individual, by requesting special favour in prayer to God, is morally wrong - whether you’re a religious adherent or not. I’d expect this kind of mistake from a member of the public, or a local newscaster, but not a presumably morally-educated spokesperson for the Church.

I hope that this was simply word misuse. To my mind the phrase is more acceptable with the word “including” instead of “especially” - but shouldn’t we expect Rev Sue Caddy to examine her words in detail before delivery? This was no simple Sunday service being dished out to a few townsfolk, it was treated to pre-arranged high-profile media exposure.

A trivial slip-up? Or an indicator of a more deeply rooted malady?

Wired News’ Tony Long explains that graphic novels are less worthy than “real” novels, in a stroke completely belittling the genius, intelligence and planning behind the creation of the graphic part of the equation. I replied, perhaps taking things to heart a little too much.

Footnote: since I’m reconstructing this blog from the old Blogger version, and editing the timestamp to maintain chronology, I can add crystal-ball type comments. I revisited this blog entry on the Wired site, and strangely all of the original comments have vanished, or been deleted. Odd.

“Today, we (the EU) are around three percentage points below 1990 levels, whereas the US emissions have risen by more than 30 per cent since 1990. And according to the US Department of Energy, US emissions are expected to rise further.”
Source: extract from a speech by John Bruton, EU Ambassador to the US, talking about CO2 emissions.

How can the Bush administration continue to hold the argument that to limit US emissions would damage the economy and cost jobs? Some hold the view that the human contribution to global warming has yet to be proved as significant. Regardless of significance, no-one can deny that our activity does have an effect.

Let’s be clear about this: global warming will damage the US (and world) economy all by itself. Adverse effects include damage caused by increasingly extreme weather; stress on water resources; public health; desertification and population migration, to name only a few.

I find it alarming that the world’s remaining superpower, the nation that has tasked itself the role of global policeman, continues to cock a snook at the rest of us. How can the so-called “developed world” take the moral high-ground when asking emerging industrial nations to clean up their act?

And before anyone claims that the EU’s emissions are not particularly small taken in isolation, I am all too aware of that. We can all do more to reduce resource squandering. Can any of us claim, hand-on-heart, that they’ve never made an unnecessary car journey?

Climate change awareness has to be our new religion.