Sunday 16 February 2020

Read to Elgar


Right. I must try harder not to give the wrong impression of our country to overseas readers, some of whom, after all, have plenty to complain about in their own country. Rather I should compare the benefits of living in the UK favourably to anywhere else.

Actually, that's exactly what I have done up until about three years ago. How many times have you heard people favourably comparing British TV with the English language American  equivalent? The BBC World Service has actually saved lives in the past.

I love our countryside. I love living in England despite the weather. I would never want to live somewhere which hardly has any distinct seasons, or had almost permanent sunshine.  I normally love the Winter here - I even said on a post in the Autumn how much I was looking forward to it - but somehow circumstances have produced the perfect storm of political and economic chaos  under a seemingly permanent downfall of water, blown horizontal by gale force winds. Denis, Ciara - roses by any other names would smell as sweet. My glass is half full - of rainwater.

Do you remember when American tourists in London would say how much they loved and admired our police? This was the Met they were talking about. Now the Met colludes with the media by doing things like raiding the home of Sir Cliff Richard on a whim, making sure that the BBC has plenty of time to hire a helicopter to film them during the operation, or they ruin the lives of innocent men by publicly naming them as paedophiles.

The Crown Prosecution Service will find plenty of excuses not to prosecute even if the police have - for once - provided enough strong evidence to do so, but will press ahead with a charge of assault against a Love Island presenter, despite her alleged victim asking them not to. She killed herself yesterday.

Oh yes, British TV. I've never seen a single episode of Love Island, but I did see a few Jeremy Kyle shows before one of his 'guests' killed himself after being harangued by Kyle on air.

I love Britain, which is why I cannot stand watching it being dumbed-down in order to gain popularity by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Everything is being dumbed-down, including politics - left and right, before you jump to conclusions.

If you have a list of the improvements to ordinary British peoples' lives over the last ten years, then please give it as a comment here. I need to believe that things are getting better, not worse.

11 comments:

  1. At least we're not on the road to disaster with Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne and Momentum.

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    1. By the way, the lowest common denominator politics that you so love to bandy about these days as something new has been around since at least 1971.

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    2. Of course it has, but can you honestly say that it has ever reached the height (or depths) that it has now? It is the instantaneously fast social media which is to blame, and that was not around in 1971. I am talking about the extremity and extent of it.

      The Met has not been squeaky clean either, but the difference is the blatancy. You can blame social media for that too. Lies have always told, but the biggest lies have been told in the last three years. Social manipulation has never been easier.
      Blair put me off Labour years ago, and Corbyn was a terrible swing in the opposite direction. I am glad he is not in too. I am not suicidal.

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    3. Yes agreed but I believe that the downward spiral, on and caused by both sides of the House, has been going on for years and I do not buy into the last three years as having made it any worse, apart from Brexit.

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    4. Yes, both sides of the House, which is why I keep saying that it has nothing to do with left versus right. I don't know why I am continually branded a leftie. '...apart from Brexit'. I was alluding to Brexit as causing the sharp acceleration downward. Once again, from all sides. They couldn't do anything but speculate at best and lie at worst - nobody knew what the hell would happen. They still don't. That's where the optimism versus pessimism comes into it.

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  2. At least in blogland we are keeping our lips stiff and our hearts stout

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    1. There'll always be a Blogland.... (stirring music)

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  3. Does everyone take the state of 'things' ' to mean 'how it affects them personally? If so then as a retired almost ninety citizen of the UK I can't say I feel too badly done by. There are plenty of pensioners who don't fall into my category of course, but I can't answer for them.

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    1. For me it is more general. It affects me personally because of the general effect. Us baby boomers have nothing to complain about really. No wars, the NHS, and a very much improved standard of living. It's the decline of culture that I really don't like. That, and how we are milked like cows.

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  4. I completely get you that it feels like a race to the bottom. I blame it firmly on TV. Reality TV to start with. It would seem only the stupid want to go on it. Have sex on TV in the name of getting famous (heck Kim Kardashian became famous because she had sex in a hot tub or pool with someone and it was leaked to the internet, now her younger sister is a billionaire!). Every kid thinks they are going to be a you tube or tik tok sensation. None of them want to be a scientist and cure cancer, or a nurse or doctor. Nope if you ask them most just say they want to be famous. We need TV to have programmes on that engage and are entertaining again. The world has gone mad. What years ago you would have been snubbed in the street for, is now something to be proud of. its all upside down

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    1. The instant celebrity thing is very strange. I have actually heard a child say, when she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, "A celebrity".

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