Hmm, things I dislike in less than twelve hardback books - I'll try
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1) Political correctness - same as with just about everyone else. The idea that you can make an environment completely inoffensive to everyone is simply impossible; and the most annoying thing is that its exponents fail to realise that while they may be eliminating sources of ill feeling in some places, that is vastly overpowered by the resentment the PC movement itself causes. That's what democracy is all about - if enough people want something removed, then they'll tell you. Don't assume you know what everyone else thinks. This seems to be a general trend along the lines of the equal rights movements we used to see with regards to race, gender etc. The problem is, even though these problems have been removed to a fair degree, the people who support the movements are very slow to realise they have success, and they end up campaigning
against equality. This does filter down in a more amusing way with popular culture, I remember laughing at Spice girls fans and the idea of "girl power", apparently one had "girl power" because she felt she could do what she wanted. That's not girl power - that's called individuality. And I'm very sorry, but most people seem to have that without the need for a celebrity to inform them of the matter
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2) Animal cruelty - no, I'm not a tree hugger before anyone starts (far to prickly), but I'm talking about needlessly harming animals. To make things absolutely clear, I've nothing against the food industry or for that matter hunting for food, conservation etc, but killing or hurting animals for fun for instance. While very much sensationalism, the lengths fo cruelty some kids will go to for their own amusements is disgusting; decapitating pets, poisoning pigeons to watch them die, taping gerbils to fireworks and so on achieves nothing. I think it's just because people don't associate animals with human feelings, but it boils down to simple ignorance if you ask me. And while trying to avoid debate, I do include fox hunting in this; while I respect that traditions and sport are important, there is a line where these things exceed the boundries of ethics and I think fox hunting does go past this.
3) Hmm, I think I’ll be here all week if I keep up the detail, so I'll try to cut things down
. So, my next point is party politics, UK style. The idea of a democracy as I said is that the public are able to voice their concerns and have them listening to, and the role of parties is to provide a range of governmental ideas so that people can vote for who best represents their views. However, these days politicians, most notably the Conservatives, believe that they should actually get in government as their only goal. They are so obsessed with this that thy don't care that they aren't actually representing a set of views and policies, but just what the public thinks it wants at the time. As a result, many people think all the political parties are the same, and apathy ensues when politicians all reject their true values in favour of more popular policies.
4) Vocal ignoramuses - people who will be outspoken about a subject, despite lacking the knowledge to actually have an informed opinion. Bush is a good example, many people who seem to shout loudly against Bush (not here so much by the way), do so for the reason that's in the news at the time, at the moment Iraq. However, there is more to Bush than Iraq, and if you're going to complain against a foreign leader, you should learn about more than one single policy point. And the most annoying one to my mind is the anti-monarchy movement. I've heard loads about how the Royal family costs so much money, and that it's so unfair as they just get handed power, but to counter that many seem to think the role of the monarch is just to look nice at ceremonies and to swindle money out of tourists. The full range of duties, powers tradition and influence of the monarch seems to be lost on most of these people, but that doesn't stop them getting extensive support from their half formed ideas.
5) Yoof culture - mainly, the "rude boy" youth. Parodied depressingly accurately by Ali G (and even more depressingly emulating Ali G), the warped sense of coolness, which seems to rotate around shunning conventional values by simple virtue of them being conventional. Social responsibility, if they can understand such a complicated phrase, is non existent. These are the kids who are prepared to go to any length to fit in amongst other kids, and taking things to another level if they think it makes them look better. "Dat boys got a nife - I'll be da bomb if I get a gun" sort of thing, which has led to a dangerous glamorising of all sorts of antisocial, illogical and downright dangerous behaviour.
6) Selfishness - the me culture that is great for economic growth, but has I believe led to an increasing lack of social conscience. A lot of people feel compelled only to do things which directly benefit them, which goes against the ideas of charity and helping other people less fortunate them themselves. People who will not give any money to charity, because they need to buy some useless fashion accessory. Or the people who consider legal action as a simple means of income. They will sue anything which has money to get cash, and I’m incredibly annoyed at the way the police is used as bank by some people. If they have a complaint against the police, rather than simply make a complaint against them and allow lessons to be learnt, they then try and grab money from them. And I’m sure they will put however many tens of thousands of pounds they take would be used far better than if the police had it. The money these people take could easily be used to pay for more police, and to actually fight crime, but no, it gets given to idiots with no social conscience. Leading on to...
7) Freeloaders – similar to above, but people who don’t hoard their own wealth, but take what isn’t theirs. Abuse of the benefit systems has been complained about regularly here, with the modern youth striving to find new ways of getting cash from the government. The idea of benefits is to make sure everyone has a decent standard of living, even if they aren’t able to generate the wealth themselves. Some people however, see them as a nice bonus. While old people are being hit by ever decreasing pensions and vanishing private pension funds, money which could be used here is siphoned off to people who get unemployment because they’ve realised they don’t need to work or who simply don’t declare it etc. Now, I don’t work at the moment, and haven’t for a couple of months or so. Do I claim unemployment benefits? NO. Because I’m able to work but choose not to, I understand that I have no moral right to it, and so I allow that money to go where it’s actually deserved.
Economic migrants – not necessarily illegal immigrants, but the people this country attracts just to increase their personal standing. This is particularly problematic in my view with the highly skilled people such as doctors. The reasons for this is that with most things, the poorer a country is, the more valuable a skill will be. If a doctor works in their home country in the third world, their service may allow many people to live who would otherwise die, they may play a direct role in reducing disease in a community and s on. If they come here, Mrs Mills gets a couple of weeks knocked of her waiting list. Now while the latter may be better for Britain, the loss of the original country is often far greater than our gain and so is something we should be working to reduce, not encouraging. And economically, the way forward is to allow thirds world economies to grow and bring them up to our level, not to pile into the West and leave their countries to stagnate.
9) Confused legal systems – while not as bad i the UK as it is elsewhere, we do seem to be playing a catch up game. The news often mentions the disgustingly insubstantial sentences convicted criminals get in this country, with murderers and rapists getting put away for a short time before being let out, the idea being that it has to be compared with other sentences for other crimes. The problem is, the benchmark here is far too low. A crime twice as bad may well deserve a sentence twice as harsh as another crime, but if the sentence it is compared with is too lenient, then the higher sentence gets brought down too. And the judges complain when the home secretary tries to make life sentences mean more than ten years? It has to be said ti seems worse in the US; I recently read an article about self defence and how to communicate with the police. It put great emphasis that you should only provide short details to one officer before demanding to see a lawyer. It even said that if another police officer asked you something you should refer them to the first officer, all to avoid incriminating yourself for something. Elsewhere, a case against a rapist was thrown out because the judge quoted from the bible, supposedly making the trial void (or thereabouts). The fact that the man committed a crime was not considered. The whole point of the law is to dispense justice, but what’s the point if what you say is more important that the actual crime itself?
10) The EU – not in principle, as I believe the idea is a good one, but the implementation. Corruption is rife, and the dominant countries are allowed to bend the behaviour of the EU to suit themselves, CAP being a case in point. But largely it’s down to our own governments handling of our membership. The EU constitution is being forced through using blatant lies; even the Europeans have a referendum but we don’t, the government fobbing us off by saying that it isn’t significant and that we wouldn’t understand it anyway. The point of being the government is that they can educate us, if we don’t understand the constitution, the government should bloody well give us information so that we do. Even information drowned in spin is better than no information at all.
11) Did I mention Conservatives? Oh, I did
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12) I might be bothered to put 12 up tomorrow, but that’s it for now
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I never realised how easy going I was till now.
I mean all this techno and Hip-Hop and rap....grrrrrr. IF they want to play something loud, why not make it somethin like Zeppelin, pink floyd...even the cure, the smiths or Louis armstrong. And i know heaps of people will disagree with my personnal musical prefrences, I just mean play something that has a little skill, or at least not loud. It's basically the same as religion, if you like it, good for you, just don't try and enforce it on everyone else around you 