I was reading the Sunday Times last night and throughly enjoying other peoples world view. I don't see many strangers and I definately don't talk to them so it is pleasant to read the papers because it feels like a converation of sorts with the additional benefit that you can turn the page if things get boring which even I in my monumental rudeness would be loath to do in the middle of a face to face conversation.
Anyway, there I was reading all about peoples impression of the world today. Rosie Millard on modern mistresses and Giles Hattersley going on about the eco terrorism of the coke barons - do you know that to produce 1kg of cocaine one uses 200kg of very bad pesticides etc and the terrible ensuing effect on the environment. So now Mr H has given up coke on moral grounds and is now attempting to convert others in his social circle to his point of view. Poor thing was having a terrible struggle with it too.
Then I went to bed - only to wake up as soon as my head touched the pillow because in my mind's eye I saw a cartoon very much in the Punch genre of the middle classes up on a chair holding her skirts up and shrieking at several rats that lay in wait around her. One was the social underclass, one was eco terrorism, one was a coke baron etc. I wish I could draw, I'd send it in and few others beside.
These people seem to have a horror of so much and they seem so surprised at it all. They mourn the death of the possesive apostrophe as the symbol of all that is wrong with this nation's education and don't seem to realise that it was their 1970's right on, liberal minded, middle class, nanny mentality parents, dreaming up reading schemes that failed to teach reading, removing corporal punishment which effectively emasculated discipline in the classroom and eventually introduced league tables that so stressed out teachers that they now concentrate on tests rather than fostering a love of learning and the subject in question.
And on top of all of this they utterly fail [split infinitive - I know] to realise that none of this is new. There they are littered with degrees ( earned one might add when a university education actually meant something and wasn't the raddled whore that it is today, stripped of its worth and dignity and forced to work the gutters for the Thatcherite/Blairite mutant product that is our political system). They almost all live within spitting distance of some darn fine art galleries, so why don't they toddle off down to one and have a look at Hogarth, or if that's too much trouble read some Dickens and paddle for a bit in the cesspool of the Victorian rookeries. It is insane that they do not understand that the terrifing mob underclass have always been with us from the plebians of Rome to the spectral hoodies of today. And whereas at one time the unwashed mass might join the army or navy in search of three meals a day and all the grog it could sink and become cannon fodder as the price, now they litter our prisons coming out to face the same appalling future that their forefathers did. There is no solution barring a mass revival that traditionally tidied up the underclass. Roll out a new improved Salvation army asap.
Sorry for the rant but I needed to get it off my chest and it's not as if any of this is new either. Back to cooking, felt and spinning tomorrow.
Anyway, there I was reading all about peoples impression of the world today. Rosie Millard on modern mistresses and Giles Hattersley going on about the eco terrorism of the coke barons - do you know that to produce 1kg of cocaine one uses 200kg of very bad pesticides etc and the terrible ensuing effect on the environment. So now Mr H has given up coke on moral grounds and is now attempting to convert others in his social circle to his point of view. Poor thing was having a terrible struggle with it too.
Then I went to bed - only to wake up as soon as my head touched the pillow because in my mind's eye I saw a cartoon very much in the Punch genre of the middle classes up on a chair holding her skirts up and shrieking at several rats that lay in wait around her. One was the social underclass, one was eco terrorism, one was a coke baron etc. I wish I could draw, I'd send it in and few others beside.
These people seem to have a horror of so much and they seem so surprised at it all. They mourn the death of the possesive apostrophe as the symbol of all that is wrong with this nation's education and don't seem to realise that it was their 1970's right on, liberal minded, middle class, nanny mentality parents, dreaming up reading schemes that failed to teach reading, removing corporal punishment which effectively emasculated discipline in the classroom and eventually introduced league tables that so stressed out teachers that they now concentrate on tests rather than fostering a love of learning and the subject in question.
And on top of all of this they utterly fail [split infinitive - I know] to realise that none of this is new. There they are littered with degrees ( earned one might add when a university education actually meant something and wasn't the raddled whore that it is today, stripped of its worth and dignity and forced to work the gutters for the Thatcherite/Blairite mutant product that is our political system). They almost all live within spitting distance of some darn fine art galleries, so why don't they toddle off down to one and have a look at Hogarth, or if that's too much trouble read some Dickens and paddle for a bit in the cesspool of the Victorian rookeries. It is insane that they do not understand that the terrifing mob underclass have always been with us from the plebians of Rome to the spectral hoodies of today. And whereas at one time the unwashed mass might join the army or navy in search of three meals a day and all the grog it could sink and become cannon fodder as the price, now they litter our prisons coming out to face the same appalling future that their forefathers did. There is no solution barring a mass revival that traditionally tidied up the underclass. Roll out a new improved Salvation army asap.
Sorry for the rant but I needed to get it off my chest and it's not as if any of this is new either. Back to cooking, felt and spinning tomorrow.
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