Craving common sense

Yesterday, long before the eleventh hour, at which the majority of the nation - the exceptions being some juvenile idiots and some contemptuous Islamists - observed the time-honoured two-minutes of silent contemplation of the only true 'ultimate sacrifice', I encountered an article about sugar addiction.

Alice Smellie [yes, I know!] says she used to consume six stones of the stuff a year, admittedly not by direct addition but by ignorance of how much sugar is hidden in everyday food and drink. Okay, we all eat too much sugar, but 'addicted'? Come on! She claims withdrawal symptoms ensued after she regulated her intake, but then homeopaths claim their remedies - and not just the placebo effect - can cure cancer!

Disengagement from habitual over-indulgence in pretty much anything will cause withdrawal symptoms. Teenagers get bored when their ration of mind-numbing computer time-wasting comes to an end. Parents get hangovers the day after they've had a couple 'to take the edge off'. The news media are going to have one hell of a jolt back to reality when all the millions of prowling paedophiles have been finally rounded up. But, addiction?

I'm not knocking what Alice has done; far from it. I know we eat way too much added, processed sugar. But I'm buggered if I'm going to stand idly by and let yet another 'addiction' enter the national consciousness. How long before some doctor, somewhere, writes a sick note for sugar addiction withdrawal, prescribes diet Coke and bed rest and spawns a whole new avenue for skiving off and claiming disability?

When it comes down to it, true addiction is rare and what most people imagine as addiction is nothing, more or less, than lacking the will power (or inclination) to give something up. From chocolate, to cigarettes, from coffee to alcohol, from gaming to gambling and from pain-killers to heroin, we use and sometimes abuse; because we can, because it gives us pleasure and because, in the main, it doesn't do a great deal of harm.

But once we recognise we have a habit we are reluctant to eschew, we all too readily rely on 'the guvmint' to do something about our habit. Calling it an addiction legitimises what may otherwise be shameful. Use the word 'addict' and suddenly it's not your fault any more; you're a helpless victim of a cruel and uninvited assault on your feeble body and mind, powerless to resist without plenty of soothing public money to dress your wounds.

Maybe the sign of real addiction is denial. The people in trouble who do need help are those who don't ask for it, - not those who embrace it as an excuse. For the record I am NOT addicted to Twitter!

Say again?

I am no enemy of ‘green’ technologies. I say ‘green’ in quotes because it’s rare that we use any of the Earth’s resources in ways that are truly wise and don’t have an overall negative impact on somebody along the way. Often, Green proponents are dreamers, just as hell-bent as other causes on forcing their policies on those who don’t agree and rarely managing to make a real case. But, if there IS a case for using a low-impact energy source, I’m all for it.

This weekend a story about EU green energy policy caught my eye: Apparently, David Cameron backs the EU's grand design for energy. I’m not entirely sure what his backing of that ‘grand design’ really means, so I am inclined to try and find somebody who really knows. But I know that’s not going to be possible; nobody with interests in the green energy industry will tell you the objective truth. 

Some of you know that I teach electricians for a living. They don't, in the main, understand what electricity really is, how it does what it does and alarmingly, how to make it safe. Although they may do an excellent job of repeating what they have been shown, they REALLY don't understand generation, transmission or storage of electricity. So there’s no point in you asking an electrician. 

David Cameron won’t have asked any electricians either. Neither will he have consulted any engineers, because politics and cold hard facts just don’t mix. No, he will have been advised by ‘advisors’ (again, in quotes) and who will those advisors ALWAYS turn out to have been? That’s right, lobbyists for the technologies they promote… Directors of ‘green’ technology companies, or their willing dupes. 

Humans are on record as being profligate, poor decision-makers. We barely listen to the arguments and then return to our knee-jerk first choice. Or we work out we can’t afford that car/jewellery/suit/suite… and buy it anyway. It’s partly because our true nature is reactive, rather than contemplative, but even so that’s hardly an excuse in government. 

With my sparkies I tell them, tell them again, get them to repeat it several times, then tell them again. Then when I ask them what I just told them they often reply, “Sorry, what?” It’s the calculators in primary school argument all over again; there is no substitute for hard graft and if you don’t grasp the fundamentals you just aren’t ready for the rest. 

A politician is unlikely to be able to grasp the technical principles behind policies he is being lobbied to promote. But he can at least ask again. And then again and again until that chink of light appears. 

So, Mr Cameron, before you engage in yet more unnecessary spending of money we can’t afford in pursuit of ideals we generally don’t hold, achieved by means we don’t really understand and making profits for anybody but us, you might want to hang on to this handy crib-sheet of questions for the green lobbyists:

DOES it work? HOW does it work? Can you PROVE to me that it works? How much will it COST in total to set up? How long will it last? What will it save? If it doesn’t save anything, why should we consider it? How many jobs will be lost? How many of the jobs created will go to British workers? Can you prove all of that? If not, why are you here? Now, tell me again why you’re asking for public money? If it’s as good as you claim it is, surely you can get private funding? Next! 

Next... Ah yes, the European Union. Tell me Mrs Merkel, “DOES it work? HOW does it work? Can you PROVE to me that it works? How much will it COST?...”

Life's hard... then you die.

I just caught a snippet of what passes as 'news' on BBC Breakfast as I sipped coffee and planned my day.

Former schoolboy crush, Maggie Philbin was earnestly discussing the use of calculators in primary schools with a no-doubt lovely, but a bit wet and dithery teacher of the sort we'd have eaten for breakfast, back in the days when schools were for education rather than indoctrination. I believe the cases for and against the use of calculators are both settled and a matter of common sense; over-reliance on tools before you understand what they do is palpably not helping.

But the more interesting aspect of the discussion was their use of words; words and phrases like 'enjoy' or 'make lessons more fun' which put the emphasis on the teacher to entertain, rather than teach. Is it any wonder we have people who grow up to expect life to be one endless round of giddy delights, instead of the mixture of pain and pleasure we actually endure?

Some animals on earth seem to have a life of pastoral ease, grazing away until the predator pounces or old age or starvation or drought takes its toll. They shudder, roll over and die. Did they enjoy life? Do eggs taste better from happier hens? [Bad reversed joke alert: What's a hen do? Practice the oldest living religion - baboom-tish. Sorry.] What's the point of life? There appears to be no point whatsoever other than that which we make for ourselves.

And I believe we get more pleasure and reward in every sense from that which we achieve by our own efforts. People put up with unimaginable hardships to cross frozen continents, to climb airless mountains or starve themselves in search of enlightenment, truth and triumph. Schooling, formal and otherwise, should give us the personal tools to set out on our own journeys. Education should prepare us to meet the world, a world where shit happens and sometimes there is nobody at our back.

So, sod the fun. Teach them the skills and teach them that life isn't a bed of roses, a basket of cherries or a box of bloody chocolates. The fun comes after you've learned to deal with the other stuff.

Then you die.

English. Don't let it die of ignorance

Every day we mangle our precious language. We use words we don’t understand, or use the wrong words to describe what we might not mean. Occasionally, hilarious clangers, such as ‘escape goat’, remind us how little care we take over verbal expression, or how reluctant we are to challenge received Norman Wisdom.

Other examples of misused phrases include ‘for all intensive purposes’, ‘play it by year’ and ‘that’s a mute point’. Add to the mix the proliferation of so-called management speak - meaningless pumped up expressions that allow corporate clones to miscommunicate with each other - and we are perilously close to little more than grunting… albeit in a form of English. 

If I ever hear utterly redundant phrases such as ‘going forward’, or tautology like ‘me, personally’ or the ridiculous ‘from the get go’ I know the speaker has nothing to say and will use too many words to say it. I’ve already closed my ears and pretty soon my eyelids will follow suit. I’ve been known to snore loudly in meetings and not miss a single important thing. 

We also use phrases from the past whose origins are lost. How can ‘now then’ mean ‘hello’, for instance? But, English changes; all languages change with common usage. Useful phrases from one age – ‘balls out, ‘big-wig’, ‘dyed in the wool’ – often survive with their meanings intact, while others die out altogether or change their meaning. I’m not against change; I’m against wrong. 

And the wrongest of wrongs must surely be the ubiquitous ‘should of/would of/could of/must of’ and any other variants you can think of. Wrong because it is simply incorrect; but even more wrong because users don’t seem to realise it. You hear it pronounced ‘of’ instead of have, which is bad enough but far too often you see it written down, even in newspapers and official documents. It’s only a matter of time before the OED lists it as acceptable. 

This is how propaganda works. Say it often enough and loud enough and eventually people will accept as true something which palpably isn’t. The Conservative political philosophy is as far from being evil as you can get, but Tory may as well be pronounced ‘Lucifer’ for many. Labour’s fiscal policies are demonstrably unworkable, unfair and destructive, yet somehow ‘welfare dependency’ is interpreted as caring. 

If you can’t even be bothered to check whether what you say means what you intended, what are the chances you’ll bother to check the provenance of the news of the day? Ignorance breeds more ignorance and eventually the truth is lost altogether. How else did the gigantic despotic experiments of the twentieth century get off the ground? 

The USA has just had its say and produced an outcome many disagree with and some even fear. But at least the USA IS one nation with no real threat to its identity. But a United States of Europe? English isn't just a language, it's a whole way of life. We should of got out when we had the chance...

It's ALL about the money - ker-ching, ker-ching

While everybody is banging on about the living wage it’s convenient to forget that money is an abstract, constructed by man in order to trade. It’s also probably the closest thing we've got to an accurate measure of exactly what somebody is worth – morally fair or not - to the society in which they live.

We each accrue what we are able, by whatever means we have at our disposal. So, if increasing numbers of people who go out to work are unable to live within their means it can only mean that our society does not value their labours. Let’s look at a few numbers… (Where’s Carol Vorderman when you need her?) 

The proposed living wage, outside London, is calculated at £7.45 per hour, presumably based on a 37.5 hour EU working time directive week. That’s a little over £14,500 per year. Take off Income Tax and National Insurance and you’re left with around £11,500 or £220 a week. You’re not worth a whole lot, are you? And after a rise in wages pushes up the price of goods – because it’s the economy, stupid – you’ll be worth even less. 

Contrast that with a family of non-workers having their benefits ‘ruthlessly’ capped by the Nasty, Nasty Tories at a mere £26,500 or £500 a week. So, let me get this straight… in effect the Labour party are opposing any reduction in benefits received while pushing for workers to survive on less than half the proposed reduced benefit ceiling? 

And then of course, a disproportionate amount of government spending goes to stopping some welfare-dependent families from eating their own kids, succumbing to various addictions, spreading disease and making the whole country look untidy. No wonder they think working is a mug’s game. It doesn't seem to make sense, does it? But then, nothing does in Socialism. 

And when all the social spending doesn't work – and it rarely seems to – we take them off benefits and bang them up in jail. Well, if it costs £47,000 a year to keep a man in prison that means they accrue some £900 a week of national wealth merely to keep them off the streets. Crime don't pay? 

Following, so far? A quick summary then, of your net worth to the country as it stands: 

• Honest worker = £220 p.w.
• Unemployable layabout = £500 p.w.
• Nasty thieving bastard = £900 p.w.

It seems pretty clear to me that this is arse-about-face and it has to change. LESS should be spent on the non-productive and the unwanted. Prison should be hard and cheap – lock ‘em up & make ‘em work to survive. Benefits should be bloody difficult to come by unless you’re genuinely needy. And work should pay enough to live a reasonable life. Who can possibly argue that this isn't how it should be?

I've got my eye on you... one false move...

But there’s no way we’re going to be able to get to that position with a population fast approaching 70 million. So, unless anybody has a better answer than my oft-proposed cull, I’ll be away to ready the snipers.