Why Dont You Blog?

This rant may well be more specific to the UK than the rest of the world, but as 32% of the visitors to this site are Brits, I can live with that . As I have mentioned, or at least alluded to, previously, I have spent a lot of time over the last few weeks driving up and down the UK’s motorways. This seems to have given me an insight into how truly awful most people are when it comes to driving.

In the south of England, I am actually now convinced less than 10% of the population have even passed a driving test. The stereotype of BMW drivers never bothering to indicate, let alone give way or maintain lane discipline, is massively accurate but needs to be expanded to include pretty much every second car on the road.

I could (almost) understand such lax habits on quiet country lanes where few (if any) cars will be going over 30MPH. It truly amazes me when people are driving like this in heavy traffic at speeds in excess of 70MPH (we wont discuss speed limits here…).

 (Update: It seems this has been added to Digg)

I am not sure why I have strayed into current affairs as a topic for debate here, but I promise this will be the last blog post I make on this topic (for a while at least…). Previously, I have ranted about the supposed “outrage” over the 15 sailors and marines held hostage by Iran being allowed to sell their stories, and about them wrongly being called cowards or a disgrace.

For people outside the UK, this may come across as little more than a parochial spat and, to be honest, I am amazed there is so little going on in the world that this is actually headline news. Again, today, I have spent most of the day listening to the radio. This is never a good thing, and especially so when I spend time listening to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 (he gets callers to call in on current affairs topics). I am also very aware that they will screen callers to ensure the cranks get more air time than they deserve.

Knowing all this doesn’t stop the idiocy and bigotry winding me up though. (Again, this is long so most is below the fold)

The BBC reported on some research on faith schools this week. LSE researchers supposedly found that faith schools got better results where there was competition for pupils. This isnt exactly surprising, league tables of exam results being so crucial now. Any school that needs to attract pupils has got to show it gets good results – something of a circular process.

This competition thing confirms that a lot of people aren’t sending their kids to “faith schools” because of faith.

It makes me think about the concept of selling your soul. Parents are selling their children’s souls to the highest bidder – the religion that can offer the best GCSE and A level results wins the prize. These must be the cheapest Faustian deals ever recorded. Didn’t the going rate used to be lordship of the earth or eternal life or something of that magnitude?

There were two interesting paragraphs, one encouraging and one depressing.

The research is published as the ATL teachers’ union attacks faith schools for a lack of accountability – and calls for them not to “discriminate” in their admissions process.

Conservative leader David Cameron and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne have recently said they intend to send their children to faith schools – a choice also taken by Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The first paragraph indicates some opposition to the apparent increasingly widespread supportfor religious schools, in our generally pretty godfree society. The second one shows how politicians – who can certainly afford to send their children to the most sought-after secular private schools -feel that it’s a better vote – winner to choose the religious option.

They know that people resent them buying their kids a “better” education. So they don’t want to be seen to send their kids to Eton any more. But, they are not going to risk their precious little Cressidas and Julians in the target-driven qualification factories that all parties are keen to turn state schools into. The faith school thing gets them off the hook, plus it hints at hidden depths of religious belief and morality.

That is, they are painting themselves of people of such deep faith that they won’t risk their children’s moral upbringing in non-religious state or private schools.

They must feel that this will make us trust them more.

It just makes them look even shadier and more hypocritical.

The good (in an odd way) funny Korean monster movie, “The Host,” sparked this post. The villains in this movie are all Americans. (I did say it was Korean, didn’t I?)

It’s certainly not a political movie, but it has an occasional wry political subtext. Part of which is that the villains – the pathologist who dumps the chemicals that create the monster; the doctor who lobotomises the ineffectual and narcoleptic hero Gang-du; and the military team who dump “Agent Yellow” on the monster and on the demonstrating students – are all Americans.

You don’t need a degree in Media Studies to work out that there’s something being communicated here.
Obviously, the Koreans have a long history of US involvement that’s left at best some ambivalence. You might expect them to cast American actors as villains. But it got me wondering why the villains in US TV and movies are always English men. It may be that the US public expects the Queen’s redcoats to turn up at any moment and demand all that unpaid tea tax plus interest. (After all, they have laws allowing each citizen the right to bear arms, on the off-chance that the UK will suddenly remember it used to be our most lucrative colony.)

Far from posing a threat, England has been uniquely co-operative – some would say slavish at points – to the US for well over 200 years. So why do they hate us so much that any male actor with an RSC-style delivery will never be out of work if he moves across the Atlantic? There is such a thing as bearing a grudge too long, surely.

Ah ha! They don’t hate us. They hate Europe. And we’re the only Europeans who speak a language they can understand.

Europe is big. It’s rich. If it stopped its internal squabbling long enough to look out for its continental interests, it would be the global superpower. Obviously, the European continent is, and has always been, a squabbling mass of tribes. We hate each other much more than the Americans hate us and we’ve had LOADS of practice.

Europe doesn’t act as a global ruler, so other countries don’t hate us much any more. In fact, we can project a sort of cuddly moral high ground image as the continent that has the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross and the International war crimes courts.
Other continents usually don’t speak English and would provide villains that might really feed on the anger of Americans. If every villain were Chinese or African or South American or Indian, there would be some reasonable questions raised about stirring up a nationalist frenzy. Europeans are OK because they aren’t going to war with us any time in the foreseeable future. That was “with” as in “against,” of course.

Aside: Why use British actors, at all? We all know that the average American 10- year-old can out act almost any British Shakespearean actor. In fact, our current TV and movie productions are generally so teeth-grindingly poor that we couldn’t compete against an evening’s HBO schedule with the best from a year’s worth of UK output. (You may be arguing “What about Mike Leigh or Ken Loach or the Office or whoever?” I said “generally.” ) Our films are so bad that we even infected Samuel L Jackson. He usually has the capacity to make even movie excreta watchable (e.g The Man) Put him and Robbie Carlyle (also a pretty good actor) together in a British movie and you have The 51st State. Need I say more? (OK, if I must then, Brad Pitt in some execrable London gangster movie where he was a gypsy bare-knuckle fighter) Point taken, I think.
Why do they hate us and yet let us humiliate their best actors? That will have to be another blog.

Just got this picture from another member of the blogging team at WhyDontYou.org.uk. After exhaustive research (Google images then) I think it’s a praying mantis? If anyone sees this and recognises it, please let us know.