Thursday, July 23, 2009

Woolly reactionaries

It is true (from personal experience) that things irritate you more as you get older. Hence the more you grumble and as older people are a vital market for TV, books and newspapers these grumbles are well represented in these media (media: plural not singular, that would irritate). But what gets my goat more than anything is grumbles about the wrong things.

People grumble about speed cameras when they should be grumbling about idiot drivers cutting in and out of traffic to gain a few yards in the queue at the next roadworks; they grumble about paying their licence fee for the BBC to put out politically correct woolly liberal programmes when they should be complaining about paying Rupert Murdoch for channels which put out twenty minutes of adverts and trailers every hour while sporting events which are part of our national heritage cost more money and are re-scheduled round maximising viewing figures. People grumble about immigrant workers when they should protest over obscene pay packets for directors. Then worse of all they grumble about people like me who try to point out the ignorant prejudice which they are displaying, calling us woolly liberals.

You want something that isn't woolly: OK, you're wrong. You haven't thought through what you're saying but are just repeating parrot fashion what you've read and heard. You are perpetuating old myths. But here's the rub: however hard you try you can't stop the continuous progress away from the past which you hold up as so golden towards a future which scares you shitless. Stick that in your reactionary columns.