Monday Moan 59

WHAT’S THE FORECAST FOR THE WEEKEND?

Maybe the weather forecasters are suffering a little lack of confidence after recent weeks where their pronouncements have been wide of the mark, but come on guys, you have to be a bit more courageous than the forecaster who last Friday could only manage to commit himself to “the weekend is looking mixed”.

10/10 for accuracy.  0/10 for usefulness.

 

NO LONGER JUST SUNDAY DRIVERS

For as long as I can remember it has been customary to label anyone whose driving appears hesitant as being a ‘Sunday driver’.  In other words, they are not used to driving in traffic like all those experienced people who have to drive every day. Even on a Sunday, when the roads are not as busy as the rest of the week, they don’t know how to keep up with the traffic, they poodle along well below the speed limit, they are hesitant about turnings or roundabouts. In other words, they get in your way.

 

It seems to me that this is now a thing of the past.  Traffic on Sundays hardly seems any lighter than the rest of the week these days. Where are they all going at all hours of the day?  Why are there so many people on the roads even at Sunday lunchtime?  Surely, if they are visiting people, or going to meet people, they should be there by then?

 

More importantly, and now that I am ‘retired’ I have to phrase this carefully, the people who might previously have been labelled as ‘Sunday drivers’ now appear to be out on the roads every day of the week.  By and large (careful here) they seem to be people of advancing years. They pull out in front of you when it is clear (to anyone who can see properly and, probably more importantly, can judge speed and distance) that it is unsafe to do so. They then potter along, never going faster than 5 mph below the speed limit, looking for all the world as if they are going to turn off at every road junction, only to carry on when they realise this wasn’t the turning they wanted.

 

I’d shout at them if I thought they could hear. I’d gesticulate at them if I thought they were ever likely to look in their rear-view mirrors. And I need to remember to add 20% to my expected journey times to compensate for their presence.

 

And when I become one of them ……… you can all just eat my exhaust.

 

GIVING US A BAD NAME

I sing for my pleasure. I love being part of a fantastic choir.  I know some wonderful people through this passion and consider them all to be perfectly normal and likeable people.

 

But I cringe when I see or hear some singers who clearly think they are very clever, important or funny when actually, they are just being pretentious and/or embarrassing.

 

Step forward the Edinburgh Complaints Choir.  Formed specifically for the Edinburgh Festival, but based on a ‘concept’ originating in Finland, this choir sings its complaints about the city.  The BBC thought this a suitable ‘filler’ to slot into the Today Programme last week, and followed up a time-wasting interview with the choir’s director before 7am with an invitation to listeners to email in with suggestions for complaints that the choir would then put together and perform before the end of the programme. 

 

I listened to the later performance to see if they had included my suggestion to include something on “pointless, boring and contrived items on the Today programme”, but don’t think it was mentioned.  See if you can hear it here.

 

 

DON'T RUSH BACK ON OUR ACCOUNT

Like it or not, much of what is considered to be ‘newsworthy’ revolves around political stories.  Rail as we might about the unbearable smugness and self-importance of so many of our politicians, the fact remains that the mainstream media, both written and broadcast, not only provides the oxygen of publicity to these people, it panders to their vanity.

 

Thus it is that for most of us, the summer months are a period where we ought to be able to read the papers, watch the television, or listen to the radio without having to listen to some puffed up MP or other, or some Minister or Opposition spokesperson boring us rigid with something they consider highly important.  It should be a time where real news comes to the fore, and where we might be lucky enough to hear more about what is going on in the rest of the world and not just what is happening in this country.

 

Unfortunately, journalists seem to enjoy a long holiday as much as the politicians, and so instead of a golden and enjoyable break from the nonsense we get sloppy, lazy journalism.  They all seem to subscribe to the notion that this is the ‘silly season’ where they can get away with pieces that wouldn’t get anywhere near the frontline in the rest of the year.  Someone said on the radio the other day that this was a classic ‘August story’, as if that justified it being aired.

 

Does the world stop revolving because Whitehall and Westminster empty during the summer?  Doesn’t anything happen anywhere else in the UK, let alone the rest of the world, that is interesting enough for us to be told about it?  

 

Apparently not.