Do We Really Need Helicopter TV Shots?

One of the most ridiculous things about the ongoing talks to establish a stable government has been the disturbing noise of helicopters hovering overhead during interviews being carried out in the streets around Parliament.

Why are these helicopters needed? Does anybody really care about the views we get from these helicopters of people standing outside buildings or walking down the street? How much money is being wasted on these helicopters? I find it ridiculous that the BBC is wasting money on such a pointless and expensive toy.

Surely somebody at the BBC would stop and question if this is a sensible use of licence payers money.

Thoughts On Electoral Reform

It may be fate or simply synchronicity but this is the year we must have an election and also the last year of the Big Brother TV reality show. So why don’t we combine the two events and put all prospective candidates for Member Of Parliament in the big brother house? We would have to make sure they were not claiming expenses for the house while they were there, of course.

We could keep them there during the election campaign and for some time afterwards. It would make for fascinating television as they attacked each other. In fact it could be that only one would survive and he, or she, would have to be Prime Minister but the best part would surely be that the election would be held and they wouldn’t know the result.

It would be wonderful to see the losing side continuing to claim to be the only people who knew how to run the country even after we all knew they had lost. Can you imagine the fun we could all have watching those who claim to be so superior to the rest of us behaving like complete idiots. Oh, it sounds like so much fun.

Sadly I can see a flaw in this idea. Between the lot of them I doubt they could manage to run the house. They all admit they are incapable of running the Postal Service so they want to privatise it and we have seen what happens when they try to run the country so what likelihood is there that they could run the Big Brother house? They would probably all end up starving because none of them could sort out the feeding arrangements. I wonder if they would turn to cannibalism? They do say that politics is a dog-eat-dog world.

Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones But Words?

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. You know that saying? Goodness only knows who first came up with that.  The phrase has been around for at least 100 years and probably considerably more.

It isn’t true, of course, and we have all been hurt by words of derision, spite, jealousy and even the truth when we have seen how we may have been wrong to say or do certain things ourselves and been proved to have been naive, stupid or jut plain ignorant of the facts. We all make mistakes and we must expect to get some critisism when we do.

We try to laugh off those comments that hurt us but they do have an impact. Sometimes things are said in childhood that affect us subconciously for many years into adulthood and perhaps for all our lives. Words do have an impact.

So what if someone tells me I am a banana or a sozy twat? Should I be offended? Frankly I would find it rather amusing. What if they call me an Aussie, apart from being wrong, I would not feel it was derogatory or offensive, other than being wrongly attributed.

I remember the Falklands war and the Argentinians were referred to as Argies. It was, at that time, probably partly being used in a derogatory way but it was after all an abreviation of the word Argentinian. We talk about the French as being Frogs, the Germans as being Krauts, Americans Are Yanks and the Polish are Poles, so what is the problem with Pakistanis being called Pakis?

I understand that this is a term that was used mainly, for a time, with the intention that it would be considered derisory. It was, at that time, being used by people of limited brainpower to try to help them think they were better in some way.

Racial slurs have always been used that way and in any war or dispute there will always be a derogatory term used about the enemy when referring to them and such terms are probably used to try to convince ourselves we are better than them but that does not make the word unusable after the disagreement. Over time these terms can become friendly terms and perhaps even affectionate.  We Brits, (or should I say English?) have fought the French many times over the centuries, even though we were conquered by a Frenchman in 1066 but these days they are probably one of our greatest allies even though we continue to have disagreements and refer to them as frogs. I’m not sure what they refer to us as but I am sure they have their own pet name for us which may or may not be freindly. We did, after all, slaughter large numbers of them over the years and I’ll bet there are more than a few who still recall Agincourt and get upset about it. To be honest I feel bad about it too but times were very dfferent back then.

Couples give each other pet names, soldiers give themselves names for their regiments and others give them more derogatory names. Kids in school have names for other schools nearby and football teams even choose to have a name they are known by.

So given that it is human nature to call any other group by some sort of group name why would anyone object to being called a Paki? It is only that this was used by idiots in a way that they felt was derogatory yet it was, when used to refer to Pakistanis an accurate short form of the word Pakistani. If we are expected to assume that it is a derogatory term then the white, racist thugs have won and that would be a bad thing.

Any Pakistani should be proud of their heritage and they should be happy to be referred to as a Paki. We have so much Political Correctness around these days that it is destroying the most natural human behaviour like grouping people together and referring to them by a name.

We had several incidents reported in the media last year where someone had referred to someone else as a Paki and there was a huge fuss about it. It even included one of the royal princes. I’m not sure which one as they all look the same to me. He was referring to one of his comrades in the army and it was said in a friendly and warm way the way we might refer to a friend as a Brummie or a Southerner. It was not nasty, cruel or unkind and I would imagine the person it was aimed at considered it a warm and friendly way to be referred to. I know that I would not be offended in any way if a prince or anyone else,  spoke to me in such a way.

I am concerned that political correctness proves that the racial thugs won and that they succeeded in making something racially offensive that never was before they used it and should not be thought to be now. To the Pakistanis in England, Britain, The United Kingdom or anywhere else in the world I would say be proud of who you are and please let us forget that this term was once used by idiots in a derogatory way and let’s get on being humans again, using human traits such as referring to any groups as some phrase or another, as we always have done and always will.

There is no reason to be offended and considering such a term offensive is the only thing that makes it so. I sincerely hope nobody has been offended by anything I have said here. I would not want that to happen. My whole point is that none of these terms is offensive in it’s nature and by considering such terms offensive we reinforce the racial slurs the braindead racial thugs so desperately wanted everyone else to believe were significant.