Thursday, May 15, 2008

Am I alone or are there other people out there who despair at the demise of Great Britain? So much has changed over the past thirty or forty years that the life I enjoyed as a child is no longer recognizable any more. Sometimes, I think that this change has been caused deliberately. It certainly seems so when you look at what has taken place.
Discipline in schools has more or less been eradicated and results in kids being disruptive and unwilling to learn. Teachers are almost powerless to keep order and a new phrase has been invented to excuse the little darlings' bad behaviour - ADD. This is the mnemonic for ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER. Apparently, it's an illness and can only be cured by sending it's sufferers on free holidays and "adventure" trips. It's Political Correctness gone mad. In my day, a quick swish of the ruler or the threat of a good hiding off the Headmaster cured it in a flash and the problem never raised it's ugly head again. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh but the wording is purely one of semantics but I think you get the gist.
At my grammar school in the early 1970's, there was a teacher there who put the fear of God into every pupil. I forget his actual surname but I remember that everyone referred to him by his nickname, Jack "Grinner", and he was Deputy Headmaster. A rather large man, tending toward the portly side with toussled hair and glasses - a rather imposing figure and woe betide the pupil who fell foul of Redditch County High's Jack Grinner! A summons to meet Grinner in his study was not something you would forget lightly - and it was not an episode you would wish to repeat unless you were wired up like some sort of masochistic psychopath. I only encountered Jack Grinner the once when I was punished with a detention one day on account of a miserable attempt at a History essay concerning the Babbington Plot. Jack Grinner took charge of the few after-school reprobates and bellowed at everyone and everything and me in particular and scared the living daylights out of us. I made up my mind there and then to knuckle down and, suffice to say, that was the one and only detention I ever received. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Unfortunately, there are no Jack Grinners any more. They've been put out to grass instead of out to stud, if such an analogy may be allowed.
Respect and discipline have gone out the window, thanks to Political Correctness. I would love to meet the advocators of this mumbo-jumbo and drag them off for a session with the nearest psychiatrist. In no time at all, I have no doubt that they'd be judged mentally insane and incarcerated in an asylum. This country is run by lunatics and caters for freaks and my last reserve of patience is finally running out.
I hate political correctness. These idiots are everywhere - in the schools, the universities, the Police Force, the Army, Government, the NHS, ad infinitum. You see instances of it every day and all around you. It runs in parallel with the Health and Safety Executive but is secretly bound together as one.
You can't train soldiers in boots any more. It hurts their little feet. And you can't shout at them either. That affects morale.
The police have to call criminals "Sir". There's no height restriction any more and you can join up even if you're three feet tall with buck teeth and glasses.
Council workmen now have to go on a training course to use a step-ladder and if you're an electrician working for any Government-sponsored body, you have to wear a mask if you want to snip the end off a bit of wire.
On a train, it's illegal for a single person to order more than two cups of coffee. In a hospital, you can't send the patient flowers. Apparently, the excuse is that the flowers take up the oxygen.
Huh? Come again? Flowers supply oxygen as any primary school kid will eagerly tell you. It's called photosynthesis. They may not know the equation but this is it.....

6H2O + 6CO2 ----------> C6H12O6+ 6O2

They must imagine that we are all stupid. These are just a few instances of where this country has gone stark, staring bonkers and I don't believe there will ever be a return to normality.
Only a short rant today I'm afraid. I almost forgot. I have to go off and write a letter. Not with my text-editor though - but with my portable, hand-held, black, ink inscriber.

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