Unimaginative Observations

I like to think of myself as quite a liberal and open minded person, who values human rights and freedom. I’d never advocate capital punishment, but sometimes it’s hard to repress it as an answer to dealing with some of the utter scum roaming the streets of this country.

A couple of weeks ago I made note of some mindless young vandals who had been urinating into fresh water tanks, or piercing them to deprive people of supplies during the flood crisis that had affected parts of England. As much as those idiots are contemptible, a story I read today about the actions of a gang of youths closer to home makes my blood boil with anger.

Say you were sat in your home, minding your own business when you heard something of a disturbance outside, you’d probably investigate, right? Now, imagine you take a look out of the window and see a gang of youths hanging around your property and vandalising your car… what would you do? Maybe you’d do what one poor chap in Warrington did this weekend and go outside to confront the gang and ask them just what the hell they’re doing. I doubt you’d expect to be killed for doing so.

What an appalling series of events, a man confronts a gang who are on his property, who are vandalising his vehicle and while he might have expected some cocky response before they moved on, instead they pounced on him like a pack of wild animals, beating him to the ground and assaulting him repeatedly, kicking him, punching him and stamping on him, until they killed him. Just a few feet away, probably pleading helplessly with the gang- a group of fifteen hooded idiots, were his wife and three daughters. Fifteen boys versus a forty-seven year old man, with his family in audience.

I can’t even begin to comprehend what is going on in the minds of these people, one can grasp at straws and try to blame alcohol, or drugs and sure, maybe that was a factor. But I drink, and get sometimes I get very drunk… but I’ve never felt the urge to do anything violent, ever. There’s more to the rise of this kind of anti-social, sometimes shockingly sickening behaviour than alcohol and drug abuse, there must be.

I often scoff at the stories of times passed that my granddad tells me, about the different kinds of punishment and deterrents in place which apparently controlled the behaviour of youths to some extent, at times it sounds barbaric. But have we gone too far in the wrong direction? I’m not suggesting ‘bring back whipping’ or any kind of heavy corporal punishment but there’s no escaping the fact that the vast majority of these crimes are committed by the under-20’s- and we don’t seem to be doing anything about it. What happened to this man in Warrington at the weekend wasn’t a one off, and it’s only a matter of time until it happens again, and again- they’ll catch some of the perpetrators I’m sure, throw them in prison with sentences of ten years or less then let them out after serving a third of that to commit more crimes. Something has to change… my sensibilities are just in conflict as to suggest what it is that needs to be done- what do you reckon?

But not those fine folks over at Walker’s Crisps. They proudly proclaim on the back of their recently redesigned packaging that while we’re all complaining about the rain, they can’t get enough of it. More rain means more potatoes apparently. Bad timing, Walkers.

We’ve been lucky here in Manchester really and managed to avoid the torrential downpours which have brought some extreme flooding to most of the country, which is rather ironic for a city affectionately labelled as the ‘rainy’ one by many. Who am I kidding? We’ve had some horrendous downpours, fortunately though most of it hasn’t sat. Around the country, the official response to the flooding has hardly been admirable in the last few weeks, but the armed forces have been doing a remarkable job, whether it’s the RAF in their Sea King helicopters rescuing trapped families, or the army distributing millions of litres of bottled water to some of the most badly affected areas.

But while some areas are thankfully getting back on their feet, in others it’s not only the flooded streets and lack of electricity that are causing problems. It’s the sub-human, cretinous little vandals who I can only label as clinically braindead. There are people whose homes have been ruined, property destroyed and lives thrown into disarray by the flooding, who have no electricity or even running water thanks to treatment plants and electrical sub-stations (intelligently) built on flood plains becoming disrupted, and what do these moronic idiots roaming the streets with nothing better to do inflict upon them? Looting homes, stealing cars and perhaps most bizarrely, vandalising emergency fresh water tanks which have been placed in areas where running water might not be restored for up to a week. Where does anyone get off on doing that? These idiots have actually put some effort into attacking and piercing the tanks, for what? To deprive their neighbours of drinking water? It’s disgusting, but just another example of the kind of people this country is nurturing right now.

I could get philosophical at this point, and reflect on the fact there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who live in worse conditions every day of their life, who always drink from dirty water and never enjoy the luxuries afforded to even the poorest families in this country. But that’s another blog altogether, and it’ll only make me even angrier than the low lives closer to home do.

I need to write a book. Or Seven.

I guess I’ll never comprehend what drives people to queue through the night just to get their hands on a product that won’t be sold out in the morning, even if tens of millions of copies do fly off the shelves in a single day. What’s all the more amazing to me is what they’re queueing for, we’re not talking about a recently discovered, never before published, literary masterpiece from Shakespeare, but (another) sequel to a rather lacklustre series of not-so-original books chronicling the adventures of a not-so-original character and his band of not-so-original friends. I’ve tried to read the books, I’ve tried to watch the films but I just don’t seem to get caught up in he hype that is Harry Potter.

I’ve been rather disturbed by the level of racket surrounding the latest book in the series, apparently the last (thank god), though I’m sure that J.K. Rowling and her publishers have been lapping it up. I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but in the UK many stores have been undercutting each other to the extent they’re selling the book at a massive loss, probably in some desperate attempt to entice customers into their stores to buy something else. I wasn’t surprised to walk into ASDA-Walmart and find huge banners advertising a sale price of £5 (RRP £17.99), pointing shoppers to the book section in the furthest corner of the store. While ultimately the customer wins, it’s another case of the supermarkets ruining it for everyone else in business, now that they have their dirty fingers in the sales of every single type of tangible product available to the country. I feel sorry for the legitimate bookshops that are forced to either match these ridiculous prices or not sell the book at all. How long can this kind of idiocy across different markets continue? At least J.K. and her publishers get their cut, and the supermarkets can claim yet another increase in their ever expanding market share.

Maybe I’m missing something, there seem to be millions of other adults (and kids?) who thoroughly enjoy the series and empathise with its characters and the world which contains them, but from what I’ve read and seen it all feels a little… unchallenging. It’s amazing what marketing hype can do, and regardless of actual quality there’s no doubt that the insane price wars all over the world have contributed to the indubitably amazing success the latest addition to the series has had. Or maybe it just is that good, what do I know?

We might not have the ungainly sight of a thousand chimney stacks pumping dirty, lung destroying smoke onto the streets of England any more, but something just as nauseating has reared its head of late.

I was so pleased that all throughout the country those smokers have been turfed out on the street to partake in their nasty habit and leave those of us who like the taste of fresh air, food and drink to breathe in peace. But I’m somewhat disgusted by a nasty side effect that it has created, one we really should have seen coming a mile off.

There are cigarette stubs everywhere, and if there’s one thing that really makes me feel sick it’s the sight of a pile of dirty, stinking cigarette stubs. I don’t know which particular phenomenon disgusts me more, is it attempting to walk into a pub and having to battle my way though a cloud of toxic gas while trying not to slip on the carpet of discarded cigarette ends on the pavement beneath me, or walking past a street-side waste bin on which a thousand cigarettes have been extinguished in a continuously growing mountain of stubs- why can’t they just throw them into the bin once they’ve put them out instead of leaving them on top like that? I think they’re doing it on purpose, some kind of rebellion to make a misery the lives of those who have chosen not to inhale carcinogenic fumes into their lungs if they can avoid it. That, or they’re just dirty, lazy buggers with no respect for their surroundings or the people around them whatsoever.

I’ve never been a smoker, never will be, so it’s practically impossible for me to empathise with the position many of them are presenting in response to the ban, that they’re being discriminated against, oppressed and almost laughably, are victim of human rights violations. It’s ignorant, more than anything. No one has taken away their right to smoke, but now they can’t do it in an environment where it is harmful to other persons, which just so happens to be any public enclosed space in the country. Ah well, there’s plenty of room outdoors, now we just need to teach them how to use the bin!