It would appear (and it’s not even that close to Halloween yet) the general public of this great nation is being beset by a plague of scary clowns leaping out of the woodwork all over the shop to place the lieges in a state of fear and perturbation.
This trend, like so many others, started in the United States, of course and like many other deeply stupid ideas, has been taken up here in a particularly pitiful, sheep-like manner by those with nothing better to do with their time.
However, on the principle of life imitating art, or at least politics, what else are we to expect at the moment, given that our public life is being dominated, home and away, by a proliferation of what we can only realistically designate as clowns.
Wild-haired, loud-mouthed, menacing and screaming abuse at all and sundry, especially women and “foreigners”, they are in search of ways to make life harder for the rest of us.
It’s not that funny any more. In fact, it never really was. But I wonder if I’m alone in fearing that, ultimately, the joke just might be on us?
So much appears to be emanating, these days, from a default setting of threat, which is increasingly common in the experience of many people in the workplace and wider world.
Referenda-mad
And when, can I ask, did referenda become the answer to life and beyond any kind of reasonable challenge?
I vote in them because I have strong views about my duty to exercise the hard-won right to put my cross in the ballot box when required. But it doesn’t mean I think they’re up to very much as truly democratic exercises which reflect real life for all of us.
Whether you regard them as the infallible and unignorable voice of the people or as, basically, opinion polls on steroids and about as trustworthy, the fact remains we seem to be increasingly saddled with them as modes of absolute and final decision-making.
And they are surely far too simplistic to be followed to the letter, like the aforementioned sheep.
I do feel it is worth pointing out that you can accept a result you don’t agree with and try to make the best of it, without feeling you have to stop making the case for the opposing argument.
It’s the “people have spoken” and no one has the right to say otherwise aspect of this process that strikes me as more than slightly sinister, like the grimacing clowns of both types. One size – or one decision – does not and cannot fit all.
Before long, of course, we could all be living in the global version of Trumpton and the increasingly unpalatable fact is that none of us can do anything very much about it – although the voters and deeply undemocratic electoral colleges of America will make the bed we will all have to lie on.
In fact, the only thing the beleaguered individual can do is to continue to order by the crate. I can find no advantage in changing the habits of an (adult) lifetime.
Seeing what our so-called, self-designated “betters” are doing when they are, presumably, stone cold sober, I think we could be forgiven for assuming that we might be happier, if not much healthier, to be in a position where drink drives the human condition – even if the human in question isn’t in any condition to drive.
Sooty-gate
I see from the recently revealed cultural archives of the BBC that there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth back in the otherwise swinging 1960s about providing children’s favourite, Sooty, with a girlfriend.
To the pure, all is pure, it may be said but obviously, questions must already have been asked about the existing status of Andy Pandy, Teddy and Looby Loo, not to mention the Flowerpot Men and Little Weed.
Pursed lips and raised eyebrows abounded throughout Broadcasting House, it would appear, when this wild departure was suggested, so much so that the final decision eventually landed on the desk of the-then director general. It’s tough at the top.
Executives were apparently beset by pre-Whitehousian fears that the introduction of a lady bear would mean that “sex would be creeping into the programme”, with the final compromise being that a girlie could join the merry and hitherto unexceptionably innocent twosome of Sooty and his doggy chum, Sweep, “but they must never touch.”
Interestingly and deeply ironically, of course, the female interloper, eventually known as Soo, was depicted as a panda.
Given what we now know about the success rate of the breeding programme at our own Edinburgh Zoo, there was absolutely nothing to worry about on the hanky panky front.
But it does make one think, however, that if the broadcasting powers-that-be could get so prissily exercised about the perceived misbehaviour of a loveable glove puppet, what a pity it was they weren’t so picky when they turned a blind eye to the antics of Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.