Thoughts from a Grumpy Old Man

I read an article today on the interweb about the train strike that’s going on in and around London at the moment.

The headline to the article was ‘Tube Strike Brings Mayhem And Misery’ and I couldn’t help but laugh at the scale of the exaggeration from the author: typical of most of our London-based media when the story involves the capital city.

A quick ‘definition’ search of the words Mayhem and Misery using Google returned the following:

Mayhem: the wilful and unlawful crippling or mutilation of another person
Misery: a state of ill-being due to affliction or misfortune

Perhaps a more appropriate – but obviously less eye-catching - headline would have been ‘Tube Strike Brings Inconvenience and Frustration’

My advice - use the bus.


As I was flicking around the TV channels last night while the Premier League Bowls was on an advert break I came across a programme – I didn’t catch the name of it – that had a fairly simple and yet intriguing format: to interview what I believe are referred to these days as ‘young people’ (late teens), ask them simple questions, then sit back and marvel (!) at the responses.

One such question was ‘how do you spell elephant?’: one young lady suggested it was e-l-p-a-n-t, whilst one gentleman wasn’t sure if there were 1 or 2 f’s.

Another question was ‘what is 8 x 8?’ – you can imagine the answers I’m sure, needless to say there were plenty of answers that didn’t even come close.

My favourite question and answer though was ‘what is the capital of Spain’ to which one fellow responded ‘Holland’. Really, ‘Holland’.

Quite remarkable and yet I would hazard a guess that at least half of these 'young people' are currently enjoying a university education.

Marvelous.