L is for Look Left

Is it just me or does every third person you pass in the street have a mobile phone glued to their ear?


I think I'm turning into a grumpy old man but these tiny prophetic signs of doom niggle me. I mean is it absolutely necessary to be in a constant conversation with somebody who you probably saw in person five minutes ago? I grew up in a time when there were no mobile phones and no internet connection. If you wanted to connect with somebody you had to use your home phone or attach a message to a pigeon or nip across the road to use a telephone box. Yep I just said telephone box. Those strange alien looking things that are now either filled with second hand books or used for drug dealing and pissing in on a late night bender. I think everybody of a certain age can remember squeezing into a telephone box to hide from the rain or breaking up with somebody in one of them or stealing a quick fumble with somebody you shouldn't have.



Now the only thing people are fumbling with are their mobile phones. They don't even stop to cross the road. When I was a kid I remember the Green Cross Code Man telling everybody to look left and then right to make sure the road was clear. Now if they ever had to wheel him out of retirement he'd have to change it to Look Left, look Right and switch off your bloody phone.


Phones are a menace. Somebody is going to get run over one of these days in the middle of downloading a map of the Chinese Underground or while ordering a cheese and elder-flower sandwich from Butties4U.com. But is that the reason why everybody is on their phone? Are they really that desperate for human interaction or are they hiding something deeper? I think that it goes deeper than that. I propose that the real reason people have phones permanently glued to their ears is this.



They want to look like they are not on their own.



Read it and then read it again. It's more of a hunch. I'm no psycho analytic wizard but it's what I'm beginning to think. People don't want to be seen to be actually on their own anymore. It's not cool.


Maybe my hunch is a load of codswallop but I do know it can't be safe crossing a road with a pram and a dog and a phone stuck to your ear lobe.



And then there are drivers.


Drivers with mobiles stuck to their ears or (more often) on their laps.



It's dangerous. Very dangerous. But somehow the message isn't getting across. We need the equivalent of the Green Cross Code Man to tackle this problem or we need to bring back the good old telephone box or we need to bring them back and lock a few of these idiots inside them. Or maybe I need to get with the times and stop being so grumpy. I'll let you decide.








Written for the A to Z Blog Challenge.

K is for Knife-Edge

Tuesday, 14 April 2015

So I've caught up with Camp Nano but I'm behind a little bit with the A to Z Challenge so here goes for K.



It's Election time in the UK and the political parties are all over our TV like it's just been invented. You can't turn on the television at the moment without seeing David Cameron's smug face or Ed Miliband making love to the television cameras. One is smooth as silk and the other has been worked on so much by his team that he is nearly unrecognisable from the geeky, nervous guy that first won the Labour Nomination all those years ago. He is turning into a Tony Blair clone. He is talking and walking like him and soon he will probably be indistinct from the former leader.


But it's not all about looks. It's about content. This country has been through the worldwide recession and it's coming through the other end. But it's still on a knife-edge. The NHS is in turmoil. Immigration is such a hot potato that nobody wants to catch it in case they burn their hands. And we are still up to our knee-caps in debt.


But who are really on a knife-edge?


I'll tell you who. The Tories and the Labour and everyone else are banging on about their party being the party for the workers. It's the phrase that keeps falling out of their mouths every second. The workers. 'We are the party of the workers of the United Kingdom.'

They shout it from the rooftops. They fling the banner over their specially designed coaches and their pulpits. But listen to what they are saying.

Who is missing?



The unemployed. There you go, I've said it. The unemployed are missing. I have listened to them on TV, on the radio, on the internet, in the newspapers but where have they hidden the unemployed?


There are thousands of unemployed people in this country who are trying to scrape a life from themselves from the left overs of our society. But when do they ever get mentioned by Miliband? By Cameron? By any other faceless politician?

It's a dirty word. Unemployed. Isn't it? But they are the people that are on a Knife-Edge. Unemployed people and homeless people and other human beings on the fringes of our society. Human beings that politicians don't want to talk about in case they catch something. Not once have I heard the phrase 'job creation,' coming out of their mouths.



Yes there are many people who live their entire lived on benefits because it's what they do. It's what their families have always done. But a vast majority of unemployed people have fell down life's plughole and nobody is even attempting to scrape them out. Human beings in their 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's are on the scrap heap but who is talking about them.





Dear Mr Miliband/Blair & Mr Cameron are you?



Quit calling yourselves the party of the working people.











------


Written for this month's A to Z Challenge.