What is wrong with people?

When I think about the people I share this country with, I feel two emotions: shame at being British and a massive desire to leave Britain permanently.

I believe Holland is nice.

Yesterday, I was listening to a conversation between two people I respect and admire. They were discussing the Carol Thatcher/golliwog thing, laughing and reminiscing about things that we, as Brits, used to do that were appallingly racist. The comments were along the lines of "things were different then" and an underlying sentiment that is was excusable because "we didn't know any better".

No it wasn't.

Did we really need people to come along and tell us that it is wrong to call people names and that the colour of your skin doesn't make you a lesser person? Did people not feel that within themselves? Were the Crusades fine, because it was a) long ago and b) Christian? What about the acquiring of the British Empire, and the way it was run? Slavery? Was that ok... because we didn't know any different, times were different then? Nonsense. It was just not popular to actually have a shred of humanity. Some people did and had the gumption to speak out and thank god they did or we'd still be living in a nasty racist society...

Hang on. This is 21st Century Britain. We'd be appalled at using terms to describe people by colour. Nasty nasty words are stamped out. Huzzah! Thank goodness everyone was so pleased by the Eastern Europeans arriving! Imagine if we'd been prejudiced against them. Even though they weren't from the "nice" new countries, you know, the ones that used to be British.

I read responses to an article from the Daily Mail some months ago. There was the initial article, then there was the reader responses (as you'd expect) and then comments on the forum I was reading it on, responding to the whole lot.

The story: a number of Eastern Europeans (I'm not being deliberately generic, I can't remember where they came from) had come to Britain looking for work, believing that this was the best thing for them. These were people who genuinely wanted to work, who wanted to make a better lives for themselves. Yet when they arrived here, there was none of the promised work or life for them and as a result they had ended up living on a roundabout.

The overall response to this?

"Ugh, it really does make the roundabout look nasty". "I'm so glad that's not in MY town". "Who do these people think they are, coming to our country and spoiling our roundabouts?"

Hello???????????????????????????

The story there is "look how our country let these people down". Not "ugh, nasty dirty foreigners".

Yet it was OK to say these things? No one felt embarrassed?

Back to Carol Thatcher. Freedom of speech? Excuse me?
How about "I'm sorry I caused offence, I didn't mean it offensively"?
No. that's too hard. "We" can't apologise. "We" have the right to be offensive if "we" didn't mean it offensively. "We" don't need to explain. "We" don't need to retract our comments if other people are offended, clearly that's their ignorance or political beliefs clouding their judgement.

The Sachs debacle: with the vastly overhyped nonsense, at least Russell Brand used the little exercised thing called "an apology". He could still be arguing the "it was a joke, we didn't meaan any offence, I feel my freedom of speech has been compromised by the whole furore" and taken the usual stance. But he didn't, he gave a dignified, and seemingly sincere, resignation speech and, I feel, did the right thing. I believe Wossy also apologised, I must be fair, but I am a little sickened by the return of the prodigal son effort that's been going on since his return.

It never hurts to say "sorry, I didn't mean it". That doesn't necessarily excuse what you said, but it helps.

******

We're living in a nanny state now, it seems.
Evidence for this?

The government recommended that we should dance for exercise, presumably based on the slightly mystifying obsession with Strictly Come Dancing et al.

and

The government advisers, having been asked to study the effects, recommended that children should not be given any alcohol at all even at home until they are 15 because their bodies can't deal with it.

Recommendations. Not "this is how you must live your life" or "we are telling you how to bring up your children".

For God's sake!!!!!

And there's the MMR thing. Does anyone still believe that? Oh yes, they do. Thank you, hype. Thank you for directly causing the death of children to a disease that had all but been wiped out. I think I mentioned that before...

I'm done now. Please note the sarcasm and don't shoot me for being literal. Thanks.