POINTLESS

A pointless post because I don't feel like writing anything else.

Football not rugby
Deeply not madly
Perhaps not necessarily
Question not statement
Rising not falling
Hopeful not deluded
Spearmint not peppermint
Gum not patches
Animals not vegetables
Pale not tanned
Late August not mid June
Bucket & spade not 'sand sculptures'
Valiant effort not not running for buses
Yorkshire not Cornwall
Geoffrey Boycott not Ian Botham
Brown sauce not ketchup
Old Labour not New Labour
Tony Benn not Tony Blair
Breakfast radio not breakfast TV
John Coltrane not Miles Davis
Dressing down not dressing up
Leonard Rossiter not Ricky Gervais
Forward thinking not 'getting where I am today'
Sheremetyevo not Domodedovo
Boats not planes

SOME NEW WORDS

Japarist A Japanese tourist
Prequaliser The first goal in a 1:1 result

And we need one for the excessive and gratuitous use of technology or multimedia - say, on election night or in a girls' clothes shop where you can watch MTV on giant screens whilst on the escalator. I can't think of a satisfactory word for this.

TRY TO IMAGINE...

That the following is the first story of its kind you've ever heard.

From Tuesday 17th August's Metro (usually these stories are not reported at all, for reasons I can't understand - either not sufficiently newsworthy or don't sit comfortably with political agenda).

A driver who killed a young child and crippled the boy's mother was jailed for nearly four years yesterday. Justin Martin was overtaking a bus on a blind bend when he ploughed into the car carrying Kirstie Buckle and her son, Blake. His 4x4 was travelling at 55mph. The three-year-old boy was knocked unconscious and pronounced dead in hospital. Miss Buckle suffered horrific injuries and is now wheelchair-bound. Jailing Martin for three years and nine months, Judge Paul Hoffman told him: 'Your driving was utterly reckless. It was a narrow road on a dark morning. It was an act of blind overtaking. You caused the death of Blake and shattered the life of his mother.' The crash took place on a country lane near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire. Miss Buckle, 23, saw the bus coming in the opposite direction and slowed to 30mph. But Martin, whose Mistubishi was behind the bus, sped up and overtook. Miss Buckle was cut free from the wreckage. Both feet and six ribs were broken. She has had six operations since the crash in January. Outside York Crown Court, Miss Buckle said 'When I got up life was perfect. I had a son I adored. Blake was murdered because a man could not wait to get past a bus.' Martin, of Saxton, was banned from the road for four years.

That this happens every day is clearly a scandal and one that seems to pass unnoticed. Why? Why should an arrogant 4x4 driver be allowed to drive ever again after overtaking a bus on a blind bend at 55mph and killing/crippling people? Note that the driver was sentenced to three years, nine months custody, and banned from driving for four years. What these stories neglect to mention is that any driving ban runs concurrently alongside the custodial sentence, so this guy will, more or less, be back behind the wheel on his release. He will not, therefore, be banned from driving at any time when he is free and at liberty to drive!!!!!

We are surely desensitised to the terrible injustice of these stories and sentences. Perhaps that's because they are largely unreported. On the other hand, if a cyclist brushed past a pensioner causing him/her to stumble/drop his-her shopping/step out of the way - ie causing shock and inconvience but no lasting damage (note, I'm not saying that this is acceptable) you can be certain it'd be reported in appalled, condemnatory terms.

At the top of my street in South London there are boards advising of a 'fatal incident'. When I lived in North London there was a 'fatal incident' at the top of the road I lived there, too. Yet no one is ever really punished. A fine of a few hundred quid isn't punishment. A prison sentence is, and this is why they are so rarely handed down. What is most amazing is that people who kill on the road because they drive selfishly do not receive a life's ban.

And most depressing of all... cars are such a cash cow for the governemnt (from fuel taxes to the VAT on every tyre refit and MOT), the situation will never really change. Sigh.

CLASSES OF TRAIN

Struggled from Middlesex to Berkshire via London a couple of days ago with very heavy luggage. It occurred to me that, whereas other countries may have First, Second and Third-class compartments on trains, here in South-East England we have separate First, Second and Third-class trains. That’ll make sure the rich don’t have noisy proles ruining their journey! Consider it: you need to travel from Central London to Heathrow airport, say. If you are poor or on a limited budget, you would get the bus or struggle down the escalators onto the Piccadilly Line and take the tube to the appropriate Heathrow terminal (remembering to allow about two hours for signal failures, broken-down trains, etc). Not quick or comfortable but (relatively) cheap. Then there’s a mainline ‘overground’ option that leaves from two or three big, interchange stations (Victoria, Waterloo and possibly Charing Cross). Again - not expensive nor particularly swift (this train would stop about three times between embarkation and destination, against the tube’s handier twenty stops). But then, for the ‘cash-rich, time-poor’ there is the Heathrow Express which doesn’t stop at all between Paddington and Heathrow but is more than twice the price of any other option. I wonder how prone the HE is to signal failures, defective track and points failures? I suppose transport ministers would pretend this is about empowering people with ‘choice’, but if you can’t afford £20 for the Heathrow Express then of course there is no choice and, priced out, you have to go for the less convenient option. Perhaps this explains why First/Second/Third class compartments are less obvious on trains – all these people are actually overtaking you on a different train.

SMOKING

I wish cigarettes would be banned from public consumption and even from being on sale via the usual channels: shops, vending machines, garages, pubs. I appreciate that this kind of intervention is veering on the excessive, but from my own point of view it would be for the best (for me). Every time I 'give up' - and I use this term loosely - it is in public places that I eventually succumb because the temptation of other people smoking around me proves too much. Yes, I know: weak, weak, weak.

In the UK we are now familiar with increasingly forthright warnings on packets - for example, "Smoking can cause a slow and painful death", "Smokers die younger", etc. The Canadian government has gone a step further and displayed pictures of oral cancers and diseased lungs on the front of packets. Last week, a bilingual friend told me that an approximate translation of Japanese health warnings would be "Try not to smoke too much". This is because the Japanese don't have the same concept of smoking as lethal, because their rates of lung cancer are so low. However, such a mild-mannered message seems comic where we are used to relentless negative press about smoking.

JUNG - COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

According to a website which I've just moved away from and which I therefore can't cite, "The CU is a person’s psychic inheritance. It is a reservoir of our experiences as a species - the knowledge we are all born with but which we can never be directly conscious of. It influences all our emotional experiences and behaviour but we only know about it indirectly.

There are some experiences that show the effects of the collective unconscious more clearly than others....
- love at first sight
- deja vu
- the immediate recognition of certain symbols
- the immediate recognition of the meanings of some myths
- creative experiences shared by artists and musicians
- the spiritual experiences of mystics
- parallels in dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy tales, and literature
- near death experiences

.. these could all be understood as the sudden conjunction of our outer reality and the inner reality of the collective unconscious."
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The first paragraph makes perfect sense. The piece then lists human experiences that are supposed to illustrate the collective unconscious in effect. But - I'm stoopid! I genuinely find it difficult to follow. On one hand we cannot be properly aware of its mechanics; on the other hand we have the awareness to understand that these things are manifestations of the CU (which is at work at a much deeper level). Can anyone provide an authentic or made up example of the collective unconsious causing or enabling someone to - for example - recognise a symbol, have "a shared, creative experience", or experience deja vu? I'd appreciate it. For me, listing these effects in a bullet-point style isn't enough. I need practical/direct *examples* of how it works, or the theory of how it is said to work, rather than a theoretical/abstract list.

I've been interested in this for ages without investigating and I can't put it off any longer. If anyone would like to enlighten me until I find one of those cartoon illustrated books, that would be great. Also, if anyone (ie, any one of my two readers, ho ho) knows about the Trickster archetype, plesae do tell...