You know, I once actually phoned Birmingham Council about Winterval, which comes up every year. They were polite and weary about it...

Thirded (or I think maybe its fourthed)

ibis wrote:

You know, I once actually phoned Birmingham Council about Winterval, which comes up every year. They were polite and weary about it...

Winterval ?

Well that's a great example. I counted two assaults on Christmes last year, both were non-stories. One was the Australian story about Santa's not being alowed to say 'ho-ho' for fear of offending the ladies. They were advised not to and I daresay they ignored it anyway. But of course if the PC thought police give advice it's really a diktat, right? (I'm not being hypocritical there, Ian O'Doherty actually said that).

The other story was the crib one, where RTÉ 'banned' the word from television. For as long as there has been political correctness there has been exaggeration about it, and condemnation of the exaggeration.

No Santa is calling me a ho.

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

You know, I once actually phoned Birmingham Council about Winterval, which comes up every year. They were polite and weary about it...

Winterval ?

That's the one where Birmingham City Council is supposed to have decided that Christmas is too PC and replaced it with a "multi-ethnic festival" called Winterval.

Actually Winterval was a shopping drive to try and bring a bit of life back into the city centre. It ran once, in conjunction with the usual Christmas festivities.

Comes up every year, often repeated by exactly the same people. Sometime I wonder if some people just have grey fluff in their heads.

To further 905's point. I also hate people who think they're a lot cleverer and well-informed than they actually are. Tedious wretches.

Spoiler:

Code:

[quote="ibis"]To further 905's point. I also hate people who [i]think [/i]they're a lot cleverer and well-informed than they actually [i]are[/i].

[spoiler]inevitable ribbing follows[/spoiler][/quote]

Don'tcha love the buttons

ibis wrote:

To further 905's point. I also hate people who think they're a lot cleverer and well-informed than they actually are. Tedious wretches.

Spoiler:

To further ibis' point, I hate when people use phrases like 'actually' or 'in reality' when making some entirely unproven point. They say something like "in reality, Ronald Reagan is still alive and is running the EU", when what they probably mean is "in (my extremely narrow concept of) reality..."

It's bad enough when people say something like "actually, the US illegally invaded Iraq", which is hardly a universal fact, but it's an understandable opinion. I think though, that some people deliberately use these phrases when well aware that their supposed fact is disputed in order to boost them.

Maybe it's like when people say "I literally died from laughing" or "I actually killed him, I was that annoyed". These two phrases were brought into use precisely because the phrase "I killed him" held no truth currency. And now they're used in the same manner.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Code:

[quote="ibis"]To further 905's point. I also hate people who [i]think [/i]they're a lot cleverer and well-informed than they actually [i]are[/i].

[spoiler]inevitable ribbing follows[/spoiler][/quote]

Don'tcha love the buttons

I do, it's beautiful that such tags can produce such brilliance.

I HATE when people don't keep an eye on their kids. I'm doing some work in a hotel lobby and four adults in front of me are allowing their three children - all under four (and they've just been joined by another one) to run amok, doing vociferous circuits.

Call me a spoilsport, I don't care. It's a hotel, not a racing track and if the parents want to drink coffee and entertain themselves, they should take the kids to a playground or a bowling alley or a Jumping Jacks or whatever.

I blame the parents - completely, fully and absolutely.

Aaaagggghhhhh.

Rant over.

Not good for the children either as they cannot be taken anywhere a bit more challenging, like a restaurant or theatre, because they don't know how to sit still.

Irish children used to be well trained by sitting through interminable masses. Where did it go wrong?

Can children be trained to be civilised effectively though? In the airport on the way back from holidays one boy - he was around 10 - started trying to do a bit of stunt tricks with the luggage trollies. Not too bad until his two friends joined him then started to push your man around right next to the queue for the ticket desk...

Boys will be boys though eh?

Give them the back of your hand Kate. Whatever the child care experts say, it will soon shut them up.

johnfás wrote:

Give them the back of your hand Kate. Whatever the child care experts say, it will soon shut them up.

Sadly, giving the back of hand to other people's children is likely to get Kate P shut up.

It's not the kids' fault - it's the parents' who blithely assume that just because they're having a leisurely couple of hours (as it is now) their kids will be entertained by carpet and chairs.

Most of us couldn't sit quietly for hours on end with nothing to divert us; how can parents expect that their kids will???

cactus flower wrote:

johnfás wrote:

Give them the back of your hand Kate. Whatever the child care experts say, it will soon shut them up.

Sadly, giving the back of hand to other people's children is likely to get Kate P shut up.

Sadly being the key word there. I was on a 4 hour flight last summer and was very tempted to open the emergency exit and throw a kid out the window. The mother just kept on going "now your a naughty boy and everyone on the plane will just wait until you get over your tantrum". I'm aware that being a parent is very difficult, particularly in a confined space like a plane and there could be issues such as an ear ache etc. However, the manner in which the mother just wasn't bothered even attempting to relieve us of her little brat was most annoying.

I don't have kids, and I've never come out of these discussions well - even though I spent years working with them while I was teaching. Parenting has to be one of the most difficult jobs ever, but it never ceases to amaze me that parents sometimes just don't think of their kids' needs when they're so busy looking after their own.

Kids are kids; they hate shopping (especially for adult clothes), sitting for long periods of time, patronising grannies (like the one beside me now), hotel foyers, overheated cars and waiting for their mothers to stop talking. Does nobody ever bring a book or a packet of crayons with them any more to keep their kids as entertained as they are? Or portable DVD players. It's not fair on anyone.

Kids find it difficult to sit still as it takes years to grow accustomed to that most unnatural of stances. Next time you want a kid to sit still, try sitting on your haunches or sitting cross-legged and see what a strain it can be.

I hate it when kids are expected to do thing grown-ups find easy. Take covering a silage pit. Without going into details it's a laborious task, but as kids we were told to grin and bear it. It never even occured to me that it was easy for adults until I beccame one myself.

Lousy traumatic childhood.

905 wrote:

Kids find it difficult to sit still as it takes years to grow accustomed to that most unnatural of stances. Next time you want a kid to sit still, try sitting on your haunches or sitting cross-legged and see what a strain it can be.

I hate it when kids are expected to do thing grown-ups find easy. Take covering a silage pit. Without going into details it's a laborious task, but as kids we were told to grin and bear it. It never even occured to me that it was easy for adults until I beccame one myself.

Lousy traumatic childhood.

At least you didn't fall into the silage pit.

Can you fall into a silage pit? You may mean slurry pit, cactus flower. In which case, had 905 fallen into one, he wouldn't be here today.

However, I am told than the way to survive falling into a slurry pit is to dive down to the bottom on the pit where the slurry is most liquid and swim to the edge and crawl out.

As for silage, I know far too much about silage...

Kate P wrote:

I HATE when people don't keep an eye on their kids. I'm doing some work in a hotel lobby and four adults in front of me are allowing their three children - all under four (and they've just been joined by another one) to run amok, doing vociferous circuits.

Call me a spoilsport, I don't care. It's a hotel, not a racing track and if the parents want to drink coffee and entertain themselves, they should take the kids to a playground or a bowling alley or a Jumping Jacks or whatever.

I blame the parents - completely, fully and absolutely.

Aaaagggghhhhh.

Rant over.

I like children but I couldn't eat a whole one.

I don't like children in my company for any more than about 5 minutes

cookiemonster wrote:

Can you fall into a silage pit? You may mean slurry pit, cactus flower. In which case, had 905 fallen into one, he wouldn't be here today.

However, I am told than the way to survive falling into a slurry pit is to dive down to the bottom on the pit where the slurry is most liquid and swim to the edge and crawl out.

As for silage, I know far too much about silage...

All this means nothing to a townie like me. Let's talk about quick and easy strategies to carjack and how to carry off a Columbia tracksuit instead.

Thank you for that cookiemonster. Now I am a rural dweller but was a city girl. I am still learning.