GETTING ANGRY ABOUT SUCCESS

My site minder said somewhat peevishly “you could do with more passion in your blogs. You’re at your best when they’re angry”.

Bastard!

Well I’ll tell you about what makes angry. It’s the persistent moaning about how terrible everything is with no acknowledgement that the world consistently gets better. For sure, because we are human, there are odd exceptions and hiccoughs but overall the world is a better place.

“Oh yes. What about today’s youth? Drunk, drugged and up the duff and on benefit as like as not….”
Well the facts are somewhat different. Alcohol consumption is down in the UK, especially amongst 16-24 year olds. Drug use is down and, as one pundit wryly observed, “drugs aren’t cool anymore.” As far as teenage pregnancies goes they’ve also gone down to the lowest level since the 1960s.

Yet every morning on the Today programme I hear the Welsh and Scottish lilts of Humphrys and Naughtie pronouncing imminent Armageddon ….. the collapse of the NHS, the decline of education….of transport.

There’s never been so much airtime devoted to “news” and so little devoted to wondering what’s expressed in the immortal lines from Mel Brooks film  “The Producers”

“How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?”

Where did we go right?

Take transport. Best service you can imagine from Brighton to London – 11 trains between half past six and half past seven in the morning, they take an hour yet all I hear are grumbles. We have a fantastic underground, bus service and so it goes on.

Live departures and arrivals board for London Victoria

Time	From/To	P
17:58a 18:01	Littlehampton & Ore	17
18:02 On time	Brighton (East Sussex) Starts here	13
18:03 On time	Ashford International via Maidstone East Starts here	3
18:03 On time	Epsom Downs via Norbury Starts here	9
18:03a 18:01	From Orpington Terminates	5
18:04 On time	Bognor Regis via Horsham & Portsmouth Harbour via Horsham Starts here	19

The Boris Johnson brand of gung-ho “we can do it…just watch” is seductive because it’s rooted in a series of truths.  As the Olympics and Shard have shown we have the best civil engineers in the world.
London is the no. 1 capital city.  We are the top country in the world for the arts….no don’t interrupt…..
If the NHS were a private enterprise most of the problems would be discreetly solved as opposed to the constant attempt to fix the plane in flight with the media watching… basically it’s a brilliant product.

Angry….I’m mad for all the wrong reasons. I’m beginning to feel that Britain has become,  like that silly joke about France, “a brilliant country apart from the people”.

We are skilled at innovation and change.
We have an innate sense of fairness.
And we want to win….don’t we?

But that silence in response to the question may be the problem.

www.colourfulthinkers.com