Reading other people's cryptic, often funny comments on items in the News, I'm left wondering what ever happened to principles. Not wishing to mention names or instances here, because everyone has different views and reactions, and there's a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, alienating readers with something that simply is not the main issue.
Decisions don't seem to be made with other people's welfare in mind. Discretion doesn't seem to prevail either, so we are no longer left to muse and mutter darkly, but bombarded with conflicting information and animosity.
Dipping into some of it tonight, a number of names of people whose clarity of argument and writing really impressed me, have come up with huge question marks beside them. I have been in the same room while some of them have turned a discussion round to their way of thinking (or someone's with clout), ridiculing anyone and everyone tempted to have a wee doubt or two.
OK, we are all grown-up and responsible for making up our own minds. Why then, do some organisers 'employ' such clever and persuasive people, to put on a show to sway opinion, years before anything hit the fan more prominently? What are we to think, years down the line, when such names crop up in connection with, perhaps mixing with or defending people whose reputations are now challenged by questions of their integrity, and alleged involvement in serious matters that, had we known about them at the time, would have demolished respect? Do we now respect those who long ago, tried to get a roomful of us laughing at their wit? I do not decry all of the work they have done before or since. I don't know how, once in a while, they are not meeting themselves coming backwards on the other side of an argument.
Is it a class act, do you think? Or how useful one can be, for now? We write for those who fall foul of it, and cannot fathom why, or why they don't snitch on each other: a foul is a foul, after all. Do family or social bonds hold most sway, the type of school one attended, the accent one speaks with? Perhaps it is who one knows. Or what they know or assume about us, and think they will override. Or not, meaning they give us a wide berth. We think ourselves lucky then!
OK, we are all grown-up and responsible for making up our own minds. Why then, do some organisers 'employ' such clever and persuasive people, to put on a show to sway opinion, years before anything hit the fan more prominently? What are we to think, years down the line, when such names crop up in connection with, perhaps mixing with or defending people whose reputations are now challenged by questions of their integrity, and alleged involvement in serious matters that, had we known about them at the time, would have demolished respect? Do we now respect those who long ago, tried to get a roomful of us laughing at their wit? I do not decry all of the work they have done before or since. I don't know how, once in a while, they are not meeting themselves coming backwards on the other side of an argument.
