Emotional incontinence

I'm prepared to take a few hits on this one but..here I go...

Am I the only one seriously hacked off with the levels of public grieving, fuelled by the meedya, that are now a common occurrence?

Liverpool's cathedral now appears to be hosting candle lit vigils / services of remembrances every other week. liverpool's football clubs spend almost as much time stood in silence and attending above mentioned emotional whoring activities as they do playing. Boris Johnson was quite correct in his statement the other year.

Diana culture and emotional correctness are taking over this country. I hear on good authority that tourism in Prai del luz has actually increased since the Maddie debacle as British tourists flock there to be seen "supporting" / grieving etc. Weekly we now hear of more of our lads returning home horizontally in a C130 and it gets maybe an inch of coverage. In the meantime, the media focus on more emotive subjects and whip the Diana mongs into yet another frenzy of laying flowers at shrines and signing the requisite books of condolence.

Fair enough if you know somebody who died or they had a major influence on your life but..grieving for the sake of being seen to grieve is just plain sick IMO. That recent funeral in Liverpool with the Everton FC coffin was a pantomime IMO. People crying for the camera over the unfortunate murder of somebody they had never met.

This country needs a kick up it's arrse.

Rant ends.

 

You are so right.

Those rememberance day thingys on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is just so much grieving for grievings sake.

FFS, we don't even know the guys who died in the Great War, so why do we insist on remembering what they did - in seven years time it will be a hundred years since that war started.

 

Greetings Sven

I salute your attempt at sarcasm but feel I must point out a section of my post you appear to have missed.

I would assume that people who died in action could well fit into that category.

Would you not agree that the November ceremonies "minute's silence" has now been undermined due to other silences being proposed at the drop of a hat?

We are now well used to the all too familiar headlines picturing a woman with a crying child laying flowers somewhere labelled simply "poignant".

 

You are a major league prick, Sven.

Unless I've missed a very deep amount of irony in your post, I find the connection to remembering our fallen comrades to supermatelots post utterly distasteful. Your usual 'devils advocate' posts are quite often useful in the sense that they open up debate but in this instance, you have demonstrated what a complete tosser you really are by trying to be 'clever'.

 

Ironic or Arrse, I know where my thoughts lie with your comments, and irony doesn't come into it.

Untold thousands giving their lives to allow you the freedom to talk such bollox on here should be remembered and rightly so, read the original comment again, it seems to be aimed more at the band wagon jumping, get your face ontelly/in the papers mongs who want to'grieve' for someone they have never known and who has had NO influence on their lives...

15 mins of fame for them........

Arrse

 

Cheers for the agreement chaps.

I feel Sven was just being deliberately obtuse and probably agrees with the sentiments I earlier expressed.

 

Probably.

But knowing his style, I doubt it.

 

I found this link from a link on a topic further down that I think explains it perfectly.

http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/00000006DA25.htm

 

I saw that there were a few bunches of flowers on the war memorial in Worcester a few days ago, so I decided to walk over and see which kind person had taken the time to place them there. On reading the attached card, it read "for Diana, the princess of hearts". A few months ago, there was one for Maddie.

It's a war memorial. What don't people get?

 

Very much so.


In particular;

The media have played a very big part in this. The slick, pseudo journalism we see 24hrs a day has turned certain tragedies into 'events' with shiny graphics, CGI reconstructions and various opinionated 'experts' wheeled on stage. Not to inform but to fill 23 hours of air time in order to compete with their rivals. It all just becomes a background noise after a day or two...a bit like an over played record on Radio 1.

 

When the Diana concert was on recently I was watching my sister with amazement as she was in floods of tears yet previously when a repatration of the fallen from Iraq and Afghanistan was on the News she was nowhere near visibly upset.

I asked her why.

She said she felt "more connected" to Diana. My jaw dropped open as her father, elder brother (me) and husband are all ex servicemen and our younger brother is still serving.

I took my brother in law to the pub, I didnt know you could actually go purple with rage.

 

Okay. Once and for all:
HM: a nice lady, don't really care. Can take care of self, family.
Diana: whore- fucked Brian Adams, Canada's Most embarrasing Pop-Star.
Idiots who care about either: should be choked until dead.

 

Funbags, I hope you punched her in the throat.

Just had a gander at SkyNews and theyve even got a fcuking column on the left directly under 'UK News' for Maddeline.

They dont care, they too just want to be 'connected'.

 

TLF, I think you have nailed it- its a connection thing. I can remember certain message boards at the time of the Tsunami and the London bombings and people were actually falling over themselves competing over how many people they knew who were involved or potentially could have been involved!

Now some message boards are full of people using the Maddie thing as an excuse to self advertise their own flawless parenting skills with regards to leaving kids unattended etc. It seems the way to the moral high ground nowadays is quickest off the back of somebody else's tragedy.

Wristbands? Flowers? Books of condolence? They acheive the square root of F-all. All they serve to do is highlight one's membership into the ever burgioning club of self righteous emotion whores who deem themselves to be on the side of good.

If people actually gave a $hit then they would put the several quid their tragedy memento cost to better use.

 

People want to be seen to remember, while at the same time, not remembering at all.

More often than not, the urge to ease one's conscience, is the driving factor behind "remembering".

The urge to be seen to be doing what is expected of them, regardless of what they believe, the same urge that leads athiests to murmur "amen" at christian funerals, the same urge that leads them to send sympathy cards instead of speaking to the families of the bereaved as friends and neighbours...

Emotion these days is a business, the same as everything else. These days, sympathy is more about salving your conscience than remembering what has been lost.

I hope that if If I die in any way that is commemorated, no one dares insult my parents with "i'm sorry, I never knew your son but..."

Nothing can do justice to the men killed. Every life lost is a whole world destroyed, and only those closest to them know the true loss that has been inflicted upon us.

I don't, and I won't, presume to even pretend to know what has been lost, not even in one single death.

Because for now, thank whatever god there is, I have no clue.
And I hope it stays that way.