proud

praʊd/

adjective

1. 1.

   feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of one's own achievements, qualities, or possessions or those of someone with whom one is closely associated.

   "a proud grandma of three boys"

   synonyms:

   pleased (with), glad (about/at), happy (about/at/with), delighted (about/at/with), joyful (at), overjoyed (at/over), thrilled (at/about/by/with),well pleased (with), satisfied (with), gratified (at), content (at),appreciative (of) More
2. 2.

   having or showing a high or excessively high opinion of oneself or one's importance.

   "he was a proud, arrogant man"

I keep seeing the phrase 'Proud to be British' bandied around.  Well here's the thing, I'm British and I can't actually say I'm proud of it.  Where I was born is a fact, not an achievement. Lets forget for a moment the deterioration of Great Britain as the government dismantle and destroy it.  How can you be proud of where you were born?  It's not an achievement, it's an happenstance.  You can't determine where you're going to be born anymore than you can determine your own height or eye colour.  You may be fortunate to be British or even to some, lucky yet how exactly can you be proud of where you were born?  The entire notion seems a trifle ludicrous to me.  Pride is an emotion evoked by one achievements.  Even if you were to look at it as Great Britain's achievements, what exactly has this country done to make you notably proud?

In an era when hatred and prejudice is strong, is this not just another example of feeding this? encouraging this? A way of blinding people against the utter destruction of society that is occurring under the ridiculous guise of uniting them?  

Are you proud of what you're wearing?  Of what you last ate?  Of the colour of your eyes? Or are these just facts?  Are you proud of being British?  Or is that again, just a fact.  

Before you say you're proud of something, ask yourself if it's really something to be proud of.  Are you really understanding the meaning of the adjective 'proud'?

Maybe you're just happy, lucky or content instead.

So no, my children won't be singing the national anthem in school, just like in a none religious school we ensure they realise as Atheists, they don't have to join in prayers either.  It's not inspirational, it's just another attempt at control.  It's arrogant and reeks of conformity. We are not and will not be sheeple.  If you want to make the children proud, do something to inspire it.

Congregating rant | MOVE!

Oh dear I do believe i'm rather on a ranting roll, again.  Bollocks.

If there's one thing that utterly irritates me it's thoughtless and inconsiderate congregating.  Not to be sexist seeing as I myself am a woman, but woman are generally the culprits.

How many times have you tried to enter or exit a shop only to find you can't because two or more woman illogically decided to have a natter there.  Out of all the places, they choose there.  Because obviously nobody else could possibly need to get past.  Ditto when they randomly decide to do it in the middle of the bloody shopping aisles.  I would say excuse me only my trolley accidentally decided to mow you down.  Sorry.

Take nursery.  Parents are allowed to accompany their children inside each morning.  You take your child in, help them hang their coat up, kiss them goodbye then get the fuck out of the way.  Oh no, not at our Nursery.  Parents gather, hover and generally get in the way.  The Preschooler has to literally fight his way through these belligerent clueless imbeciles to get to his coat peg. How is this fair on the small people? These are adults, show some spacial awareness.  Show an iota of awareness to your surroundings and whilst you're at it, some good old fashioned consideration for other people.  After hanging his coat up I often scoop the little fellow up just to help him get through the parents and to the safety of his carpet space.

Another school example.  There's two main exits/ways in.  Obviously each morning and home time 90% of the schools population will need to use these.  It's the only way to get in and out.  So why oh why do the same people insist on congregating outside the gate, fag in hand, dog on lead and foul language a plenty, children chomping at the bit whilst they have a good old natter.  You're in the bloody way! Have your natter across the road near the wall, or in the playground.  What possible good could come out of blocking the school gate/path at the school run time?  It's utter inconsideration.

Yes sometimes you don't expect to bump into someone, a quick hello turns into a catchup, that's fine.  Just bloody move out of the way!

It's people like this that make me feel I deserve far more credit for not acting upon my homicidal impulses.

VagueBooking

We've all seen it, you log onto Facebook and you see someone set their public status as something along the lines of 'Feeling totally let down and pissed off' or 'Such an awful day'  or even an 'OMG! soooooooo excited!' It grabs your attention, it was meant to.  Underneath you will see a ream of concerned replies along the lines of 'RU OK?' (evidentially people were so concerned they momentarily lost their command of the English language) to which the majority are ignored until one of their select few inner circle ask the same thing to which they get a reply.  What is the reply?  'I'll text you later about it later!"  If you don't want to tell all and sundry what the hell is wrong, here's a tip....don't post something vague in a pitiful attempt to be cryptic on a semi-public place.  Yet you won't take that advice, will you?  Because you didn't do it to talk about it, it was a petty attention grabbing stunt just to see how many people would care enough to ask.  These poor suckers who did ask are then met with no reply because they're not elite enough.  Well pardon them for caring.

Another type of vague booking is someone 'checking in' at their local a&e.  They have time to do this yet apparently not an extra ten seconds to add a one sentence brief explanation.  That would be no fun now would it? Not when you want everyone to ask 'OMG what's happened?' Obviously the lack of response to the concerned friends serves to make them assume something sinister.  Occasionally they'll update to say they're home now and exhausted after a terrible night at the hospital, again with no explanation.  Maybe the next day they'll finally explain how they broke a nail or had a splinter that ended up with the trip to hospital.

It gets worse, it gets vaguer....'Does anyone know what time the walk-in centre is open?' They're asking on Facebook because Google gave them an answer without pandering to their attention seeking ploys.  Google would tell them the opening times without bothering to ask why they wanted them.  The only reason you would ask something on Facebook that is so easily Google-able is to create a sense of drama.  Do grow up.

Stop feeding the drama trolls people.  You're doing exactly what they're hoping for.  You're giving them attention and control of your attention.  If they are ridiculous enough to vague book, don't pander to them.  People who have something to say or genuinely need help or support will quite simply say it.

How many times have you been tempted to respond with 'well if you're going to text a select few about it later why the fuck bother facebooking it?! why not just text them to begin with?!'

Vaguebooking is when someone is being intentionally vague in an attempt to garner attention.

Captcha.

We all love comments, right?  It evokes a certain fizz in your heart when you see that someone has taken the time to not only read something you've written yet also taken the effort to leave a comment.

If you want someone to do something for your benefit or gain, make it easy for them.  It's like when you go to donate money to a charity yet rather than being gracious and simply accepting it they suddenly want your bank details too.  Or you're in a shop with a basket full of goods yet you can't find the bloody till in the maze of badly organised stock and nightmare floor-plan.  Here's another one, some work at home businesses who make handmade things yet expect you to jump through loops to win the privileged of giving them your custom and more importantly money.  If you make it unnecessarily difficult, people will be less likely to do it, and rightly so.

Blogs are no different.  If you like comments don't make it unnecessarily difficult for your readers to leave them.  Yes. We're talking about that pesky evil called CAPTCHA.  They've read your blog, they've typed out a comment for you and then you have the audacity to ask them if they're human?  Worse, you're asking them to prove it too.  Nobody likes SPAM but this is your problem and shouldn't be that of your readers.  Activate comment moderation, so you get to view them before they go public.  You do the work here don't make your readers suffer it for you.   No matter how much I love your blog I for one refuse to squint and try and fathom out some unintelligible random code to earn the right to comment.  The privilege is yours to get a comment, it's not of those who are commenting.  I've lost count of the amount of times I simply end up closing the window after writing a comment rather than waste time and effort on captcha.

It's annoying, it's insulting and it's quite probably halving the amount of comments you would otherwise get.