Opinions Archives - Page 4 of 5

Travelling with young children

I was once the guy that rolled my eyes whenever I saw a young child waiting at the gate for the same flight that I was in. I also let out a further moan when I found out said child was sitting within 20 seats of me.

More recently, I knew I was going to be on the other end of the stick for our Christmas trip to England as I would be subjecting 240 people to the unpredictable nature of my 18-month daughter for 9 hours.

I fully expected karma to bite me in the arse and sure enough it did. Being that flights to Europe from the States take off in the evening, fly overnight and arrive in the morning, this was the worst possible scenario for us, since Ellie had been up all day (with her usual naps), but then was boarding the plane when she’d usually be going to bed. Between taking off, 2-3 hours of drinks and dinner, unfamiliar surroundings and bassinets/seats that were too small for Ellie, she was not going to sleep, and so, we were the ones with the unhappy and occasionally very vocal infant.

Giving gifts in 2014

I think I’ve finally got there. I’m Scrooge.

Maybe not. I think I’m just equally as disillusioned as everyone else is about gift-giving these days.

Christmas has lost the magic and wonder that it once had and it’s instead been replaced with high expectations from your children and peers of what they expect Santa to deliver on Christmas morning (don’t you remember when you had no idea what Santa would bring?).

This has obviously been going on for a long time, and some people my age may have been the same way when they were young as kids are today. And the parents don’t help matters, giving in to the onward march of capitalism into every avenue of their lives.

I have been ever more skeptical of capitalism after watching the creep of “Black Friday” move into Thanksgiving Day to the point where families are now not having dinner together, because they’re out fighting over a TV at Walmart.

Who’s my doctor?

It’s inherently hard to trust doctors in America. In the land of the free, healthcare is privatised and opened up to the free market, which brings with it the ugliness of capitalism. I’m by no means anti-capitalist: it does a lot of good and has even enabled me to start and run my own business. However, my health is one of the few things that I do not want subject to the many faces of capitalism.

In case you weren’t aware, I hail from the wonderful rolling hills of England. I am proud to be British, but don’t shove it in other people’s faces (a la “America is the best country in the world”). The British way is still very ingrained in British culture and the way we do things, regardless of the influence that America has had on our society.

One of the vastly different ways that things are done in the UK is healthcare. Established in 1948, The National Health Service (NHS) brought freely accessible healthcare to all, regardless of one’s ability to pay. Funded by taxes, the NHS is still almost universally where all Britons’ healthcare is conducted, unless you happen to be quite rich and decide to opt for private healthcare.

Olympic-sized swimming pools

Since when did an Olympic-sized swimming pool become a standard unit of measure? Whenever journalists are talking about large volumes, they will invariably resort to referring to how many Olympic-sized swimming pools said volume would fill, as if that’s some sort of frame of reference for us, you know, after you bought an Olympic-sized swimming pool of rice, because it was on sale…

Add to this list of peculiar measures:

Football fields
Double-decker buses
Wembley Stadiums
Central Parks

What other “units of measurement” irk you that you’d be happy to see banished?

Smartest person in the room

If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

Always strive to learn, and better yourself. Surround yourself with smart, intelligent, stimulating people that you revere and admire.

Apple Watch – an April Fools’ joke?

As I do every year, I watched the Apply keynote speech to see what new tech was coming out soon. It’s a ritual that gets more attention on alternating years when I know that I’ll be buying the new iPhone, no matter what it is.

The iPhone 6 was a nice upgrade, but I agree that the days of enormous leaps in new features and huge improvements are probably waning, and I have been less and less captured by the hype that surrounds these events, which has been refreshing. I’m not much of a capitalist, but I have long been a fan of the iPhone, because it helps me out in so many aspects of my daily, and business, life, so that I’m seeing it as more of a tool than a toy is very welcome to me.

When Tim Cook breezed through the iPhone announcement, it was becoming apparent that he was making room for the rumoured “iWatch” announcement, and sure enough, he devoted the second half of his keynote to just that.

As his presentation went on, I was getting less and less impressed, and more and more angry by how they were trying to hype up ridiculous features.

The occasional massacre is okay with us

Look, we’ve collectively decided, as a country, that the occasional massacre is okay with us. It’s the price we’re willing to pay for our precious Second Amendment freedoms. We’re content to forfeit the lives of a few dozen schoolkids a year as long as we get to keep our guns. The people have spoken, in a cheering civics-class example of democracy in action.

Tim Kreider just wrote a piece for The Week (There is no catastrophe so ghastly that America will reform its gun laws) which caused my insides to sing with acknowledgement and agreement.

America is far too divided (and hyperpolitical) to ever change their gun laws, as the massacre at Sandy Hook so clearly demonstrated. As his byline puts it:

We as a nation don’t care about any number of murdered children, no matter how many, or how young. We want our guns.

The death of “news”

Some time last year, the building where I work was kind enough to install ceiling-hung LCD TVs in the lobby next to the elevators, so that while you were waiting for the elevator, you could catch up on 20 seconds of news.

I don’t have a TV, nor do I follow American media. Most days, I take a look at BBC News (the most impartial and far-reaching news organisation I know of) to get a feel for what’s going on in the world, and back home. As such, I am not really exposed to the American media except when I happen to be in an airport, or doctor’s office where they are showing CNN or Fox News.

These new TVs in my building have exposed me on a daily basis to what most Americans wake up to and form their views from on the world at large.

Which is quite scary.

I am, without exaggerating, saddened by the state of American media. This morning’s discussion tipped me over the edge: the figureheads of news and information were analysing how Justin Bieber was being mean to his lawyers, and whether he was on a prescription for Xanax.

Who gives a flying fuck?

I mean seriously, America. These are your national news networks discussing a spoiled, Canadian, hyped-up brat, when there are far more important things going on in the world, like planes mysteriously disappearing in mid-air, and humanitarian and political crises in numerous places, such as Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela to name but a few. Do you not ever turn on the TV and think “Seriously, what is this, why am I watching it and why do I give a crap?”?

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Wake up and smell the coffee. Be your own person, form your own views, and stop caring about meaningless drivel that the media are feeding you.

What I miss the most about the UK

Martina said a word recently which really resonated with me. I realised that, excluding friends and family, it was probably the thing I missed the most about the UK. That word was objectivity.

As a teenager and as a young adult, when meeting with my friends at the pub, or at a friend’s house, we would often discuss certain subjects: sometimes trivial and sometimes weighty. We would pass around points of view and see the merits of differing stances. It made for intelligent and enjoyable conversation.

Since moving to the US, it’s the one thing I dearly miss. Americans are very opinionated (in case you didn’t already know) and they’re not afraid to voice their opinion, so when a point of discussion arises in conversation, every participant considers it their goal to convert you to their way of thinking, no matter the cost.

It’s really sad because I look back fondly on times that I was able to intellectually discuss a perplexing problem or topic with my peers and consider varied viewpoints: now I’m left being barked at by brainwashed stalwarts, insistent on recruiting me to their way of thinking, which is of course, the correct way.

Americans would benefit greatly from:

Acknowledging that they don’t know everything.
Realising that considering other perspectives gives you a more rounded view of the situation.
Acknowledging that considering the opinions of others doesn’t make you weak: it makes you stronger for being willing to listen to other viewpoints and ponder how they might fit into your belief system (and not the belief system that you think you should have).

Living in a post-NSA-revelations world

The ongoing revelations of the NSA’s secret program of spying activities has been a mainstay of the news this year, since Edward Snowden’s first revelation about PRISM back in May. Since then, he has been labeled a traitor by the USA and forced to hole up in Russia to avoid extradition. Personally, I think his revelations were in the best interest of Americans and the people around the world.

Ever since the PATRIOT Act was hurriedly signed into law on the heels of emotionally-charged politicians and citizens, I’ve been mildly concerned about how much freedom the US had given its government to monitor the activity of their citizens, in the name of fighting “terror”.

Now, understand that in 2001, I was still in the UK (I didn’t move to the States until 2006), a country with perhaps one of the largest networks of CCTV, which the US seem so against. I was never too concerned about the manner in which your movements could be recalled if the need arose, because it was generally only used to help solve crimes, and they only recalled the data they needed to solve an isolated incident.