Balanced Confusion.

I’ve stopped listening to The Moral Maze for health reasons. Four supposed experts maul over four expert guests towards a conclusion that’s never reached. It’s like Songs of Praise with the hymns sung backwards. And now all news on the Beeb is treading this same path in its quest for balance, one weary confused step at a time. Is the government right or wrong? Are the teachers right or wrong? Should this be that? Every point made by some expert is politely countered by a news caster with a GCSE in woodwork. The assertion that “Picasso used coloured paints” is met with, “But mightn’t he have painted in black and white and it’s been coloured in later?” GCSE pratt fishes out an old black and white photo to prove his point. “But that’s a b&w photo, look Picasso’s in b&W too.” “Yes but colour was only invented in 1945, well after Picasso’s period.” It’s like planting out a raised bed, one carrot and one anti-carrot at a time, every idea planted next to its opposite. Is it the old fascist idea of ruling by mass confusion? And then some nine year old is interviewed, because of course he has a valid view on government policy, and mouths some middle class verbatim about missing his friends and being worried about his own mental health and long term career prospects like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I’m now screaming at the screen like the Last of the Mohicans. If that’s what schooling does fuck it, fuck ‘em all, let him play in a field for a week, poor bastard! And Mohican is correct spell checker, I looked it up. I have not misspelt ‘Chicano’! If I’d wanted to say a person of Mexican descent I would have said so. And why is everyone waiting for ‘more data’? It’s like some spreadsheet’s going to come down from the sky and churn out a definitive answer so that basically I don’t have to think about it. And equally basically I must not make a decision because decisions are bad. If I ever make a decision it will likely be wrong and that’s way worse than doing nothing. I go back to the spell checker for comfort. ‘Chiastic’, Inversion in the second of two parallel phrases.’ OK I don’t understand that but it must be true. ‘Chiasma’, The crossing of the optic nerves from the two eyes at the base of the brain.’ OK, whatever. ‘Chicago’. Oh I know this one so lets try Synonyms. ‘boodle, Michigan, Newmarket, stops, Windy City.’ Who writes this stuff? I try ‘Bollocks’. It’s got to be done. ‘One of the two male reproductive glands that produce spermatozoa and secrete androgens.’ Oh right, must try that next time some twat gives me the benefit of his opinion. ‘she kicked him in the bollocks and got away.’ That’s more like it. At last something I can relate to. And that’s the trouble with data, most of it is boll….x.