Success stories reported as failure

Something I often see happening in the media is the reporting of success stories as failures. The scenario is this: Something unfortunate and unpredictable happens. The authorities / people responsible clean up the mess and few-to-no parties are harmed, physically or financially. This major success is reported by the news as a failure. Today’s story about the keys at Wembley going missing was a great example of this phenomenon. Something very unfortunate happened – a set of keys went missing at a major Olympic venue. But here’s the thing: this fact was discovered instantly, and security protocol was initiated which resulted in all the locks being changed before there was any chance of security being compromised. This proves the security systems...

Posted by on Jul 30, 2012 in Thoughts | 2 comments

Lords Reform: Time for a Senate of the modern age?

The House of Lords is a bag of balls. We know this – you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone other than a foaming traditionalist who believes that having almost two-thirds of our country’s lawmakers being appointed, rather than elected, is a good idea. The recent news about the latest bill for Lords Reform  — the latest in a line of small-scale tweaks — is the most exciting yet because it promises a large proportion of the seats to be democratically elected. But do we need another set of politicians elected the same way as the Commons? Will the public even understand why they’re voting for two different representatives? Will they care? It’s hard enough to get people to turn out for elections when they’re only voting for one. In...

Posted by on Jul 16, 2012 in Politics | 4 comments

Thought for the day: Andy Murray

I don’t normally write about sport (or indeed, anything, these days) but I thought this was worth a moment. The BBC is reporting today that Andy Murray’s defeat in the Wimbledon final was his “biggest disappointment yet” because he played better than ever before. And I have no doubt he feels that way. That’s our culture that does that, not logic or common sense: the better you do and the harder you work, the bigger a disappointment it is when you fail. Why? Is this a good thing?

Posted by on Jul 9, 2012 in Thoughts | 3 comments