The View from the Hill for Saturday 11th July

Whilst wanting to be careful and not comment on ongoing criminal proceedings, I find myself forced to speak up for teachers and society and against young people and their misguided parents.

There has been a lot of coverage and interviews and supposition about what actually happened in a Mansfield class room this week and there have been lots of people offering opinions on various blogs and Facebook pages and when young people are asked about respecting teachers, the answer you get parroted back from them and their retard parents is '"respect has to be earned"!

Then they all nod sagely in agreement.

Respect does not have to earned you thick bastards - personal respect can grow or fade because of actions but respect for what holds our tenuous societal model together should not be earned, it should be given.

Soldiers don't wait to follow orders until they can respect the man giving them, they follow the orders because they respect the need to do so and respect that more than likely a man in charge might know more than you do! ( not always true I know but I'm trying to make a wider point so go with me please)

With religion, people accept things on blind faith because they respect the church, the text, the messenger. ( I'm losing you now I know but please just stick with it)

Hopefully some young people respect their parents enough to do as they are told on occasion!

And we should respect teachers too, because they have chosen to try and educate our young people in spite of the young people not wanting to be there, and government intervention and endless changes and the erosion of authority in the classroom.

I'm not talking about total blind obedience but a general respect for what makes things work best for the majority.

There is always room to question but there is also a need to accept and conform and stupid stupid stupid parents telling their kids that respect has to be earned should lose the right to parent.

Now of course we should respect children too, I don't agree with beating children but I think feeding them mindless platitudes is equally as cruel because all it does is engender a sense of false perspective for what the world holds.

Respect is a good thing, yes it can be earned over time usually because the person you find respect for, respects themselves enough to follow the rules.

Hearing young people say, 'we is disrespected' actually translates into 'somebody was asking us to do something we didn't want to do and that disrespects my freedom to be an individual'. Wake up and smell the petrol kiddies, being an individual is great but we all have to live together and that is why we have laws and rules and respecting them is bloody important.


Let's regain some common sense - sometimes we just have to do as we are told, for our safety, to learn or allow others to learn, for the world to work, and we should explain that to kids. We should also take the time to widen that discussion and show young people why respecting yourself will lead others to respect you.

Wow, that's quite a rant, but that's my view from the hill.

The View from the Hill on Friday 10th July.

As I was having my breakfast today, fruit and yoghurt, I was struck by the insane thought that with all this aspirin in my system if I was to cut my tongue licking the yoghurt pot top, I could bleed to death...I could die licking the lid of life!

Life and death brings me to my thought for the day. With all the kerfuffle surrounding the demise of the Wacko One and the endless hours of TV coverage (including the very crass and cringe worthy memorial concert come funeral) where is the tribute to Molly Sugden or Karl Malden or any of the other celebs who have passed away recently?

Karl Malden was an Oscar winning actor, widely respected in his field, having worked in Hollywood at a time of real legends. He was a former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he was inducted into the Western Hall of Fame, he had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild, and he’s even had a post office named after him! Yet no coverage of his death, no screening of ‘On the Waterfront’ or ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ or ‘The Streets of San Francisco’. Classic films and iconic 70’s television. Perhaps if he had touched a few kiddies up….who knows.

And as for Molly Sugden… Molly Sugden was Mrs Slocombe for Christ’s sake! How much more famous and worthy do you need to be? If only she had learned to walk backwards and had a chimp. She did have one thing in common with Wacko; she did her best work more than 20 years ago! But nothing - not even a re-run of Are You Being Served has pitched up. Not a sign of her purple rinse or her pussy. Come on BBC, show us that you really do recognise the greats, and give us some Grace Brothers and then On the Waterfront.

The View from the Hill for Thursday 9th July

And although I know the date is stamped on the entry by the magic machine, I think to start each entry with the tag line gives it a little class, in my own way I am becoming the Alastair Cooke of my little hill.

Friends are important, good friends are invaluable, especially if they tell you the things you ought to hear and everyone else is scared of saying. We need a little honesty in our lives and even though I would love to live in a world of happy endings, we know that is impossible.

We are none of us perfect, we make mistakes and hopefully we learn from them. But there are times when we try so hard to get everything right and it still turns into a pile of shit. This is where we have to accept it and move on, hard as that is. Then there are the times that we plough on regardless of the fact that our course of action is heading for failure because we are too blind to see what is obvious to others. Yes, we are none of us perfect but if we can accept that about ourselves, why can we not accept it in others.

What has prompted this mornings lecture, I hear you ask? Well, I was in town yesterday afternoon and it was not too busy but of the people I did see, so many were arguing.

There was an older man and woman arguing about parking, quite insignificant in the scheme of things I would suppose. There was a young couple, both men, having a right set too outside NatWest about something and then one of them threw the shopping bags on the floor and stormed off. There were parents screaming at children, there were children crying and screaming just as loud at parents.

You could look down your nose at them, airing their dirty laundry in public if you like, but then again you could just say, none of us are perfect and move on.

Have the best day you can, in the circumstances.

The View from the Hill for Wednesday 8^th July

Of all the subjects I had planned to write about today, I never expected to end up with sperm on my computer.

The news item that caused me to change direction stated that a university in Newcastle has developed sperm in the lab, they have created sperm without the use of a man, testicles, Playboy or a strong wrist.

Now my objection to this waste of money is not based in religious belief, (I have no problem with science pushing the boundaries of medicine for the betterment of the human race,) but if we are going to spend money on medical research let it be to look for cures and preventative measures, not making more of what we all ready have plenty of!

Surely there is no shortage of sperm in the world? We throw so much of it away. You only have to walk down the street to see thousands of the poor creatures’s abandoned in their plastic Macs in doorways and gutters.

And those that don’t fall on stony ground but hit the target, there seems to plenty of them in the world too, especially Catholic ones. Catholic sperm seems very hardy and I’m sure they would wrestle a faux sperm into easy submission.

There is a real need for a debate on this issue, we should all get together and have a mass debate on sperm and its uses. (Sorry)

And why create sperm in Newcastle, I know the teenage pregnancy rates in Newcastle have fallen by 6% in recent years, but I still suspect that there are plenty of the little buggers avoiding the end result of unprotected sex whilst still enjoying the act. So why not collect all that unwanted sperm and save it for Newcastle University, then they wouldn’t have to spend thousands of pounds making it!

The scary thing about the created sperm is that when they did it with mice and got a lady mouse up the duff with frankensperm, the end was result was described as ‘not normal’ due to an ‘imprinting error’!

Do we need another level of troubled teen in this country, the ones with imprinting errors? No, let’s stick to the tried and tested way of creating and delivering sperm, good old British sperm, with a sense of patriotic duty and spunk, the drive of a spawning salmon and the swimming ability of Becky Adlington.

Let’s all join hands and cum together in support of sperm.

The View from the Hill for 7th July 2009.

It is raining, the floor is wet because I forgot to close the door.

Let's compare how to plan a memorial event.

In America, the Jacko memorial will attract thousands of lunatics, perhaps we might see a suicide according to the news. Such is the level of hysteria surrounding the death of a has been, suspect child molester. At least Dame Lillibet has the good sense to avoid the circus! Her tweets have been moving on the subject.

In Hyde Park, we unveil the memorial to the victims of 7/7 - I think it will be a little more restrained.

Of course we don't always get it right, remember Diana?

Grief is a very personal thing and these big public shows of 'grief' are no such thing, they are self indulgent nonsense....well that's my view from here on the hill.