I worked for London Underground as well as part of the earth structures team. I would be even more attached to it
Citizen Khan saying that if the FA sell him Wembley, he will let Chelsky play their nomad seasons there. Is that the sound of a 'say no to the FA selling Wembley' petition that I hear being opened ...
Doesn't time just fly. It was only 6 months ago tonight that we stuffed Real at Wembley. Now, they have just reached the CL final after looking a million miles away from getting ther on November 1st.
They didn't look too near tonight, but Bayern could take advantage of the all the possession and chances they had.
Listening to 5 Live last night there was a "discussion" of the incident where a woman was ejected from a BFI film screening for laughing inappropriately throughout. If you haven't heard the story it turns out she was on the autistic spectrum and does not have as much control over her reactions as most of us. I say discussion but I don't think that's what we got. The overarching feeling was that of understanding the condition and ridiculing the BFI for the draconian reaction of physically removing her. There was also implication that the audience were wrong to be so intolerant. I think that's what we're all supposed to be thinking anyway, and much of it is perfectly true. BUT I didn't hear any balance. I can most certainly agree in principle that people on the autistic spectrum should be treated with more tolerance. I can definitely see how the way the BFI security removed the woman was extremely heavy handed. There is however another perspective here, but I think we are not encouraged to say it lest we are branded intolerant or anti-disabled. So this was all about the rights of someone to enjoy a film, and the rest of us to accept that their behaviour may cause "difficulty" but we have to accept it. But do the rest of the audience (in the vast majority) also have rights to enjoy a film without being constantly distracted by inappropriate laughing? I know that if I was in the audience I would have been one of those wanting her ejected. There I've said it. Call me what you want, because apparently I should now be demonised. But before every film these days you get a black screen and the words of Mark Strong extolling us to switch off our phones and don't talk - why - because it ruins everyone elses experience. And it really does - not just the talking but the bright screens because people can't survive 10 minutes without checking their phone let alone two hours. So I've I'd made the choice to go to a special (possibly one-off) screening of "The Good The Bad and The Ugly" - which if I'd done so it would probably be something I really wanted to see at the cinema as it doesn't get screened that often - made the trip to Central London and paid my money, I'd be thoroughly pissed off if someone was talking or checking their phone throughout. But if someone is laughing I'm supposed to now wonder if they might be autistic? In other words if someone wants to do that, then that overrides the rights of the entire rest of the audience? There's no winners here, but I just think the story has more than the one side and the BBC were unwilling to discuss it properly.
I saw this on BBC news, and immediately the scientist in me went : 1. How loud/long was she laughing each time 2. How often was she laughing 3. What bits was she laughing at (the "inappropriately" claim) The Good, the Band and the Ugly is one of my favourite films, and there are bits that always make me laugh (the ongoing "there are two kinds of" exchanges, the "guardian angel" scene, Tucos' idiocy etc) . But do the sheeple agree with (non-autistic) me ... ??
Since you know the film, when I heard her interviewed she said one of the things she was laughing at is when Tuco disassembled / reassembled various weapons to make a combined one he liked. I suppose you could find that funny but to me it was just empahsising the fact that Tuco was an expert gunfighter and knows his weapons really well. If someone was laughing at it, it would have spoiled my enjoyment assuming (and this may be a big assumption) there had been several other incidents too. We don't know how often she was laughing but I might suggest that nobody is going to get upset at the odd incident and it would have taken quite a lot for a BFI audience to get security.
As with most things in life, in hindsight no doubt this could have been handled a lot better at the end. But I suspect the combo of the things I asked was just too much for the general audience.
It's bloody difficult. Our next door neighbours are lovely people. To one side, they have 2 kids. The eldest one is 16. He suffers from Autism and Tourettes. He struggles to talk to me but my eldest and he get on well and she says that he's a nice kid with issues. Unfortunately, his Tourettes results in ranting foul mouthed abuse and shouting, sometimes for prolonged periods of time. I know full well that it's not his fault but on a hot sunny day when I'm relaxing in my garden, it's hard not to want to..... I'm lucky, I can put music on and well, there's always tomorrow for lying in the garden. If I'd spent £200 on theatre tickets and a meal and travel and he was sitting behind me? I can't think that I'd be happy about it. I daresay that the theatre would have most of the audience saying..."Do something or I'm asking for my money back and suing you if you don't give it to me." So then what? Plus, what if someone snaps and there's trouble? Increasingly, people are losing it in supermarkets over the most meaningless incidents. If he ruined someone's wedding anniversary or 50th birthday, tensions could run high. I suffer from tinnitus, what if I asked a theatre to demand that the actors to shout [not Brian Blessed] so that I can hear or a blind person asked for commentary throughout?........"Othello starts to strangle Desdemona........the strangling continues.........he's still bloody strangling her." It's a brave new world and well intentioned mistakes will be made on all sides.
There seems to have been a sharp increase in intolerance in society of late. "Sheeple" is the right word for the majority. We live in times where non-conformity is frowned upon; apparently this now extends to what we should be amused by and how we should express our amusement. Laugh at the wrong thing or at the wrong time and you're a social outcast (literally). People seem more desperate to conform than ever - and keener to shun those who don't. Tolerance is about recognising that people have different appearances, beliefs, views, cultures, interests etc and should be free to express themselves. Just because they don't always conform in some respect to whatever is seen as the mainstream doesn't make them subversive. It certainly doesn't merit some form of suppression. But increasingly the minority is suppressed - and with the full backing of the authorities who claim to promote tolerance. I have to tolerate "Party In The Park"/"Parklife" every year. 50,000 people descend on Heaton Park, Manchester in June to listen to dance music with a booming bassline (and do loads of drugs which the police ignore too). This lasts all weekend. Even though I live six miles away I can hear the music and the house shakes. If a punk band played live in my garden, the authorities would be round to confiscate their amps in about five minutes flat. The majority like dance music so their noise is good and we have to tolerate it; punk noise is bad and will not be tolerated. I blame George Orwell.
It's hardly a new occurrence, though, after all I remember having to take a wide detour out of my sixth form back in 1997 to avoid a group of blokes who didn't appreciate it when I mentioned the irony that the one time Princess Diana was unable to manipulate the media she was killed. Or, to go back further, look at the lengths The Powers That Be went to in order to shut down and silence the Sex Pistols. The difference is the intolerance is more overt than it used to be, so instead of random flashpoints courtesy of Mary Whitehouse or Tipper Gore or the Daily Mail or whoever it's a constant narrative, best exemplified by the one time I turned down a flier for an Indian restaurant and said it was because I don't like Indian food and the bloke handing out fliers flat out called me racist - and that was back in 2000-1, not in the past eighteen months. I could have also cited the example of intolerance evident in every Croydon branch of Subway, where the vast majority of people only order ham & cheese and ignore the rest of the menu because it's "different" - which is one of the many, many reasons the local Boxpark's been an utter failure as the locals only go for beer and junk food so the Greek, Vietnamese, Brazilian et al stalls all closed down and have yet to be replaced. Or how, in 1999, I received death threats from Star Wars fans when I said The Phantom Menace was a waste of time...
The reason for it is the hyper inflation of the egos of the individual in modern times. Specifically that their desires/opinions matter most, and conflicting/ dissenting views are not to be tolerated. The modern Internet forum is the embodiment of it. In the era of the mighty Usenet, sheeple would get destroyed for what they write, because the audience was primarily the academic community + employees of large (primarily techie) companies (ie the baseline intellect was a lot higher, whatever the actual specific type of forum) .
There's always been intolerance, I agree. Intolerance borne of ignorance or prejudice is something you would hope has decreased in our more diverse world. But there's definitely a greater desire to be seen to conform now and therefore greater intolerance towards those who don't. The "like" culture of social media is underpinned by a need to conform. If you do the same as everyone else, they will like you and you like them back. That makes people feel popular and have a sense of belonging. No room for anyone who dissents and wants to upset the apple cart.
It's because people are being told that (insert outgroup here) are responsible for all of their ills. The EU was used for decades and now it's whatever random university students are focused on defending. Certain sections of the media are rage-baiting constantly, so that people don't look at what's actually going on.
I'm almost tempted to say the opposite, because somehow the notion of tolerating other beliefs has somehow blown up in our faces as flat earthers and anti-vax campaigners going from a small and easily-ignored group of mentalists to a vocal army of colossal ****wits - although this can mainly be put down to the complete and utter bastardisation of Freedom of Speech that says that anyone can say whatever is on their mind no matter how wrong or deserving of the -ist suffix bolted onto it and tries to shut down how people have the freedom of speech to say they're so full of **** they must have been born without an anus.
