The reasons...

When bad things happen, it's usually easy to get bogged down in the reasons. The why's and the how's of the event. That's exactly where I should find myself this morning while dealing with the aftermath of a theft. But in reality I am in a completely different mental space.

Having been picked pocketed in Clapham, I spent my entire evening and most of this morning sorting through the madness of cancelling cards, requesting new ones and discovering the thief had access to my pin number and has taken a substantial amount from my account.

Even though I am annoyed (not only because I've been robbed but because I wasn't even drunk when it happened) and it would be really easy for me to vent my frustrations in this post, what good would it do me? It would simply leave the small amount of control the thief scarpered with last night in tact and serve no real purpose. No, I would rather forgo the rant and focus on the lessons learnt - that way a negative experience can have positive impact on my life... So the next time shit happens (and it always does) I urge you to do the same.

Legoman out...

The media still really annoy me!

So recently I've not been able to open a newspaper without coming across the running total of soldiers killed in the Afghanistan conflict - so far the count is up to 204 and trust me those newspaper editors are just waiting for the call from their correspondants, giving them the chance to chuck the magic number of 205 on the front page. It reminds me of the way the media reported the knife crime problems of 2008. Check out my thoughts on that here if you want.

Once again the media has either missed the point entirely or are ignoring it for the sake of moving units and selling product. Here's the thing, by joining the armed forces a person places their life and potential loss of life in the hands of those in command; either their superiors or the politicians who decide which conflict is worth fighting. And those people who do decide to enlist are much braver and all together nobler than I. But I can’t sit here and listen to the media keep score on the number of deaths in an active conflict (and it’s not as if the numbers on civilian casualties is being given the same amount of coverage either) without feeling slightly stupid - it’s as if they are treating me like I have the brain of a lobotomised cockroach addicted to crystal meth!

When they feign indignation at the death of a soldier and then immediately begin to ask why Britain is in Afghanistan in the first place, it can only be unhelpful. Surely instead of the running totals and the lampooning government ministers the media (and us as a nation) should be asking looking to be as informed as we can be and asking different questions to get said information.

In my view, the question is not why Britain are in Afghanistan (they are there for a number of reasons, but the most pressing is that the country needs rebuilding, 8 years of military struggle have levelled it and they are not there alone!) but whether NATO is still an effective world peace keeping force? Or even whether the use of military force is sufficient to resolve this occupation and if not, what is being done to supplement the military efforts.

Surely intelligent journalism or insightful news reporting has not deserted us yet or have our news services decided that treating us all like we have the combined intellect of the Big Brother housemates is best way for us to know what’s going on in the world in 2009. I guess a little perspective is too much to ask for?