Expert bashing

There's quite a fashion in some quarters to deride "experts" and make out that they don't really know any more than you or me. They're dismissed as "so-called experts", "self-appointed experts" and so on.

This was one factor that led to a majority voting for Brexit. We were constantly advised to ignore the experts who foresaw disastrous consequences if we left the EU. We were told the experts were talking nonsense and were just hysterical "prophets of doom".

The expert-bashers will cite doctors who take two years to diagnose a serious illness, or diagnose a serious illness that turns out to be non-existent. Or they cite dieticians who say a certain food is unhealthy, and six months later it's fine, eat as much as you want. "You don't know who to believe" say Joe and Joanna Public.

The trouble is that people expect experts to be 100 per cent certain about something. They should have a clear-cut answer, an infallible explanation. Experts aren't meant to change their mind or get it wrong, that shows they're not really experts.

But of course experts change their mind all the time. It's precisely because they're experts and constantly reviewing new information and new findings that they change their minds accordingly. That's not ignorance, it's keeping up-to-date.

I'd like to know how these expert-bashers would get on if all the experts disappeared. If there was no neurosurgeon to remove their brain tumour, no mechanic to repair their car, no chemists to formulate shampoo and detergent, no builder to fix the leaking roof. We'd be living in pretty spartan and backward conditions.

Sure, there are some bogus "experts" who really are ignorant or are deliberately scamming the public (miracle cures and natural remedies come to mind), but that doesn't mean every expert is bogus. That's an absurd conclusion.

But don't take my word for it. Ask an expert.

Faulty fingernails

There's something very wrong with people when a five-year-old Massa-chusetts boy who likes wearing nail polish is so viciously attacked by his fellow pupils that he goes home demoralised and in tears.

Sam Gouveia's father said "Sam was ridiculed for being a boy with nail polish. They called him names and told him to take it off. This lasted the entire day. He was devastated at how other kids turned on him, even his friends."

It seems that by the age of five, most boys have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the idea of masculine and feminine clothing that something as trivial as wearing nail polish is jumped on as if some major crime has been committed.

If a five-year-old boy wants to wear nail polish, what's the problem? It's not harming anybody, it's not threatening anybody, it's not disrupting lessons. If other boys find it threatening, because it challenges their macho fixations, that's their problem and not his.

There has been similar bullying of boys who want to wear skirts or dresses or long hair or any kind of "female" clothing. The bullying is often supported by teachers quoting the official school dress code.

Surely boys who misbehave, disrupt lessons, and abuse teachers are the real problem, not boys who like to have shocking pink fingernails or floaty skirts? Surely the quality of the teaching is more important than what a boy puts on his fingers?

The idea of gender fluidity may be popular in certain fashionable quarters, but clearly it hasn't caught on with the general population, who still rigorously enforce masculine and feminine boundaries.

Think twice before you dress. The gender police are watching you!

Pic: Sam Gouveia

Motorway madness

The other day there was another case of an elderly driver going the wrong way on a motorway. On this occasion the couple in the car, both in their eighties, and the 30-year-old driver of another car, were all killed.

Aside from the question of how on earth it was possible to enter the wrong side of the motorway in the first place, missing all the signs for the correct slip road, I wonder if yet again an elderly motorist refused to admit that he or she was no longer safe on the roads and should stop driving.

I ask myself, would I willingly recognise that I was no longer a competent driver and stop driving before I caused some calamity? Or would I keep kidding myself I was safe enough, though maybe not quite so alert or clear-sighted as I used to be, and carry on driving just the same?

I ask that because it seems quite a lot of elderly drivers kid themselves they're still safe on the roads when they're not. They end up crashing into another car, careering into a shopfront, driving on the wrong side of a motorway, or killing someone. I want to admit my failings before I do something disastrous.

I've already decided not to hire a car to drive on unfamiliar roads, as it feels too risky. I've driven several times between the M11 and Stansted Airport, and I find all the different lanes and roundabouts too confusing for my liking. It was always a relief to return the car without mishap.

I would never drive in another country, where not only are the roads unfamiliar but I might be driving on a different side and facing road signs in foreign languages. I would be far too nervous to enjoy it.

Drivers who won't admit they've become a liability are a public menace.

Festering grudges

Do I bear grudges or don't I? It depends how you define it. The dictionary says it's a feeling of persistent ill-will towards someone. But to my mind that's just an everyday feeling and nothing unusual. Surely we all feel ill-will towards certain people because they're rude or obstructive or bad-tempered or needy? So what?

I think ill-will only becomes a grudge when it turns into obsessive, irrational, all-consuming hatred, or when there's also a desire to get revenge on the person, to give them a taste of their own medicine. Then you're no longer talking about an everyday feeling but something abnormal and unhealthy.

I've often felt persistent ill-will towards somebody, but it never develops into something obsessive or magnified. Dislike is enough for me, I don't need to build it up into something huge and grotesque. For one thing, I don't the energy for such intensity. It's too exhausting.

I guess grudges are usually driven by anger, and I'm not an angry person. If someone's pissing me off, I don't get enraged, I just look for a way of dealing with their obnoxious behaviour. Or I keep away from them.

Some grudges result from a failure to get something you dearly wanted, and the conclusion that you were unfairly treated. You fail to get that prestigious job you were after, and you're convinced the interview panel was biased against you. Thus a grudge is born and lasts for decades, based solely on an unproven belief. I've never had that sort of grudge either.

I've known men with a severe grudge against a woman who wouldn't go out with them, or abruptly ended a relationship. They simply can't get over the rejection, and they're nursing a continual grudge that they didn't get what they wanted and feel slighted and scorned.

I don't need grudges. Ill-will suits me nicely.

Thanks to Chuck and Ramana for the subject.

The gay cake

The global controversy continues over the so-called "gay cake" case, and whether a Belfast bakery was entitled to refuse a cake order that included the message "Support gay marriage" on the icing.

The British Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Ashers bakery was indeed entitled to refuse the order, as this wasn't discrimination against the customer's homosexuality, simply an objection to a particular message that conflicted with their religious beliefs (the owners being devout Christians).

The two lower courts had sided with the customer, Gareth Lee, but the Supreme Court sided with the bakery. Which has reignited the tangled debate over homophobia, what amounts to discrimination, whether a business can refuse an order or not, to what extent you can assert your religious beliefs and so on.

The legal action has already lasted almost 4½ years and cost over £500,000 (partly funded by the Equality Commission). It could last even longer, as Gareth is considering a further appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (through crowdfunding).

Personally I wonder if this interminable legal action is really worth it. Surely the whole dispute could have been resolved at a much earlier stage, with a bit of common sense and flexibility? Someone suggested that after his order was refused, Gareth could simply have shrugged his shoulders, recognised that some people don't agree with gay marriage, and found another bakery that was happy to make his cake.

If one particular bakery throws a wobbly over the message on a cake, is that such a big deal? There must be plenty of bakeries that are more obliging, so does it really matter?

If I ordered a cake with the message "Bollocks to Brexit" and the bakery refused the order, would it be worth  starting a £500,000 legal action to demand my culinary rights? I think not. It would just suggest I had a very large chip on my shoulders.

Pic: Gareth Lee

Shared passions

I had an interesting thought about loneliness the other evening, while I was sipping wine at an art gallery exhibition launch. I wondered why I didn't feel lonely, even though I was on my own and I was surrounded by people in couples and groups chattering away to each other.

Loneliness is normally taken to mean the lack of close relationships in your life, the sort of relationships where you can connect with someone at a deep level and feel a sense of intimacy and empathy.

But I wasn't with anyone else, so why didn't I feel lonely? I realised it was because even though I wasn't with someone, I shared with the others present a passion for modern art, and an enthusiasm for this particular artist, which meant I felt connected to them and had that sense of intimacy and empathy that dispels loneliness.

I get the same sort of feeling when I attend political rallies. I share with those around me the same political aims and attitudes, the same passion for a better and fairer society, and again that makes me feel connected to them.

In fact I feel connected to other people in all sorts of ways. I see them going through the same struggles as myself, the same difficulties, the same successes and failures, the same hopes and fears, and I don't need to talk to them or befriend them to empathise with their predicaments.

It surprises me when people don't feel that general connectedness to others, when they feel cut off from other people, shut up in their own personal existence as if there's some invisible barrier between them and the rest of the world.

I should sip wine at art galleries more often. And wait for the dazzling insights.

Rules and regimes

The media is stuffed with articles about how to be healthier, how to stay physically fit, and how to live longer. But do I necessarily want to live longer? And do I want to enslave myself to all the arduous restrictions and regimes that might add a few months to my life?

Do I really want to spend hours at the gym, stop eating chocolate and ice cream, stop drinking alcohol, chomp the latest super-food, or do everything standing instead of sitting? No, I don't. That would take a lot of the pleasure out of life. It would turn me into a self-denying killjoy constantly asking myself if I should do this or do that rather than just doing what I enjoy.

My mother lived until she was 96, but by that age she was declining mentally and physically and was a shadow of her former bubbly, energetic self. Do I want to be alive at 96 in the same frail condition? I can't say I do. I'd rather conk out at an earlier age when I still have all my faculties and I'm still enjoying life to the full.

There's also the small matter of looking after all these frail elderly folk who have survived many more years than they used to a few decades ago. They're a burden on families and a burden on the NHS who may or may not give them the care and attention they need. And quite often the people looking after elderly relatives are elderly themselves, with their own infirmities to deal with.

So spare me all the well-meaning articles about octogenarian yoga maestros, nonagenarian marathon runners and globetrotting centenarians. Just give me another bowl of ice cream and some chocolate truffles. And a generous glass of pinot grigio.