Hidden messages

Some people habitually read things into what others say. They never take a remark at face value, they always speculate on what the person is actually saying. Is it really a put-down, or a cry for help, or a sign of indifference? What are the hidden messages?

I hardly ever read things into other people's remarks. Maybe I'm stupid or insensitive or unimaginative, but I do tend to take what others are saying at face value. I don't assume there's some subtle meaning I have to tease out.

I remember a woman I knew telling me she always read too much into what others were saying. This had led to a few heated arguments with her boyfriend when he insisted that what she was imagining was nonsense.

Journalists are front-runners in interpreting people's remarks in a hundred different ways. Could that politician's chance remark mean they're considering resigning? Or they're getting dementia? Or they're angling for promotion? Or they're panicking over some imminent scandal? Of course most of it turns out to be claptrap.

Actually I'm fibbing slightly when I say I don't read anything into people's remarks. I like to be liked and I do try to figure out from what someone's saying whether they like me or not. Did I detect a certain frostiness there? Did I detect a note of warmth? Did they agree with what I just said? Did they look disapproving? I can't quite go along with the "just be yourself and don't worry about the reaction" brigade.

Mostly I confine my speculation to novels and the fate of fictional characters therein. Whether I guess right or guess wrong, it's of no consequence.

War mongering

Journalists are always trying to stoke up a supposed generation war - young people hate the old and vice versa - whereas in reality young and old may get on very well and sympathise with each other's problems.

An article in the Independent claims that "the generation wars seem worse than ever" and "the debate is becoming more toxic". Really? Where's the evidence, apart from a load of dubious anecdotes and stereotypes?

Most families include people of different ages and different generations. Are they all at loggerheads, constantly fuming and accusing each other of heinous offences? No, of course they aren't.

Some people get on well, some don't. That's all there is to it. I wasn't at war with my mother or my grandparents or my aunts and uncles. We may not have had the same opinions or attitudes but we rubbed along okay. I was estranged from my father for 20 years but that was exceptional.

Yes, some young people accuse us oldies of making their lives worse while we enjoy the fruits of much better lives. Yes, some oldies accuse young people of knowing it all despite their limited experience of the world.

Most of us take people as we find them however and don't trot out such one-sided stereotypes.

There's a natural tendency though for each generation to think they know better than any other generation - the young because they see us oldies as hopelessly out of touch with the modern world, oldies because we have so much more experience of the problems that life throws up, and the middle-aged because they're in the midst of so many situations the young haven't yet encountered and the oldies have forgotten about - like parenting or running a business.

Bu it takes more than self-righteousness to make a war.

Up for grabs

Other people's bodies seem to be fair game these days. They can't just be quietly enjoyed and apprec-iated. Everyone has to have an opinion on them, the more scathing and dismissive the better.

I know, I've done my fair share of presumptious commenting on other people's bodies, weighing in on something that's none of my business.

I've aired my opinions on their clothes, their size, their voice, their hair, or anything else that catches my attention. And what's all that got to do with me? In a word, nothing.

It's entirely a matter for them. Just as what I do with my own body is my business and not that of every opinionated Tom, Dick and Harriet who happens to see me.

Some people go even further. They presume to tell women if they can have abortions or use contraception or get sexual advice. Or keep their clitorises. And usually it's men who issue these gratuitous instructions. Who gave them the right?

There's a term for all this unwanted opinionising. A very accurate term. Body fascism. Because isn't that what it is? Or at the very least authoritarianism.

No wonder so many women dislike their own bodies and wish they had a different one. How can anyone have body-confidence if any passing stranger feels entitled to pass judgment? Just a critical glance can be disconcerting.

Random strangers and their opinions are bad enough, but once the journalists start wading in, it can be seriously destructive. Thousands of people are told that celebrity X or Y is badly dressed, too thin, has stringy hair or looks like they just crawled out of bed. Who gave these superannuated hacks the right to trash other people's bodies so freely?

It's about time we reclaimed the integrity of the human body, instead of treating it as another commodity to be shaped by public whims.

PS: Just to clarify, I don't include loved ones here. I think they're entitled to have opinions on their partner's/ friend's body. Of course those opinions may not be heeded....

False assumption

Just imagine being mistaken for someone who has died and your photo being flashed around the world as being that person. And then imagine the other person was a political activist their government wanted to get rid of.

Quite a nightmare. And Neda Soltani, who was a victim of exactly this mistaken identity, is still trying to rebuild a life that was wrecked by the confusion - a confusion still being perpetuated by indifferent journalists.

Media outlets looking for a picture of Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot dead during a demonstration in Tehran, found Neda Soltani's Facebook photo and assumed she was the same person. Her photo went around the world as the other Neda - and is still being misused even now.

Before the confusion, she was a Professor of English Literature leading a normal, unassuming life. In less than two weeks that life was torn apart. She received hate messages accusing her of being both an agent of the Islamic Republic and an agent of Western governments. She was hounded by the Ministry of Intelligence.

She had no choice but to flee the country, eventually settling in Germany where she obtained political asylum. She is still trying to put her life back together. She suffers from depression and nightmares - and total disbelief at the events that shattered her life.

The people she is most angry with are the Western media. They kept using her photo even though they knew it was the wrong one, and knowingly exposed her to extreme danger. She could easily have been murdered.

Simply because her name was similar to someone else's and she had a Facebook photo. Two tiny but disastrous facts.

My thanks to the BBC Magazine, which originally ran this story. Pic: Neda Soltani

Scary pigs

Aren't you totally terrified of swine flu? According to the media, it might kill tens of thousands, devastate businesses and trigger countless miscarriages and birth defects. We should all be quaking in our boots.

Thank God for one intrepid soul ignoring the screaming headlines and asking what the fuss is all about. It's only flu, says columnist Simon Jenkins. If you get it, just take an aspirin and wait for it to go away again.

It's not even as debilitating as other types of flu, he reminds us. We'll hardly know we've got it. A sore throat, runny nose, aching muscles - hardly the end of the world. The only people dead so far are those with underlying medical conditions that make it hard to fight the infection. So why the panic?

But the tabloids are conjuring up lines of coffins and ravaged families, the government are diverting cash and staff from elsewhere in the health service, two thousand phone advisers have been recruited and reams of advice have been issued (much of it contradictory and confusing).

Pregnant women are scared they might lose their baby, but the risk is no greater than for any other flu. The woman who died after giving birth had used a wheelchair for 15 years and had serious medical problems.

We should all take a deep breath, turn our bullshit-detectors up a few notches and just laugh heartily at all the lurid headlines. Haven't these journalists got anything better to do, like asking why poverty and illiteracy are still so common in a highly developed country?

I sometimes think journalists get a sort of sadistic thrill from frightening us out of our wits and creating doomsday scenarios out of remote possibilities. Still, why let the truth stand in the way of a good story?

PS: Of course swine flu is child's play compared with the horrors of man flu....

PPS: Drug companies and retailers are making a killing out of swine flu hysteria, selling a gullible public everything from anti-bacterial hand wipes to thermometers and face masks. It's reported that internet sales of bogus Tamiflu are now higher than bogus Viagra....

Slumming it

Every so often some journalist or politician looking for attention decides to see what it’s like living on welfare. You know the kind of thing – “My life on a fiver a day” by Terry Twatt.

It’s always completely bogus. They’re not really living on a fiver a day because they’ve got a nice stock of Armani togs and all their hi-tech gizmos back at their real home in some fashionable urban neighbourhood.

They know they’ve only got to survive a week of low-life grot before they can race back thankfully to their normal life and resume shagging their sleek, perfectly-honed bedmate.

They don’t even have to keep it up 24/7 because they can always sneak home for a few hours and make up some plausible diary entry about the Tesco budget loaf being eaten by giant rats.

They know full well that one week in a grubby hovel is not the same as a life-sentence of poverty, dead-end jobs, greedy landlords and constantly struggling to make ends meet.

They don’t have the crippling back story of mountainous debts to loan sharks, four children to feed, a winter’s worth of fuel bills, and windows being broken by the local yobs.

A week of slumming it is about as realistic as having a few pints and pretending you’re an alcoholic.

Instead of grabbing their flea-ridden fleeces and pretending to be poor, Terry Twatt and his ilk would do better to tell us just why poverty is so entrenched and why a long string of British politicians have failed to give the residents of one of the world’s wealthiest countries a decent standard of living.

And why the fat cats running our big companies are paying themselves more and more while the wages of their overworked employees are steadily shrinking.

But that would be far too controversial. And not nearly so entertaining as a bit of down-in-the-gutter make-believe.