Armchair critics

What really struck me as I was watching an Amy Winehouse documentary last night (she died ten years ago yesterday) was how many people happily pontificate about who or what caused her death and heap blame on whoever they think pushed her over the edge.

People who never met Amy, know nothing about her except what they read in the media, but set themselves up as instant experts on her complex psychological state.

They'll casually pour scorn on her mother, her father or her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, also people they've never met, oblivious to the effect their vitriol might be having on the recipients.

All they're doing is adding insult to injury. Her parents, still struggling with deep grief ten years on, also have to fend off the endless barrage of accusations and derision from people who think they know better than her family and friends what might have saved her.

Who knows what could have saved her? She was clearly in a very bad way when she died, but rejected any type of therapy or professional help. She suffered from bulimia, alcoholism, a period of drug addiction, and was mentally and emotionally very fragile and unstable.

To begin with she enjoyed her sudden rise to fame, but that turned into another psychological hindrance she could have done without.

Her parents Mitch and Janis are adamant they did everything they could to help her but were constantly thwarted. They're obviously hurt and shaken by all the criticism from complete strangers.

These armchair critics would be better off minding their own business and reflecting on their own imperfections - which no doubt are numerous.

Pot shots

One of life's little mysteries is the way people condemn things out of hand. Things they don't understand and don't want to understand.

How can you decide that something is sinful or immoral or damaging purely on the basis of some knee-jerk reaction, some blind instinct totally detached from the facts?

People who slam a play without seeing it, or a book without reading it. People who condemn immigrants or refugees with no comprehension of the circumstances they find themselves in. People who sneer at alternative remedies or veganism or psychotherapy without knowing the first thing about them. People who knock teachers when they haven't set foot in a school in 40 years.

On the basis of a few tabloid headlines, or neighbourhood gossip, or a dinner-party anecdote, they casually let rip at anyone or anything they fancy, oblivious to the distress and alarm they might be causing to those on the receiving end. It never occurs to them that they might be totally misinformed, prejudiced, wrong-headed.

Personally I try not to condemn anything I know very well I'm ignorant about. If I'm not sure of the facts, I prefer to keep my mouth shut until such time as I am. I'm not going to pontificate simply to impress an audience.

If I don't understand something, I'll confess to being puzzled, or being uncertain, or being undecided, rather than feign knowledge I don't have. I'll try to find out a bit more about the subject and road-test whatever half-baked preconceptions and stereotypes are floating round my head.

But I think a lot of people actually feel embarrassed or uncomfortable at the idea that they're ignorant about something. Instead of admitting their ignorance, they parrot the latest fashionable opinion and hope nobody examines it too closely. All I can say is, I'd rather stay silent than talk out of my arse.