Monday 19 March 2018

Everyone's an expert


I was browsing Country Living magazine online recently and came across an article about how knitting is shown to lower blood pressure, tackle depression and help you cope with pain, the article was accompanied by the above image (for the uninitiated the lady is crocheting).  Presumably whoever uploaded it realised knitting involved yarn and needles and imagined this image met both criteria.  Certainly did nothing for my blood pressure.
I am sick to death of people voicing ill informed opinions and over estimating their own knowledge and capabilities.  I used to detest those radio phone in programmes when strange people often late at night rang in to broadcast a tirade of nonsense.   I thought they should be banned. 
Nowadays everyone types their own correspondence, we have so many masters of all trades.  I receive documents that make me laugh out loud at the appalling grammar, the shoddy layouts, the poor command of English.  Of course everyone jumps on the bandwagon of slapping in an apostrophe whenever they use capital letters or a plural or neither.  
Our communal garden is a great example of the idiots taking over the asylum.  We employ a gardener who has no idea when or how plants need to be pruned and does what he likes, he is not a gardener but the ill informed believe he is doing a great job and never wonder why there are so few summer blooms.  Likewise the council staff who come to tend the public gardens.  Every spring I watch them savagely prune the gorse before it can flower and cut back the catkins as they appear.  
Recently one of our management board, a fellow resident, was tasked with ordering bulbs for our lake garden, £500 worth.  He said he had ordered snowdrops, when they arrived they were erythronium, the dogs tooth violet which admittedly are lovely but not snowdrops.  He obviously had no idea of the Latin name for snowdrops (galanthus) and didn't bother to find out.  I pointed out his mistake when I helped with the planting and he replied well they look like snowdrops, they'll be fine.  Unfortunately the poor resident who had put up the money for the bulbs was not so pleased.
On our local Facebook chat page recently there was information about the upcoming annual business awards event.  Some one had written in the comments to the effect that those nominated were a bunch of rich snobs, he made a few spelling mistakes in his comments.  I'm sure he would be delighted if someone wrote on his page that he, his family and friends were a set of chavs.  When I checked this person out he didn't even live in our town so how he knows that everyone running their own business here has too much money or looks down on others is beyond me
The internet has a lot to answer for, my blood boils when I see blatant displays of ignorance.  I am careful what I post, I am not here to be contentious or to voice my political views. I stick to what I know and God forbid I should ever make a fool of myself my stepping outside my areas of expertise (obviously ranting is one of these).  It's such a pity that others don't do the same.  

4 comments:

  1. I've previously come across photos of crochet when an article has been about knitting, it's something which seems quite common, as you say, yarn, needles, that picture will do. What a shame about the snowdrops, you'd think trusted with that amount of money he'd have made quite sure.

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  2. There's a lot of truth in what you say = particularly about people thinking they know enough about gardening to set up on their own and go round offering services to elderly people who wish to keep their gardens tidy but are no longer able to do so themselves. I found the way to avoid this was to go by personal recommendation.

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  3. Today, I went to the beach front with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said "You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear." She put the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is completely off topic but I had to tell someone! Loans on hard assets

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  4. Snowdrops are best planted in the green ie when they have just finished flowering.This also has the advantage that you can tell what they are.They are also as cheap as chips from your local market.

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