What the hell are you talking about?

You only have to switch on the television, be involved in social media or, indeed, read a newspaper to wonder if the world is going mad these days. From politicians pronouncing black to be white or vice versa to criminals denouncing prison as being cruel or violating their human rights, we seem to feel that we are entitled to present facts as they suit us, with the apotheosis being President Trump and his people telling blatant untruths and calling them alternative facts.

And every day it is getting worse.

Recently a woman here in London was convicted in court because she behaved aggressively towards a cyclist while driving her car, ranting and raving at him, threatening to run him over. The whole episode was caught on his helmet camera and she is clearly shown to be threatening the cyclist, who happened to be well-known BBC presenter Jeremy Vine, yet she is reportedly 'not happy' at her conviction despite also ranting about this on social media while the court case was in progress, having several other offences and a suspended sentence in her background. Is she serious? What is she saying, that despite everything she has done she must not be punished?

A very fruitful source of amusement on this front is, of course, Boris Johnson, currently Foreign Secretary and previously Mayor of London, who constantly lets pearls of wisdom escape his mouth. The fact that often his observations are intelligent and, possibly, even accurate does not mean that he should be saying these things. How is he going to face President Trump (The Donald) having said that one of the reasons he does not go to New York is his fear of meeting Donald Trump when, during his tenure as mayor, Trump suggested that London was an unsafe city to live in - and implying it was because of the large unchecked numbers of foreigners in our midst.

Another complaint is how we use language officially in everyday life, like the announcement on a train that 'we are arriving at XYZ where this train will terminate'... The other day I wanted to congratulate the conductor who said that 'we are now approaching XYZ where this train will complete its journey', but was unable to find him. Perhaps he is following new instructions or there is a new movement afoot to speak properly, all a good thing, for language used correctly is a thing of beauty.

I must confess to another pet hate, the use of the word peadophile to imply someone who has erotic and sexual interest in children; the correct word is pederast (from the greek words for child and eros, physical love i.e. sexual). If we take the use of -phile (from the greek word philos: friend, lover/amateur-not sexual) in that way, then a bibliophile is a very strange person indeed, and you had better hide your pet gerbil if a zoophile comes to visit. Whilst I appreciate it is probably too late to change to the correct word now it continues to 'impact' on my sensibilities... And of course impact is a noun, not a verb, so it has an impact really...

Of course this is small fry when someone as error-prone as George W. Bush walks this earth, though I fear that he is about to be eclipsed by the new U.S.A. administration. I so hope not!