Fuddland
Risking a Boris Johnson-style backlash, I’m not going to observe today’s three minute silence. Obviously it’s up to the individual whether they want to partake in a collective silence as a mark of respect, but to stand stock still and say nothing a little over a week after the disaster, when countless survivors are struggling to come to terms with what has happened to their homes, to their families and friends, seems rather pointless to me.
Perhaps I’m grossly misjudging human nature, but I really don’t think the people affected would give a damn whether we fell silent for three minutes as a mark of respect or not, and would much rather we did something a little more pro-active if we wanted to do anything at all.
Aside from all that, my new project is to attempt to figure out, via interpolation, the secret formula they use to determine the lengths of the silences recently observed in the UK. My data points thus far are:
Three minutes ten days after the tsunami which has claimed over 150,000 people [and counting]
Two minutes every Remembrance Day in honour of the millions of people killed serving their countries in the two great wars of the twentieth century
Two minutes allocated one day after the event of Ken Bigley’s murder
Three minutes three days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 which had a deathtoll of more than 5,000 people
Zero minutes silence in respect of the 800 people killed in Bangladesh’s floods last summer
Not sure I’ll have much luck fitting a curve through that lot.
Comments
Jann | 2005 / 01 / 06 – 12:53
I was grumbling about this very point the other day.
In fifty year’s time there’ll be a football match that’ll miss its three o’clock kick-off by a couple of hours following the latest war/ disaster/ dead-fellow’s-immaculately-observed silence tibute thing.
David | 2005 / 01 / 06 – 13:01
Re #1: I’ve always found the observances of silence at football matches to be faintly amusing. I wonder if, just after the referee has signalled the end of the silence, anyone has ever thought, “Those two minutes of contemplation have put a whole new perspective on things. I’m going to leave this trivial pursuit right now and spend my time a little more fruitfully.”
No, everyone just goes “Wwwhhheeeyyyyyyy! Now let’s get on with the footie!”
David | 2005 / 01 / 06 – 13:02
More of my thoughts on this matter follow Richard’s own.
mrtn | 2005 / 01 / 06 – 17:10
re #2: regarding silences at football matches, i’ve moaned and groaned about this for ages. it used to be (when i were a lad etc.) that if someone intimately connected with the club e.g. a long-term player, coach etc, had died, _or_ there had been a major _football related_ incident e.g. heysel, hillsborough, then a period of silence would be observed at the next home game. now it happens when anybody, anywhere, has died. ditto the players wearing black armbands.
sweeping characterisation of football fans as trivial pursuants less able to gain perspective from contemplation than others is amusing btw ;)
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