I LOVE being home in the UK but some things are just completely bonkers. On my top ten list of things that irritate are having to separate rubbish into about 20 different bins, excessive political correctness and just how many people hate Andy Murray…
A woman from Norfolk, who runs a recruitment agency, complained this week that she was not able to place an advert for a ‘reliable and hard-working’ domestic cleaner on a job centre website. She claimed that she was told by a Jobcentre Plus worker that they could not display an advert for a ‘reliable’ worker as they might be sued for discriminating against unreliable workers. The Department for Work and Pensions refused to comment but confirmed that the advert has been displayed! Have policy makers taken leave of their senses or are there just a lot of individual morons around?
I think there are always morons around. And there is certainly a fair amount of moronic thinking re the Andy Murray issue. The feeling of animosity and petty mindedness is tangible here. Murray is the first Brit to get to an Australian Open final since John Lloyd 33 years ago and half the country wants him to lose? Why? Because he is Scottish? Because he is not Tim Henman? Because he is British and actually really good? According to the ‘just for fun,’ I hate Andy Murray soc on Facebook, it is because of his ‘smart-arse attitude and horse face!’ According to my mother, lots of her Daily Mail reading friends don’t like the way he opens his mouth too wide when he celebrates some piece of tennis brilliance and wants to spur himself on. What bizarre collective psychology is this?
Some people will just never forgive him for his quite clearly tongue-in-cheek comment about wanting ‘anyone but England’ to win the world cup four years ago. It was actually quite funny at the time and they really should get over it. Hello, Scotland and England are footballing rivals and Scotland hadn’t qualified. It was certainly far funnier coming from a Scot, than it is when that kind of comment comes from smug, right-on, middle class English people who feel guilty about the Empire, think Tony Blair should be demonised at the Iraq enquiry and probably never watch football anyway. I suspect that most of the Murray haters, never watch tennis either and fail to recognise that the reason he is so brilliant is because he is so focussed on his tennis, which may make him seem surly. He will never be Tim Henman because he just isn’t a middle class, English, Home Counties sort of chap. But he might actually win something worth winning and soon……..
Thank goodness I thought ahead and decided not to fly back to Cyprus on Sunday morning. Now the only problem is who to support. I love Federer and don’t care if he has already won 15 grand slams. He is just so brilliant he could win another 10 and probably deserve them all. But for all those Murray haters out there, I just want Murray to win and ruin their day!
