I’ve become quite good at spotting them. The lowered head. The shuffling gait. Usually, but not always, under 25. Hands stretched out unnaturally, thumbs poised at the ready.
Welcome to the march of the zombie mobile phone users. It sounds like the name of a rather dull horror film, but for many of us these days it is a regular and unstoppable nuisance.
You know the types. The ones for whom what is going on in their phone (texts, videos, level 643 of Candy Crush, who knows?) is so important that they cannot possibly look where they’re going but instead walk down streets, across roads and through shops staring at it.
They bump into us. They get in the way. They cause queues, crushes and bottlenecks. Sometimes they even bump into each other.
Welcome to the march of the zombie mobile phone users
And quite frankly, I’ve had enough of it.
Part of it is the arrogance. The inner confidence to believe that everyone will simply leap out of the way. Mostly though, I’m fed up playing human dodgems each time I leave the house.
Look, I understand that most people carry their lives on these devices.
I’m one of them. They contain a whole world of apps and contacts, emails and texts, not to mention the life-sucking force that is social media.
But is any of it so important that it can’t be left for five minutes while you scoot round Tesco? Is it crucial that you respond to that WhatsApp message right at the moment that you decide to cross the road?
Part of the problem, I think, is that we now have a generation who have never known life before mobiles.
For them, the idea that you’d just have to wait and hope for the best if the person you were meeting didn’t turn up is unthinkable.
Most under-25s rarely make phone calls, which makes me sad when I think about the hours I spent nattering down the line to school friends on Saturday nights.
So I was heartened to learn this week that, in England, mobile phones are to be banned in schools.
At least that’s the guidance from the Department for Education, which will back head teachers in banning mobile phone use to tackle disruptive behaviour and online bullying, while boosting attention during lessons.
The Scottish Government has yet to make a decision, but education minister Jenny Gilruth is said to be concerned about the impact of phones on young people and may well follow suit. I really hope she will.
Because there’s something else, less tangible, about the use of mobiles. It’s about missing out.
Our real world is an extraordinary place. It is beautiful and chaotic and fleeting, and if you go through life with your head down staring at a screen, then you’ll miss it. The chink of blue sky after rain. The smile from a passing stranger.
The older I get, the more I think that mobile phones, once hailed as devices that would help free us from our desks, are in fact imprisoning us by constantly demanding our attention.
Like so many facets of modern technology that were supposed to make life easier, they have made it harder.
While we wait for a Scottish Government decision, then, I can only advise the zombie-like users to look up. You never know what you might see.
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Beautiful Pam’s bare-faced chic
Gold star please for Pamela Anderson, who this week chose to attend Paris Fashion Week with a bare face entirely free of makeup.
This should not, of course, be controversial. Millions of women, after all, go makeup-free every day and I hear some of them even quite enjoy it.
But there’s a world away from nipping to the shops without your lipstick and sporting a bare face at an event packed full of supermodels, designers, photographers and, yes, makeup artists.
It helps that Anderson, who is now 56, is naturally beautiful.
But I admire the fact that she chose to remind the world of fashionistas of that, entirely on her own terms.
A natural Pamela Anderson in Paris
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Humza Yousaf told Time magazine that the SNP has faced ‘five of the most difficult months my party has probably faced in its recent history’. Tell us something we don’t know, First Minister…
First Minister Humza Yousaf on the front cover of TIME magazine.
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Margaret trashed her own party’s reputation
If ever a picture could say a thousand words, it might just be the image of Margaret Ferrier – who triggered Thursday’s Rutherglen by-election after losing her seat for flouting Covid rules by travelling while knowingly infected with the virus – taking out the bins.
I have never had any sympathy for Ferrier or her selfish actions, and I suspect many of her SNP colleagues felt the same.
Unfortunately for them, it is the party – who lost the seat to Labour by a landslide in a vote which is now triggering ‘beginning of the end’ talk – who have paid the ultimate price.
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The cost of single first class stamp has now risen to £1.25
It is both terrifying and, frankly, outrageous that a single first class stamp now costs £1.25. Still, that settles it – eCards all round for Christmas this year.
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Regrets, Nicola? Only in hindsight it seems
Fascinating to learn that even Liz Lloyd, Nicola Sturgeon’s faithful and long-serving top lieutenant and adviser, never supported the former First Minister’s ‘de facto referendum’ independence strategy.
Lloyd, who was for many years Sturgeon’s chief of staff, admitted in an interview this week that she opposed the plan to turn the next General Election into a vote on breaking up the UK. Even more intriguingly, she also raised concerns about the impact of Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell holding the top jobs in the SNP.
‘In hindsight, I think even they would say it probably wasn’t the best, or that maybe it could have been done differently,’ Lloyd said.
Of course, it may be that Lloyd is still, to some extent, Sturgeon’s mouthpiece, sending a soft message out that the politician has regrets over how certain things were handled during her time running the country.
Nonetheless, it astonishes me that it is only ‘in hindsight’ that such things are being considered. How many more things, one wonders, might Sturgeon eventually concede ‘could have been done differently’?
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Good riddance to Rossi
So farewell then Nicholas Rossi, the fugitive sex offender accused of faking his death to escape prosecution for alleged rape in the US. Wanted in Utah and Rhode Island for a string of allegations, Rossi, pictured, will now be sent home after ministers signed his extradition order.
Thank goodness for that. A man who has clogged up our over-worked justice system for too long, it is time he went back to his own country to face the music.
Nicholas Rossi, the fugitive sex offender accused of faking his death to escape prosecution
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Congratulations to Professors Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, the scientists who developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccine, for winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Whatever the naysayers might claim, their achievements have saved millions of lives. I’m delighted they have been recognised with the highest accolade in their field.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
Content source – www.soundhealthandlastingwealth.com
