Urban myths

By Tony Watts - Editor - 06/10/2008

I love the way that jokes somehow make their way into the national consciousness as ‘facts’. This is usually because jokes are overheard in pubs (where alcohol has a way of dimming one’s judgement) or relayed by minicab drivers (say no more).

 

After a while, it really doesn’t matter. Because – even if they aren’t strictly true – they might just be, and because they reveal the untapped potential for mankind to be blindingly stupid.

 

There are lots of quotations from newspapers that do the rounds on the internet, and I’ve been unable to determine their exact provenance. So are these really true or not?

 

“Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, ‘We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It’s possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house‘.“ (The Daily Telegraph)

 

“A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast guard spokesman commented, ‘This sort of thing is all too common’.” (The

Times)

 

“Mrs Irene Graham of Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she recalled. 

‘He’d always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out ‘Heil Hitler’.’’ (Bournemouth Evening Echo)

 

Do you see what I mean… they could be true. Even the inflatable teeth. Another strand of society that strays (albeit inadvertently) into urban myth is the ‘Political Announcement’. This often begins life as a big, bold new Government initiative. Let’s start with something hypothetical – like pumping hundreds of millions of pounds into insulating poorer people’s homes. The media give it big headlines but then, once the froth has come of the coffee, it is realised that very few people who really need help will actually receive it.

 

Once again, it could just have been true…

 

Or here’s another example – purely hypothetical of course. A new policy is announced that will actually improve the service provided to older people living in sheltered and very sheltered housing. 

Rather than having someone living on-site, there to keep a day to day eye on vulnerable residents, you issue everyone with an emergency pendant or emergency cord and promise to drop in every now and again to check they are not lying on the floor, unable to press the pendant or reach the cord.

 

Examine it logically, and this sort of policy is a disaster waiting to happen. A bit like taking inflatable teeth out to sea. So true, or not true? You decide. Can people really be that stupid and uncaring?

 

So how about starting an urban myth right here and now in Mature

Times: that the Government and councils up and down the country are trimming budgets everywhere they can. And they believe that the services that they can cut, and upset the least number of people, are those supporting older people.

 

Uncanny how it does have that ring of plausibility about it…