No more, No Les.

I would like to take this opportunity to officially ask Les Horton to put down his crayon, once and for all. His 'column' in the GDN is bland, pointless, rambling and seemingly written by someone in the 8-10 age group. His opinion(s) are flaccid and his arguments are unsubstantiated. His prose is shockingly colourless and infantile. I, and many others like me, have had enough of his patronizing tone. We, the people of Bahrain, do not deserve to be treated like retards. The Gulf Daily News, for all it's many, many shortcomings, remains one of Bahrain's only forums for discussion and opinion. Surely the literate masses deserve better than 'As I See It', the ramblings of an unspectacular mind scrawled onto paper by a lacklustre hand and published in all their monotony in the monochrome pages of mediocrity that has the audacity to label itself the 'Voice of Bahrain'. 

It is clear that the GDN struggles to find content. It is obvious that original thought is included as a mere afterthought; as padding between advertorials, press releases and cinema listings. So it is nothing less than tragic to think that something as rare as opinion be relegated to the desk of a second-tier hack with a genuine inability to explore an idea, an opinion or even a passing thought. Try as I might, I have never once been enlightened, excited, enthused or even merely interested in Mr. Horton's unstructured mumbling. If anything, I sympathise with his position, as unstructured rambling is something I do often, as can be evidenced right here on this blog. And that, Mr. Horton, is where your opinion should be confined. To some easily-accessible, inexpensive, tree-saving, entirely avoidable nether-region of the world wide web. Donate your printed words to someone interesting. To someone intelligent. To someone opinionated. To someone who will relish the opportunity to enlighten, argue or inform. Not Ali Al Saeed. Put down your crayon Mr. Horton. And then, use that point-and-click device the young 'uns love so much to 'surf' to www.blogger.com. It's free, easy and thankfully, obscure. 

Am I being harsh? I provide links to RANDOM columns for your perusal. Judge for yourselves. 

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269522
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269386
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269313
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269183

When confronted in the heavily-edited forum that is the letters section of the GDN, Mr. Horton had the decency to defend himself. In his own words (with comments in bold):

"I try to write about a broad mix of local or international issues, or personal experiences that I think others may relate to. (Try harder, or stop trying) "Some are intended to be light-hearted, since I don't believe people need lecturing to day after day and some are just thoughts about life which I believe will touch others. (i.e. shallow and/or lame) "Not everyone will like or relate to every column, but I like to think that each one touches someone. (They might, but only because the GDN is soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent) "I once wrote about being reunited with my brother after many years and received, as a result, a letter from one man who had been inspired by it to pick up the phone to his own brother for the first time in 20 years. (Way to save the world Les) "One lady in Saar wrote in response to my more personal columns that when she read them in the mornings, it felt like she was having coffee with a friend. (There it is... your audience. That one lady in Saar) "I hope you continue to read the column and find something to interest or entertain you, at least occasionally. (We live in hope, but the trees keep falling)

Enough Les. We've had enough. Please stop. The only people who will miss your scrawls as the stockholders of Crayola. We wish you well in all your future endeavours. 

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Yeah, I know... I've been lazy again. I couldnt be bothered to complain, though that does not mean there isn't plenty to complain about.

(Wayward rant begins)

Parliament. Yeah, those guys. The bearded club of overpaid ignorance. They've been spouting and spewing again.

This time their gripe is, once again, with the profession for which Bahrain has garnered so much international attention recently: prostitution. A couple of weeks ago an urgent inquiry into the scale of prostitution in the Kingdom was launched. Necessary, I suppose. They voted to set up said inquiry after our one and only Ministeress of Culcha and Informayshon told them that they were 'exaggerating' the scale of prostitution in the Kingdom. Fair play. The Ministeress also took the time to blame our MPs for the 'misleading information that other countries were getting about prostitution in Bahrain'. According to her, the government is doing it's best to combat vice and the situation is 'under control'. Hurrah?

The smell of bullshit is overpowering. For once, the MPs seem to be on the right side. They took matters into their own hands after being blamed, lied to and patronized by the Ministry. It would seem, perhaps, that a pandemic of sanity was affecting our democracy. Not quite.

For whilst there are reasons enough to launch an inquiry that will inevitably be biased and pointless, they couldnt stop there. One overeducated, underpaid muppet took the time to blame Bahrain's 40% divorce rate on the prevalence of prostitution in the Kingdom. That's right ladies, germs and gentlemen... the reason so very many people in Bahrain hate their spouses enough to legally terminate their union is prostitution.

"Because of sleaze, our divorce rate in the country is around 40pc and our women and men have become victims of its effects."

Top notch ignorance. A+. First bloody class. I would pay to see his research. Actually, I wouldnt, but I reckon someone somewhere might. It's cause and effect, starting backwards.

Scenario A

Mr MP was sitting at home, staring at the latest figures for divorce, shaking his head in dismay, wondering how his beloved Kingdom started to lose it's lustre. And then, naturally, he started to think about prostitutes. As one does. And then it occurred to him: we have a divorce problem and a prostitution problem, so they must related. Directly. And his 'theory' was born.

Scenario B

Mr MP was recently divorced, owing to some indiscretions on Exhibition road and a possible STD. He started to think about how many of his peeps had suffered from the same itchy, lonely combination. Of his 10 homies, 4 had recently been divorced because of those darned whores. A few hours of number crunching and he had a figure: 40%. We must do something about this problem, he thought. So he went to parliament and spewed his new fact to the GDN.

Scenario C

Mr MP was standing outside a shop in Muharraq, staring at a plastic female mannequin. After several hours of leering, he went home to realise he'd missed his wedding anniversary and his wife filed for divorce. Sleaze was the culprit and he was the victim. Of the ten people he hung out with outside that shop window, four ended up in divorce court.

Scenario D

Mr MP just made up some random statistic to spew at his weekly meeting of Ignorance Anonymous

Anyway, Shaikha Mai was at the parliamentary house of logic to respond to a question by an MP on the "reasons behind the closure of discos and dance floors and a ban on alcohol and live entertainment in one and two-star hotels, while higher-rated hotels were spared the ban."

"The question is -- are dance floors, alcohol and prostitution against Islamic values in one and two-star hotels and not in the rest? "For years, MPs in this chamber have addressed the issue and demanded real solutions to the problem, but there has been no significant achievement in combating sleaze and it continues going on unchecked."

Decent question. Fair point. And then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid, again. He said, again according to the GDN, that hotel car parks and surrounding areas were filled with GCC-registered cars throughout the week and especially during weekends, with men coming from other countries for the prostitution and nightlife. And that "No action has been taken against these hotels where those cars are parked".

Umm... they're hotels. HOTELS. Where people from, yknow, other countries stay when they come to Bahrain. Would you prefer a scenario where there were no cars outside the hotels, or perhaps you envisage a Bahrain where the only patrons of our hospitality industry are Bahraini? Cause that wouldnt be sleazy. Nah. That'd be normal. Lets spend time and money discussing ways to 'take action' against the hospitality industry because of GCC-registered cars. Fucking genius. Yeah, the hotels are jam-packed full 'o sleaze. But is it really fair, or practical, or actionable, or even remotely sensible to approach something as endemic as Exhibition Road's sleaze from such an idiotic, bottom-up approach?

The goverments position is rather clear, in a totally vague kinda way.

"We have a respected hospitality industry and demanding a curb on our tourist facilities and describing them all as being full of sleaze, gives the impression that there is no need for a probe, considering that the judgement has been already made." ... " The proposal has to be changed to some and not all facilities, because these things have to be proven by a probe committee"

I'm losing track. MP's are against sleaze and hospitality, but the goverment says the sleaze is under control and that the hospitality industry is respected. No one wants to damage Bahrain's reputation, but both sides manage to do so by engaging in such a fruitless, unsubstantiated debate. MPs love Bahrain, but not one with foreign cars (or foreigners) in it. Government made rules about 1 & 2 star hotels but say that things have to be proven by a probe committee, eons after the rules came into effect, which just aint fair.

Whatever. I'm just complaining. The real culprit here would seem to be the lack of objective, professional journalism, courtesy of the GDN. Has it not occurred to the 'reporters' to ask questions? Is that too much to ask from the 'Voice of Bahrain'? It would seem so.

And now I'm off in search of direction. I need something new to complain about. Suggestions?