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Damn it, Ignorance is Not a Virtue

One of the worst things of getting ancient is the fact that an increasing number of people in society are ignorant.

I don't mean having poor manners or no social graces - although they are pretty appalling nowadays - but rather the increasing level of a lack of knowledge about the world.

A classic example was brought to my attention by my mate Ian who was pretty annoyed by the coverage Channel 9's breakfast program gave to the recent storms in Sydney.

Apparently an outside broadcast came zooming across the airwaves from "the outer western suburb of West Ryde".

Now if my memory of my old home town serves me properly, the last time West Ryde was an outer suburb was when I was a lad. And that's about two million Sydneysiders ago!

Frankly, I'm not surprised because television is one of the heaviest anchors weighing down our efforts at becoming a smart country.

Nothing will have me racing off to the loo faster than the torturous mauling of English by the alleged leading lights of journalism - TV reporters. Pardon me while I chuck!

Few of them know what anything other than what fire-truck chasing is, wouldn't know how to break a story if their lives depended upon it and yet swan around press conferences like the gods and goddesses of news.

Anyway, next time a news bulletin comes on have a squizz at the graphics that pop up next to the presenters. I can guarantee that there will be at least one error per show and usually a lot more.

The main sign that says: "Hey, we're a stupid bunch of tossers" is the one you see everywhere - the confusion of plurals and possessives. An example (and I don't want to insult your intelligence readers, but I'll just give one) is the hundreds of times a day I see CD's instead of CDs.

Now as any learned person knows CDs is the plural and how on earth a CD owns anything is anyone's guess. But, the cretins on the box just can't seem to pick up such a basic mistake.

I'll state here, with some amount of pride, that even my six-year-old great-great-great-great-great grandaughter has picked up the errors. She learnt the difference in Prep and is very keen to point out when they are not used correctly.

Mind you, seeing Channel 9's awful programme line-up it is no surprise that it has little time to teach its staff English. After all, when your main flagships include A Current Affair and 60 Seconds (that's about all I can stomach that allegedly hard-hitting sop for) you must be struggling big time.

Come on, send us some other examples of cretinism on behalf of those who should know better!

Gotta go, there a sale of CD's over in the outer western suburb of West Ryde.

If there is something that has really got up your nose, let Grumpy Old Coot know at grumpy@webwombat.com