In my opinion....

In some unwittingly optimistic moment, I joined the 'DD208 Welfare, Crime and Society' facebook group.  In both previous years I have joined the relevant group and within weeks have needed high blood pressure tablets every time I looked at it. I don't know what it is about them that irritates me so much but they seem like a different species to me.

It is still 6 weeks before DD208 starts and already I'm thinking I might leave (the facebook group, not the course!)... the only reason I'm not is because  it's a group where someone else has to add you to it.  So I'll stay put just in case, and try to resist looking too often.

The reason I started this post is that just after the riots (in the UK) one of the girls in the group was trying to get me to give my opinion on the reason for the riots.  My reply was that sorry I'm not informed enough at the moment - ask me after I've done this year's course!  She said 'come on, you must have an opinion though?'.  Well actually no.   If the experts in the field have half a dozen different theories about it and can't agree on what the reason might be, how the hell am I supposed to know?  Yes yes I know, it's supposed to be a discussion - but I know what happens in discussions in those types of groups, they can degenerate into personal insults.

Sure I could postulate about 'dysfunctional families' and inequality and drugs and bankers and politics - but I would have no idea what I was talking about, it would just be repeating what I've heard. It would not be an informed opinion based on anything but media chat, so would be worthless.

I have mentioned recently that I have become more opinionated, but that does not extend to repeating what 'experts' on the Jeremy Vine programme have said.  To have an opinion, I need to fully understand something, and I won't be bullied into voicing some parroted opinion which I can't back up.

I would feel like Bridget Jones : "Ugh. He's just a big knobhead with no knob. Is some people's opinion of Kafka... but they couldn't be more wrong. This book is a searing vision... of the wounds our century has inflicted on--on traditional masculinity. It's positively Vonnegut-esque".

The final opinion of the two girls in the group who did discuss the riots was that really our country should be more like Somalia and the Middle East.   Yep. Right. Glad I got involved in that discussion then.