I remember once standing in the pouring rain on the south side of Waterloo Bridge on a miserable Tuesday evening after a dreary day at work, waiting for a Number 4 bus. The Number 4 bus runs every 10 minutes; it starts at Waterloo Bridge. After 15 minutes I grew impatient; after 20 I was frustrated. When half an hour rolled around and the rain had soaked beneath my coat and under my collar and into my shoes and none of the three buses that were supposed to have started from this stop had materialised, I began to get angry. After 40 minutes, a bus finally showed. Soaking wet and furious with all the impotent rage that standing still in the London rain for two-thirds of an hour gives a man, I asked the driver where the bloody hell he'd been. This was the first stop for Chrissakes: how can you be 40 minutes late for the first stop?
His answer: he wasn't late. He was exactly on time. He couldn't say what had happened to the three buses that were supposed to have preceded him. It wasn’t his responsibility what they did and if I didn’t like it I could get off and wait for the next one.
And this is what waiting for a bus is really like. It's not a case of waiting 40 minutes and then four come at once. It's waiting 40 minutes and then one limps along chronically late without apology or explanation.
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This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.
No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.
Defining the age through a slogan a day
This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.
No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.
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