REV DAVID FAREY: People need to express themselves considerately

A chap tried paying with one of said round coins and was told quite rightly that they couldn’t accept them.

The man proceeded to remonstrate with the poor barista. He caused a right old fuss.

Eventually, and with lots of noise and bluster for everyone around he said that if they wouldn’t accept his coins he would pay with a note, and proceeded to take out a roll of fifty pound notes and pay with one of them. Sorted!

Now the news that the old pounds were ceasing as legal tender has been going around for months. This person had really been living in a cave if he hadn’t realised what was happening.

The barista was quite right. There was an exception of a cut price shop that announced it would accept them for the next few weeks. A clever ploy I thought for a boost to business with people wanting to offload their coins!

The point is though, why was he being so nasty? This is becoming a common trait in our society where people get nasty when someone or something does not fit in with what they want.

When there is a genuine injustice then it is quite right and proper that complaint is appropriately voiced. Sadly all too often people are far too quick to start bleating about something that has adversely affected them or someone they know. And it is all too often done in a nasty and bitter way with colourful and unnecessary language, and sometimes accompanied by threats of a physical nature.

People really do need to control themselves and learn to express themselves in appropriate and considerate ways.

Recently Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb. DCG as she was known forged a career in exposing crime and corruption, often at government levels.

Her death is the ultimate extreme of what happens when someone does something that another individual or group does not like. Bloodshed and loss of life is the extreme example of just what people’s nastiness can achieve. Road rage incidents are another example of how things can so easily get out of hand.

Words that don’t seem to sit easily with the modern generation are discipline, self-control and restraint. People are encouraged to express themselves, but sadly little attention is given to thinking through what the consequences are of people expressing themselves.

It doesn’t seem to enter people’s heads whether what they are saying is going to hurt another person. It needs to!