The 'Freddie Mercury Syndrome'
I know this article is going to make me sound
like a terrible old buffer; so be it.
We just are not making things any more.
Precisely how the successive streams of morons in Westminster ever thought
that a country could pay its bills by systematically destroying the
manufacturing sector has always been a complete mystery to me. Just try to
buy a box of paper clips 'Made in England'. Real things were replaced by
digital fraud in the city and the world became awash with vast sums of
digital money. Any ten year old could figure out that digital money was not
real but it seemed to escape the 'experts'.
These days, it is all about instant
gratification, the 'Mercury Syndrome'; "I want it all and I want it now", to
quote the late great Freddie Mercury. Very sadly, this is happening to the
hobby of railway modelling at an alarming rate. When I was a kid, we would
wait and save for the entire year in order to buy the latest Hornby
locomotive. The usual price was about 30s which these days does not even buy
an ice cream at a cinema. Most things, we had to make ourselves. This was
wonderful training for manual dexterity, the use of tools and innovation; a
great preparation for the adult world. Men were judged by how practical they
were.
Nowadays, kids get inundated with ready made
toys. The only thing they learn to do is to push Lego bits together. Hardly
surprisingly, they grow up into people who can do absolutely nothing at all
in the real world. They cannot fix a tile on the roof, they cannot repair
their car and many cannot even put a flat pack together. Frankly, many young
men nowadays behave like girls with hands like limp kippers. They only seem
interested in having the correct label on their stupid clothes and the most
exciting programme for them is about baking cakes. Perhaps there are just
too many female hormones in the water supp;y.
For quite some time, I have laughed at German
railway modelling. Overweight men in three piece suits buy hugely expensive
model railway equipment, open the boxes and tip it all onto a ready made
baseboard. The result of course looks like just what it is. Sadly, I find
that this is increasingly happening in the UK.
Just about everything is now available 'off the
shelf'. Even models of Pendon houses are being sold these days. Bit by bit,
British model railways are looking more 'German' by the minute and frankly,
and I am getting sick of it. What is worse is that everything is getting
digital. One well known magazine has taken to promoting its digital
counterpart on its pages to the point of nausea.
Even the less usual scales are being
afflicted with the 'Mercury Syndrome'. Boxy toy like trains are pushed out
of a 3d Printing machine to be avidly purchased by those who can't do
anything for themselves. What makes it worse is that these crude models are
'freelance' which could actually be made in an evening with a few scraps of
plastic sheet. Freelance should be the opportunity for people to design and
build their OWN creations and not purchase some one else's idea.
Kids can no longer go to their model shop and
purchase glues or even sharp knives without adults present. Computers are
taking more and more of a role in making the new generation models while the
real modellers are going to their graves.
It won't be long before a model railway
exhibition will be a series of large screens where 'modellers' show off
their virtual layouts.
The new railway modeller
It is about time parents said to their kids, if
you want one of those, MAKE IT!
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