I have limited reserves of energy this evening as I have just discovered and been watching Arte.TV, a free and on- demand cultural TV station run by two European countries. Alas it is not on Sky. I am totally amazed by the quality of the programming which makes British TV, even BBC4, superficial in comparison. As if I haven’t got enough to do what with unread books and articles,  articles to write, a huge stack of TV programmes to watch on Catch Up, here comes another demand on my time. If I had to work full time we just give up.

I had almost forgotten, but I used to be a regular contributor to Soundcloud.com and for some reason stopped about three years ago. Over the last seven days I’ve had 358 listeners to my words of philosophy. To my further delight and amazement I find that I’ve had over 275,000 visits and 44,000 followers. I put up pithy three-minute thoughts on various common problems, rather like Thought for the Day on radio four BBC. I am not even sure that they still do it. The BBC have an anti-Christian bias as they are so frightened of upsetting Muslims. Pathetic and cowardly you might say and I would agree. Anyway if you want to have a listen, here is my soundcloud channel.

At my Men’s group this morning the question was discussed, is it right to put people on the spot. We are so hopelessly Politically Correct these days that we are averse to putting anyone on the spot except if it is a complaint to a travel company for a service we have not received. Putting people on the spot could be one of the most valuable things we could do because most of us are rather complacent and even lazy and if we are forced to take a stance or think about something that we don’t normally do that could give us a valuable lesson. I like the illustration from the Collins Directory “He put me on the spot a bit because he invited me right in front of his mum and I didn’t particularly want to go. Even clever people are not terribly clever when put on the spot.”

A pointed question  may well make people embarrassed but if the matter is legitimate then why not? We are not babies. The people that you are speaking to know that you have respect for them and are generally polite. We are not snowflakes at University who ban debates on the grounds that people might be hurt. What a dreadful preparation for life in the real world.

Tomorrow, I look forward to going to church, an actual church service, which I haven’t done for a few years, and then we go to lunch with a dear friend from South Africa.