Benny's Eye on the Street: People: Collectively less intelligence than a house brick

I've met loads of intelligent people in my life. Some of them too intelligent! Unless you are Stephen Fry you're always risking coming a cropper with someone that knows more than you about the things you thought you were pretty damn clued up about. You see most people are pretty knowledgeable about at least one thing.

Even the thickest person at the world has an interest that makes them good at something. That something is probably utterly useless and embarrassing like the rough ex prostitute/beggar at the end of my street that is definitely an expert on where to get the most hideous velour tracksuits, but at the end of the day she's still damn good at tracking them down. Almost as good as her boyfriend is at going out with his clothes inside out.

If someone is too clever though it can be a bit frustrating. I went for a drink with a girl once that knew far more about every subject I'm good at it just made it impossible to have a conversation. It was ridiculous. She picked me up on absolutely everything. Fair play I do tend to lean more toward the school of 'know a lot about something but if you get stuck loosely base the rest on fact' but this girl was amazing. She knew everything about everything. She was like a walking Google. Every time I see that Eggheads program I always think they proper need her on there to re-address the goon to attractive balance. What an ugly set of bastards. Have you seen that Chris?

What a goon. You know when people have one of those faces you just want to smack. That Chris is one of them. It's annoying me just typing about him. He looks like one of them things out of Fraggle Rock that nick the radishes, Gorgs, but he's actually more goonish. Look at Chris, then look at this Gorg fella. He could go double dating with Chris and Gorg would be the looker.

And that Judith Keppel.Well I've always been suspicious. Remember when she conveniently won that million quid on Who Wants to be a Millionaire when noone had won it in about two years, and she just strolled in there and walked the million? Turned out she was a millionairess anyway and related to Camilla Parker-Bowles and had Royal connections..Hmm, we'll leave that for another rant.

Anyway, this girl was smart. When I end up being pulled up on facts I thought I was accurate on regarding the 16th Century Tudor Court I knew I was more than meeting my match so I kind of gave up on trying to talk about anything and that was that.

Ok, so we've ascertained that some people are intelligent. How come then, if there are so many people that are intelligent is the 'Human Race' as a whole is such a set of dribbling idiots?

Collectively we are absolutely useless. If an alien came down and looked at us they'd probably just wipe us out and start again. Hold on, this brings another angle to the 'Great Flood' again. (I always end up on religion at some point)

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)

could well have been...

" And the Aliens saw that the thickedness of man was rife in the Earth (capital letter surely, come on Bible, you stick one in 'He' so surely a fucking planet gets one), and that every imagination of the thoughts of his and her (see mine's more PC) hearts was fille'd (they put stupid pointless spellings in like that for no reason I've noticed in most Holy scriptures, never understood why) with emptiness 'xcept the patronising meddlings of Jeremy of Kyle, and banality Danceth on Ice." (Benesis 6:5)

People are absolutely pathetically dense as a whole. So many people believe exactly what they hear it's just embarrassing to listen to.

I think the only reason we don't hunt witches, burn heretics and believe in things that should only exist on Iron Maiden album covers is because these people in the modern world are distracted by time wasting technology (like er..blogging, Facebook, mind-rot TV) so don't have as much time to worry that someone may be 'The Harbinger of Evil'.

I don't think we've actually progressed from as the telly calls it (on channels I watch) 'The Medieval Mind'.

You can pretty much prove this by looking what people collectively want to read about when they run out of stories about Cheryl Cole going back to a complete knob that cheated on her or what presenter has snogged some little boy that can't even shave from some reality TV show boy band. Between episodes of Dancing on Ice and X Factor middle England reverts back to the Medieval Mind before you can blink.

It's slightly more hidden in social culture these days as the tabloids seem to have cunningly disguised their 'Dark Ages' ways in this 'pretending to be a friend of the everyday man/woman' way they do but it's still there. Only the focus has switched from witches, demons, and general heresy to paedophilia, governmental tax dodging, and immigration. I'd add religious hatred to that one as well, but the whole thing is so old hat I'm surprised there's not a couple of WMC's clubbing together, nicking the flag off their bar wall,chucking some chainmail on and booking a couple of 40 seaters over to Jerusalem for a ruck.

The collective mind is thick as two short planks. Why else would anyone within their right mind in the lower middle classes vote Conservative? It's obvious to an individual that the logic behind their general 'idea' is to let the rich get richer whilst the poor suffer. Why else would they put a tax on pasties? You can see how collectively thick people are just by the way that the government went about showing people they were down with the kids when it came to pasties. People are so thick collectively that politicians from both sides of the commons actually know they can convince some of their voters that they eat pasties like normal people do and can do this in a no way 'staged or false manner' Hmm..Did you see that footage of MP bigwigs going into Greggs surrounded by cameras? It was actually embarrassing but I bet it made a few collective pockets of middle England believe it was actually real and not staged. Because we are collectively stupid of course!

We saw David Cameron make a right plum of himself when he exclaimed that he was a 'pasty lover' then went on to say he'd had one at Leeds train station at a pasty shop that's been closed a couple of years. There's been a lot of talk about this on telly but there's one fact about this that's sorely been missed out. Everyone focused on the fact that the shop has been shut for a couple of years which invalidates the story, however I have a different seperate qualm with our Dave. That pasty shop is a terrible example of him having a pasty to be 'down with the working classes', one of us, a normal every day guy. This is because the chain in question is a fucking rip off.

Normal people can't afford pasty time at the West Cornwall pasty Company. According to 'What's for Lunch' on the Londoner website (it doesn't say on the WCPC site as far as I can find) the prices of their pasties range between £2.50 and £3.20 on the standard menu for the pasty alone. I think the large cornish traditional variety is £4 just for the pasty!! if you start adding in little extras like drinks and snacks it's getting ludicrous. If you then think that for a Wetherspoons beer and a burger it ranges between £3.99 ( the cheapest I've seen it at 'The Stick and Twist' in Leeds to around £7.00 (for the gourmet burgers with all the trimmings), for this you get a sizeable burger, chips and best of all a beer!!!!A big one too. Not a girly half or a bottle of pop.

back on pasties for a moment, this is why I think most comedians and media surrounding the Cameron pasty gaffe missed a trick. I think not only did Cameron put his foot in it by saying that he had a pasty at all, but his choice of pasty shop makes him look more like a fucking Tory boy than he already did!! Also, as someone who lives in Leeds I know it's a shame Dave didn't venture one minute up the road to Albion place because he would have been struck with this horrific choice!! Does he choose Tory boy £4 a slice, or does he slum it with Mr Five knuckle shuffle there outside Greggs?