Whose your Deity?

When did being famous for no good reason become something to aspire to?
Everywhere I look I see a z-list celebraty shining their perfect pearly white teeth at me. Take a walk down any high street on a Saturday and count the number of wannabe WAGS, complete with over size sunglasses - perfect for blocking out the inquisitive gaze of "randoms".
The media tend to carpet bomb celebrity "culture" upon us from a great height. Television constantly regurgitates the same faces in a conveyor belt of self-promotion that we sit and swallow night after night. One example of this is Family Fortunes - one of many game shows I used to watch as a child - now it's Celebrity Family Fortunes. No longer good enough for television, the average family has even less chance of their 15 minutes of fame - unless one of their number is an out of work actor who wants to kick start their career after their tragic on-screen demise.
Why should any of this bother me so much you ask?
During my travels I ventured through India and was particularly amazed at the enthusiasm of everyday people. They were eager to become educated and come to England to escape the crushing poverty that was so apparent everywhere around them. The level of aspiration that these people had was breath taking and, in my view, not matched by my peers back home. Sure, we all wanted to do well in school, college, and university, but we were certainly not going to accept anything less that what we percieved to be ours. Menial jobs (those that involved starting at the bottom of a ladder and working our way up) became too lowly for us and rather than work 9-5 for a living we would chase the live fast, worry later mentallity. At least we looked good doing it.
What we see now is a major skills shortage in our country. Not content to work for anything less than what they think they are owed, the lower classes are seemingly happy to sit on their backsides and moan about all the foreigners coming into this marvellous land and taking their jobs. Jobs that they are simply not prepared to do as it will involve giving up a life handouts and celebratie scandals. All the while we loose sight of the bigger picture - our culture is not being erroded by the infux of foreign nationals, we are doing it to ourselves.