Encouraging whining?

Ok, maybe it's the heat, but I detect an upswing in public tolerance - even encouragement - of whining.  So I'm going to have a whine myself, about that.

For the past week Melbourne has sweltered in record heat. (For my northern hemisphere readers it was 111'F [44'C] by day, and a balmy 92'F [31'C] overnight, if we were lucky.) The rail system broke down - the rails buckled in the heat.  There were bush fires. There were power outages, as our air-conditioning overloaded the power grid.  And the drought meant we were denied even the comfort of a long, cold shower if we had any environmental sensibility at all.

The newspapers had a field day: news-hounds haunted suburban train stations where commuters were stranded, inviting hot, tired, frustrated people to let 'er rip.  And they did. O how they did!

Did the whining make anybody baking on a platform feel better?  I don't think so.  Playing the blame game gets most people's blood pressure up.  It's always someone else's fault.  Encourage whining in a group situation, and you're well on the way to creating a mob.

Did reading the whining make any of the rest of us feel better? I noticed that in the many column inches of rhetoric and whining, what was absent was a constructive suggestions for a solution.  Apart from, "someone (else) should do something".

Yes, I agree the government should probably have worked out by now that a growing population will put pressure on infrastructure.  No, I don't agree that the government ought to have forseen a once-in-a-century heat-wave.  Can you imagine the public response had our government said, "We're putting taxes up because we want to install super-duper rails that will withstand extreme tempreratures"?

I see that it is enormously irritating that one's local train line has become unreliable.  I don't see why individuals haven't done more to improve their own situation.  Work from home, car pool, taxi pool with other stranded travellers, catch a bus or drive to another, more reliable train line, take your own water/food/umbrella for long waits - all these are possible part-solutions.

Not much space was granted to those who said, "Yep, there are problems with public transport, but really this weather is unusual and the government doesn't control that."  

None at all was granted to honouring those who had to work outside (or inside without air-conditioning) through it all - fire fighters excepted. I've watched my postman toiling up the hill on his bicycle every day, and I question whether he ought to be allowed to work in such extreme conditions.  No-one seems to have thanked the rail workers who walked ahead of the trains pouring water on the tracks. Noone has thanked the station staff who have continued to come to work to be yelled at for situations well beyond their control (and pay rate).

It's time for a stiff-upper lip, people.  Australians traditionally mocked the "whingeing" Poms, but now we're surpassing that stereotype. If there's something useful you can do, do it.  If there's something helpful you can say, then say it. If not, don't whine about.

On which note, I'll take my own advice and stop.