COMPLAINING is a good thing.

That's what I've decided this week. It's time that we, as a nation, stopped trying to be so darned nice and polite.

Leave the positive spin to the Americans. We need to get back to plain speaking. To not beating about the bush. To calling a spade a dirty great shovel.

No more complacency. Enough of glossing over the facts. Say goodbye to the smug pat on the back. It's just a load of hooey.

It's time we started taking our good old British moaners and whingers seriously.

I think the reason we all complain so much is nobody's listening.

So I vote we start our very own South Devon Complaints Choir.

They've got one in Birmingham. And they're in Helsinki, Tokyo, Jerusalem and Canada. It's a whole international complaints choir movement.

I've been listening to them on YouTube. They sound ruddy awful most of the time. But that's not the point.

The point is people get together and talk about their complaints. They all listen to each other. Then they write down all their problems and somebody musical (or not, in some cases: Jerusalem's was particularly dire) turns the list into a libretto and the choir tours the area performing. Getting stuff off their chest.

Apparently having your complaint voiced by others makes you feel well and truly listened to and understood (especially if it's set to a four-part harmony). You start to feel that somebody actually cares.

Instead of smiling in the face of adversity, the complaints choirs say they can acknowledge things aren't as good as they should be.

Then, hopefully, you lose the need to keep on (and on, and on) moaning. It's therapeutic. Hurrah!

The Complaints Choirs around the world are fascinating. There are some things everybody moans about, everywhere (taxes, traffic, not getting enough sex, parking).

And then there are the things that are peculiar to individual countries.

For instance, on the West Coast of Canada there's the Post Coquitlam (PoCo for short) Complaints Choir, which has written the Bear Bin Boogie — the story of a bear climbing into a garbage bin.

Apparently everyone in PoCo can relate to having a bear in their bin.

I was thinking how funny, and how different, our Torbay Council (ToCo) complaints choir would be, but then I realised that it's not so different after all.

Top of my list of complaints about living on Torquay harbourside would actually be animals in the bins — seagulls and rats, not bears.

Have I ever told you (and I probably shouldn't, because I hang my head in shame) that I once accidentally killed a seagull in the street as it ripped a seagull-proof bin to pieces.

I was driving up the hill and the whole street was littered with debris. It was bin day and the gulls, as usual, had created havoc by pulling rubbish all over the road.

Angrily, I drove at a gull, expecting to frighten it off as it pulled rubbish across the road. What I hadn't realised was that the greedy gull was so intent on finding a tasty snack, that it didn't notice my car.

So much for an animals' sixth sense.

The next thing I knew there was a sickening bump as I drove over the poor thing, killing it stone dead.

I was mortified. I still am. It was years ago but I still can't drive by that spot without feeling a stab of remembering.

And it made me realise that hit-and-run drivers who claim they never felt a thing as they drove over a body are lying through their teeth.

If a gull makes such a horrible noise, what must it sound like if your car hits a human being?

The Tokyo Complaints Choir turned up wearing face masks (all 90 of them), presumably in silent complaint about pollution.

They were all beautifully and stylishly dressed in muted greys, creams and black (apart from the accordionist, in pink) and complained about their bosses a lot: "I don't like to take care of my boss when we go out drinking," said one.

I thought that was a peculiarly Japanese complaint. In this country we don't go out drinking with the boss. And if we do, we're more likely to end up in a punch-up.

Another peculiarly Japanese moan was: "My Grandmother thinks she is an American." Weird!

In St Petersburg, the Russians seemed afraid to complain too much, even in a Complaints Choir. It must be a hangover from Communism.

Instead they asked timidly: "Why do we keep loving when love is so painful?" And guiltily: "Why are we always so dissatisfied with everything?"

In Hamburg the Hamburgers complained about all the same stuff as your typical Brit: that the mascara 'gets always smudgy', that my lawn doesn't grow, that the days are too short, that there is plenty of debate but nothing gets done, that my flatmate sleeps with my ex-girlfriend and that not a single politician keeps his promises.

In Jerusalem they complained there is passion-fruit in everything. Fascinating.

One country, I can't remember which, moaned that all the shops are Lidl and Aldi and that all the other shops have moved too far away. I must make sure I never go to that country.

In Helsinki the choir sang about tramline three, which smells of pee; and complained that when you buy furniture all you get are boards; that the Christmas season starts earlier every year and about never getting laid enough (the Helsinki choir's complaint, not mine).

So I thought I'd have a go at writing some words for our South Devon choir — just to get your creative juices flowing, feel free to join in at any time. I suggest we sing to the Old Spice advert music (I've looked online and it's a piece by Carl Orff, called O Fortuna, from Carmina Burana).

If you can't remember it, just picture enormous waves crashing in slow motion.

I've written this down to jog your memory (but I'm the world's least musical person, so it probably doesn't help much).

It goes like this:

Dum dum dum dum - crashing wave;

Dum dum dum dum - crashing wave;

dum dum dum duh du du - bigger crashing wave.

Repeat (with more venom, anger and sense of impending doom) and sing the following words:

O Torbay,

like a bad play,

you're going downhill. (Crashing cymbals for waves).

Up on the Downs

The loos are doomed;

The fish cafe is coming. (Crashing cymbals).

On the seafront,

Rock Walk is bare,

Not many trees are left there. (Tsunami style wave).

The chainsaw man's,

Gone power mad

Just logs and piles of woodchips. (Crash, bang, smash).

The pretty lights,

Have gone from sight.

The LEDs just don't look right.

And so on. Add your own verses about parking meters, residents parking zones, Paignton Green, the balloon, redundancy, student loans, bankers and buses coming in threes.

All that stuff.

But not the weather.

I know, I'm getting a bit silly, but actually my determination to complain more started on a serious note. It was the big poster hanging on the railings outside Torquay town hall with the slogan 'performing well' which started me off.

I was overtaken by a sudden 'Banksy-esque' urge and my hand itched for a can of spray paint.

I started fantasising about a new career as a middle-aged street artist, creeping out in the dead of night, hidden under my hooded dressing gown. Something stopped me.

Maybe it was the realisation that I'd have to leave the children home alone in bed.

Oh and yes, of course, I realised that vandalism is illegal. Don't do it kids.

But mostly, I just couldn't think of anything witty enough to write.

Changing the poster to 'performing well but still not well enough for the worst off in our society if you ask me' is hardly going to stop the traffic at Castle Circus.

Maybe the poster with its 'pat ourselves on the back' attitude jarred because I'd just been reading about the Bay's horrendous pregnancy and abortion rates among teenage girls: the figure is just about as bad as it can be anywhere in the Western world.

Where I live, in the Tormohun ward on Torquay harbourside, the teen conception rate is the highest in the Bay at 82.8 per 1,000, which is double the national rate (41.6). That means one in 12 girls are conceiving before they reach the age of 18.

It's a scandal.

Even more disturbing are the abortion figures. Pregnancy terminations are 'twice the expected level'. Exact figures are practically impossible to obtain.

There is much fuss about Torbay's teen conception rate rising, while elsewhere the figures are starting to fall.

But a huge part of the reason why this isn't being tackled or understood is that abortion remains our greatest taboo.

Nobody will get to the root of this problem, because none of those girls' stories will ever be told — not even their own mums, or their teachers will know.

Some of them may not even tell their best friends, or the father of the baby. Abortion isn't something you boast about in the playground.

There are an awful lot of private tragedies and fearful secrets being borne by one in every 12 teenage girls in my neck of the woods.

We're not really performing that well are we?

Not sure it's something you could put on a wall or in a song though.