So, just to clairfy, eight years ago Holly said that she thought Londoners said a lot of bitter things and that something bad might happen as a result of this. I'll be honest first and say I'm not entirely sure how this was even considered news eight years ago.
However, because I'm a language geek and because of some of the comments that have been made above, I'm going to put something out there for consideration. "Think something might" and "hope something will" mean two different things. The first is a neutral statement, a suggestion of a possible future that you have no opinion on. The second suggests that this is something to be wished for, something that you want to happen. For example, I might say "I think it will rain this week." That does not mean that I hope it will rain, it just means that I've seen the weather forecast/ the clouds gathering/ have taken into account the weather at this time of year and believe that rain is likely to appear in London at some point in the coming week. If, on the other hand, I say "I hope it will rain this week", it means that I want there to be rain this week but do not necessarily believe that this will happen.
Holly, in this article, did not say that she hoped something bad would happen, she said that she thought it might. As the article does not expand on her reasoning here, we have no way of knowing why she said this or what she thought might happen. What we do know if that she is at no point quoted as saying that she wanted something bad to happen. So I'm not quite sure how we can speculate on what she wanted to happen, being as this is not even mentioned in the article (unless you count the implication that she maybe wanted Londoners to say bitter things less often).
Staying on a similar train of thought, as the article says so little beyond the headline, we also do not know what context these remarks were made in. We don't know what she was asked, we don't know what kind of day she had had, who she had been talking to, where she was staying in London, what her trip had been like or what else she might have said in the course of this interview. The first time I lived in France, I came to believe firmly that if I wanted to walk home after a night out, I had to have a guy with me because even when we were a group of five girls, we got harassed. The second time I lived in a completely different area and was able to walk back on my own at 3am. Obviously, I changed my mind in between times because the circumstances had changed.
This brings me to my third point, which is that these comments were made eight years ago. Maybe she did mean these comments exactly as they sounded at the time. Maybe she has since changed her mind.
Final point: sometimes people say stupid things. Sometimes they exaggerate for effect, or say things that they were half thinking but know they shouldn't have said by the time they get home. Twenty year olds who talk to the tabloid press on a regular basis are particularly prone to "foot in mouth syndrome." It happens. This is far from the worst thing that a Strictly contestant has ever said and if Holly has now signed up to SCD, presumably she now likes Britain enough to try to revive her career here (rather than in America, Australia or wherever), whatever she may have thought in the past.
However, because I'm a language geek and because of some of the comments that have been made above, I'm going to put something out there for consideration. "Think something might" and "hope something will" mean two different things. The first is a neutral statement, a suggestion of a possible future that you have no opinion on. The second suggests that this is something to be wished for, something that you want to happen. For example, I might say "I think it will rain this week." That does not mean that I hope it will rain, it just means that I've seen the weather forecast/ the clouds gathering/ have taken into account the weather at this time of year and believe that rain is likely to appear in London at some point in the coming week. If, on the other hand, I say "I hope it will rain this week", it means that I want there to be rain this week but do not necessarily believe that this will happen.
Holly, in this article, did not say that she hoped something bad would happen, she said that she thought it might. As the article does not expand on her reasoning here, we have no way of knowing why she said this or what she thought might happen. What we do know if that she is at no point quoted as saying that she wanted something bad to happen. So I'm not quite sure how we can speculate on what she wanted to happen, being as this is not even mentioned in the article (unless you count the implication that she maybe wanted Londoners to say bitter things less often).
Staying on a similar train of thought, as the article says so little beyond the headline, we also do not know what context these remarks were made in. We don't know what she was asked, we don't know what kind of day she had had, who she had been talking to, where she was staying in London, what her trip had been like or what else she might have said in the course of this interview. The first time I lived in France, I came to believe firmly that if I wanted to walk home after a night out, I had to have a guy with me because even when we were a group of five girls, we got harassed. The second time I lived in a completely different area and was able to walk back on my own at 3am. Obviously, I changed my mind in between times because the circumstances had changed.
This brings me to my third point, which is that these comments were made eight years ago. Maybe she did mean these comments exactly as they sounded at the time. Maybe she has since changed her mind.
Final point: sometimes people say stupid things. Sometimes they exaggerate for effect, or say things that they were half thinking but know they shouldn't have said by the time they get home. Twenty year olds who talk to the tabloid press on a regular basis are particularly prone to "foot in mouth syndrome." It happens. This is far from the worst thing that a Strictly contestant has ever said and if Holly has now signed up to SCD, presumably she now likes Britain enough to try to revive her career here (rather than in America, Australia or wherever), whatever she may have thought in the past.
