My mother is currently in Africa and has been sending me texts periodically. It has been nice to hear from her but every time she has texted me, the text seems to have been sent 5 or 6 times - only a mild inconvenience I know. Yesterday afternoon she texted me again, it was nice to hear she was still having an amazing time, is due back Saturday, and wishes me good luck for starting my new job tomorrow - which I told her I now wasn't starting and was looking forward to seeing her when she got back. A couple of minutes later I received another text from her, telling me she was still having an amazing time, is due back Saturday, and wishes me good luck for starting my new job tomorrow - 'yeah alright mum, no need to rub it in!', I joked to myself. Moments later I received another, and then another - a mild inconvenience to delete them from my inbox. At this point I headed into my band rehearsal, and put my phone in my bag.
Two hours later, I retrieved my phone from my bag to discover that I had 76 unread messages! Wow, I thought, I have never been so popular in my life! It was the same message. I deleted them all, and on the way home they kept arriving, and I kept deleting them as they did. I tried texting mum to tell her to stop or turn her phone off or something, but just kept deleting them, and in the end turned my phone off, having by then received hundreds of the bloody things.
This morning I turned my phone on, for a few moments nothing happened and I thought, 'Ahh, crisis over.....' and then, my phone vibrates. Oh dear. There was obviously a backlog from last night coming through! Every 7 to 12 seconds - I timed it in the end - I received another text, and was frantically trying to delete them as they arrived, at one point shouting "JUST FUCK OFF MUM!!!!!!" as they arrived. Which struck me as being quite funny.
At last count I must have gotten over a thousand of the sodding things, have sent several messages to Mum to try and sort it out at her end, and a few emails. I tried to phone my network, but couldn't get through, eventually just giving up and turning my phone off again, hoping it just goes away.
Another thing I hope goes away, and doesn't come back, is Jeremy Clarkson. I have never really liked him, and for a while found his outspoken, right-wing brand of xenophobic, anti-environmental nastiness quite offensive. But after a while I realised that everything he says is almost caricaturial in it's simplicity, and he only says the kind of things he does to sell swathes of his books to his devoted if ignorant fans every Christmas. I even almost started to enjoy watching 'Top Gear', which is one of the most ridiculous television shows about.
But yesterday, live on television (BBC's 'The One Show'), he spoke of how he thought the public sector workers who were on strike, as legitimately as protest and striking surely must be in a democracy, should be shot. And then added that he thought they should be executed in front of their families. Now, this is most likely just a badly-timed example of Clarkson's 'humour', and possibly ill-judged, as surely nobody can genuinely believe in such fascist ideals in this day and age? As well as broadcast them on early evening TV.
I mean even Nick Griffin would probably have heard that and said, "oooo, well that's a little strong there I think Jeremy, I mean I agree on your foreign policy ideas, but maybe suggesting executing our striking public sector workforce in front of their own frightened families is probably a bit beyond pale".
Clarkson has just come back with a vengeance in my mind as not just this kind of whimsical right-wing cartoon character which I assumed he was playing to, but to being the small-minded, greedy little fascist he must surely be. And perhaps this will come back to haunt Clarkson's good friend, the Prime Minister David Cameron, who has already dismissed the strikes on the grounds of idealogical nonsense. You might imagine them both sharing views along the lines of that which Clarkson said, which is a scary thought.
Clarkson will get away with this easily, and will no doubt defend his views in the future. His job at the BBC will never be under threat as he makes them too much money, and his brand of politics seems to fairly represent the views of the Sun newspaper for whom he writes. It does make me think of the hypocracy of the BBC though. Just over a year ago Carol Thatcher was sacked by the BBC after using the word 'Gollywog' to describe a black tennis player, this was deemed offensive and she was sacked. I would argue that, essentially, fascist comments made by Clarkson are just as offensive as this. The criteria of the BBC seem to be that if you say something bad, but happen to be a bit weird, have a speech impediment, and everyone hates your mum, then you should be sacked to make an example - but if you say something bad, but happen to make them a lot of money, then, so what.
Ah, received another 53 texts in the hour since I last checked my phone. I hope no-one's paying for this.
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