Life (and Death) Through a Lens
A middle-class music journalist once asked Sid Vicious if he sang for the Man in the Street, expecting punk’s very own Dennis the Menace to support the scribe’s opinion that the peasants were revolting; however, Sidney rubbished this theory with succinct bluntness – ‘No, I’ve met the Man in the Street,’ he replied, ‘and he’s a c***.’ If Sid Vicious had been in Telford last weekend, he would have had his character assassination confirmed; if you or I had been there, we’d most likely have walked away from the scene of a horrible personal tragedy feeling ashamed that we belonged to the same species as a particular breed of the Man in the Street.
Around lunchtime on Saturday, an unnamed individual in his forties appeared on the roof of a multi-storey car-park attached to Telford’s Southwater Shopping Centre and threatened to jump. The police sealed-off the immediate area and did their best to negotiate with the man, all to no avail; he leapt to his death less than three hours later – a tragedy in more ways than one. That someone so young should see no future is a tragedy; that the police were unable to persuade him his life was worth living is another, as is the fact that he chose to die in such a terrible manner; one could even sense the absolute despair and futility facing him that he should end it all beside one of those soulless and sterile retail cathedrals that are such irredeemably ugly blots on the modern British landscape. But what drags this tragedy down to an especially gruesome level is the way in which some members of the gathered throng reacted to a sight that would fill most with concern and compassion.
According to first-hand accounts, some onlookers present encouraged the man to jump. Why would anybody in their right mind want this awful outcome? Have the desensitising effects of incessant exposure to Hollywood or videogame interpretations of what happens to human flesh and bone when they encounter something strong enough to reduce them to a bloody pulp provoked curiosity as to the reality? Or does the fact that some of the crowd that goaded the suicidal man chose to record events on their mobiles in eager anticipation of the money-shot serve as evidence that so many now can only relate to a world that has a Smartphone border framing it, making everything their eyes see a virtual movie? In this case, all empathy has evaporated. They weren’t looking at a fellow human being clearly suffering an intense mental trauma; they were witnessing the end scene of a pretend drama, frustrated that they didn’t have a joystick in their hands that could tip the man over the edge and score them their highest points in the game so far. But there’s possibly more to it than even that.
Certain distasteful characteristics that were once universally reviled have, in recent years, come to be accepted as acceptable, primarily by the generation under-30, those whose concept of how to behave in public has not been shaped by parents and teachers who have absolved themselves of the job for fear of ‘stifling’ junior, but by the few remaining TV shows guaranteed to rack-up the kind of viewing figures that come closest to those regularly scored back in the old four-channel era. In one respect, the pioneer was ‘Big Brother’.
Following the Nasty Nick debacle of series one, something that turned the show from a minority sport to the most talked-about programme in the country, contrived cruelty began to filter into the format, subjecting participants to humiliations both at the hands of their unseen ruler and at the hands of each other. With the power to vote out those they disliked, the viewer soon acquired the status of Roman Emperor, giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down that would decide the fate of a gladiator. This interaction helped cement the incestuous relationship between the programme and its audience whilst simultaneously encouraging a more sadistic streak in the British that hadn’t really been seen since the end of public executions in the nineteenth century. The competition for ratings as ‘Big Brother’ imitations began to clog up the mainstream schedules also meant the originator of the concept had to stay one step ahead of the game, and it did so by introducing the ‘freak show’ element.
There seemed to be little reason for the presence of such ‘freaks’ other than for them to be held up as figures of fun, reducing the programme to a modern-day equivalent of Georgian Bedlam, with the viewers coaxed into being members of the public paying to watch the lunatics at play in the asylum and unnaturally upbeat presenter Davina McCall taking the role of the over-enthusiastic gate-keeper. This aspect of the programme, in which the sadistic mocking of those who were square-pegs either by nature or design was rewarded, showed that personality traits traditionally regarded as undesirable were now perfectly acceptable ones to air in public. The audience of ‘Big Brother’ absorbed the subliminal messages inherent within the show and began to bring behaviour that was confined to the Big Brother House on screen into the public arena. The heightened and fabricated drama enacted by gullible pawns on TV was employed as a yardstick for social interaction in the real world.
Running parallel with the rise of ‘Big Brother’ was the rise of Simon Cowell on ‘The X-Factor’ and his trademark rudeness when confronted by contestants he proceeded to cut to ribbons with verbal evisceration. Yet, the most remarkable aspect of the whole Cowell system was the willingness of its hopelessly optimistic participants to submit to any humiliation on the exceedingly slim chance that they might become a star – almost reminiscent of the energy-sapping dance marathons that offered vague hope to desperate Americans during the Great Depression. With each successive series of ‘The X-Factor’, pop music’s individual voices were slowly silenced as the nation’s youth spinelessly submitted to Simon Cowell’s unelected Absolute Monarch without putting up a fight.
Indeed, the presence of a waspish party-pooper soon became a pre-requisite for all entertainment shows to follow, with everyone from the obnoxiously oily Piers Morgan to the bluntly brusque Alan Sugar encouraged to adopt the contemptuous sneer of an especially spiteful games teacher forcing the poor kid without a kit to don a pair of spare shorts with unsavoury stains on them; and the more humiliating the put-down, the better. When impressionable young viewers realised how these atrocious traits were being handsomely rewarded, either in the astronomical wages TV producers were prepared to pay or in the plethora of peerages and awards such figures were lavished with, it was no wonder that a streak of verbal cruelty began to assert itself on the streets and in the chat-rooms of Britain, with any perceived misfit fair game for the Cowell treatment. At a time when there was a greater awareness of bullying than ever before, it was horribly ironic that television’s most celebrated stars were legitimising the tactics of the playground or workplace bully for mass consumption.
So, take half-a-tablespoon of legitimate rudeness in social interaction, add a pound of technology that found an early outlet for physical manifestations of antisocial cool via the ‘Happy Slapping’ craze, blend with a mix of cold indifference to the sufferings of others now that they are detached from reality due to being viewed as miniature figures on a screen, and carefully place in a baking tray for around a decade on crass mark five. When ready, serve to a guest-list of two-dozen 15-25-year olds at a grotty Telford mall as a starter; the main course will come when a chronically depressed man undergoing a mental meltdown ascends to the roof of the multi-storey car-park and is urged to jump to his death by diners who have acquired a craving for blood. Once dinner is over, throw-up in unison and weep at how cheap life has become.
Petunia Winegum
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March 18, 2015 at 9:40 am -
Derek & Clive had a song about this. But I thought its black humour was intended to be aversion therapy, not a recipe for yer modern yoof.
Violence as entertainment marks the death-throes of civilisations – we seem to be approaching the end of ours.
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March 18, 2015 at 10:10 am -
” Jump, you fucker, jump!
Into this blanket, what we are holding here,
and you will not be hurt!
Jumped, he hit the deck, broke his fucking neck,
There was no blanket.
Laugh? I nearly shat!
I have not laughed so mush since Grandma died,
or Aunty Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle”For those not classically educated!
Funnily enough, we didn’t listen to the record and then go out looking for someone to chuck off a roof!
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March 18, 2015 at 1:31 pm -
Thanks Robert, I was trying to avoid spelling it out for the more-sensitive souls reading this blog!
But now you’ve started, I recall it began, “I was walking down the street one day, when I saw a house on fire. There was a man, shouting and screaming from an upstairs window, to the crowd below.”
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March 18, 2015 at 2:12 pm -
Ah…Derek and Clive live!
Yet this vignette (if you will) of the poor sod on the roof and the crowd below going ‘Jump you fucker, jump’ is decades old, a staple in many film noir scenes! It was recognised that the people might be dickheads, buit they had not forced him up onto the roof, nor pushed him off, that was ultimately a personal choice; in the film the good cop, or the priest, or his wife/girlfriend or the plucky reporter or Samaritans bod talked him down, usually by going up there with him. Now we have removed the Good Samaritan but left the crowd of arseholes! You want to prosecute them? What for? Have they commited a crime? I don’t think so, being a twat is not yet an offense. For those who think it should be, remember that you can’t shut that door once opened, just think of how useful an offense of General Twattery could be to the PTB.-
March 18, 2015 at 3:06 pm -
“You want to prosecute them? What for? Have they commited a crime? “
Police say: “Yes! Wait…maybe. Errr…”
http://4liberty.org.uk/2015/03/18/west-mercia-police-seem-to-have-more-resources-than-they-need/
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March 18, 2015 at 5:25 pm -
For we are miserable sinners,
Fearful f**kers
Our Souls.
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March 18, 2015 at 6:12 pm -
It might be appropriate to read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon again…..
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March 18, 2015 at 9:50 am -
You missed out the systematic removal of Almighty God from our schools. Now, children grow up thinking they are just evolved pond scum, so why be surprised when they act like it? You cannot have humanist ‘morals”, only what is helpful for the “Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”
If this fellow who jumped was mentally ill, well evolutionist Nazis started their gassing spree by killing them off in their hospitals. Maybe the brainwashed bystanders in Telford had the same idea, that he was bad for the gene pool, therefore bad for the ‘species’ and bad for them?
God help us.
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March 18, 2015 at 11:38 am -
“You missed out the systematic removal of Almighty God from our schools. ”
Others hold alternative views. Daily morning assembly and ‘prayers’, plus ‘Religious Instruction’, were the biggest waste of learning time I endured at school.
I respect others’ belief in a deity; but I don’t expect one to be foisted on anyone.
“Now, children grow up thinking they are just evolved pond scum,….”; yet from time immemorial religious fanatics & bigots have been responsible for more human deaths & misery than any other cause.
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March 18, 2015 at 1:26 pm -
That’ll be apart from Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Khmer Rouge …..
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March 18, 2015 at 1:38 pm -
Exactly, Andy. The evolutionists must have killed 1,000 times the number of people the “religious fanatics & bigots” have. And it’s the same Godless socialism we’re developing in the West.
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March 18, 2015 at 4:19 pm -
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc were all religious fanatics. Marxism is a religion with a Holy Book, like any other.
Like Buddhism, it doesn’t include a personal God, but otherwise it is closely related to Judaism and Christianity.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:28 pm -
Marxism couldn’t be further from Judaism and Christianity. The former demands reliance on the state and the latter on God, the family and self.
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March 18, 2015 at 10:42 pm -
Hitler thought he was a Christian, although to be fair to Christians you’d never guess he was one from his behaviour. Do you seriously think an atheist dictator’s army would have “God with us” on their belt buckles? Pol Pot was probably Buddhist. Stalin and Mao didn’t act as they did because they were atheist, they demanded total submission to the state and that’s not possible if you also follow a god or gods. Imagine that Stalin and Mao both couldn’t ride a bike. Would you then claim that a lack of cycling ability turns people into evil dictators?
Atheism is a lack of belief in any deity and as such cannot have any moral framework. Being an atheist doesn’t make you a bad person and neither does it make you a good person. However, an atheist won’t torture or kill another atheist for not believing in god in the wrong way, whereas religious people have and do torture and kill those who worship the same god but in the “wrong” way, e.g. Protestants and Catholics or Sunnis and Shias.-
March 19, 2015 at 9:45 am -
“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? ” Matthew 7:16
Therefore, Hitler was not a Christian. Being raised a Catholic did not make him a Christian. He believed in a ‘master race’, yet we are all of one blood according to scripture.
“Stalin and Mao didn’t act as they did because they were atheist…”
Would they have ordered tens of millions of people to be killed had they believed they were responsible for their actions?
But you’re right, atheists cannot devise a moral framework. They mostly have God-given consciences which is just as well, but their molecules-to-man ‘theology’ and “survival of the fittest” type of scripture demands ‘morals. or rather, ‘rules’ which don’t value all human life equally and even sometimes put greater worth on animals.
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March 18, 2015 at 3:16 pm -
” ‘Religious Instruction’, were the biggest waste of learning time”
Religious Instruction is of limited value (if any) in the modern world, Religious Education however is , to my mind, vitally important. And by ‘education’ I don’t mean the ‘tra-la-la-la pink unicorns tolerating colours not in the rainbow’ style ‘Education’ currently found most places. Children desperately need to know The Facts about what others believe and how those beliefs impact/will impact on those children’s lives.
It is even more important than teaching “Sex Education” (just incase anyone doesn’t get the difference between ‘education’ and ‘instruction’).
I was raised an Anglican-mainly Low Church but with a hankering for High and converted to Anglo- Catholicism . As a young *snork* adult, I went up to Scotland to work and was puzzled as to why the first question anyone asked me was ‘ye a Billy Or a Dan?’ not ‘are you English?’. I was also puzzled as to why my answer could mean my having to duck-punch-run -and eventually led me to learning how to use a knife. I wish the Religious Education in School had covered the difference between the various Xian denominations and how it applied to the UK in much greater depth.
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March 18, 2015 at 4:07 pm -
You could probably do it as a map in Scotland:
Places where you get the Heed for drinking to King Billy – Red
Places where you get the Heed for drinking to the Pope – Blue
Places where the Heed comes to a Mick – Green
Places nwhere the Auld Enemy gets the Heed – Orange
Places where the Heed is for everyone, because they’re evil bastards – YellowSome overlap would be unavoidable I suppose
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March 18, 2015 at 7:32 pm -
I used to do market research for radio and TV in the Glasgow area, once in a very ‘orange’ area I was asked what school I went to before they would consider doing the survey! one invited me in to his house, it was a shrine to King Billy. Not being remotely religious I was amazed that anyone took it that seriously.
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March 18, 2015 at 12:47 pm -
You assert that the disgusting behaviour of the crowd at Telford was due to a lack of religious education. Please supply a link to the source you’ve obviously read that states the religious affiliations of the scum who called on the man to jump.
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March 18, 2015 at 3:07 pm -
I suspect they worshipped at the Church of Weatherspoons.
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March 19, 2015 at 9:58 am -
Pud, as Julia says, their “religious affiliations” are not where they should be. The social re-engineers are destroying family and faith and therefore communities are crumbling and people are losing their way. Classic Marxist-Leninism. The Fabians talked about smashing up the world to rebuild it in their socialist image a century ago.
When I was at school (1968-1981) our RE was solely Christian, we had church services, prayers, etc. at assembly, openly-Christian teachers who weren’t afraid of letting it be known.
I believe we grew up better prepared to enjoy the world and contribute to it.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:35 pm -
Can you cite a study of the religious beliefs of the Telford crowd? They could have been 100% Christian (at least as far as weddings, christenings and funerals are concerned), 100% Muslim, 100% Jewish etc. or they might be 100% atheist. Or more likely a mix of the above and probably some devotees of the many other religions as well. Your assertion that the Telford’s crowd behavior is due to a lack of God in their lives fails at this point, as you have not provided any evidence.
Assuming that such a study existed, and it did show that the crowd was atheist, or even following the wrong religion, you’d then need to demonstrate causality, that is that the behaviour was down to a lack of God and not because of another factor e.g. Shropshire people might have a folk tradition of gathering in the open and shouting “Jump”, the crowd might have been desensitised from watching too many violent films etc.
You appear happy to believe, and are religious. I like to see proof and am an atheist, (who does enjoy the world).-
March 19, 2015 at 5:43 pm -
Going to church does not make someone a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes them a mechanic.
The crowd will have been desensitised, dehumanised, demoralised and dumbed down as per the age-old social re-engineering agenda which is turning us into compliant drones unable and unwilling to love our neighbour as ourself.
You appear happy to believe, and are religious. I like to see proof and am an atheist, (who does enjoy the world).
Here’s proof that humanism/atheism/evolution is fake: http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2010/08/myths-and-hoaxes-1
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March 19, 2015 at 11:08 pm -
Are you the same Stewart Cowan who writes the blog and article you provide a link to? If so, I’ve got to admit I’m not at all convinced by you saying “I’m right and to prove it here’s me saying so”. And I would have expected an article that supposedly proves humanism and atheism are fake would at least mention them.
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March 20, 2015 at 6:24 am -
I hope I have demonstrated that the Theory of Evolution is a fraud which leaves the Creator as the originator of life on earth.
Try my series on “Richard Dawkins Exposed”. http://www.realstreet.co.uk/?s=Richard+Dawkins+Exposed
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March 20, 2015 at 12:37 pm -
You came nowhere near disproving the accepted peer-reviewed scientific theory of evolution. We’re going to have to agree to disagree so this is my last post.
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March 18, 2015 at 9:55 am -
You’re seeing the result of years of dehumanisation come to flower. Anyone on benefits is a scrounger, not a human being who wants to be in a better situation. Anyone with wealth is an undeserving toff who id out of touch with everybody else. Mothers have rights of way (well, in their own minds) with push chairs over disabled people in wheelchairs. Drivers lord it over cyclists who in turn, treat pedestrians as targets in a video game – traffic laws don’t apply to THEM. And everyone is Instagramming, Youtubing, Vinining, Facebooking and Twittering what goes on around them.
All the world’s a stage and life is not lived any more – it is viewed, critiqued, and rated as entertainment. And so is death. What I find the most depressing is the idea that the suicidal man probably got more attention because of the way he died than the way he lived. I’ve never understood why a potential suicide would carry out the act in a public place, unless they want it seen or want to be talked out of it. Those intent on it have, in my experience, carried it out in the privacy of their own home. But I still feel sorry for the poor bloke that the end of his life was soundtracked by tossers encouraging him to follow through with it.
Stop the world. I want to get off.
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March 19, 2015 at 1:37 am -
Just when you think the obsessive narcissism of the young can’t get any worse, they go and invent the selfie-stick! Let’s hope the six-month lifespan of today’s useless inventions renders it so yesterday before the year’s out. And top marks to the National Gallery for banning them. Imagine going somewhere like that, not to gaze in awe at the paintings, but simply to take a snapshot of yourself stood in front of them to post on Facebook. The mind boggles.
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March 19, 2015 at 8:38 am -
With a certain narrative symmetry, there’s a substantial collection of google news entries testifying to the foolhardiness of taking selfies on the edge of a cliff.
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March 18, 2015 at 10:05 am -
“According to first-hand accounts, some onlookers present encouraged the man to jump.”
They should be prosecuted.“Even as they become more connected, young people are caring less about others… The study…found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years.”
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/10/17/the_empathy_deficit/“A retired art teacher committed suicide … because she was frustrated at the lack of interaction in modern life, because of our reliance on computers and the Internet. … was not terminally ill or seriously handicapped … Before her death she told the Sunday Times: “People are becoming more and more remote … We are becoming robots. It is this lack of humanity.””
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10747672/Retired-art-teacher-committed-suicide-because-of-frustration-with-modern-life.html-
March 18, 2015 at 3:08 pm -
What should they be prosecuted for? Even the police were hedging their bets yesterday.
And don’t they have actual, real, established crimes that they should be dealing with first? You know, the ones they are always whinging about ‘lack of resources’ stopping them from acting on?
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March 18, 2015 at 4:58 pm -
How about breach of the peace.
“The concept of breach of the peace is difficult to define, and the limits of the power have been subject to disagreement. However, it is now widely thought that the correct definition is that which was given in the case R v. Howell (1981): actions which harm another person, or harm his property in his presence, or actions which are likely to provoke such harm.”
http://www.inbrief.co.uk/offences/breach-of-the-peace.htm-
March 18, 2015 at 5:45 pm -
You mean the act they steadfastly refuse to use when Islamist nutjobs are marching with placards declaring ‘Death to the UK’…?
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March 18, 2015 at 10:05 am -
Your Oompas worked overtime on that last paragraph, Pet. “Crass mark 5″ I’m going to nick at some point.
I’m also going to agree with Cowan about the removal of the Deity (so-Deum night rate?) from the recipe, up to a point and that point was when one of my, then, teenage sons asked me why I had called Prospective-if-she-had-been-old-enough Daughter in Law ‘evil’ for wanting to abort when all it was was a ‘bunch a cells things like innit?[sic]’
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March 19, 2015 at 1:39 am -
March 19, 2015 at 5:48 pm -
Careful, Dwarfie, that’s twice you’ve been supportive of me. And you are pro-life. You continue to rise in my esteem, sir.
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March 18, 2015 at 10:12 am -
When I was at University it was “a well-known fact” that students suicided off a nearby bridge but this was never reported by the press in a paternalistic suppression of “the News”, on the premise that it would stimulate copy-catting. Methinks everyone with a brain understand the pyschology of this. Folk now have the freedom to make their own news and thus we will be forced to see our own underbelly. Maybe in the end it’ll be for the best, or maybe our civilisation will end. So far as I am concerned, the only knowledge I will gain about this whole tawdry spectacle will be in this blog. I will not watch it. I will not commentate on the reason why for any of it. There is no such thing as Society; there is never is, there are just individuals who may or may not try to make things better for themselves and any others they happen to bump into along their journey from nowhere to nowhere.
Criticising “Society” will just feed the growing Authoritarianism latent in the popular Media and those who wish to rule ordinary people.
Let’s not forget the elderly French proles with their knitting, below the Guillotine. The glorious triumph of Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Hasta la vista babies.-
March 18, 2015 at 11:03 am -
” The glorious triumph of Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”
I take your point but you are , perhaps, being a un peu unfair on the French (not that should bother any Englishman overmuch). Let us not forget that at the same time the French were dispatching their Revolutionary Traitors using the most humanité method of it’s day- a method which is probably STILL more humane than the Lethal Injection or Chair- we, the British were still merrily hanging, drawing and , for the Ladies, burning to packed crowds down Tyburn. …to the delight, no doubt, of the Marble Arch Ladies Knitting Circle & Sewing Bee…”Drop one, pearl two *Thud* *Scream*…cast off”
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March 18, 2015 at 11:39 am -
Yeah, but the English were monarchistic thugs whereas the Frenchies were at the acme of the Enlightenment of crowds
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March 18, 2015 at 12:32 pm -
The jumping incident is an example of what scum the human race can be. But it is hardly some great outburst of strange or alien barbarism. Attending hangings was once a common public amusement in this country. That only stopped in the 1860s –I think–when TPTB moved them indoors. Human nature does not change. Scum we will always have with us.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:43 pm -
But the crowds still gathered outside the prison gates on Hanging Day, often quite large ones! They would stay there until the notice was posted outside the gates that so-and-so now had a longer neck. This happens outside prisons in the USA when some notorious tosser is being fried or given the jab! Human nature I guess, the feeling that you want to be there on a momentous occasion.
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March 18, 2015 at 6:27 pm -
I recall, while at Secondary School, hearing snippets of US Radio in a documentary concerning the execution of Spenkelink. Right then I realised there was a downside to Freedom Of Expression and the meaning of the phrase ‘rabble rousing’. I could well imagine the US DJs concerned pelting the poor unfortunates on their way to a scaffold or for a ‘shower’ in a previous time or place.
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March 18, 2015 at 6:30 pm -
The British were on the long drop method of hanging by then, which is pretty quick, also drawing and quartering were long since gone.
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March 18, 2015 at 6:46 pm -
Bunny, hanging and 1/4ing was almost gone by then *in practice* but not quite and was still within living memory (if that isn’t an unfortunate turn of phrase).
“The French spy François Henri de la Motte was hanged in 1781 for almost an hour before his heart was cut out and burned,[67] and the following year David Tyrie was hanged, decapitated and then quartered at Portsmouth. Pieces of his corpse were fought over by members of the 20,000-strong crowd there, some making trophies of his limbs and fingers.[68]”-Wiki
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March 18, 2015 at 2:33 pm -
“this was never reported by the press in a paternalistic suppression of “the News”, on the premise that it would stimulate copy-catting”
Still happens. If you listen to the radio, whenever a train has been delayed due to an unspecified ‘incident’, it is often because someone has decided to end it on the railway.
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March 18, 2015 at 10:51 am -
I’ve noticed – and blogged about extensively – the decrease in ‘consciousness’ that has resulted in almost every person under about 30 become reactionary zealots. I can only assume it’s all part of the New Labour education reforms that produces cold, callous and cruel young adults with no sense of self-awareness given it has swept over the nation like a tsunami of institutionalized stupidity but it’s evident across the media and especially the ‘comments’ sections of newspapers (and particularly pages of Facebook & Twitter) – they do not question what they are told and they do not question their own judgement, and it will undoubtedly result in a ‘lemmings’-style boom in suicide, self-harm and other extreme reactions as people find they condemnation they are so keen to mete out to others eventually catches up with them. I suppose it’s a key part of the social conditioning that will ultimately surrender all our ‘rights’ to The State.
The incident in Telford is quite shocking, but also very much inevitable. The really horrible thought is this mindless mob mentality is endemic and shared by the young journalists, wannabe politicians, solicitors, media underlings etc – and thus will soon represent ‘the nation’ as a majority.
Another weird point is how the reactionary has blended with the supposed ‘politically correct’ – all of these pitch-fork wielding young idiots would consider themselves ‘nice people’ and be able to parrot lots of PC propaganda and probably feel obligated to vote Labour and call out those who consider UKIP an option as “fascists”.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:58 pm -
When the nonentity David Smith hung himself in his 90+ year-old mother’s house, the child abuse lawyer at Pannones complained that the dirty bastard had cheated his client of justice. Corruption starts at the top of any society and the lawyers are both corrupt and on top.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3bJKSbKt7Vs/UnTl4xngEpI/AAAAAAAADTg/ZX-P5Mn-La4/s640/image002.jpg
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March 18, 2015 at 11:03 am -
This should be mandatory reading for all A Level sociology and Philosophy students, not to mention PSHE.
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March 18, 2015 at 11:08 am -
As Ed P points out, this is not new. I actually wrote a Songfact about that number a while back. This is the madness of crowds; I assume you are familiar with the book. I have no doubt that if this poor bloke had been in a position in which he was hanging on for dear life or perhaps standing in the window of a burning building screaming “Fire” that the crowd’s reaction would have been entirely the opposite. Then don’t forget the bystander effect.
I don’t think these people should face the courts but naming and shaming might not hurt.
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March 18, 2015 at 3:10 pm -
Yup, let’s have a bit of shame, then if they get harassed enough by the public, they might climb up a tall building and…
Oh. Wait.
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March 18, 2015 at 12:01 pm -
Thoroughly repellent behaviour if as reported, & I agree the separation from reality by a screen is a big part of the desensitisation. The casual use of foul language regardless of who might be offended seems to be a symptomatic & classless vice, too.
I wonder how many of these mentally warped people could cope with some simple reality, say gutting a fish, or drawing & plucking poultry, eating food with a face instead of in a bun or on a pizza?
My comfort is that in my large village there are enough oldies to help, rather than egg on. We run nearly everything local anyway, because we have the time but mostly we have the inclination.
No matter how long & dark the winter evenings, none of these ridiculously contrived reality shows hold any attraction. (I do confess to dipping in to Gogglebox to see the sheer joy of life of the two black ladies, and the warm but gentle & civilised Siddiqui men, but that’s not the same kind of thing is it?) -
March 18, 2015 at 12:43 pm -
I am not sure how much we can blame individual TV series. The sheer competitiveness of contemporary life, especially for the under thirties, of which The Apprentice and such like is only indicative, is surely part of the reason that compassion and fellow feeling is withering in society.
That said, I’m also wary of saying, as Petunia appears to, that something disappeared after the abolition of public executions has suddently reappeared now. William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ shows how under every exterior of civilised behaviour there is a cruelty that is always only barely represssed.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:42 pm -
Lenin said he only need one generation and Nulabor proved the theory.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:32 pm -
Lenin and NuLabour? Eh? I though Michael Foot was Lenin. LOL.
William Golding is a typical Roman Catholic view of human nature nothing Marxist or even socialist about him.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:56 pm -
The absence of culture. Pol Pot was a Catholic?
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March 18, 2015 at 8:23 pm -
I’m moar than lost now. Are you saying William Golding’s views resemble Pol Pot’s!!!
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March 18, 2015 at 10:02 pm -
Golding was simply illustrating that the human animal is not somehow instinctively “civilised” but rather the opposite. Without the civilising effects of the culture upon the young person, in just one generation they will perforce revert to some form of what we would view as savagery. When Lenin suggested he only needed one generation he wasn’t talking about the removal of all culture he was merely talking about perverting the extant culture into a brand new one. Pol Pot’s strategy effectively emulated Golding’s fears because unlike Lenin, Pol Pot seemed to think that sending everyone back to nature would make them pure of heart but instead they regressed to savagery, as any good Catholic would anticipate…
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March 18, 2015 at 6:26 pm -
The curious thing though is lots of things happened in quick succession and they all contributed to the change of mentality:
1996: New Labour manifesto published, Dunblane Massacre (key to subsequent education reforms and the need to quarantine children from adults)
1997: New Labour landslide, 1997: Diana hysteria
2000: “Big Brother”,
2001: “Pop Stars”, 9/11, Afghanistan
2002: “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!”
2003: Iraq
2004: “The Apprentice”, “The X-Factor”I remember entertaining a younger guest at my house in about 2001 and them being keen to know ‘who’d got voted out’ on Big Brother. Like the competition for syrupy hit single between Will Young & Gareth Gates I remember thinking “whatever this is about, I’m not interested” – things were changing. http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/bon-anniversaire.html
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March 18, 2015 at 8:26 pm -
As I replied to Petunia below behind all that you have to put the internet. Until about 1998 most people could only see what the media showed them. After that they could upload pretty much what they wanted. It was licence for rubbernecks to set the tone for what we see.
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March 18, 2015 at 1:16 pm -
Many years ago I lived on a main-road & bus-route in London. Leaving my ‘studio apartment’ shoebox one day I had to push past some of my neighbours who were blocking the narrow entrance, gawping at something occurring outside. And outside was what seemed to be the whole neighbourhood witnessing the spectacle of the ambulance-service desperately trying to keep someone alive who had been seriously injured by a bus.
I returned from the shop sickened by the voyurism, and a while later left the house again. They were still at it, both actors (medics) and audience (Great British Public) only now there were CHAIRS on the pavements as people had decided to watch it through to the grim end.
The local rag had the story on the cover a day or so later: one of those cases where the injury was so bad that they had had no option but to try and save the victim in situ. And all I could think of was the poor devil’s last moments as entertainment for the masses. It’s stayed with me to this day, and I don’t think I’ve ever thought of ‘society’ in quite the same way again.-
March 18, 2015 at 1:45 pm -
This is not something of which I am proud but relates to your experience:
About eight years ago I overdosed on sleeping pills. Not a suicide attempt but a definite decision to sledgehammer the uncontrollable and insatiable rage I was feeling at the time so I would not end up being responsible for harm to a person or damage. Anways… some 48 hours later, still alive and very much under the influence, drifting in and out of consciousness a friend visited. I refused him entry. He knew something was wrong and I slurred that I’d be ok because if death was going to be a consequence, it would have happened already.
He disagreed and called paramedics. I refused entry. They called police. They bust my door down. Six of them carried me struggling and shouting down the steps of my block of flats and put me in the back of an ambulance. A crowd had gathered. I was not restrained. I paced back and forth, in considerable distress at just not being left alone to to sort this out myself (I have heard all the arguments about why this would/should/could not have happened). I saw people in the crowd on their phones, talking about me, getting out cameras (this was lunchtime in central London) and eventually lost it, turning around and yelling (in one of my more lucid moments): “Just fuck off all of you! Haven’t you got your own miserable lives to go and indulge or do you need to watch someone breaking down to make your life more satisfying?” At that point I was restrained and driven off for sectioning.
I absconded the sectioning assessment process after telling the two psychiatrists they were wankers for asking me exactly the same questions, but phrasing them differently, and asking if they expected different answers because of that. I was distressed, not stupid.
After absconding, the police came to get me again. They were cool – two officers assessed me separately and decided I’d be ok as long as I had company for the next 24 hours. A neighbour, who had witnessed everything, kindly said she’d stay.
The policewoman said, as she left, I seemed “a right laugh” and maybe we could go out for a drink sometime as she was known to down a bottle of vodka. I answered that this may not be the best time to make such an arrangement. End of story (well, there’s a load more, but that’s all you’re getting).
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March 18, 2015 at 2:24 pm -
It’s a popular misconception that a suicidal state is always a state of madness – it can be a reaction to the madness of others, and perfectly logical.
I admit it crosses my mind fairly regularly – in fact several times a day of late – but one of the reasons it doesn’t appeal is what is described here. I don’t want to be anybody’s ‘spectacle’ or ‘incident’ and I wouldn’t want people dining on fake grief, nor of course would I want to cause any grief to those who do actually care. But we’re all just passing through anyway, clusters of cells that will become dust & bones in the end. -
March 18, 2015 at 2:24 pm -
Well, I suppose we should try & remind ourselves that the decent folk who would never think to get their ‘phones out, instead quietly returning to their own lives with a silent wish that ‘everything turns out all right’, will be invisible to us in the main, and that our impressions are often formed by that pushing & shoving minority who see a tragic situation as another selfie-stick opportunity for bad-taste oneupmanship with their social-media “friends”… It’s just that that minority often appears to be anything but!
The accident described above was thankfully pre-camera ubiquity, or else I’m sure the death-throes would have been uploaded for someone’s amusement.
Maybe I’m just overly-sensitive or squeemish but even scrolling through the news these days is a chore, endless still-shots of about-to-be-executed hostages & the like; I really don’t want those images in my head, and I don’t want the culprits given the fame they crave.P.S. The policewoman sounds a bit, er, unprofessional. The phrase “a right laugh” always sends shivers down my spine – usually those laughs come at someone else’s expense.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:44 pm -
Two or three years ago, Tony Scott (brother of Ridley) jumped off a bridge. There was mobile footage being hawked to the American networks by the lucky-lotto passers-by. To the best of my knowledge the hated commercial Yankees told the sellers to go jump and not on their Channel buddy. One benefit of being Puritans at heart maybe.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:00 pm -
Simply searching online for an image of a Jihadi John-type to use to illustrate an article is an especially grim minefield. Through no choice of my own I’ve been exposed to all those images of severed heads we hear about but thankfully don’t see in the media. God knows what it must be like for a family member of an ISIS victim to stumble upon those by accident.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:42 pm -
You could set Google to Safesearch, add a daterange restriction to the search box (daterange:xxxxx-xxxxx, where xxxxx is the Julian calendar date [use an online date converter]) and/or add a site restriction to restrict the search to a site you trust, e.g. site:bbc.com.
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March 18, 2015 at 3:03 pm -
“I was distressed, not stupid.”
If I had a £ for every time I have had to say to someone that The Bestes Frau In The World is ‘insane not stupid’ ….or, in his younger days, point out to people that Crippled Son’s “legs don’t work not his brain”.
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March 18, 2015 at 3:13 pm -
“And outside was what seemed to be the whole neighbourhood witnessing the spectacle of the ambulance-service desperately trying to keep someone alive who had been seriously injured by a bus.”
Go back just ten years, and tell me we had the now-common spectacle of first responders erecting screens around such an unfortunate, as if they were a Grand National runner with a shattered cannon-bone, awaiting the on course vet’s bullet.
We didn’t. Because who’d have thought we’d ever need it?
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March 18, 2015 at 1:40 pm -
Damned if you walk on by, damned if you stand and gawk.
Most of us are working from incomplete or imperfect information so its best not to assume that everyone else has the same perspective as we have, or indeed that ours is the correct one.
As to the separation by ‘screen’, I remember a bit of film shown on TV years ago where a man is hanging off the side of an ocean-going yacht screaming his head off. It then becomes clear that he is shouting, “Stop filming and help me!”
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March 18, 2015 at 3:08 pm -
Your last point rang a bell (rather poignantly, given this week’s news of his death); back in 2009, Ross at ‘Unenlightened Commentary’ highlighted the case of a 12-year-old girl mistreating a dog and the Sun’s report that a ‘sickened’ neighbour filmed the attack for 13 minutes.
http://fountain.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/canine-kicking-voyeur.html -
March 18, 2015 at 3:11 pm -
Robert Maxwell?
I recall footage once of a cameraman so detached from “reality” that he filmed the man with the rifle, who turned the barrel in his direction, and then shot him dead. Gary Gilmour’s eyes indeed.
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March 18, 2015 at 1:59 pm -
I fully agree with what you say, we have become a less caring people and that is accelerating as our society goes downhill. To watch as a spectator sport is simply sickening. To shout for them to jump is despicable.
However, there is another side of the coin. Many of those will have been trapped from where they were going by Plod blocking off everything within a significant distance of the actual site and stopping people getting their cars and going home or on to work. What do they do? Watch and shout abuse while they are disrupted.
I like to consider other viewpoints especially after being stuck on a motorway for 5 hours as someone contemplated jumping on to it from a bridge. All surrounding escape roads were jammed when someone took a detour and crashed and a truck got stuck under a bridge on another road. So there I was, stuck in a car, nothing to drink or eat, flat battery on the phone, miles from home surrounded by hundreds of people in a similar situation and looking at my watch whilst the time counted down to make me late for my plans that evening. I can assure you I wasn’t thinking nice things about the potential jumper. If a button had been there to push them off it could very well have been accidentally triggered, not by me of course. In the end they didn’t jump. I was late and missed my plans. So I was out several hours and some cash. You can look and say that it doesn’t compare to a life and you are right but treatment is available and there are ways of getting help that doesn’t necessitate causing disruption for others for hours. What did they really gain?
Where exactly do you draw the line? He got his cry for attention when Plod turned up but he were still there over two hours later. I’m all for helping these people and they should be given what help is available but these public spectacles seem to be becoming more common. I suspect that these are the services getting the cuts. Can’t cut a diversity coordinator but a mental health nurse is an easy target.
So, sadly, I’m starting to see these cases as I do when I see someone starving in Africa. I don’t like it but there is nothing realistically that I can do. I don’t see me ever shouting for them to jump though. I’d never live with myself if they did as I’d wonder if it was me they heard and made them decide to jump.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:19 pm -
Quite! It puts me in mind of the James Cagney gangster movie where he ends up on top of a burning oil tank or something, shooting at the cops and shouting ‘Top of the world Ma, top of the world!’ The life or death was no longer important, it was being the absolute centre of attention!
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March 18, 2015 at 3:26 pm -
Some suicides do that, but I would guess the majority of successful ones don’t. A few years back a childhood friend of mine parked his car, walked to the middle of the Humber Bridge, and threw himself off. Around the same time, a mate went missing for a few days, posted final letters to select family and friend, and then jumped in the Thames in the early hours of an October morning with a rucksack filled with weights strapped to his back. As far as I know there were no eye witnesses to either.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:21 pm -
I agree with many of the comments that there is an unpleasant side of human nature that is instinctively drawn to the distress of others, especially in a crowd, where the ordinary thought processes of an individual are absorbed into mass, almost militaristic unison; a car-crash will always attract spectators. For me, though, I think the most significant and sickening development of the past decade is capturing such a scene on a mobile and then uploading it to FB as though a suicide is no different from a cat playing a piano.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:50 pm -
Dory Previn had a minor hit record with he 70’s song about the girl who jumped off the Hollywood Sign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofhaKy7DJGw-
March 18, 2015 at 3:17 pm -
And let’s not forget Bobby Joe and the Tallahatchee Bridge…
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March 18, 2015 at 3:54 pm -
BILLY Joe, as in ‘Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchee Bridge’ cos it’s Ode to Billy Joe innit.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:47 pm -
Oh, damn! Of course! It was Bobby Gentry, the singer!
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March 19, 2015 at 10:32 am -
Bobbie not Bobby – you’ll be getting sorry you mentioned it!
Holler, but don’t hit!
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March 18, 2015 at 7:20 pm -
I loved that Dory Previn LP there were some really profound songs on it. It was spoiled for me when a friend committed suicide while playing it and I had the misfortune to find her. That was enough to put me off the idea of suicide for life when I saw the devastating effect on the family.
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March 18, 2015 at 7:28 pm -
I always adored the song about the left-hander, especially so because I too was “changed”…
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March 18, 2015 at 8:21 pm -
I think this is more to do with a sense that everything is public rather than cruelty. I am constantly amazed at the way news websites are happy to show photos of dead bodies. I think I must have been well into my twenties before I first saw an image of a dead body. Long, long after I had seen quite a wide range of sexual acts. It was something very taboo but seems to have lost that.
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March 18, 2015 at 3:19 pm -
“However, there is another side of the coin. Many of those will have been trapped from where they were going by Plod blocking off everything within a significant distance of the actual site and stopping people getting their cars and going home or on to work. “
Lord T, yes indeed. That was, frankly, my first thought.
But then I realised that there was a much greater chance that they were just scum.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:20 pm -
I have two friends who were police officers and both had jumpers to deal with. Both were affected, down the pub after a few beers they would talk, one was having nightmares repeatedly of the poor girls head bashed in. The other of the harrowing task of telling the young mans parents what had happened
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March 18, 2015 at 2:36 pm -
I used to work on a landmark bridge, and “incidents” were regular. The lion’s share were a cry for help, but there were several instances were people just turned up and went over, including a pregnant woman who actually somehow survived the fall. The nearest I personally came to dealing with an actual suicide was a harrowing attempt a ‘rattling’ young (female) heroin addict made to hang herself over the edge of the railings, fortunately for us this was the height of summer and a sight-seeing pedestrian had hooked her up as she threw herself over, and were cradling the sobbing wreck by the time we got there.
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March 18, 2015 at 2:35 pm -
Whatever happened to the Golden Rule?
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March 18, 2015 at 3:37 pm -
Petunia; this callousness is nothing new. It has existed down the years and thrived during the days of public executions. “Oh, my. Think I’ve got to die.” Was a popular chant recorded at many Newgate executions. This vicarious blood lust is a common trait displayed by those with psychopathic and criminal tendencies. Leering over Big Brother or jeering at a man who’d lost all hope of living so he ended it. It’s the same mentality. Vacuous and brutal, in short, base model human. Pondlife. Chav. Whatever.
I’ll bet if we did enough digging we’d find records of some Noble Roman Lady complaining about the cruelty of executions and how they pointed to the end of things as we know them.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:05 pm -
Well, I do make the point in the article that the resurgence of bloodthirsty sentiments inspired by the way in which contestants on reality TV are treated by programme-makers and viewers alike is a throwback to the days of public executions.
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March 18, 2015 at 5:28 pm -
I wouldn’t call it a resurgence. My contention is that the bloodlust never really went away.
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March 18, 2015 at 3:49 pm -
“According to first-hand accounts, some onlookers present encouraged the man to jump. Why would anybody in their right mind want this awful outcome? ”
These are the self same people who pray to God that children have been horrifically abused, nay murdered, so that they can crow ‘they were right all along about those Tory bastards’.
The fact that innocents have to have died to realise their chosen outcome doesn’t seem to bother them one bit.
I’ll bet you that right now, someone is interviewing parents and friends of the departed, and looking for the angle that says ‘ his benefits were late/stopped/cut’ or some other angle they can politicise.
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March 18, 2015 at 4:10 pm -
They might even start a “UK Change” (and oh, hasn’t it just?
) petition to demand that all deaths can be politicised by the media “for transparency”….-
March 18, 2015 at 5:19 pm -
“These are the self same people who pray to God that children have been horrifically abused, nay murdered…The fact that innocents have to have died to realise their chosen outcome doesn’t seem to bother them one bit.”
Prurience cloaked in false moralising perhaps. Or something more than prurience. It’s particularly odd that anyone claiming to have been abused themselves should choose to constantly harp on what must be a painful subject. Also the holding up of the issue like a chalice, as if to claim the moral high ground (don’t most people consider it abhorrent?), plus use of the word “nonce” makes you wonder if prison culture has spread to the general population, or at least to many of those who loudly proclaim their views.
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March 18, 2015 at 7:27 pm -
Must admit I am very suspicious of those who seem obsessed with child sexual abuse, they seem to be enjoying it all a bit too much for my liking. Real victims I have known don’t behave like the publicity/money seeking ones paraded in the media either.
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March 18, 2015 at 8:29 pm -
The creepiest are the ones who only rattle on about abuse, but are smiling in their profile pic.
Like this creep https://twitter.com/ciabaudo
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March 18, 2015 at 4:21 pm -
‘I’ll bet you that right now, someone is interviewing parents and friends of the departed, and looking for the angle that says ‘ his benefits were late/stopped/cut’ or some other angle they can politicise.’
That would be the nice man trying to nail the ‘Nasty Party’.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:50 am -
A term popularized but not invented by Theresa May, who combines both the nasty and the useless in her own person.
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March 18, 2015 at 4:59 pm -
I don’t think this is unique to modern society. Around forty years ago, two of my friends, who were then and are now, law abiding, decent citizens, did something similar. They wrote “jump” in the sand below Blackpool Tower, during a similar incident, and got a ticking off from the Police. That’s how teenage boys are, although I don’t think I would have joined in – well, maybe after a few pints.
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March 18, 2015 at 6:01 pm -
Ahh, the innocence of youth. These days, though, it’d read ‘Jmp u feckers!’ and there’d be vomit punctuation…
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March 18, 2015 at 6:05 pm -
It’s interesting that the OP considers the varied effects of modernisation, etc on the onlookers, and yet none on the man, who remains a victim. Yet, as Lord T points out, he didn’t jump until several hours had passed.
Maybe he too wanted his 10 minutes of fame, his chance to be the centre of attention. Maybe he’d done this before?
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March 18, 2015 at 7:27 pm -
Friday sees the Coroners Court hearing on the suicide of Brenda Leyland I understand, the woman “outed” by the brave journalism of Sky News.
The last thing I remember about the earlier hearing was that the Coroner demanded the brave journalist explain how it was he came to confront this ordinary member of the public, who had so foolishly drifted into the new Social Media landscape, outisde her own house and in front of all her no doubt nosy neighbours.
The last I heard was the top Honcho at The Times was thundering about Martin Brunt’s right to Journalistic Privilege. Presumably the Churnalists think their glorious business is worth more than life itself. I on the other hand don’t believe it’s worth the paper they write it on.
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March 18, 2015 at 7:48 pm -
Anyone wants a good laugh, check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbuxkv0mhbk
Jones has done some good work in the past, but this idiocy undermines it all.
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March 18, 2015 at 8:34 pm -
Jones the “truther” made a twat of himself in 2013.
At 5mins you’ll see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1OhjUk2CRk -
March 19, 2015 at 9:01 am -
A bit like David Icke I suppose. It does seem to be the way of the demagogue personality.
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March 18, 2015 at 7:50 pm -
Flashback to late 70s, suburban Dublin. My mother is driving, I’m in backseat, five or six years old. An old man falls off his bike. Two teenagers, who seemed frighteningly big and threatening to me but were probably just average 13 year olds in reality, point and laugh, in the style of the Nelson character from the Simpsons. Then, obviously feeling somewhat shamefaced at their involuntary initial reaction, they rush to help him get up.
That’s what’s changed I guess. First part is still there. Second is gone.
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March 18, 2015 at 8:11 pm -
“According to first-hand accounts, some onlookers present encouraged the man to jump. Why would anybody in their right mind want this awful outcome? Have the desensitising effects of incessant exposure to Hollywood or videogame interpretations of what happens to human flesh and bone when they encounter something strong enough to reduce them to a bloody pulp provoked curiosity as to the reality? Or does the fact that some of the crowd that goaded the suicidal man chose to record events on their mobiles in eager anticipation of the money-shot serve as evidence that so many now can only relate to a world that has a Smartphone border framing it, making everything their eyes see a virtual movie? In this case, all empathy has evaporated. They weren’t looking at a fellow human being clearly suffering an intense mental trauma; they were witnessing the end scene of a pretend drama, frustrated that they didn’t have a joystick in their hands that could tip the man over the edge and score them their highest points in the game so far. But there’s possibly more to it than even that.”
As I was driving home the other night I heard an interview with a woman who had observed this. She challenged one of the people encouraging and filming, but – in my view understandably – being in possession of her little baby, didn’t take the matter too far. I pondered a piece myself, but work forbade it, and Petunia has of course done a better job than I could ever do. The mob has always been cruel and appalling. Back in the day, the Games of the Roman amphitheatres , and others. Bear baiting, badger baiting, cock fighting, dog fighting – something which seems to be undergoing a resurgence, much to my distress, and so forth. All of this upsets me. This poor man was so upset that he took that ultimate step. I have been there, and looked into that dark tunnel. Only fear made me not go through with it. Or maybe he was just ill. Here, I think, is the point where I may depart from our editor’s view and betray my own lack of goodness. For each person who organizes dog fighting, badger baiting etc – I would order them to fight, be baited and so forth. For each person who shouted at the man to jump, I would put them on a ledge. OK, probably not morally sound, and yet somehow just.
It’s been a long day.
Poor guy. -
March 18, 2015 at 8:49 pm -
Never having been at that point of torment, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to get into the mind of the ‘jumper’ – I don’t know what it’s like to be ‘there’, so I am not qualified to judge him. Something, or some accumulation of different things, just got so bad that he couldn’t see another solution.
Although I too share the frustration of thousands of drivers and train-passengers caught up in these tragic events, and massively inconvenienced by them, that must always be trumped by the overwhelming thought encompassed in Brother Gildas’ two closing words.
Poor guy. -
March 19, 2015 at 12:15 am -
It’s about two seconds free fall from that height. Having done a sky-dive, I can imagine all previous thoughts and concerns being wiped out by sheer exhilaration from adrenaline, combined with the terror – him not me – of knowing the ground was coming. I would have tried to land on one of the ghouls gathered below.
As Gildas said, “Poor guy”. -
March 19, 2015 at 8:20 am -
Not directly relevant to the thread, but it did occur to me to spare a thought for The Samaritans and others quietly trying to help people having a really seriously bad time of it. They don’t boast or shout about what they do, but they do try hard to ‘be there’. The exact opposite of the ‘me me me’ society and attention-seeking celebs and media whores, and the diametric opposite of those we are all to familiar with on this blog – those exploiting other peoples’ misery for political gain, or even more sickeningly, for ‘entertainment’.
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March 19, 2015 at 9:17 am -
I’ve seen a lot more posters & little signs going up on the railway recently, advertising the Samaritans.
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March 19, 2015 at 10:30 am -
True. Quietly getting on with their job and doing a good one.
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March 19, 2015 at 12:40 pm -
They do great work
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March 19, 2015 at 1:29 pm -
I don’t think it is entirely fair to lump Alan Sugar in with the general thesis here. I have stopped following the Apprentice now as it’s run its course, I feel, but I was a keen viewer originally, and although Sugar could be blunt or even unkind, most of his criticism was constructive. It seems to me that the other contestants are more often these days like the Telford crowd (not literally of course) and I think that is down to the editing and producers, who all seem to want the theatre of cruelty.
) petition to demand that all deaths can be politicised by the media “for transparency”….
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