Is this Cameron's Sepp Blatter moment?

[kernelbogey]

[...] like tieing a bunch of garage flowers to a lamp post for a road victim you have no knowledge of and pre-judging the situation merely because you want to take part in some sort of group hug and an emotional experience[...]

Anna, have you any evidence for this? I agree that the flowers-by-the-accident-spot phenomenon is rather strange, but the ones I've examined look as though the flowers and long notes are from people who knew the (often young) victim well.

Young people consider online 'friends', whom often they have never met, to be nonetheless legitimate friends - however incomprehensible that may be to us older folk. I think we risk misunderstanding how social networking is perceived if we diminish it.

BW, kb (Grammar School educated )

[Lateralthinking1]

Anna, I don't know of this incident. However, I seem to recall people marching through Portsmouth in similar circumstances before Twitter and the 1981 riots were pre-Twitter too. If you set this in the context of the general breakdown of community and the grandiose ambitions for the "Big Society", I think what you see is that people tend to come together when they are against something rather than for something although they also see it as being for themselves.

I have long held the belief that the highlighting of extremely isolated cases of child abuse is a reflection of less than respectful ways between some ordinary people themselves. It tends to occur where there are significant social problems. As for mass outpourings of grief, Diana springs to mind. That was different I think - I was there and it felt part-pagan and part-Mediterranean. I felt as if I was in a foreign country. It was sad but also nice.

[Pilchardman]

Apologies if I'm wrong, I got those figures at lunchtime, can't remember, it was either The Guardian or The Telegraph.

BBC says the complaints for Ross/Brand Manuelgate were 37,500. (BBC scroll to Thursday 30th).

[Lateralthinking1]

.....I think he and Top Gear will leave the BBC but I don't think it will be the strikers. It will be the train that just kept going.

[Anna]

Lat, and others, I really feel I don't understand the Twitter generation. Yes, you (not you personally, any of you) have 1,000 friends there, or on Facebook. You have never met them, they just hang on to your coat tails. It just seems weird to me and negates the need for actual human, face to face, contact. That is what is important, human contact, isn't it? Facing someone, in the flesh, saying, stuff. Not some follower on Twit or FB who gets off on what you've done? Oh, I really must go.

[ahinton]

.....I think he and Top Gear will leave the BBC but I don't think it will be the strikers. It will be the the train that just kept going.

A train on Top Gear? Well, that'll be novel, if nothing else - and if watched on the computer, might that be leaves on the line online?

We're at message #200 on this already and if there are many more it might turn into Cameron's Sepp Blatter week - or yet month...

[Lateralthinking1]

Face to face contact is important. That is why I am on FoR3.

Top Gear should be replaced by Top Trains. A similar bunch of anoraks but all the BIG controversy is about timetables.

(Number of Jeremy Clarkson followers on Twitter - 220).

[ahinton]

Face to face contact is important. That is why I am on FoR3.

Top Gear should be replaced by Top Trains. A similar bunch of anoraks but all the BIG controversy is about timetables.

(Number of Jeremy Clarkson followers on Twitter - 220).

You can just see it, can't you? Lots of stuff about the competition for the world's fastest train, aggressive competition between these fast trains and airlines...

[John Skelton]

(Number of Jeremy Clarkson followers on Twitter - 220).

I'm afraid the number of Jeremy Clarkson followers on Twitter is 35,232. I've just looked . He, however, only follows 9 people ....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

David Cameron's friends.

Hmm. Now let me see - Jeremy Clarkson, Rebecca Brookes, his Eton cabinet chums...

Hmm.

[Lateralthinking1]

Sorry - I said that I didn't understand Twitter. That proves it. I read that he has recently had an affair and is therefore in a "vulnerable state of mind" (A BBC Insider said......)

What he actually said in The Sun was:

‘Change the driver, pick up the big bits of what’s left of the victim, get the train moving as soon as possible and let foxy woxy and the birds nibble away at the smaller, gooey parts that are far away or hard to find.’

A man rang a radio station to say that his 19 year son died on a train line 16 years ago. At the time, he had been unemployed since the age of 16, his parents were in the process of divorce, and he had recently been in contact for the first time with his birth mother who had a heart attack the following day, after which under immense strain he attended her funeral.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Top Gear should be replaced by Top Trains. A similar bunch of anoraks but all the BIG controversy is about timetables.

I would welcome that. The BBC has plenty of train programmes, but there is no co-ordination. Michael Portillo's series was not really about trains at all, but it was a start. There would be lots of interest in a such a series; think of the number of railway magazines in W.H. Smith. People must buy them.

[Mr Pee]

I'm afraid the number of Jeremy Clarkson followers on Twitter is 35,232. I've just looked . He, however, only follows 9 people ....

And 488,117 people have joined the Facebook group "Jeremy Clarkson For Prime Minister."

Let's face it, he couldn't do much worse than most of the recent incumbents at No.10.

[Lateralthinking1]

Have you thought about standing yourself Mr Pee? I see from your picture that you already doing the bike thing. All you need is an energy windmill and an address book of dodgy celebrities. The world is your oyster. I assume it was Eton.

[kernelbogey]

[....]I see from your picture that you already doing the bike thing.[...]

Oh, I don't think you should make judgments based on members' pictures, Lat: why, if I relied on yours, I might think that you were just stirring.