Blipping v Blogging

It's some time since I wrote a blog here. It's not because I have nothing to say or to get steamed up about, far from it. It's almost entirely down to a growing interest in photography and a daily commitment to file a picture (like the one featured here of the beach at Estoril) on Blipfoto where my member name is Earthwatcher.

I found Blipfoto through a service  called Pushnote. If you use the web at all - and let's face it, many of us do - I would recommend two internet services for finding interesting web sites. One of these, which I have used for some years now, is Stumbleupon. Stumbleupon allows you to list your interests, then feeds you web pages that it thinks may interest you every time you press the Stumble button that is loaded on to your toolbar when you download  the software.

Pushnote is a little different in that web pages are recommended by individuals who you follow and who may follow you. In that sense it borrows some of the features of Twitter . But, unlike Twitter, it is not simply about making a statement. Whoever files a Pushnote is pointing you (or pushing you, hence the name) to a web page they have enjoyed or found interesting or useful.

It was a Pushnote link that took me to Blipfoto. I enjoy photography, have had some pictures published professionally, and maintain picture galleries on another website, this one a subscription service called Smugmug.

I know that for those who use the internet only cursorily some of these references may sound a lot of nonsense. But, believe me, each of these services can enrich the way you interact with the internet. On the other hand, there is no doubt that they do draw you in and if you're not careful you may end up spending more time than you bargained for on such sites.

Another draw on my time, beyond book-writing, is playing games made by John and Rob, our two eldest boys. We always play their new games to test them out and sometimes these games, like other parts of the internet, can eat up time you simply can't spare.

I don't expect the blog frequency to improve any time soon as, in between the gaming, the photography and the web posting, I have to make a living. The attraction of living somewhere remote is growing by the day. I'm thinking, maybe Orkney. One way or another I suspect 2012 is going to be quite an eventful year for the Donkins.  

Public execution

I went on strike once and a little old lady, who must have been Jeremy Clarkson's grannie, came up to us as we stood around our brazier on picket duty and said we should be put up against a wall and shot. She was entitled to her opinion and we all took it in good heart.

I suspect people might have taken Clarkson's comments on The One Show last night equally lightly had he not said that yesterday's public sector strikers should be "executed in front of their families." It was tasteless in the extreme and certainly inflammatory, but nothing out of the ordinary in exchanges you might hear down at the local Conservative club.

Clarkson has form for such wanton disregard for public taste. He might argue that it is part of his brand and therefore should be dismissed as "just Clarkson being Clarkson".  In the same vein Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were just being themselves when they made cruel remarks about Andrew Sachs on late night radio.

And because they made such remarks, they had to go. It was right that they did and both seem to be re-instating their careers after an incident that was soon going to be water under the bridge in the liberal, forgiving world of celebrity land.

Clarkson knows there is no such thing as bad publicity and just now he has something to sell. Every outrageous comment and every tweet or blog (like this one) that responds is pumping yet more oxygen in to an over-inflated ego.

There are a lot of things to admire in the man. He is an articulate and talented writer and broadcaster and had I known him during his early career in Yorkshire newspapers when we would have been contemporaries - he is three years younger than me - I dare say we might have been drinking mates. You had to sink or swim in the banter that exchanged between journalists in those days and I had colleagues at the Yorkshire Post who would have eaten a young Clarkson alive.

I suspect he has become too successful, too rich and far too famous to give two hoots about what anyone thinks of him, including the management of the BBC. I doubt if he will care much if it is he who has to face the firing squad, however metaphorically. He knows he has a franchise he can take almost anywhere and ITV will probably be waiting with the readies for anything he has to offer. But he doesn't think this will happen because he belongs to a small coterie of people in all walks of life who believe they have become unsackable.

I'm not sure that the unions, the TV executives and the viewing public should become too worked up by what he said. It will only play to the sympathies of his hard-core following if they do so. Be in no doubt there will have been quite a lot of people watching their TVs yesterday who would have said "right on Jeremy" in response to his remarks about gilt-edged public sector pensions. He had a point to make and he made it a little more emphatically than the average politician because he doesn't care a damn about niceties. You wouldn't recruit someone like Clarkson in to the diplomatic corps.

We must wait and see if the police become involved, as the unions hope they will, but I would argue that the best way to deal with his remarks if they offended you is to remember them.  Remember them, as I will, when tempted to tune in to another rollicking episode of Top Gear.

If you don't like Clarkson, or any other boorish TV celebrity for that matter, one way to respond is to turn them off, ignore their columns and leave their books on the shelf. I've done that for years but these people have a habit of popping up and saying something more outrageous than ever. Perhaps the only answer, come the revolution, will be to drag them in to the street and.......

But not Clarkson. Shooting's too good for him. As die-hard liberals, I think we would need to show some compassion and be satisfied with the kind of punishment meted out to the dissenters of old. How about if he was hanged, drawn and quartered, his innards hung from lampposts and his severed head planted on a spike above Tower Bridge? That'd learn him.

On the other hand, in mitigation, he did once punch Piers Morgan. That alone may be enough to grant him a pardon. But he's had enough pardons hasn't he?