hoaxers of humanity

The hoax by the Australian 2day radio programme illustrates a number of fashionable idiocies.

The company has been reported to have said repeatedly that no laws were broken. Apart from the possibility that is not true, it is only a part of the main point which is to do with honesty.

It has been said no one could have foreseen the outcome... I suppose they thought it would be ok if they just humiliated someone.

The claim that the company tried to contact the people they had tricked, suggests such a shallow view of correct behaviour that I imagine them responding to anger with “lighten up” or some such nonsense.

What kind of defence is it to say that you tried to contact someone if you then fail and go ahead anyway? Even if I believe them, and I am inclined not to, they seem to regard ethics as optional.

What kind of shallow nonsense is their programme that they think it worthwhile making such a foolish and intrusive call?

Is this what we do with international telecommunications? We have enabled worse than senseless things to take the piss out of the world when they probably hardly understand it. The points of view of cancer cells.

And then one of them says he is gutted.

He can't even express sorrow without using a poor cliché.Nor has he attempted to gut himself; so he is not feeling the consequences of his action as strongly as his victim. Hyperbole and lies.

No wonder they did not foresee that someone would take their responsibilities so seriously as the dead nurse appears to have done. They are without any substance, just morning trumpets in front of microphones.

Not that British commercial radio is better. It may or may not be different but I can never stand to listen to it for very long because of its inanity.

I turned my radio away from Radios 3 and 4 at one point over the weekend, a rare occasion when one or the other did not please me, and got some fool on LBC who repeatedly corrected himself as he tried to multiply 50 by 10, couldn't believe the answer he imagined but finally settled for it because he couldn't see what else it could be. He thought the answer is 5000.

I turned the radio off before I heard what it was he was trying to conclude. I suspect that any inquiry about anything would be beyond his capacity to complete.

The private sector, eh?