Plenty of outrage about clips of dangerous driving being spread on social media in the last few days, nothing about this. These platforms need reining in on many fronts.
It’s not just the dangerous driving clips that have been of concern in recent weeks. Apologies if it’s already been covered on here, but was anyone else aware of the competitions being run on the likes of TikTok to see who could start the best fire during the drought?
This one feels literally close to home for us, as a week last Saturday a couple of kids, possibly not yet even teens, decided to get in on the act by taking a ciggie lighter to some tinder dry tall grass just the other side of a path behind our house.
We hit lucky on three counts. First, the wind that day was gentle and blowing away from our property. Second, some families on the nearby estate saw the flames early on and called 999. Third, the fire brigade got to the scene inside seven minutes.
But for all of which, who knows. There is certainly at least as much flammable material near to hand around here as, say, in those examples in south Wales and the Midlands of multiple residential properties being lost to fire.
The kids didn’t sleep easily until the first subsequent substantive rain half a week later. I’m not sure I did, either.
And all of this for what, the most fleeting and hollow of bragging rights on an online platform?
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.