While rushing around the shop today, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the newspaper stand by the till. There on the front page of The Sun was a big picture of Jeremy Clarkson, the outspoken English broadcaster and motor journalist, with a short sentence next to it stating that he has poked fun about 'dead Chinese'. The dead Chinese in question are the 23 Chinese workers who drowned while collecting cockles on Morecambe bay in 2004. Giving his opinion about synchronised swimming Clarkson stated that is this nothing more than "Chinese women in hats, upside down, in a bit of water". He added: "You can see that sort of thing on Morecambe beach. For free".
Talk about hitting a nerve! Those people came to the UK in the belief that they were going to get a better life for themselves and their families. But this was not to be: having been tricked out their money and passports they were forced by gangs into slave labour. With very little pay they were being bungled around the country in vans to do back-breaking work. Their presence in the UK only became known on that terrible night in Morecambe. What is so funny about a vulnerable person's terrible suffering for some broken dream at the hands of their captors? What is so funny about drowning to death?
The backlash against Clarkson's comments has already begun: A representative of Morecambe's town council has described it as "beneath contempt". A spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in the UK has slammed it as being " insulting and show a woeful disrespect of decency and moral standards".
As usual in the aftermath of all his gaffes, Clarkson will be made to apologise, but what is the point? He has made so many crude and incredibly objectionable statements at people's expense, one wonders if the man has any empathy for anyone apart from himself, or feels any real remorse.
1 comment:
... he's unwell =.=
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