5 Feet of Fury

Wish I’d written this piece on Cameron’s ‘cans’ and ‘cool’

Victorian Coren Mitchell writes (read the whole thing):

Under “careers” on the website, the company smirks: “We’re building an incredible organisation and need driven, innovative, and fearless individuals to help us bring better sound to the world. Where will you fit in?”

I think I can imagine the person who’s getting that job. A wanker. Come on: would you advise a bright, hardworking, smartly-dressed friend of 58 to apply?

Quite why you have to be “fearless” to sell headphones, I don’t know (do 43% of them explode?), but why celebrate that particular quality anyway, while simultaneously trying to spread fear in the world? Fear of being uncool. Fear of looking stupid. Fear of not being good enough, fashionable enough, young enough, thin enough, to use their product. This is everything I despise in the world.

When David Cameron is being prime minister, I don’t generally see eye to eye with him. When he’s just a man trying to fly quietly home from holiday on EasyJet, I would rather be him – innocently putting on a pair of headphones that I was probably given as a Christmas present – than standing sneering on the side, slyly taking his photo and pasting it up online so he can be shamed and ridiculed for all the wrong reasons.