On the false media outrage on Jeremy Clarkson's views in suicide.

Jeremy Clarkson is very good at what he does. You simply don't create the biggest tv programme in the world or win writing awards and international prizes if you're not good at what you do. 

For this he is very well paid. They say he is being paid around £1 million a year from the BBC. This is a lot of money. However when even BBC radio presenters with dozens of listens are paid the same it isn't. Clarkson is one of the few who could actually make more money in the independent sector but chooses to remain in public broadcasting. He's turned down vats of cash to move to the US to work but wants to remain in the UK. 

So he worth it as he brings the BBC vastly more money than he or his programmes cost. 

He is not popular with some because he's blunt, and because he dares present a programme about cars which they think is evil personified. 

There has been a lot a false outrage about his remarks that those who commit suicide by throwing themselves under trains are being selfish as it is traumatic for the driver, unpleasant for those who have to clean up the aftermath, and causes incredible delays for the passengers. 

Cue outrage from journalists and the left jealous of his talent, wealth, and popularity. Page after page is filled with personal attacks on Clarkson and how he insults suicide victims. 

It all fills pages on slow days, may allow them to bring down the object of their jealousy and allows the worst type of tabloid mentality to emerge with demands that we cannot say, think, or do what these tabloids hacks, currently having their crimes studied, disagree with. 

Two this need to be understood. 

The first is that Clarkson, like all of us, has the right to say anything we want. Once we go down the route of censorship, prosecution, or people losing their jobs because of their views we are in dangerous territory. For a discredited press fighting government control of their views this is nonsensical. It's the type of reasoning which will be used to censor and control the press. 

The second is that Clarkson in right. 

This isn't an attack on suicide victims, or those who battle depression. Their hell isn't something anyone can doubt, or be anything but sympathetic to. As I've written before people need to seek help and support without embarrassment or stigma to help them cope and hopefully overcome the black dogs who hound them. 

In the end people are free to do what they will with their own bodies, regardless of if anyone else thinks its good or bad. Control of our destinies is the most fundamental part of our uniqueness. Choosing to live of die is the most fundemtnal part of our being. 

However suicide is a selfish thing. 

Therapists and suicide prevention organisations make great play on this fact. It goes along the lines of "if you kill yourself what will your kids, partner, family, friends do? How will they cope? How will they feel? What will they do? Don't you owe it to them to get help and stick around?"

Such a reality check helps some people decide to seek help and support rather than ending it. It reminds people that people love and need them, that they are not alone. That there remains hope. 

Clarkson is also right about the sheer selfishness of doing so much damage to the poor innocent train driver. For a driver to see a person standing on the line when you're doing a hundred plus and knowing that you cannot stop and having to decide if you should try to slow down or speed up to ensure that their death is as quick as possible is devastating. To kill someone and having your widescreen splattered in blood and gore is the stuff of nightmares. 

We are not talking about someone taking an overdose and the trauma of the person who finds the body. Though this is bad enough. We are talking about making someone kill you. 

To do that to a innocent person is horrible. I do appreciate that the suicide victim is mentally ill and not in their right mind but it is a horrible thing to do to anyone. 

The trauma of such events can destroy the lives of drivers. 

The horror of those who have to clean up the carnage is intense. It isn't a nice thing to do to clean still warm bits of human off a track. 

A friend of mine lives in a isolated university facility below a tree covered hill topped with a hidden roman fort. Early one morning several years ago a young eighteen year old student came banging on his door hysterical babbling about finding a body on the top of the hill hanging from a tree whilst jogging. 

Entrusting the devastated girl to his wife he grabbed his phone and climbed the mist shrouded hill alone. On the top by the hidden fort he found the man strung up from an ancient tree. He phoned the police, then his wife, and waited on his own by the body. He was there what seemed hours, he and the hung man. 

This was a suicide but even now the image of the body effects my friend. How it effects the poor student who found him all alone in the semidarkness I don't know. It would scar me for life. 

The suicide victim was in unbearable pain and needed help and support. One's sympathies remain with him and those he left behind. However the selfishness of his action by killing himself in the manner they did has hurt and devastated people who did him no harm. 

That's selfish. 

Returning to the train drivers. They don't deserve to be the weapon of death for a suicide driven person. Clarkson is totally right about that. Don't let the vacuous muckraking of the tabloids and the left blind us to the fact. 

We need to provide help for those in need and encourage people to seek it without shame. Our natural sympathies for those in pain shouldn't blind us to how their actions hurt others.