Signal Virtue.

I was in a bad mood yesterday, but British Telecom really helped cheer me up.

I’ve been in a bad mood for a while now (don’t know if you’ve noticed) and it hasn’t been made better by my worst enemy: ordinary members of the public. As you know, everyone in the UK voted for Brexit. They may not have physically ticked the Brexit box on National Cunt Confirmation Day, but they still fill the grey between eternal nothingness by playing music loudly out of shit speakers in public, attack everyone they agree with on social media and clip their fingernails while sitting next to you in Costa’s. If that isn’t separating yourself so that you can live by your own backward laws, then I’m a Dutchman (this is my pathetic attempt to get a non-UK passport).

My bad mood was brought on by a man playing noise out of his phone while he sat near me in a local café. I said nothing. I don’t say anything at all these days to people who do this because, sadly, making noise come out of your phone is now how we all live. It’s been normalised. People get their phone out in a café, bus or funeral parlour and don’t give the slightest shit that we can all hear their tinny screeches of football, Ed Sheeran or hilarious YouTube racists piercing our eardrums while we pretend that we’re cool with it and control the High Street shooting spree within. And then, in the café, bus, funeral parlour or cinema, someone sitting near you WHO HAS SAID NOTHING to the person making the noise, has the fucking brass balls to turn to you, A COMPLETE STRANGER WHO IS NOT MAKING ANY NOISE, and sort of tut a bit. Why the fuck are you tutting at me? You’re not trying to bond with me, are you? You’re not actually turning to me and saying, “Isn’t it terrible that that person is making unnecessary noise?” when that person who is making unnecessary noise is just a few feet away? They’re RIGHT FUCKING THERE. Not that telling them will do any good. You should have told them years ago. But you didn’t. You sat there in the café, bus, funeral parlour, cinema or children’s hospital ward and did nothing, just occasionally rolling your eyes at a fellow passenger to let them know that you didn’t vote Brexit like that other cunt playing Foo Fighters out of his fucking iPhone. That was your chance to stand up and be heard but you did nothing so now you’ll just have to live with it. Like Noel Gallagher.

Voting or non-voting on the Making Noise In Public debate is meaningless anyway now that British Telecom has pushed for a hard Brexit for everyone by actually having noise pollution as a happy, loving family moment in their recent television advert. A bastard gets on a bus and gets her phone out to see a Facetime call from another bastard. Even though she is on a crowded bus full of people that don’t want to hear about her bastard life, the bastard answers the call and we hear the bastard on the other end of the phone say “Hello. Here’s something exciting” THROUGH THE SPEAKER OF THE PHONE SO THE WHOLE BUS CAN HEAR. The “exciting” thing is that the bastard’s cunt child is making her first white supremacist’s march around their living room. British Telecom have cleverly made sure we have no hatred towards the bastard making all the shitty noise in public by making her a member of medical staff. Like Harold Shipman.

So, it’s normalised now. I’m angry that the man near me in the cafe is making all the noise through his phone even though he must know it’s annoying for anyone else. But then, since when has a Brexit voter ever cared? And the silent majority in the café say nothing too.

The only bit of joy I get in the café is hearing the man sigh when the video he is watching starts buffering. This happens a lot. He sighs. He watches 10 seconds of Hitler pouring baby oil on his own bum, the video buffers and he sighs again. It goes on like that for ages. Sigh, Hitler, sigh. Sigh, Hitler, sigh. Then his sighs get angrier. He can’t watch his beautiful führer oil up for Britain for more than 10 seconds without it stopping. I look at my phone. I can’t even get a signal. Turns out that the only way you can get a signal to watch any Nazi propaganda is to connect to the café’s wifi. The man complains to the café staff that the wifi isn’t working. They apologise and switch the wifi off and on again in the hope that will help the man get his white noise/white supremacy fix. It still doesn’t work for him and he sighs heavier than ever. He sits back down and sadly puts his phone away. So, I try to get on the café’s wifi too, but it doesn’t work for me either.

Of course, it doesn’t work. The café’s wifi is BT.

They can try to separate us, get us to hate one another with social ignorance and lying propaganda but thanks to good old British incompetence, they will never win. The fight continues.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge