First Impressions? Untrustworthy.

I was sitting on the train last night, waiting to start rolling out of Plymouth station on the way home after seven(ish) long hard hours of toil in the airless little box that is laughingly called my office. Pause for dramatic effect in the hope that readers are now feeling suitably sorry for me.

Whiling away the minutes, I played with my un-top-of-the-range, steam-driven, Android phone and took a peek or two at Facebook.

One of my pet hates on FB is when someone that I otherwise quite like posts a link to some semi-racist crap they've seen in the Daily Mail, the Express (sorry, John) or The Sun or some similar organ for the irredeemably stupid.

I saw last night that one of my FB friends whom I always thought to be a thinking man, had his name on a link to the above logo'd rag. "Oh dear," thinks me - "not another one..."

Because of who it was - I clicked on the link and read the piece, which was indeed semi-racist bullshit of the lowest order; praising to the skies some white middle-classed woman who described her local high street as being like a "foreign country" because this country allows in "all those bloody darkies" (I paraphrase, but that was the message).

I was about to key in a comment of acerbic abrasiveness, not being in the best of moods after my evening's wage slavery, but Facebook wouldn't allow it.

It was then that I noticed my friend had only commented on the link which had been posted by someone else (not a mutual friend, hence I couldn't comment - probably for the best).

The comment was (and I love the punctuation)  "Duncan. Please. Leave the Daily Mail alone. It'll slowly make a racist out of you."

And lo! my faith was restored that there is some decency left in this world.

I might need to steal that phrase, adjust it for whichever source is being used, and steel myself to respond in a similar manner to some of the shite that I see on an almost daily basis.