Mobile Telephones – A Modern Menace

These days, they just assume you have a mobile phone. All the corporations and authorities want your mobile number and there are many forms they want you to fill in where it’s a compulsory field. The gas board, your boss, the council, everyone – they all want your mobile phone number so they can call or txt you 24/7.

It is not (yet) compulsory to own one however. Having one or not, is a personal choice. You shouldn’t have one just because ‘everyone else has one’ – rather you should look at the positives and negatives of ownership and then decide whether you’d like one or not.

In this thread, I hope to present some of the many reasons I feel they’re an undesirable nuisance. Some of the reasons why I have never owned one and don’t intend to until they make me.

 

1. Getting blasted to smithereens by a drone

When the US military are looking for ‘bad folks’ and their families to obliterate without warning from the air, they use people’s mobile phones for their targeting. Get the GPS off the phone and then drop 500kg of napalm on the unfortunate owner.

An NSA whistle blower reports: “People get hung up that there’s a targeted list of people. It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people – we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”

 

I think you are exaggerating (or will be shortly). I rarely get an unwanted call outside business hours.

If I don't want to be bothered, I just turn my phone off. This sort of technology is great, until you let it run our lives. If that happens, it is our fault, not the technology.

 

If it's good enough for him.......

Besides what century do you live in? "The Gas Board"? I suppose you think land lines are run by the GPO.

 

On the upside I've been writing internet messages on mine which are a threat to US national security for hours, and left it outside Kenilworth Road.

 

It means I can talk to my loved ones.

 

2. Getting mangled in a horrific car smash

More than 500 people are estimated to be killed or seriously injured every year because car and lorry drivers were talking, texting or surfing the internet on their phones. They reckon it’s more dangerous than drink driving and you see people driving with their phone pressed to their ear all the time. Deadly dangerous.

In my town a 14 year old girl got killed a few weeks ago whilst walking to school with her friends. Lad on his mobile phone lost control of his car, mounted the pavement and smashed in to them.

Admittedly you not having one won’t protect you from the mobile motoring menaces, but at least by not having one you’re part of the solution, not part of the problem.

 

Mobile phones are nowhere near the main cause.

 

Utter *******s. On that logic you can argue that you shouldn't own a car because by not having one you're part of the solution.

Surprisingly enough, you can own a mobile phone and NOT USE IT while driving, just like you can drive a car and not drink alcohol.

 

It is more than drunk drivers though ... think about it

 

3. Having Phone Confiscated by the Authorities

Police have announced that they’ll now be seizing all mobile phones from all of those involved in road crashes. Phone use is such a common killer that they need to take them away for a few months to check whether their users were talking or texting whilst smashing in to innocents.

They will not be able to seize mine.

UK airport officials will confiscate all mobile phones that don’t have enough charge in them to switch on in the latest anti-terrorism moves the government has announced.

Not mine they won’t.

 

The best part of this is that at some point Clive will be arrested for claiming he doesn't own one by a police officer saying "I don't have time for jokes, sonny, now hand it over".

 

Well yes of course, you could not use your mobile phone whilst driving in theory. But they all do. I see them all the time doing it.

Presumably Arakel, you own a mobile telephone. Would you mind sharing with us **honestly** whether you've ever spoken on it or texted etc. whilst driving?

 

I'll admit I have but only to catch up on Corrie


(that's a total lie of course but I have answered with 'I'll call you back')

 

I have all my calls sent straight to voicemail when I'm driving, so that I can skype the caller back from my tablet.

 

No, I have not. Ever.

When I step into my car the phone sits in my pocket until I get home/to my destination. It's not particularly difficult, and I'm not the only person who feels that way.

I don't drink a drop of alcohol when I drive either, even if it's 3-4 hours before I will be driving.

 

Keep up Clive, I drive whilst wearing google glasses.

 

Clive, are you American?

 

4. The Ruination of Every Public Event by Mobile Telephone Filming

It’s not cheap to go and see a band or some other event these days, but after you’ve got in, you don’t even get to see them. All you get is dazzled by a thousand tiny screens held high up in the air for the whole flipping duration.

And for what?

I’ve often wondered what these films are used for. Surely the users don’t go home and watch them on their little 2 x 2 inch screens rather than watch the thing live and in person when they could have?

In fact, they’re used for boasting and braggadocio. “I went to see <insert cultural event> at the weekend y’know. Look!” and they thrust the little screen under your nose. There’s a picture half filled with rows and rows of the backs of people’s heads, one quarter filled with other screens held aloft and there, way off in the distance, a couple of little dots who could possibly be the group or artists.

And the sound. Bloody hell. Tiny, tinny little horrible squeal that makes the cheapest 1970s Woolworth’s hi-fi sound like the ultimate in audio reproduction.
Why do you do it?

Put your bloody phone away and enjoy the performance.

 

Here come the knives!

 

No. No I'm not as it happens.

Why would you think that?

 

I think the clear solution here is to send Clive to a remote island in the middle of nowhere.

He could even implement his political plan to deliver utopia to the remote island masses.

 

I use my phone whilst driving. I have a hands free system. connected to the stereo.

 

You can't track a mobile phone directly through its GPS receiver. The hint is in the word receiver. And the story about the police seizing mobile phones at every vehicle accident was what is otherwise known as a tabloid fairy tale.

 

phew

 

The rest of your argument is ridiculous, but I actually agree with this part.

 

Clives on a wind up and its been funny..........right?

 

You seem to be paranoid that big brother is watching you.

 

No wind up. I don't have a mobile phone and don't want to have one.

I believe there are too many downsides to them.

All the time there are new negatives coming to light.

I despise "phubbing" where they sit there tapping in their phones when you're talking to them.

I despise people who go into shops and carry on talking on their mobile phones while the assistant serves them.

I despise the stupid, stupid, stupid "wacky" ringtones.

That girl I mentioned earlier who got squashed by a telephone enthusiast was in my daughter's class at school and had been round here a few times. It could just have easily been my kid killed by your poxy telephone obsession.

I really hope there's a massive sunspot that blasts the earth with magnetic rays that fry the circuits of every single one of those satanic little devices.

 

No, not in the least.

It's a fact proven way beyond my satisfaction that everything you do on the internet, every call you make, most movements you make in your car, most things that you purchase and most especially every text and email you send are intercepted and recorded.

No point in being paranoid about it. For better or worse it's going on and there's not a great deal you can do about it.

Only a fool would believe otherwise.

 

I don't agree with a word Clive normally says - but on this point I tend to agree.

I hate how kids can't talk to their friends or parents as their head is glued to the phone
I hate how dads/moms can't talk to their kids as their heads are glued to their screens
I hate how companies don't recognise holidays anymore as you're still contactable and are surprised if you turn the damn thing off

 

What I really, really hate most is young kids walking, nay toddling, around with real mobiles. Personally I don't like talking on them because I still see health risks further down the line and these children's brains could be getting damaged for all we know? They certainly have not been around long enough to refute this.

 

Mobile phone radiation is non-ionising and therefore cannot alter your DNA.

 

You forgot ... 'Courtesy of Nokia research'

 

No I'm a physicist; for radiation to be mildly ionising it needs to be 3000 THz. Your phone is 900MHz which is over 3 billion times less energy.