Jereremy Clarkson had no idea as he opens up on | UK News

Jeremy Clarkson has admitted he was blindsided by what he now sees as one of the gravest risks dealing with younger people, confessing “I simply had no idea”. Writing in The Sun, the previous Top Gear presenter said that while he once fretted over more conventional teenage dangers, he failed to recognise that the most corrosive influences had been already in his kids’s fingers.

Reflecting on his expertise as a guardian, Clarkson said: “When my kids were teenagers, I worried about them taking drugs and going on motorbikes, and I simply had no idea that the real danger was lurking in their telephones.” His feedback come as the Government prepares to tighten laws aimed at tackling the unfold of non-consensual intimate pictures online. Earlier this week, Sir Keir Starmer pledged to strengthen the law so that technology corporations must take away such materials within 48 hours of it being reported.

Clarkson, however, argues that the velocity of online circulation makes that deadline unrealistic. “This is laughable because if someone uploads a topless picture of you, all your friends will see it within 48 seconds,” he said. “Forty-eight hours on the internet is about four million years.”

The Prime Minister has framed the proposed adjustments as half of a broader marketing campaign to fight online abuse concentrating on ladies and women. Under an modification to the Crime and Policing Bill, platforms that fail to comply with removing requests within the two-day window might face important financial penalties or even be blocked in the UK.

Starmer, who beforehand served as director of public prosecutions, said his expertise uncovered him to the “unimaginable, often lifelong pain and trauma violence against women and girls causes.” He added: “As Prime Minister, I will leave no stone unturned in the fight to protect women from violence and abuse.”

Describing the digital sphere as a new battleground, Starmer declared: “The online world is the front line of the 21st century battle against violence against women and girls. That’s why my government is taking urgent action: against chatbots and ‘nudification’ tools.

“Today we are going further, putting companies on notice so that any non-consensual image is taken down in under 48 hours.

“Violence against women and girls has no place in our society, and I will not rest until it is rooted out.”

Clarkson, 65, doesn’t dispute the seriousness of the issue. In fact, he suggests it runs even deeper than policymakers admire. He pointed to the HBO sequence Euphoria, starring Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney, as a sobering depiction of the pressures dealing with fashionable adolescents.

“What Starmer needs to do is watch a TV show starring Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney. It’s called Euphoria and God knows what possessed me to tune in – teenage angst and a lot of male nudity is not my thing normally – but Lord, I’m glad I did,” Clarkson said. “I know it’s a drama but if only half of the issues are real, society has a serious problem.”

For Clarkson, the show underlined how digital tradition has intensified teenage life. He listed the darker parts he believes have turn into commonplace: “The bullying. The d*ck pics. The revenge porn threats. And a very real sense that if you say or do something that is considered out of line by an unseen woke police force, that’s you done.”

While he agrees that Starmer is true to focus on the affect social media has on teenage women, he questions whether or not a 48-hour removing rule is adequate in observe. “Starmer is right to be thinking about the effect social media has on teenage girls. But suggesting that a platform must take down revenge nudes and deep fake pictures within two days demonstrates he does not understand the scale of the problem.”