Earlier today I retweeted @caitlinmoran because like a lot of people I follow, I don't always agree with her but I'm getting sick of the hate I see in my TL towards her & many others who're trying to effect change.
I don't quite agree with the Report Abuse button because it itself is open to abuse, but in the same breath I'm sick of the derogatory comments &/or threats of any degree made to all, including (but not exclusive to) women, minorities of any kind, atheists, agnostics, members of all religions, undecideds, transgender, transvestites, or whoever the fuck an individual may be.
I am all for the freedom of speech, even if the ideas etc. are anathema to me. If I wish someone to be silenced because their ideals make me sick to my stomach, then I should be silenced too. I didn't take part in yesterday's #TwitterSilence because despite my supporting its foundation, do not agree with being silenced because of vicious members of society wish people not to be equal.
In Orwell's Animal Farm*, those in power paid lip service to the idea that everyone is equal. That's not true in today's society & until it is, people trying to effect equality should not be silenced because those trying to prevent equality will not be silenced either.
I don't know what the answer is, and I doubt I ever will. A lot of people who are much cleverer than I could ever hope to be have written extensively on this subject. My thoughts are those which are not researched, terribly well thought-out or comprehensive. I don't write much about the important issues any more (not that I ever did with much dedication). But this past few weeks has driven me to it**. I hope I'll never do is lose sight of the problem and hope I never end up on the wrong side of history.
*English Literature GCSE, don't fail me now!
**now look what you made me do!
Showing posts with label I know nothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I know nothing. Show all posts
Monday, 5 August 2013
Monday, 27 February 2012
Eee, tha’s reet classy, like
What’s the best invention in the world?
ALCOHOL!
What’s the best idea in the world?
DRINKING IT!
When’s a good idea to drink the best invention in the world?
ON A SCHOOL NIGHT!
Oh wait...
Disclaimer: Today’s blog is not borne of me classily drinking Bailey’s from a coffee mug yesterday. Oh no. *innocent face*
ALCOHOL!
What’s the best idea in the world?
DRINKING IT!
When’s a good idea to drink the best invention in the world?
ON A SCHOOL NIGHT!
Oh wait...
Ah, Homer Simpson.
The classiest of classy drinkers
The classiest of classy drinkers
Disclaimer: Today’s blog is not borne of me classily drinking Bailey’s from a coffee mug yesterday. Oh no. *innocent face*
Monday, 20 February 2012
The Futility of Politics
A few years ago I couldn't give a toss about politics. Even after I reached voting age and was determined to use my right (people have died to give me the chance to have my say) I still wasn't at all fascinated. To date I have always voted Liberal Democrat and could be heard to say that "they were the best of a bad bunch".
I started to give a miniscule rat's arse about the policies of those whom we elect to be in power roughly five years ago. These people, who were all but faceless to me, are the ones we put in a job with a salary in excess of £50,000 and whom we trust to make the right choices for us as a population.
Then Twitter threw itself into my path. I signed up without really giving it a second thought. It was another way to keep in touch with online friends. Soon I upgraded to a smartphone which really started my tweeting frenzy which hasn't really let up in the two years since.
I've used Twitter has a place to have a ruddy good old rant about myriad subjects. It's a forum away from The Book of Faces where a lot of my relatives can see my status updates, and gives me the chance to spout my liberal tirades away from the more right-wing tendencies of certain members of my family.
As is the nature of time and its passing, the 2010 General Election hove into sight and I leapt into the fray behind Nick Clegg without a backwards glance. I followed his account, my then-MP's account, Chris Huhne's and the Winchester candidate's, these latter two being the next closest constituencies to mine.
I fully believed that the Lib Dems stood a jolly good chance of getting their most decent showing for absolutely ages and that David Cameron was an abhorrent windbag who wouldn’t be able to fight very well against the living memory of 18 years of his bloody party before Tony Blair.
Okay, so Cameron didn’t win an outright majority, though to listen to him prattle on you’d think so – uh, Mr Cameron, if you did, why the hell did you have to form a coalition government? Oh yeah. BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T GET A MAJORITY OF SEATS.
For the week following the election, I had great hope that a coalition would be formed between Labour, the Lib Dems and the few others here and there that would’ve created a majority of seats. After all, wasn’t everything Mr Clegg pointing towards his party’s policies being of a similar lefty bent as Labour’s? Gordon Brown remaining as Prime Minister was a much more palatable prospect than a bloody right-wing, privileged toff in No. 10.
I’m a damned fool. Of course Clegg got in bed with Cameron. After all, the Lib Dems are SUCH a match with the Tories. Aren’t they? Yes. I was shocked, I was absolutely dismayed when the news of a deal broke, and hated the sight of that press conference in the garden. I remained somewhat hopeful though. We were all told in the news that there were deal breakers in the formation of the coalition government; that the Lib Dems would temper the heavy-handedness of the Tory policies.
Bollocks.
We’re coming up on two years down the line and not a week has passed without some new Cameron-backed policy being trumpeted in the right wing press, derided in the lefty papers or sneaked out as quietly as possible because it’s total lunacy.
And what do we see of the Lib Dems? In recent weeks, not much at all of Mr Clegg (or the spineless wonder I now believe is a more fitting, if not to say polite, name for him). And of the others in the cabinet? Seemingly wheeled out when a boorish Tory needs someone to take the flack for some rotten pile of codswallop.
We’ve had, among others:
Two sets of riots
Strike action
Job cuts
Rising unemployment
The economic recovery seems to be resident in the same realm as the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny
Local budget cuts leading to the closure of libraries and the withdrawal of services
Cuts to benefits for the most vulnerable members of society
Effective cuts to the budget of the BBC
Reams of rhetoric telling us there is no money for any of this
An Olympics which is costing billions yet which we are told ad nauseam will plough even more back into the economy
A royal wedding which was also a drain on the public coffers and which we were also told would generate a lot of revenue (but the extra bank holiday we were given has since been blamed by Gideon as the reason for another quarter of poor growth)
The potential sale of forests
A bible being given to every school pupil (even though ‘there’s no money’)
And the effective privatisation of the NHS, an institution which has seen the improvement in the health of the less well off in this country, of which there must be hundreds of thousands.
How are the Lib Dems tempering the Tory’s running roughshod over those of us (and there are a LOT of us) who were not born with silver spoons jammed up our arses? And with Mr Cameron giving Alex Salmond even more firepower to progress the split of Scotland from the UK, I just can’t see how the rest of us can fight off further Tory governments without the aid of Labour constituencies in that fine country. In my constituency, Labour really don’t stand a chance, it’s either LD or Tory.
So right now, I can’t help but think, what's the bloody point? Why should I care anymore? I’ve always used my vote but look where that’s got us. I’m thoroughly ashamed I appear to have wasted it on the Liberal Democrats because of the government we’ve been landed with thanks to Mr Spineless-Wonder, yet had I voted Labour that would’ve been wasted too. Plus, on the day of the election, how was I to know that Spineless was even more of a lying shit that I assumed many politicians to be already?
So tell me. What is the bloody point in caring anymore? Because I don’t fucking well know.
I started to give a miniscule rat's arse about the policies of those whom we elect to be in power roughly five years ago. These people, who were all but faceless to me, are the ones we put in a job with a salary in excess of £50,000 and whom we trust to make the right choices for us as a population.
Then Twitter threw itself into my path. I signed up without really giving it a second thought. It was another way to keep in touch with online friends. Soon I upgraded to a smartphone which really started my tweeting frenzy which hasn't really let up in the two years since.
I've used Twitter has a place to have a ruddy good old rant about myriad subjects. It's a forum away from The Book of Faces where a lot of my relatives can see my status updates, and gives me the chance to spout my liberal tirades away from the more right-wing tendencies of certain members of my family.
As is the nature of time and its passing, the 2010 General Election hove into sight and I leapt into the fray behind Nick Clegg without a backwards glance. I followed his account, my then-MP's account, Chris Huhne's and the Winchester candidate's, these latter two being the next closest constituencies to mine.
I fully believed that the Lib Dems stood a jolly good chance of getting their most decent showing for absolutely ages and that David Cameron was an abhorrent windbag who wouldn’t be able to fight very well against the living memory of 18 years of his bloody party before Tony Blair.
Okay, so Cameron didn’t win an outright majority, though to listen to him prattle on you’d think so – uh, Mr Cameron, if you did, why the hell did you have to form a coalition government? Oh yeah. BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T GET A MAJORITY OF SEATS.
For the week following the election, I had great hope that a coalition would be formed between Labour, the Lib Dems and the few others here and there that would’ve created a majority of seats. After all, wasn’t everything Mr Clegg pointing towards his party’s policies being of a similar lefty bent as Labour’s? Gordon Brown remaining as Prime Minister was a much more palatable prospect than a bloody right-wing, privileged toff in No. 10.
I’m a damned fool. Of course Clegg got in bed with Cameron. After all, the Lib Dems are SUCH a match with the Tories. Aren’t they? Yes. I was shocked, I was absolutely dismayed when the news of a deal broke, and hated the sight of that press conference in the garden. I remained somewhat hopeful though. We were all told in the news that there were deal breakers in the formation of the coalition government; that the Lib Dems would temper the heavy-handedness of the Tory policies.
Bollocks.
We’re coming up on two years down the line and not a week has passed without some new Cameron-backed policy being trumpeted in the right wing press, derided in the lefty papers or sneaked out as quietly as possible because it’s total lunacy.
And what do we see of the Lib Dems? In recent weeks, not much at all of Mr Clegg (or the spineless wonder I now believe is a more fitting, if not to say polite, name for him). And of the others in the cabinet? Seemingly wheeled out when a boorish Tory needs someone to take the flack for some rotten pile of codswallop.
We’ve had, among others:
Two sets of riots
Strike action
Job cuts
Rising unemployment
The economic recovery seems to be resident in the same realm as the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny
Local budget cuts leading to the closure of libraries and the withdrawal of services
Cuts to benefits for the most vulnerable members of society
Effective cuts to the budget of the BBC
Reams of rhetoric telling us there is no money for any of this
An Olympics which is costing billions yet which we are told ad nauseam will plough even more back into the economy
A royal wedding which was also a drain on the public coffers and which we were also told would generate a lot of revenue (but the extra bank holiday we were given has since been blamed by Gideon as the reason for another quarter of poor growth)
The potential sale of forests
A bible being given to every school pupil (even though ‘there’s no money’)
And the effective privatisation of the NHS, an institution which has seen the improvement in the health of the less well off in this country, of which there must be hundreds of thousands.
How are the Lib Dems tempering the Tory’s running roughshod over those of us (and there are a LOT of us) who were not born with silver spoons jammed up our arses? And with Mr Cameron giving Alex Salmond even more firepower to progress the split of Scotland from the UK, I just can’t see how the rest of us can fight off further Tory governments without the aid of Labour constituencies in that fine country. In my constituency, Labour really don’t stand a chance, it’s either LD or Tory.
So right now, I can’t help but think, what's the bloody point? Why should I care anymore? I’ve always used my vote but look where that’s got us. I’m thoroughly ashamed I appear to have wasted it on the Liberal Democrats because of the government we’ve been landed with thanks to Mr Spineless-Wonder, yet had I voted Labour that would’ve been wasted too. Plus, on the day of the election, how was I to know that Spineless was even more of a lying shit that I assumed many politicians to be already?
So tell me. What is the bloody point in caring anymore? Because I don’t fucking well know.
You will never find a more wretched
hive of scum and villany.
hive of scum and villany.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
What you thought you knew
I was treated to the near breakdown of my very soul today when two different people told me that what I thought I knew about letter writing I did not at all.
How did this happen to me?
For the majority of my life I've been under the impression that letters to people whom you are acquainted with are signed off 'yours sincerely', if not then use 'yours faithfully'. This has been a staple of my letter writing ever since I can remember.
When I was writing a draft template today for my charidee work, two friends (who do not know each other) kindly offered to give me their much-needed comments and feedback. Which of course, included both of them telling me I was signing off my letters completely incorrectly.
I'm in a total quandary! Do I seek therapy through my GP? Do I track down the teacher/s who imparted this clearly-false information to me, torture them before beheading them in a fit of knowledge-system failure to sate my extreme* bewilderment? Do I stop whining about it? (No chance – this is prime blog material!)
What hasn't helped is, as a regular user of Snopes, (I am SICK of those emails sent to me by well-meaning people telling me I just had my PIN stolen by the unsuspecting looking stranger who's now wafting a business card under my nose with plans to rape, stab and kill me to death on a petrol forecourt), I would normally treat being told that something I take to be the correct form is not so with a hefty pinch of salt (watch that blood pressure!).
How did this happen to me?
For the majority of my life I've been under the impression that letters to people whom you are acquainted with are signed off 'yours sincerely', if not then use 'yours faithfully'. This has been a staple of my letter writing ever since I can remember.
When I was writing a draft template today for my charidee work, two friends (who do not know each other) kindly offered to give me their much-needed comments and feedback. Which of course, included both of them telling me I was signing off my letters completely incorrectly.
I'm in a total quandary! Do I seek therapy through my GP? Do I track down the teacher/s who imparted this clearly-false information to me, torture them before beheading them in a fit of knowledge-system failure to sate my extreme* bewilderment? Do I stop whining about it? (No chance – this is prime blog material!)
What hasn't helped is, as a regular user of Snopes, (I am SICK of those emails sent to me by well-meaning people telling me I just had my PIN stolen by the unsuspecting looking stranger who's now wafting a business card under my nose with plans to rape, stab and kill me to death on a petrol forecourt), I would normally treat being told that something I take to be the correct form is not so with a hefty pinch of salt (watch that blood pressure!).
Wanted: Salt. Last seen smothering chips to death.
But I was soon the recipient of an email from a third friend cheerily offering me a link to the Basildon Bond website confirming what the first two friends were telling me.
I've lost all faith in my skills as a letter-writer (which I do for my parents) and feel ashamed. I'm sure I'll be looking in the local estate agents' window soon for a comfortable, well-appointed rock beneath which to live for the rest of my days.
*Well I feel shaken slightly, to say the least. Like I need a sit-down while hugging a soft toy.
I've lost all faith in my skills as a letter-writer (which I do for my parents) and feel ashamed. I'm sure I'll be looking in the local estate agents' window soon for a comfortable, well-appointed rock beneath which to live for the rest of my days.
*Well I feel shaken slightly, to say the least. Like I need a sit-down while hugging a soft toy.
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