Monday, October 8, 2012

I had a late start ...

... going outside to work today. In fact, it wasn't until 16:00 that I set foot into the drizzle.

What I had been doing was much more exciting than that. I sat down and wrote out the web page for yesterday's match at Cellule. With it being a highly controversial match with two extremely controversial incidents, both of which called for a fair amount of comment from Yours Truly, I needed to be pretty careful about what I wrote, especially as these days you can receive 12 weeks in prison for telling a joke on Facebook (I'm glad I no longer live in the UK) and I sometimles have a tendency to let my flow of enthusiasm overwhelm my discretion.

Back in Ye Olde Days, I always used to let Liz see anything controversial as she had the ability to read things objectively rather than emotionally - something that surprisingly few people have the ability to do these days - but of course that is no longer possible. Luckily, Krys was on line and so after I finished it, she had a read and then we had something of a chat about it - hence the late start outside.

With the rainshowers, I made a decision about the hard-standing. As you know, I was planning to clean up the waste land where I had been working and dump onto there the stuff from the hardstanding, but I can only clean that patch after a couple of days of good weather. It looks like we've had that now - the forecast isn't too good - and so I've made a decision to put a large tarpaulin onto the land where I had my first vegetable garden, just in front of the house, and move the stuff onto that.

This is easier said than done too as I have tons of stuff to move and I forgot just how heavy some of it was. It's going to take a while to sort out all of this.

At the Anglo-French group tonight we were rather thin on the ground and I ended up having a good chat with Cécile - so much so that we stood outside the bar afterwards chatting for a good hour or so. It's been a long time since I've had a decent gossip. I spend far too much time on my own, I reckon.

8 comments:

  1. Both Britain and China are trying to monitor and regulate what is put on the internet. Personally, I think judging from all the court cases ensuing from people's use of Facebook, it would be better for Facebook to be universally blocked.

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    1. I think that it would be better if everyone in the UK went and had a tolerance injection. People are crying out for others to be tolerant towards them, but they seem to forget that it's the kind of thing that cuts both ways and that they need to be tolerant towards others.

      I wrote the Plymouth Polytechnic RagMag in 1973 - what I put in there would have earned me life in prison in today's intolerant environment.

      Whatever happened to Free Speech and "I hate what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it"?

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  2. The trouble with the internet these days is the 1% of the populaion who delight in upsetting people, causing arguments, or insulting people for no reason other than that they get some weird power trip out of it. Trolls in other words. I recently had cause to tell one to "get back under the bridge and wait for the next goat to come along". Strangely enough he left me alone after that

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  3. I'm sure all this intolerance is related to money, income and unemployment. Pretty much along the lines of "I'm miserable so I'm going to make darned sure you're more miserable because that makes me happier in relative terms".

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  4. I think it's bullies, everywhere has them, school, work and so on. Trolls are the internets bullies and they think they are untouchable and unidentifiable. They aren't though.

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  5. If you want my opinion, it's fear.

    The best way to control your population is to frighten them, as any good Fascist will tell you, and once you scare your population half to death you can easily manipulate them.

    And once they are scared to death, they lose the objectivity and the tolerance.

    Telling sick and tasteless jokes has been part of Western humour for centuries. I mean - 'phoning the police because someone said something naughty on the computer - that's really a joke in itself.

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  6. How does that judgement stand up with the judgement that was handed down before and which set a precedent...
    Chambers v Director of Public Prosecutions

    The 2003 Act did not create some newly minted interference with the first of
    President Roosevelt’s essential freedoms – freedom of speech and expression.
    Satirical, or iconoclastic, or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or
    unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humour, even if
    distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it should and no doubt will
    continue at their customary level, quite undiminished by this legislation. Given the
    submissions by Mr Cooper, we should perhaps add that for those who have the
    inclination to use “Twitter” for the purpose, Shakespeare can be quoted
    unbowdlerised, and with Edgar, at the end of King Lear, they are free to speak not
    what they ought to say, but what they feel.

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  7. I think what prompted the prosecution was a public disorder offence rather than the 'joke' per se. If you read the story, he was so offensive that around 50 people went round to 'discuss' matters with him and the police were called. Not a good idea to call them away from their bacon butties.

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