We have NEVER had freedom of speech

Posted on by inkbiotic

There has been a lot of shouting about freedom of speech recently. ‘They’re taking away our freedom of speech!’ they yell. ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it!’

To address the second point, no you won’t, you’ll rant on Twitter, that is nothing like defending to the death. And for the first, we have never, ever in the UK had freedom of speech like we have now. Not even close. And we aren’t dealing with these new levels of freedom too well. That is the problem.

Before the Internet, that time everyone seems to have forgotten, there was almost no freedom of speech for 99.9% of us. I mean I could be free when I spoke to my friends, so long as I wasn’t saying something that made them avoid me. I could also go to a busy street and shout my opinions at passers by, but if people listened enough to draw a crowd, then I’d probably get moved on or arrested for disturbing the peace. I, and everyone I knew, weren’t able to release our thoughts to the world at large, we weren’t heard.

For those that were heard, the 0.01% of journalists and famous people, there were still restrictions. Television, film, the media, it was all pretty staid and restrained – nothing incendiary, no sex or swearing. Largely because the people running these institutions were from a tiny sector of society – public school, Oxbridge, rich white men – and in general they wanted to keep society running just as it was. There were a few ‘rebels’ who criticised the establishment, but I think these people were more about giving the impression of change and problems being sorted. They reassured us that someone was asking the right questions and fighting back on our behalf, while not actually saying anything too disruptive.

Then the Internet came along and pretty soon anybody who had access could potentially be heard. Most of us aren’t listened to, of course, but if your opinions are entertaining enough and extreme enough you might just get a following and soon millions of people all round the world can hear what you say.

THIS HAS BECOME THE NEW FREEDOM OF SPEECH

and it has never happened before. Where as previously, someone with extremist or conspiratorial thinking would be a loner, with the Internet they can find thousands across the world who agree with them. And then those who would never have had paranoid or raging thoughts before, get caught up in the excitement too. Troublemakers, fascists and bigots (as well as revolutionaries, heroes and make up experts) can speak to the world and be heard in a way that has never been possible in all of history. That is why freedom of speech is being argued with, because a lot of people are becoming radicalised into various types of hate, and it has led to trouble.

Now I have no sodding clue what the solution to this is. I don’t like censorship, I’d much rather opinions were out in the open and dissected. I’m also not a big fan of the establishment controlling what words we see, I don’t like that system. However, I’m also quite alarmed at how vitriolic and divided populations have become – I think most of the trouble is online, but spills out every now and then, and the reaction to coronavirus and the US election has shown how dangerous that can be.

This is as far as I’ve got thinking about it, so I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. Is there a way that freedom of speech can lead to healthy discussion? Or are we heading for a war? Or will all the drama peter out as everyone gets bored of shouting?

Wishing you all happy joy

Posted on by inkbiotic
A friend of mine cycled to central London on Christmas day. This is one of his photos.

This has probably been an odd Christmas for lots of you, so I just wanted to send you all some good feelings of peace and warmth, like a hot toddy in front of a well contained fire. xx (for anyone not from UK, these are kisses, not just random ‘xx’s. It’s actually perfectly normal to put ‘xx’s at the bottom of a message, and I think you should all start doing it 🙂 )

Personal responsibility, Covid and Bojo. MY rant.

Posted on by inkbiotic

People have got understandably upset over the thousands of Londoners* crowded into St Pancras last night trying to escape London. Yesterday, travel was banned for Christmas in the south of England with 8 hours notice. Previously, there were repeated promises that that definitely wouldn’t happen, so everyone made plans and promises and then had eight hours to fulfil those plans and promises, leading to scenes like the above picture.

https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/london-tier-4-packed-st-19491286

With our new mutated virus, this could be catastrophic, and I’m seeing a lot of anger towards the people who travelled, but not enough with the people who caused all this. And since the virus started so much blame has been turned on individuals making stupid decisions, which hasn’t helped at all. The argument I keep seeing from anti-maskers is ‘It’s all about personal responsibility.’ ‘Stop telling me what to do, leave it up to personal responsibility.’ And then from the government ‘These people aren’t using personal responsibility, what’s wrong with them?’ For example:

‘The Government should allow us to take personal responsibility in the ongoing battle against Covid, not put us on the naughty step’

Julia Hartley Brewer from a Telegraph headline.

‘Health secretary Matt Hancock has warned that ministers will fail to get the new strain of coronavirus under control unless the public take personal responsibility for preventing its spread.’

From the Independent

And it’s bollocks. Utter utter bollocks.

Because these people in St Pancras ARE using personal responsibility, that is exactly the problem. Their personal responsibility is to their families, their mental health, their happiness. They’re trying to get home to fulfill their personal responsibilities, but in such a panic that it doesn’t occur to them that lots of other people would do the same or how disastrous that might be.

What these people need is group responsibility, social responsibility, and that isn’t (in our individualistic society) so easy to come by, especially in a crisis.

That’s why we need a government, to control society in times of trouble so that our individual needs don’t take over. We need them to make calm, logical, consistent decisions so we know what to do. Instead we’ve had vague, rambling, ever changing decisions that are so ludicrous it’s led to constant doubt that the virus even exists despite 1.6m deaths worldwide.

From the people I know who are trying to do the right thing, I keep hearing the same cry. They say, ‘I need someone to tell me what I’m supposed to do for the best,’ and more importantly, ‘I need someone to tell the people I’m letting down that it is for the best.’ Because this situation is complicated and unfamiliar and no one can agree about what’s going on we each cling to what makes sense to us personally. It’s the work of our government to think in terms of the country as a whole, we can’t do that.

But in order for our rulers to be capable of that, they have to have social responsibility. We need a prime minister who isn’t acting purely with selfish, panicked (or disaster capitalist) interests and can instead make decisions that benefit the people of the country he’s responsible for, no matter how difficult. That’s the role he chose to take on.

We need a leader, not Bojo the clown.

* Actually, they probably aren’t Londoners if they’re going North to get home for Christmas

Say goodbye to the foxes

Posted on by inkbiotic

The foxes aren’t actually leaving, they’re way too happy, but the situation with has got silly and a bit unpleasant, so after this I’m going to leave off writing about them for a while.

We already had some residents demanding that we dispose of the foxes because they are a health risk, even though we kept insisting that we absolutely fucking wouldn’t. We also knew we had residents sneaking around feeding the foxes even though we repeatedly explained it was a bad idea – they have become totally tame and dependent on people.

But now we have one particularly enraged resident saying that she’ll report us to the police because somehow she’s come to the conclusion that we absolutely fucking do intend to kill the foxes and it’s disgusting and we’re all evil. She called up one manager and screamed ‘How dare you kill the foxes.’ The manager explained that we have no intention of doing so. Then she called up my boss and screamed at her for her terrible murderous ways, while my boss explained that no killing will be happening. Then she cornered Mike and lectured him on how she’s started a petition to stop us killing the foxes. I don’t know what it will take to convince her, I mean the foxes are still there, hanging out, looking healthy and happy.

Anyway, Reynard and Talbot will be staying out of the blog for a while. Which is good, because I think it may have gone to their heads.

We are not trying to kill the foxes. We’ve given up even shouting at them because they aren’t even slightly bothered and assume we’re playing. But I figure it’s wise to shut up about the foxes for a bit.

Is this normal?

Posted on by inkbiotic

I have been sorting my room. Picking through drawers of junk – junk to throw away when I work out how; junk to re use when I think of how; junk I’d forgotten about. Anyway, I came across this, the old lithium battery for my phone that I can’t put in the bin and couldn’t work out where to dispose of it. I hope you can see from the way it’s no longer lying flat that it’s swollen up, like it’s been pumped up with a football pump.

The instructions say don’t put it in a ‘mostness or corrode environment’, but I’ve never done that! I’m not even sure what a mostness environment is.

Is it going to explode? Is it leaking toxins? Should I throw it out the window and duck down? Is it going to make me radioactive so I have superpowers? Do I already have superpowers but haven’t got to use them so haven’t noticed? You all seem smart, help me out!

Words words words

Posted on by inkbiotic

Do you write? Do you like words? Well, me too and I’m obsessive enough to have collected whole files of them. At one point I was putting loads up on my blog. I posted up words like nullibicity and afflatus but then they got lost in the archives. However, now they are all back again.

If you want to find them, they are in one easy click-and-you’re-done link, right here. (or alternatively to the right of this post in the list of categories.) The posts tend to contain other things as well, such foxes, plants and words of inspiration, but just ignore all of that and gorge on the juicy texture of words such as gudgeon and clamjamphrie. Happy word munching.

A Big Tidy Up

Posted on by inkbiotic

Hello fellow piglets (and those who identify as human)! I’m off work this week, and since we’re in lockdown I haven’t got a lot to do but play around in my garden and with the Internet. I might clean the flat at some point, but I don’t want to rush into anything drastic.

Anyway, to fill the time I’ve been organising my blog by creating proper categories for it, instead of listing almost everything under ‘blogging’ out of laziness. This means that I can find things here when I want to, and more importantly, so can you! All those brain-searing posts from the past you might have missed. Like when I found a penguin! Or spent days watching foxes play football and piss in a shoe. Not to mention loads of weirdy and short tales, dragged up from the days when I still wrote proper stories. (Note: I don’t understand the phrase ‘not to mention’, because it is always followed by mentioning). You can find them all with the squeak of a mouse, just to the right of the page there >>>>

Today I’m sharing with you the delightful journey of the Inspirational Quotes category. Including both Inspirobot wisdom (which, now I’m looking back, is quite harsh!) and my own take own motivation. Honestly, these snippets of insight might change your view of the world. Nay! Even your whole life!

Rife incompetence and Scavenger Halloween

Posted on by inkbiotic

Just a mish mash of events today.

First event is ridiculous. I was in a bit of a daze as I made my way across the station to catch my second train this morning. At London Bridge they have huge escalators and there’s no particular logic which ones go up and which go down. Sometimes they all go down and you see tragic figures walking their way up a hundred stairs to catch their train. Anyway, I reached the bottom of the escalator and looked up at the board to see that my train was late. I was trying to work out if the next one was too, as I put a foot on the escalator. I heard someone shout ‘Careful!’ and then I shot backwarsd, grabbing onto the handrail as my feet were taken from underneath me. Turned out I was trying to go up on the down escalator. Dignity lost!

However, I did find Halloween while doing the mowing. A few days late, granted. The first find was an eyeball peeking up at me, that luckily turned out to be a bouncy ball. You can see that and the other two in the picture. I’ve given them to Dan who likes to learn tricks with frisbees and footballs and whatever else we find for him to play with.

Dan was also joined by one of the foxes today. He tried to scare it away by hitting the ground with the rake, clapping the leaf grabbers together and generally making aggressive noises. Reynard fox sat down and watched him, curious to see such a silly display of not-scary behaviour. It then climbed into the bag he was using and sat watching him from the comfort of leaves.

Review: The World Does Not Revolve Around Curmudgeon Avenue

Posted on by inkbiotic

I’m not much of a reviewer, but when I read a great book I like to share it.

Especially when the book is from the lovely and highly prolific writer, Samantha Henthorn. I know her writing from her blog https://samanthahenthornfindstherightwords.blog/ and if you want to see if you’ll enjoy her books, then she put excerpts on there to give you an idea.

The World Does not Revolve one is the fifth in the series, although it’s easy enough to pick up the story from any of the books, and the others are all just as entertaining. The Curmudgeon Avenue Series is like a soap opera all seen from the POV of a house. With flawed, funny, and relatable characters, reading it is like listening to gossip from a friend who is wicked funny. Henthorn’s writing is joyful, delighting in the ridiculousness of human behaviour. So if you’re looking for something fun to read as escapism while the world is in turmoil, then this could be the one for you.

Link for the book here.

The Tube in Covid Times

Posted on by inkbiotic

I wanted to share a few photos showing what the tube looks like right now, because it is WEIRD. There have been a few cries from Transport for London saying that they are hugely in debt and need money from the government to carry on. However, I don’t think this is just due to the lack of passengers, but also the lack of advertising, because there is very little.

Instead there are posters telling us to be kind or mind the gap. I think they’re just putting up whatever they can find.

Maybe this is what a post-capitalist world would look like. Instead of every step we take being filled with BUY THIS! maybe we could get rid of these posters all together and have murals, or large photos of the sky.

With this and the talk about changing statues, it feels like London is getting a whole makeover this Covid season. I get why people find it frightening, but I think it’s exciting, like moving to a new city.

This is a video that keeps playing, basically saying ‘Chill out! Have a walk and a think! Or go for a cycle!’

Note: sorry I’ve been kind of absent recently. I don’t have a good reason, I just don’t have anything to say 🙂