You Fight Twitter At Your Peril
It has been reported on the BBC that South Tyneside Council have obtained an order in a US Court to indicate who has been posting possibly defamatory statements about councillors and officials.
Type the name of the poster into Twitter and you’ll find a large amount of posts about the postings, most of which support the poster of the statements.
This one will run and run and the only winners will be the lawyers. When do people realise, that if you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is to stop digging.
I can envisage something like this happening in the not too distant future.
- Parliament passes a law that says that anybody who tweets about a superinjunction will feel the full force of the law.
- Someone important billionaire, who has done something he doesn’t want in the papers obtains a superinjunction.
- It is published on Twitter.
- The tweeter gets found guilty, but continues to tweet about the case.
- He goes to jail.
- Others would then tweet the story and be arrested.
So what do we do if hundreds of thousands needed to go to jail?
Is The Cause of High Unemployment Our Housing and Transport Policies?
There was a program on BBC Radio 5 this morning about unemployment. It was the usual left versus right battle, which has been fought so many times to a non-conclusion, that the program got boring, so I went shopping at Upper Street.
I have lived in several houses and flats in my life and in some ways, where I am now suits me best. Visitors like it too and they feel it is absolutely right for me.
So what is this house like. It’s a three bed-roomed house with two en-suite bathrooms and one that isn’t. It’s modern and it’s built upside down, with two bedrooms, a bathroom and the garage on the ground floor and a seven-metre square living area, kitchen and a bedroom on the first floor. It has a lot of chocolate-coloured steel and big glass windows. Unfortunately, it was built by Jerry. It doesn’t have a garden, but it does have two patios front and back.
In some ways the nearest to it in feel, was our flat in Cromwell Tower, in the Barbican, where we raised our three sons for the first few years of their lives. There we had three bedrooms, a large living room, kitchen, an underground car park and superb views across to St. Paul’s.
My house is however not the sort of house that most people aspire to or in fact that many can afford.
So many prefer one of Pete Seeger ‘s Little Boxes on a new estate somewhere in the countryside with space for two cars. After all, these sort of estates don’t get inhabitated by the riff-raff do they? They are also as eco-friendly as Obama’s Beast.
I have now come to the conclusion that I don’t like to live in the countryside. It is all so sterile, unfriendly and full of lots of little cliques. After the loss of C and my son, not one person in the village came to see me. After all I was a loser wasn’t I, especially as I had a stroke? There’s a great belief too, that widows might decide to walk off with your partner! It was a real relief to escape on a train to somewhere, where something actually happened. But there was no public transport, so simple things like getting any food meant a taxi or scounging a lift.
I also should say I hated living in Cockfosters as a child. There the problem was that there were no children of my own age and most of my school friends lived some distance away. Only when I was old enough to work in my father’s print works and ride my bike all over the area did I feel liberated.
How I live now, is surprisingly similar to how C and I used to live with the boys in the Barbican and St. John’s Wood before that. Except of course that I am now alone and do the things like food shopping, that C used to do. But then when I wander round Chapel Market, it’s like going back to the early seventies and she’s still guiding me.
It’s a friendly and a mixed area, with some good shops, four pubs that know their gluten-free within walking distance, several gardens and superb public transport links. The people are friendly too and I’m starting to add to my circle of friends. In this sort of mixed area, you also develop passing acquaintances with people, who you say hello to as you pass. In the countryside, it’s a bit difficult to talk to someone about their basset hound as I did today, when the dog is in the back of a 4×4 passing at speed.
So the sort of mixed area where I live is not to most people’s taste, but in my view, if we want to decrease unemployment and create worthwhile jobs, then this sort of area can do it’s bit. Another mixed area, I know well is the centre of Cambridge and it could be argued that that mixing helps with the development of ideas.
How many good ideas have been hatched in pubs or coffee shops? Sterile country villages might have an award winning gastro-pub, but the only ideas that come out of places like that, are things like better ways to cook asparagus.
One of the complaints in all the villages I’ve lived was the lack of any staff locally. This was mainly because, those same people didn’t want any affordable housing built, that might spoil their view and lower the tone of the place. I have a lovely lady, who sorts my house out, once a week and she was fairly easy to find. Incidentally she comes on a bus from the other side of Dalston JUnction station. so just at a selfish level, good public transport helps people to get to their jobs. In those much admired villages, there is no public transport, so everybody has to drive, so those that can’t afford their own car, often can’t get a decent job. But then a lot of those that live in villages don’t want more public transport, because of all the noise and inconvenience of passing a bus in a large 4×4. But they have their own cars anyway!
To illustrate what I say further, I will take the Suffolk town of Haverhill, which has large numbers of little boxes, which asre being added too at a fast rate. There are jobs in the town, but many require a car to get to, as the town isn’t the most cycle-friendly and the public transport is limited. Haverhill is also a sensible commute to Cambridge, where there are far better-paid and more worthwhile jobs, but the only way to do it, is to use a bus or car. There used to be a railway, but that was axed in the Beeching cuts. Axing it actually wasn’t the problem, but building over the right-of-way was, as that railway, which is needed to provide a link etween Sudbury and Cambridge, could have been reinstated. In Scotland, they have been reinstating railways like Airdrie to Bathgate with some degree of success.
If I was in charge of eployment policy in this country, I would reinstate railways like Sudbury to Cambridge, as they not only create employment, but allow people to get better jobs. Recently, the line from Ipswich to Cambridge has been updated with better and bigger trains and the investment has led to a large increase in passenger numbers.
Where I live, we also have the example of the recently-rebuilt North and East London Lines of the London Overground, which are now used and liked by everybody. In fact, so much so, that frequencies are being increased.
I have also read and heard stories how the new lines have decreased unemployment, just by enabling people to move more easily from where they live to where the jobs are.
I think too, we concentrate on unemployment and rightly so, but in many cases better transport links will enable people to move up the employment ladder. This is just as important, as not only does it create a need to replace the person who’s left, but if people earn more, they tend to spend more and that helps to create jobs.
Child Abuse Cases, Baby P and Sharon Shoesmith
I’m not going to comment on the recent judgement in Sharon Shoesmith’s appeal, as it would appear that we have all sorts of groups and interests colliding in a Court of Law, with everybody claiming the moral highground.
I have just looked at the timeline of the tragic case at the centre of it all, Baby P. As I thought he died a few months before my late wife, C.
I can remember discussing this case in particular and many others in general with C over the years.
She often despaired at the ineptitude and sometimes downright indifference of some social workers and police and sometimes suffered mentally, as she tried to sort it all out as a barrister. Not that she did many cases as tragic as Baby P. She always said that she was lucky and could come home with a clear conscience,unlike many front-line workers. Not that she didn’t worry about some of the really bad cases she handled.
She would have argued that a lot of the problems were down to constant changes in the law, with large amounts of retraining, were cutting the efficiency of the very services, the changes were trying to improve. She would always tell stories about how she’d been involved where yet another baby had been taken into care from an abusive family. Some families were costing Social Services hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
So now that money to these services is being cut, staff are further stressed and we have well-meaning politicians shoving their oar in, I think it unlikely we’ll see much improvement in the next few years.
Sorting Out Fifa!
With the Champions League Final going on today, FIFA have missed an easy way of sorting out their problems.
At the match or even at half-time, they could have a genuine shoot-out to see who prevails. After all, FIFA needs a strong person to sort out their problems and one who could survive a shoot-out would have a genuine advantage. On the other hand an innocent spectator might get injured by a stray bullet. But I suppose there is always Paintball guns, providing the gunk inside is indelible.
The shoot-out could also be linked to the match in the event of a draw. But then who’d want dear old Sepp? And some of those involved in the hoo-hahs at FIFA, are probably so bent they couldn’t shoot straight.
Faster Rural Broadband
It has been announced that the first round of funding has been agreed for faster rural broadband.
I am not a high consumer of broadband capacity, as most of my on-line activity is e-mail and blogging.
However, I’m a strong believer that every home and business should have superfast broadband, as this will be one of the ways to create employment everywhere.
It can’t be installed everywhere too soon!
He’s Done More Damage and Killed More than Bin Laden
Someone has just said this on BBC Breakfast about Ratko Mladic.
Let’s hope he gets his final rewards in the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, just like Bin Laden should have faced a similar court!
But will the arrest of Ratko Mladic be a force for good? Mark Urban on the BBC has tried to answer that question here.
Jailed For Speaking Out Against the Death Penalty
Alan Shadrake has been jailed in Singapore for writing a book about the country’s use of the death pemalty. Here’s an extract from the report on the BBC.
A British author of a book about the death penalty in Singapore, Alan Shadrake, has lost his appeal against a six-week jail sentence.
The 76-year old, convicted of insulting the judiciary, will undergo medical tests before beginning his sentence.
His book, Once A Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, alleges a lack of impartiality in the implementation of Singapore’s laws.
It’s about time, that the death penalty was abolished everywhere. Jailing seventy-six-year old authors doesn’t do the case of those who believe in it much good.
The Legacy of the Hackney Mole Man
The Mole Man of Hackney or William Lyttle became notorious because of all the tunnels he dug under his house and in some cases his neighbours. He supposedly has cost Hackney Council around £400,000 in making his house safe. This report from the Guardian a few years back gives a lot of detail.
Even now, a couple of years after his death, the site is still in the middle of a planning argument according to this report.
This is a difficult one, in that the building may once have had some architectural merit. I also know from personal experience how expensive it can be to restore buildings when they get to this state. So a complete restoration may only be possible by someone who has more money and imagination than sense.
I’m glad I don’t live next to what is left of the house.
Is Measles Making A Comeback?
I had measles as an adult at twenty-eight, at the same time as I had chickenpox. I would not wish that on anybody, and hopefully it didn’t leave me with any long-term health problems. My sister had it very badly as a child and it might have explained her poor eyesight. I also know of people slightly older than myself, who have suffered seriously from the disease.
So when I read that there has been a large increase in measles, I get worried.
It would appear that most are related to young people who have travelled abroad.
It says the latest cases are mainly among unvaccinated people under 25 years old and are centred on “small clusters in universities, schools or families or associated with travel abroad”.
I feel that we should encourage more vaccination. I would not recommend my experience of the disease to anyone! But I was lucky! Others may not be so!
Is It Time To Close the Madeleine McCann Case?
Close is probably not the word, but there comes a time after any death or when someone goes missing, when those left behind must move on! And I say that, as someone who has lost not only a son, but a wife as well. I also once in the 1990s had a long talk, with a senior detective, who had been involved in quite a few cases where a body had been discovered many years after death and the results weren’t always murder, but sometimes a very unusual accident. Admittedly most of his cases involved older children or adults, so his experience can’t be applied to the McCann or any other child cases, but it was a fascinating insight into so-called cold cases.
Read this article on the BBC, which describes a dignified protest by others who have lost children. Here is an extract.
The Met agreed to review the case after a Home Office request, but London Assembly member Jenny Jones has said this was unfair on other crime victims.
It is in some ways a hard thing to say, but I agree with Ms. Jones. As the detective also told me no murder or possible murder case is ever closed in the UK.
It is not a decision I would like to take, either as the parents , a policeman or a politician. But then I had to move on in my life! and I can say that it has helped me to come to terms with all my grief. After all, everybody has something to give to society and dwelling on the past doesn’t help in that process. Learning from your experiences and the mistakes you might have made does help and we all have a responsibility to help ensure that what happened to us, doesn’t happen to others.
The Anonymous Widower 