Category: Uncategorized

I’m pretty sure you’re all aware of the recent controversy surrounding cyber-bullying and threats on various social networks, but mostly Twitter. These cyber-bullies have been named Trolls by the media at large, although the original meaning of Troll on the internet was a fairly harmless character that merely tried to derail conversations with opposing or outlandish arguments.

This all came to a head when Caroline Criado-Perez, off the back of her successful campaign to get the bank of England to include a female icon on upcoming paper currency, was attacked by trolls threatening rape and other violence. I can only imagine how upsetting it would be to be attacked like that.

The people who attacked her were probably not in the slightest bit interested in the topic at hand, probably didn’t even understand it. The point of these cyber-bullies isn’t to argue any specific point it is merely for their online persona to be noticed. This is why they tend to attack people in the news or celebrities. By and large these bullies are attention seekers and use the basic anonymity of the internet to hide. And they are very much in the minority on twitter and every other social network.

Before I get into the meat of this i’d like to point out that this isn’t aimed at Caroline herself, what happened to her was just the catalyst for what I have an issue with. From what I can tell she wants a quicker and easier way to report abuse, which is a very reasonable request and seems to be maintaining a very level-headed view of twitter as a whole, especially inspiring since she was the focal point.

My issue comes with the newspaper inches that were corrupted by various other ‘feminists’ to use as a bandwagon for either a basic attack on a forum that has been very damaging to the newspaper world of late or merely to gain a little extra publicity. I put feminists in quotes because I know actual feminists who believe in making a level playing field for both sexes, their work is hard and largely goes unreported because it isn’t considered news-worthy.

This new brand of feminist sits upon a pedestal where they are the self appointed champions of female politics, whilst simultaneously working for and defending companies that sell papers by writing articles largely telling women they won’t get ahead without changing every aspect of their look. Indeed many of these feminists write those very articles.

And now they use an attack on someone who fought a genuine feminist battle to attack a forum that has provided the world with the ability to respond to injustices from the media and has shown just how much of the news is misreported or just blatantly false. The various calls from the media basically boiled down to Twitter must check every post before allowing it on the system. This is a completely impossible thing to do, twitter has millions of posts every minute – they would have to employ the population of a small country to achieve it. The media, of course, already knows that. I don’t think anyone has every accused them of being stupid – except when it served their purposes. But they also know that attacking like this could force the hand of the government, who might try to impose restrictions. So we’d have the government imposing the kind of restrictions on twitter that they failed to impose on the newspapers themselves.

Sounds ridiculous? Perhaps you forget who Cameron is best mates with?

Twitter has agreed to simplify it’s abuse system. It has passed information onto the police who have made arrests. This is as much as it is humanly possible for the company to achieve.

If restrictions were imposed on Twitter it would amount to punishing 99% of the users for the crimes of 1%. And that’s wrong no matter which way you look at it.

I guess for many the actions of the Tory party are a shock, possibly confusing.  But really it’s the continuation of a policy that has been the on their agenda since the days of the cold war.  Namely the destruction of any and all traces of the socialist state.

The UK, on the whole, is a capitalist stronghold.  The rich tend to be very rich and the poor tend to be very poor, the middle ground tends to rise more towards the rich end than the poor end.  The belief is that any person in the country has the opportunity to ‘better’ themselves and become a ‘success’ – a very British version of the American Dream.  Obviously this is not necessarily the case in practice, education and background play a very big part in how far you can go.  Indeed even success stories like Richard Branson are not necessarily considered an equal by the old boy network who value inherited wealth far more than accumulated wealth.

There have always been people in history who have tried to level the playing field, in the past this has been the job of the Labour party, back when it was created the members were genuinely from the ranks of the poor or lower/middle classes – state educated and from humble beginnings. From this background came the socialist/workers ideals.  The NHS, better state education, fairer competition for College and University places, cheap public transport and state aid.  Not that it was only Labour that provided these, but it was Labour that drove and defended them.

Enter the Tories, the tory party has always been one of privilege.  Originally driven by the very elite of society and of late including the upper movers of the social classes (even some top-end middle classes).  By and large the Tory party policy is driven by people who have never worked in a factory and will never be in a queue in an NHS hospital.  They will never need help buying food and are more likely to drive (or be driven) across the country than ever use public transport.

These are the people deciding the fate of the very things that they will never rely on.  You wonder why they can so easily remove the very things that support 90% of the people in the country?  It’s because they have never had to rely on them.  Why worry about the NHS when you have medical insurance?  Why work for a working train system when you can get anywhere by car?  Why push money into state aid when you can buy anything you or your family will ever need or want?

But it goes further than this.  It’s not just sheer ignorance that drives this policy – it’s a fear that the current structure of the country will change.  The current system is not so far away from the feudal times as we’d like to believe.  We still have the landowners, the merchants and the peasants.  The only difference is the language has changed.  The landowners are still far richer than all other members of society, in the minority and mostly outside the law.  The merchants are still in the middle ground, richer than the poor but still poorer than the landowners and the peasants are still the people who produce the most but earn the least.

Socialism, is not an answer – it really isn’t, it doesn’t work.  But the middle ground that the UK has worked under, Capitalism with socialist leanings, worked quite well.  Until the tories started dismantling it.  The NHS is slowly being farmed out to private companies (held by tory members, their friends or contacts) these private companies are reducing the amount of medical aid given out in the UK every year.  The public transport system is now completely owned by private companies, the fares have risen more than inflation every year since the takeover and the basic service has not improved.  Track, stock and timetable improvements are worse than when British Rail were in charge, despite the train companies earning almost double than they did.

State aid is the final bastion of socialism and that is being eroded, it is harder for the average person to get financial aid today than it ever has been, and that includes the disabled and elderly.

This is done in the name of bringing our country back from the brink of recession.  And yet all of our outstanding debt could be paid off by reclaiming all the missing tax from the corporations that owe it.  In fact halving politicians wages would cover all the apparently necessary cuts.

For the tories the recession was a gift, a necessary diversion for these extreme social changes to occur.

And it doesn’t matter if they get voted out tomorrow, the changes will continue – there isn’t a party in the UK which has a fundamental ability to think to the level of the most needy.  The Labour party is pretty much interchangeable from the tories.  The Liberals are now so entrenched in the Conservative camp that they will never be able to reform as a separate party – and who would trust them if they did?  All the other parties are too small to ever make a real difference.

Aside from rebellion, which wouldn’t help and would only cause far more social issues, there is no way to stop this decline.  We can’t trust politics when there is no check and balance.  When a shadow government so vastly resembles the current one then it stops being effectual.

Apple have announced a new iPhone and unlike the many iterations before it I will not be rushing out to get one.  I’m pretty sure it will be yet another solid phone with great attention to detail and a stable operating system with lots of features – like they all have been for their time.

Unfortunately the one thing I can guarantee it will be is the same as the old.  Yes we have a longer screen and better processor.  But aside from that and the slight improvements in iOS6 it will be merely a generational update, a hiccup on the feature scale.

And it’s obvious why Apple are doing this now they have a good product which a lot of people are happy with, why risk making radical changes to a design that is already making record profits?  This is fine for the hardcore Apple fans or the style conscious phone users who just want a good looking phone.  But for people like me, tech fanatics who want a new experience with their gadgets, the new iPhone doesn’t really do anything.

So i’ll be jumping ship for the next version, very probably to WP8 seeing as the Nokia Lumias interest me and because I just don’t really like Android – although the next generation I might give them another try.

 

My fellow nerds,

I stand before you to talk about change and the need for representation.  For too long have we been a minority sub-culture, ridiculed and ignored by the mainstream and the dominent.  But ours is a culture on the rise and as with all cultures who stand apart we have our pretenders and false prophets.  But I ask you not to cast these out, don’t attack little Jimmy because he owns a Jar Jar doll, don’t despise young Emma because the first Japanese cartoon she saw was Pokemon.  Rather embrace these lost souls, teach them, inspire them.  Show them the true glory of the original trilogy, lead them to the path of Manga and show them the bounty therein.

For ours is a culture that will forever grow, from the times when there were few of us living from the meagre handouts of Atari, Nintendo, Marvel and DC.  We knew not of digital comics, we had no syndicated japanese television and our consoles had 2 colours and few bits.

But still we embrace you, the young and the new – we understand your love is not the same as ours but you are part of us just the same.

Ours is a culture in flux, were once we were the few and the male, now we are many and mixed.  Ours is a culture of many lands and we must accept all, for without them we will not grow strong.  We must not be sexist for both sexes have shown the true and abiding love of the different and the niche.

Ours is a culture of many faiths, but we must always be one.  Whether your path is DC or your path is Marvel, you are still of our faith and we may not agree – but we will accept.

So if you know who Zelda really is or you understand the best time to field an Electric Pokemon.  If you know who shot first or the father of Loki then stand up.

Stand up if you want to believe, stand up if you are a leaf on the wind, stand up if you are the law and stand up if your princess is in another castle.

Above all stand up for your sisters and your brothers, regardless of age, creed or colour.  Because we are all the children of imagination and we will never stop dreaming.

Apart from the Jar Jar doll thing, I didn’t mean that