Now....what
is certainly not a ‘blog’, even if on cheap pages supplied by blogger.com
though I never understood why easily modifiable webpages called blogs are
called blogs. They are just online scribbles or brochures. And a chronicle or
diary is just that.
Which is a
bad allegory in respect of ‘freedom of speech’. Just as speech and writing were
invented thousands of years ago, if new words or attitudes come along, they don’t
change anything. Indeed it is really nasty ageism and racism against old races,
who were just as smart as us because working out the simple indivisibility of
speech and writing anything, hasn’t changed.
Discourage
even by “nooohhh that’s just not said..” never said to your face but so often
behind your back – or too your neighbours, especially in the regions I have
inhabited – soon to leave, is exactly
what the ancients discovered, in full: the ‘superior’ will always use any
disparity in just whom may say things,
to ‘dominate’. And profit. And keep down the plebs and tramps.
Which is why
the Uks gorgeous longest ever recession, will be fab for.... well no one else
yet as they forgot, that it is all very well being nasty about those being
evicted up the road, but when their rents go up 505 too...well they may just
recall conversations in distant time gone by a few years back “ oh yes..he
meant us too...we too may one day need to use LL our ‘rights’...without some
supposed best mate a little better off, then...being so so fuckin full of
herself..”
Which in a
decadent dilettante society is terribly difficult to understand. It is terribly
simple if one is a day rate labourer building football stadiums, and dies. The
relations will automatically be asked in by radio 4 to speak. Out... but often
will need to use false names. We know why..
It is all terribly
simple, nothing has ever changed. Except a decadent younger generation- anyone
under about 50, many of whom wont yet have discovered just how nutjob fascist
even your local council can be. Especially when it comes to trying to steal
“YOUR” inheritance money, over “20 odd thou...when they charge you 700 quid a
week for b+b and gruel for your oldfolk... and you know full well that the
budget for the gruel is 10p a day and thus they are technically doing a Nazi on
your old folk.... at your expense. You
may in these instances wish to ‘speak out’...
And you may
be surprised how many chubby little slobs you will encounter in their ‘systems’
who’s first ‘response’ to any such suggestion will be “oh you really cannot do
that..it will be against your elder’s best interests if her name appears in the
paper..and our lawyers may have to...stop that..”
Which is a slightly extreme version – but only
very minorly fantastical because there are many other scenarios (not involving
children) of the same mad threats. In
other words we do not have a culture of “ i got my first amendment rights”
here...
Now, there
is one thing in the ‘system’ ‘administration’
- all surprisingly chunky people who sit at desks – or more often than
not these days expensive cars and devices,
trying to shut up the citizen when they have truths to share which may
in their small minds affect their profit, pension, or power structure. But
there is a freedom to speak maybe at times as bad or worse when supressed. Self
censorship, regarding very simple things going on around ones home patch.
Such as the
local river being utterly ruined by all the various farming and shoddy building
around and about leaching in household waste, runoffs from fields and other
agricultural activity including just too much mud from agricultural pathway use
which runs into the rivers then so muddies the waters the lifecycle of fish is
so restricted it leads to environmental collapse. Fact.
But if one
were to say that truth in a rural region – where most know it is a truth, it s quite surprising the real threat of harm
one feels. I know as i have had to keep mine zipped several years.
No more... https://dilettanteenvironmentalism.blogspot.com/
Where there are a few names maybe one day to be stuck in. But only of those paid by county to be for the wildlife... that's an extreme case.I never believe in naming anyone...i speak only in regions. But that is dangerous enough in the regions....where people make ignorant assumptions of whom one MAY be referring to....even in my always careful wordings.. deliberately designed never to point a finger.
And then
there is another recent example of even me being surprised: in a small one
horse town middle of nowhere except rugged hilly landscapes. Where one assumes
someone knows a spade when one sees one.
A major employer- ahotel as it happens, London owned, has all its
standard hotel staff – i.e. cleaners, as hotels are about cleaning, the
hotel....on self employed terms. Despite them needing continuity of
staff....desperately... as it is more efficient if the cleaner knows what to
clean and what not...
So, London
company has their hotel staff – staff...on terms to avoid paying sick or
holiday pay or their national insurance... as any 3year old knows. And yes even as a worker there, try saying...saying...to people... “ this lot are
cowboys operating what should be an unlawful regime not paying you tax..... you could hardly be less of an 'employee'..”
Just words.
No call to strike.
And it is
extraordinary in that after listening to one intelligent young man moan about
his employer for weeks, when he is having a huff one day he very threateningly
shouts out “and you say terrible things about my lovely workplace...”
say...say..
Well i
couldnt give a damn what anyone in this sick land says to me, but he better not
stop me in the shop when he says he needs help trying to get some fair sick pay
when he sprains his ankle tripping up over their unmarked steps in the dark..
That is a
bad intro. Except it is almost impossible unless writing it out as a novel, to
describe how messed up British people have become about what one can ‘say’ and
what not. And i do not evoke woke weirdo law..it hasn’t really reached the
rural fringes. Nope, the notion of speech, or lack of it, in simpler rural
areas, is a live and well. In ways that really do hurt. And certainly became the default ‘weapon’. In
other words understanding WHY universal freedom to reasonably politely
criticise, call out, even point the finger, and expect protection from the
state, community, or friend, for doing so, always... as long as one is telling
a reasonably verifiable truth, never more topical. There’s good business in it!
But to an intro i had earlier planned –my
problem is i like writing and just start and before I know it am in the zone
and have written ten pages...
40 years ago
over a pint in some more thoughtful part of Britain but humble pub all of us between punk numbers on the juke
box would share “ course we don’t want ever to become like America...all so
horrid and litigious over there..”
20 years ago
i think we well and truly had the thieving litigious version in for good...
find a paving stone and trip over it so as to rip off the council for a five
grand pay out... i bet most ‘whiplash’ injuries were at least exaggerated if
not outright fraud. One of the most
interesting chats i ever had was with a 20 year old Portuguese law student on a
bus around 20 years ago “ so do you do
civil litigation and claim law..?” or words to that effect. Her answer was “i
don’t understand what you mean” There
was no culture of suing for a payout at the slightest possible chance.
But at the
same time arose another culture.
I am a 10
year sort of minor flaneur. Thats not a voyeur its someone who likes to wander
and sometimes observe – in the background... in a writerly way. Orwell did this a lot.
Listening in cafes or pubs occasionally if i need to charge a device... I like
at times to take the bus...and listen.
I knew it
already, but even if very far flung places well away from stressy
conurbations - places where people one
would assume had some balance and sense of what is in the common good, it never
ceases to amaze me now: the amount of times someone is discussing with a friend or relative how to ‘get’ someone in
their circle –neighbour, ex lover, even ex friend, with law...
Never how
they can find some peaceful solution to some (always minor) little skirmish, or
ask some wiser older person to have a quiet authoritative word; nope – how to report
someone to someone... not to get a quiet word in their ear but ONLY to prosecute,
punish..
Not in fact
get ‘revenge’ - it simply has become the
culture – to cause someone else some legal plight...
I doubt it
is even as bad as this in USA.
I find it
extraordinary how NO one can ever consider some civil in house way of settling
some dispute or as remedy to some situation
considered negative (by one party). Nope.. in short everyone seems to
want everyone else to really suffer at the law. Arrest, injunction, fine,
penalty, or worse...
Litigious...in
fact i think we need a new word as that is simply selfish state sponsored
antagonism. I have known several coppers recently quite well on a personal
basis . They concur..
So, we have
the very worst of USA. Without it seems a tradition in the USA where going to
law is positive.
And THAT is
what i hope one day can be shown via a film if it can be made...
The citizen
going to law on PRINCIPLE...
A ‘test’
case so as to advance democracy or keep unruly powers democratically at
bay. This is what USA does so well.
But of
course we have another little weirdo UK aspect which is the pretence that
somehow as if by magic our overlords are somehow just more....British... than
nasty USA institutions, corporations, and politicians...
My, my, they
really got you.... because i am a bit of a corporate/ politics / society /
economics expert, and these days i know
of hardly any difference... except our citizenry don’t anything like as often
develop a test legal case when one or other is misbehaving...
A case which
may yes benefit one in some small way (this one had ZERO effect on me – my
story was already OUT !!!...well enough of it...) but at the same time create a precedent which
would also help wider society ..set the bar for other citizens treatment...
And also get publicity - ALL LAW IS THEATRE TOO... highlight an issue that needs highlighting... ends up written in the papers...on the breakfast tv shows..gossiped about later in the cafes and pubs...Maybe accurately rather than the years of inaccuracy i personally 'suffered'.. hahh hahh fools and you pays your money you take your chance... or in my case never was paid anything ... except 750 oce for a silly little article with photos.....didnt even pay my photocopying bill. But then there is no price on trying to do something hat may REALLY help others....because you can.
Its just a
game but the brits are far far too special to even bother much doing what the
yanks manage and theyre about as selfish as you can get...
Ergo
(though lack
of REAL - meaning non fake confected
vulnerability Olympics style facebook moaning, resolution of issues in society
does lead to a real lack of esteem which i argue is one reason mental health
gets worse and worse.. ‘the beast’ is in charge.. only because the citizenry
fail to do the fuck hard work to hold it to account... through the courts..
like those finer cousins do)
STILL to merge - this - with http://www.simonclayton2020.com/ which i didnt at first as even i was coy about wat i may say to one...and not another....for no reason other than we have weird culture of fear, here...about words.