A Problem with the ego of successful blog authors. The little guy does upskirt!

There is a real danger that certain people - I am looking at the Rev Stuart Campbell - lies to us. He certainly loves the word "lie"!

Once upon a time, that person would  have accepted all comments, and then he didn't. Then he got as restrictive as fuck. I find that quite aggravating and egotistial. On his part. Changing the rules as popularity increased, who'd have thunk it?

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I could accept that, on the basis that some of the comments against him were truly nasty.

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But mine weren't.

What the Rev Stuart Campbell says he does, has become a lie, he is just as much of a fucked up media tart as the people he criticises.

He suppresses comment as much as the BBC.

Mine, for example.

But, on that basis, beacuase he can, because he controls what is said on his web site,  he is just as fucked up as the press.

He is a  guy is a tad full of himself.

It was something he, himself, rejected.

Censorship.

No more does he see that as an issue, no more does he see that as problem.

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Ego is not a joyous thing to see in a person I used to have a lot of time for.

No more.

An apology is unlikely. For the Reverend Stewart Campbell has made an arse of himself and he is incapable of seeing little old me as being on the same side.

I assume that the Rev Stu Campbell reads the words 'Rev Stu Cambell' 'cause that is the sort of ego we are dealing with.

If you come across this, and I expect you will, pretend that you didn't, you will come across as the humourless person that I expect you are.

The Reverend Stu Campbell - I worry in public.

This is what the hero of the modern revolution had to say: The Revend Stu Campbell, yes that hero

"You are barred, yes.

Wings Over Scotland is not a democracy. It has a very open comments policy compared to anywhere else, but it is not without rules, and the one absolutely cast-iron one is that my word goes - if I explicitly tell you not to do something again and you tell me to fuck off and do it again several times, you're out.

You were warned repeatedly when you were already testing my patience (and had been unambiguously told as much), and you chose to continue acting like an arsehole. As such, you're no longer welcome in the comments section. I hope that's clear and unambiguous."

It is, It is. I said:

"Thanks for clearing that up,

I am disappointed that you would see my comments as worthy of a ban. Still, your web-site, your rules.

Frankly I didn't see the barriers. Call me blind or summat. Quite why you saw it as a challenge to your authorty is a bit beyond me. Not a side of your personality that has been evident to me in the earlier, hundreds of posts that I have made.

And, quite why you support someone that has, AFAIK, never written or commented on your web site before, or apparently since, as though they were your long lost brother, defeats me. It is perfectly possible for people to play identity fraud anywhere. As a victim of that in the past, though not in the current fandangle, I would alert you to the possibility that you are being conned.

I thought, obviously wrongly, that you were up for a bit of banter.

Fold?

Apparently not.

We are on the same side. As a long time follower of your blog I regret this parting of the ways.

Best wishes.

douglas clark."

I worry for the Rev Stewart Campbell's health. I most certainly did not tell him to 'fuck off'. He has taken on a huge burden of expectation. His genuine bravery in not backing down to a misplaced legal threat was and is completely admirable. Contrary to what he might think, I would have helped pay his legal fees over that had it come to it. He probably runs the worlds second most successful Scottish Independence blog. (He could probably argue that Newsnet Scotland is not a blog, and I am not sure I would argue with that, so first.). I know that he was genuinely impressed with the financial support he got. His output is prodigious. But the degree of humourless, or as he has said himself, anti-democratic sentiment, that he has expressed here to me is quite concerning. This is, usually, quite a funny guy.

This is not the first time I have read similar sentiments - not a democracy - from blog authors, though never directed at me before. Quite what is it about success, because they never say that when they have one or two correspondents, that allows them to trivialise the media that they have developed and / or benefitted from? What new found numbers allow them to treat us as a, well number, rather than a person?

A different side of his nature, perhaps. Not to make too big a deal of it, but on their way up blog authors appear quite accomodating to criticism, then they get as sensitive as any main stream media journalist. Who are, despite this, still the worst. In relation to the mainstream it appears to be an ego thing, or a projection of their idea that journalists as the only voices worth listening to. Had they not made the horrendous mistake of having comments the old model could have continued ad infinitum. Else we could have retained the dead tree press and their 'Letters to the Editor' with it's huge delays in actual criticism of whatever was now in a chip wrapper.

But the point about blogs is that they ought to be, with the usual caveats about trolling and lies and the Scotsman and stuff like that, to be a two way process. Which have the all the advantages and disadvantages of speed.  It is that that makes them dynamic, different and useful. It is absolutely great to have a discussion started off by a post of quality, and, usually, the Rev Stu's posts do that.  That, not to put too fine a point upon it, is the difference between the mainstream and new media. Misunderstanding that, is to misunderstand the game you are playing.

When contradiction, in the mildest of ways, becomes a challenge to ones 'authority' what is going on in ones head? Who, exactly decided that blogs were - not a democracy - it certainly wasn't their users. It is obviously a truism, but it is anti-democratic (by definition). Is that how Wings over Scotland wishes to be seen?

Is everyone that comments there to avoid any criticism whatsoever of his ideas or  philosophy or what? Is everything perfect in the best of all possible worlds?

It is the genuinely lazy idea that you cast aside contrary views, just because you can. 

I will have no impact whatsoever in his soaring flight into the stratosphere. I am a tad annoyed however that someone I had serious time for seems to have no idea what this media is about. I am also a bit worried that success will bring about it's own failure. It tends to do that when you don't remember where you came from.

Just saying.

douglas clark

Glasgow

13th May 2013

 

I got it wrong, mark one

I have argued that we are all the same under the colour of our skin.

I was way wrong about that.

There are seven billion people around on Planet Earth right now.

Every one of us is unique and different.

Skin colour is a uniquely poor method of differentiating the good guys from the bad guys.

What makes each and every one of us unique has a lot of components.

And the simplistic battle lines of Christian / Muslim for instance, which is the commonest trope nowadays, seems alien to me.

I am neither a Christian nor a Muslim. As far as God goes, he is, well, not proven in the traditional Scottish verdict.

I have been playing around with other Venn diagrams, in a sort of delta space.

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There are Muslims that clearly believe in science. There are clearly Christians that disbelieve in it. Conversely, there has to be an intersection between, say Muslims that believe in science and Christians that believe in science that at least occludes their other differences? Psychologists argue that (sexual, i.e. reproductive) relationships are built on a combination of familiarity and availability. I will return to that in a moment. Whilst the extremes, the Muslims that don't believe in science versus the Christians that don't believe in science appear, on that analysis to be completely alienated - the Venn diagrams do not touch and may as well be on separeate Earths - there is for the, albeit smaller numbers that have the common cause of science, perhaps not so much of a difference. There is common ground, albeit of a similarly abstract, but different, set of understandings.
 
And that is only one Venn diagram. Any attempt to comprehend the modern world based solely on religious beliefs and myths is quite likely to collide with, say Newton, Copernicus,Darwin, Adam Smith or this guy, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī . There will be those of us that look at a cell phone as a magical device, but it is unlikely that everyone will. And that goes across all cultures.  

It seems to me that sexuality has a bit to do with change, for it is change I am trying to express here.


Quite a lot of folk are quite willing to love and care for people that seem, to others, to be excluded from their Venn diagram of  'acceptable' partners. If you were, for instance, a white supremacist, you might argue that whites should only marry whites. But not all whites are supremacists, and not all whites agree with their philosophy. The converse is also true.

So, somewhere, in fact in many places around the world, London for instance, miscegenation takes place. Point - I do not think that that is a bad thing, I think it is a word that has had completely the wrong value judgement placed on it. Just in case you are a racist reading this, I think miscegenation is a good, indeed,  I think miscegenation may be our ultimate salvation.

It seems to me that all sides have their violent stereotypes. How, exactly does that deal with the somewhat simplistic fact that we are not actually killing each other on the streets, day in day out? Perhaps because there is an almost gravitational attraction between the mass of humanity -versus- it's outliers.I was, when a lot younger, extremely impressed by the Reverend Iain Paisley. Not for what he had to say, but for the ferocity with which he held his beliefs, his ability to stir up emotions in his 'flock'. It is noteable, that despite media coverage that even had me aware of him, his 'flock' never grew particularily large. Indeed, even in that hotbed of religious competition there is a tiny intersection of the Venn diagrams, allegedly circa 2% of the population reject segregation. Not, in itself, particularily positive, but perhaps again indicative of how gravity works.

It is, perhaps, simplistic but it seems to me that attraction on an almost atomic or personal level can outweigh repulsion at a cultural level. This is, in no way whatsoever, a result. It is, at most, an expected direction of travel. Whether the great repulsors, the conservative of a religious or racist origin can outwit human affection is the fight we are all having, whether we recognise it or not.

 







  

Stuart Campbell

This place has been dead in the water, sinking slowly for a lack of content.

It is, however, where I can say what I like.

The Rev Stuart Campbell appears to support a complete arsehole, mosstrooper, who tells us:

" Many years ago before postal voting I stood for the SNP for election to Glasgow City council.  During the count when the counted votes were being put into piles of 100 for each candidate with the name of the candidate on top of each pile I happened to notice that one of my 100 votes had the name of my rival put on top. I called over the returning officer and pointed this out. The error was corrected and the counting was about to recommence when I said but what about the other piles. It was made out that this had been a one off mistake. Nervously I stood my ground (It was my first election and I was quite young. After some discussion it was agreed that the other piles would be checked and low and behold another 5 piles had my opponents name on top of my votes.
Mistake? possibly (pace Margo) but all for my opponent and this in a local election?
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s a fair chance it is a duck.
I have no Idea if Craig Murray is correct or not but something smells bad and if I may murder my metaphors, at this referendum if we are not eternally vigilant it will be like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
The British establishment can fight dirty and it will."

Perhaps, but who is Mosstrooper? Why would he or she hide behind a pseudonym rather than identify themselves properly as they would have to do on a ballot paper?

As of this moment in time, mosstroopper's identity is still unknown. Yet, the Reverend Stuart Campbell accepts it without a qualm. I am not willing to do that without evidence.

Attempts to determine his or her identity and with the particular result being  met by silence by mosstrooper. I don't accept that silence as realistic. .I want to know who he or she is. I want to know the evidence that he or she can present.

Stuart  Campbell is being unusually favourable to the case of mosstrooper..

I have no idea why.

Being barred on a site you have contribued money to is an odd sensation. It in not wrong, in principle, to walk away from your benefactors. It just seems odd that I was banned over something as trivial as asking for evidence. Quite what the Reverend Stu thought he was all about is completely beyond me.

Perhaps the hits, the number of views, etc, is making him bigheaded. He does not run the independence case and neither does mosstrooper.

The unmarked dead, and thoughts from the back line of human pain.

It has seemed to me for a while that there is no-one that stands up for our charnelled dead. I doubt they ever wanted to be dead. I doubt they would have ever seen themselves as a political statement, red in tooth, blood type and flat line. Their voices, their ideas are largely subsumed by the political actor in the play, the man with the bomb, the woman with the commitment, the other side.

For killing us, we are just the convenient punch bags for publicity. We try to remember the people that died in Oklahoma, or Mumbai or London or now Oslo and we can't.

We cannot see the victims as more important than the message. All these messages that these people share with us, via blood and death? Why are they more important that the telegram:

Dear Mrs Ali,

Private Ali has not returned from an expeditionary force tasked with approaching the borders os Afghanistan.

You have my regrets. 

Would they want us to be impressed that their deaths were to be allowed, trapped by the horror that was done to them, into what?

An idea?

What?   

Folk that cry out at the evil that men do, simply justify the evil that men do. It is kind of important that we are not  cowed by the wolf, or the fox or whatever other scary creature we encounter.

It was wrong to pander to the spectacular, the deliberate assault  on  the fairly transparent idea that you and I should live on this fucked up planet until we leave it as something better than the victims of an advertising campaign for the mad, the bad and the completely insane. Which, it seems to me, is what an aweful lot of us basic humans do.

Ho hum.

Newsnet Scotland? Nutters or not?

No, no... it's nothing any of you fine people have done. The Facebook page was reported maliciously as fake. We're working to try and get that resolved too. Hopefully we'll be back with a shiny new Facebook page for you all to enjoy in the not-too-distant future :)

Err, no you are not.

You let cheats and liars away with my money, your money too.

And you are so craven that you can't even talk to me. It is all supposed to be a secret. I am a filthy little secret because I say someone is a liar. It is you folk that are a disgrace to the whole idea of Scottish Independence. It is pretty obvious what side you\'d have been on back then.

By the way, you have asked for and obtained my real home address. Let's see you pull up your skirts and provide us with yours.

Otherwise I will see you as a coward and a liar. Perhaps others will too.

Desperately Seeking Sanity - The Newsnet Scotland Fiasco

Apparently you are no longer allowed to have an aggressive point of view amongst nationalists. We have all got to be a party to a love in.

It is very odd, to say the least, to watch Newsnet Scotland jump through hoops about it's embarrassments. Embarrassments? Well, more than one anyway.

To reflect. Newsnet wants to be the go to place for neutral - some might say unbiased - journalism on Scottish Politics. I welcome that. Indeed, in a very small way, I contributed money towards that.

So, what happened?

Newsnet Scotland owned the .com and the .org tags. Someone took exception to their strategy and took over the .net tag. To the extent of rivalling them.

When push came to shove, Newsnet Scotland - the .org version - has released information in a piecemeal and frankly grudging manner.

Mainly through the method of adding a postscript to articles that have nothing whatsoever to do with these 'issues'.

It is an odd way to conduct business.

I do not think a site that recieves money from the public - you and me - has any right to pretend that their finances are a matter of privacy. Some brainless morons seem to see it otherwise. You should just accept that £15,000 has gone missing / been misspent and bend over for the soap in the shower. All SNP supporters are as pure as the driven snow. Well, no, they are not. And those shouting for a cover up are either stupid or duplicitous. Anyway, these moral giants have banned me. What a victory for petty minded stupidity!

Frankly I am more than a little disgusted about this.