Joe K's Blog

This is what happens when web sites are given… given… to people who don’t really want them, let alone deserve them.

And that’s January of 18 months back, IIRC, and I think I do…

BTCT Students Notice Board

Funny, but although I expected to be a bit of a knob in 2006 compared to my urbane current self, I think I was holding my arguments together pretty well, even then. It’s a shame that I didn’t appear to get to grips with the cantankerous Chris, and didn’t press him to answer my queries about how he could defend the behaviour of GFM, but then again, maybe I addressed that in the two posts Eddie removed (even then, I was arguing with one hand tied behind my back).

It’s an instructional thread, though. Note that Chris didn’t hang around for long, even after promising to, nor Kingston either, though I recall he broke his leg, so had a bit of an excuse (not that you type with your feet,but let’s not even go there). Note also that I was the one defending GFM most of the time, yet for all of my huge liberal bent, I still end up as the enemy of all ethnicity. But that’s what happens when you fall in with aging hypocrites.

Gloucester FM

And this is how the funding thing started to become a rod for my back, although it reached it’s apotheosis with today’s ‘the claims were just ridiculous and totally untrue’, now that Phil Ellaway of Abbeymead can’t even remember that a Labour councillor, Sue Oppenheimer, decried my query as ‘rumours’ on thirdhand evidence, from me, to Phil Ellaway, to Andrew Gravells (who she may have had reason to think was asking to stir things party politically).

Grants to GFM

And to top it off, although Phil Ellaway likes to rake up completely off-topic stuff when he is short of a jibe, he wasn’t so quick to respond when I pwned his arse here.

NP-MODELCONSTITUTION(DRAFT)

Fingers crossed, the link you see above will download a copy of the new constitution drafted by the city council for the nine existing community partnerships. It’s important that anyone with an interest takes a good look at it, because there are some changes which reflect the failings of some partnerships to galvanise their communities, and make it easier for a failing partnership to struggle on. For example, allowing non-residents to take a seat on the Co-ordinating Group of each partnership and have a vote, which reduces local involvement in the making of decisions. In particular, the reduction in the number of people required to allow an Annual General Meeting to proceed, from 20 to 12, disguises that failure to encourage involvement. Not a single partnership has to accept this draft constitution as a ‘one size fits all’ document, but every one of them has to be clear about what they will and won’t accept, and tell the council so.

One other thing. According to 3.1, a neighbourhood partnership’s boundaries are determined by residents, councillors and ‘partners’. In practise, most of the NPs are mapped onto electoral wards. While this is the case with Moreland and Barton & Tredworth, though, which have the railway line as their eastern boundary, Robinswood & Matson’s western edge only goes as far as Finlay Road. There is a large strip including Marlborough Road, Tredworth Cemetery, White City Adventure Playground and part of White City, which belongs to no partnership, notwithstanding what the map on this page says. They don’t get any say about the draft (although the residents of the graveyard probably don’t care), and that will need to be addressed eventually. Anyone who lives in that area can contact the Community Involvement Officer via the link above.

We’ll be discussing these proposed changes at the Barton & Tredworth NP’s open meeting next Monday (21st), which takes place at the Friendship Café, at 6:30pm.

I want to mark a special occasion this week. The name ‘Evelyn Beatrice Hall’ has finally migrated from my frankly lousy short-term memory to my comparatively sturdy long-term one. This is significant because every time someone has misattributed the words ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it’ (including a ‘Thought For The Day’ contributor just over a week ago, the Sikh, I think), I would wrack my brain to remember the true source. I could just about recall that her pen-name was Stephen G. Tallentyre, so it wasn’t hard to Google, but still, nice to be able to summon up the name effortlessly now.

For the record, Hall wrote those words in the 1930’s, long after Voltaire’s death, describing his attitude towards criticism of his work. I don’t think I’d defend any such right ‘to the death’, but then again, I’d be happy enough to let any criticism of me stand, on any forum I run. Sadly, I know those who can’t say the same.

Now, I’m going to assume my post on the ‘flotilla’ thread, where I questioned the comparison of the blockading of Gaza with a ‘blockade’ of the Falklands was deleted by Eddie, because it could only have been done out of pique. Did you delete last night’s post to this thread as well, Eddie? Is it a breach of the rules to be cynical about the police, or are you just singling me out for special treatment? The worst part of it is that it’s very obnoxious to remove a post without an explanation. That would be the minimum courtesy afforded to any member, unless the mod was aware on some level that he was violating his own ethical code, and didn’t want to leave the slightest trace of the act.

I generally copy comments to TiG before I send them, originally because I was concerned they might be deleted by the censor, but mostly now because a good portion of them fail to ‘take’. Am I going to have to start saving these as well? Because everybody else is too ‘cautious’ to compare you to Ian Mean, do you believe they’re not thinking it?

My post, from what I recall of it, went something like ‘In reality, the police will act on whatever they want to act on, and ignore everything else. Like the two police officers who left their car parked on double yellow lines and a cycle lane, opposite Barton Police Station and it’s car park. All because they couldn’t be bothered to cross the road.’ I sent it some time after midnight. Seems it upset you, Eddie, or else someone who’s pretty sure they know your mind as regards me. But you’re critical of the police. I’m critical of the police. You’re critical of TiG. I’m critical of TiG. Maybe, when I sometimes post things that still aren’t half as arsy as the things you post at me, or GFC, you think I’m trying to push against the limits of your patience, but I’m where I am because it’s where I am, not because I’m trying to go somewhere else. Since you have a bee in your bonnet about me, however, some pretty despicable characters in my ward get away with murder, which I’m not happy about. There’s no point in my even dignifying the ‘Barton & Tredworth’ board with posts because it was born out of skullduggery. Where are the people who asked for it? Or the Tuffley board? Or should that be the Quedgeley board? If I’d started a thread in the wrong forum, you’d have pounced, but others get the benefit of the doubt?

This could be a ‘long-winded’ suicide note, Eddie, if you believe in punishing posters for things they say outside the boards, but you make it pretty clear you will punish them with extreme prejudice (or at least a condescending put-down) for what they say on the boards. If you push people off the boards, don’t be surprised if they do start to push, off the boards.

Note: before I forget, I should add Eddie’s actual comment. I won’t change it back, just to make the point that site owners, if they are sufficiently anal, can take liberties with free speech(whatever that is), except that they, of course, don’t flag up their machinations. I see that my five day ‘suspension’ has become a ‘ban’. Wonder what I could have done to earn that, and how I will ever manage to fill my time now…

‘Well,well,well

‘It must be such a trial for you belonging to such an unpleasant community Joe. Just say the word and I will delete your acount and you will be troubled no more.

‘We will just have to carry on with all those others there who are too scared to support you.

‘Of course it wasn’t obnoxious of you to post this in public, it was just your saintly personality doing what it had to.’

I think you’ve deleted enough of mine, Eddie, and as it turns out, didn’t wait for my ‘word’ to delete my account (a bit of a classic example of not being able to take what you dish out?). That’s kind of the the problem, even though you’re not willing to admit it. Of course, if you could explain why you found it necessary to remove a comment that broke none of your precious rules, beside the unwritten one that states that any challenge to your bigoted views must not be allowed to stand, you could avoid all of what you will presumably view as the very obnoxious, and very public, excoriation of you and your boards, that is to come. And if you think such behaviour is not quite ‘the done thing, old chap’, all I can say is that I deal straight with people who deal straight with me, but when they try to shaft me, well, what do you really expect?

But chin up, at least people will flock to your boards (as ‘guests’), to try to guess what the fuss is about…

Additional note: I was going to post the addition above a few days ago, when I saw the word ‘Banned’ next to my details on the Gloucestershire Boards. Then I noticed that the log-in blurb still talked about a five day suspension, so I decided to wait and see if Eddie wouldn’t be a complete control freak and increase my ‘punishment’, just for showing him what it’s like when a site owner think he can edit his members posts without any discernable reason besides his own prejudices. He didn’t wait for the end of the five days to delete my account entirely, though, so now I have a free hand.

Happy birthday, Eddie, Hope you find time in the next year to get a clue and wake up to the Political Correctness brigade you’re surrounding yourself with in your misguided ire. I used to think PC was just another way of saying ‘being polite’, but even I’ve picked up on the fact that some use it for an agenda. You seem to have forgotten.

Took my wife to the hospital today, suffering greatly from a kidney infection. Leaving the hospital again about an hour later, at about 8:40pm we were followed out by the police car that had been parked in front of the emergency department (probably illegally but then, for the police, nothing is illegal) when we first arrived. We both stopped at the railway crossing, and it didn’t surprise me that the female police officer driving didn’t bother to turn off her engine. What did surprise me was that her male companion wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. Anyone who knows me at all knows I haven’t got much respect for the police these days. Perhaps some individual officers deserve it, but then, those individuals are going to to have to demonstrate as much, and that hasn’t happened yet. Plus, the cars just been through its MOT, so I wasn’t too worried about getting their attention. So I turned around in my seat and stretched out my own seatbelt, enough to make it clear what my meaning was. And by the gesticulations this whelp in the passenger seat then started to make, cupping his hands to his mouth and yanking an imaginary seatbelt, it was clear that my meaning was taken. Now, my wife was of the opinion that police officers don’t necessarily have to wear seatbelts. That may be so, although it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t, if they have a brain. It’s second nature to me now, I’d feel uncomfortable not wearing one, and as I’ve said before, people using handheld mobiles while driving seem more common these days. Police officers taking the piss out of members of the public, though, that’s something that probably shouldn’t happen, with this shiny new charter of theirs, but I have no problem at all believing does happen.

Here’s to the new, ‘caring’, police. You keep treating those scummy MOPs the way they deserve.