The Thamesmead Grump

The Thamesmead Grump is back. 

I got rather fed up with my blog about a couple of years ago and stopped posting. It wasn't a deliberate decision, I just noticed after a while that I hadn't updated it for ages. The trouble is, I have no idea how many people were reading it. The stats provided by the site are completely meaningless as they don't filter out bots and such. To the extent that, even with no new posts since December 2018, I am still getting up to several hundred hits every day. That can't be right, and I thought, 'if I am only talking to myself, what's the point?'

Just recently though, something happened to make me change my mind. Back in early 2018, I posted a couple of articles about a disgraced former Bexley Councillor which featured her antics with the council's planning department and a serious false accusation of theft against some of her ex-employees that led to them being arrested and subsequently suing her for libel where she admitted that she had made the whole thing up. She had also been trying to make life difficult for a fellow blogger, Malcolm Knight of "Bexley is Bonkers" fame who was reporting on the case. One thing I can't abide is a bully and I thought I would add my small contribution in order to give her something else to aim at. Nothing happened at all which helped to reinforce my suspicion that my own blog was being read by no-one much.

Then, out of the blue, earlier this year, a letter arrived from her solicitor threatening me with all manner of dire consequences if I didn't remove my comments and claiming she was "a respected and successful businesswoman and local politician"; a comment that made me laugh so much, a little bit of wee came out. It also contained a long and bitter denouncement of poor old Malcolm who she still seems to have a bit of a bee in her bonnet about.

The fact that I can provoke such an extreme reaction tells me that my blog may be serving some purpose after all.

As to the comments about the dodgy councillor - I removed them. I was seriously tempted to call her bluff and see if she would really take it as far as the High Court. There would be little in the way of financial penalty for me in any case; I have no disposable income other than my pension and I have no savings or property. Even if I were to lose the case (unlikely), my opponent would be holding a very large bill that she wouldn't be able to recover. There was a time when I would have let the thing drag on just for the hell of it but I'm too old now and have other priorities; and anyway, it would be something of an abuse of the justice system and I'm not yet quite that cynical as to think that doesn't matter.

The Mickey Mouse Vote

In the United States, this term is used to describe a protest voter, being someone who doesn't approve of any of the official candidates in an election so writes a fictional name on the ballot paper, typically, Mickey Mouse. In the UK however, it has an altogether different meaning. It refers to someone who will always vote for the same political party every election, regardless of who the candidate is or what the parties policies may be; the reasoning being that, if the local party of your choice chose Mickey Mouse as their candidate, you would still vote for him.

In my view, the Mickey Mouse voter is the bane of democracy, equal in the level of damage they can do as the abstainer.

I was told recently that I should only ever vote Conservative. "But what if the Conservative candidate is a crook"? I say. "What if the parties policies are damaging, divisive, or so shambolically confusing that you don't have any real idea of what it is you are voting for"?

Well, the answer is "it doesn't matter". All that matters is that I vote Conservative, nothing else.

This philosophy is not restricted to Tory supporters. Some years ago, I worked with a woman who had been a lifelong Labour activist ever since her hippy days in the 1960s. In 1983, she supported Michael Foot, who was going to abolish our nuclear deterrent; in 2010 she supported Gordon Brown who had just agreed we should replace Trident at a cost of £65 Billion.

How can you ever support two such opposing positions at the same time? The answer is, you don't. She supported Labour because she supported Labour because she supported Labour, etc. The policy was irrelevant. 

The result of all of this is that, in most cases, general elections are decided in a small number of key constituencies where the voters who actually take the trouble to examine the policies and the candidates more thoroughly can decide the outcome. I'm not sure this is a good thing.

I'm constantly amazed by the sheer number of people who are willing to offer medical advice they are not qualified to give - exceeded only by the sheer number of people who are willing to accept that advice. 

Consider this - imagine if I were to offer a step by step set of instructions on how to dismantle and reassemble your faulty gas boiler, "Big Gas" will only try and sell you stuff you don't need and then try and install a "so-called" carbon monoxide detector whose function is to monitor your activities when you are at home; what if I were to tell you that if you were crossing the Atlantic on a passenger jet, you should ask a Hollywood actress to fly the plane (you can't trust pilots, what do they know?) Do you have any idea how many plane crashes there have been when there has been a pilot flying the plane? It's a lot, I don't mind telling you.

You wouldn't listen to me, would you? You would be a fool if you did. But if I were to start lecturing you on the progress of Covid-19 and how to deal with the epidemic, then I would be joining the only growth industry around at the moment. Never mind that I have not even the most basic grasp of medicine, of epidemiology or indeed, any scientific subject at all, I can spout any amount of complete nonsense with total impunity in the full knowledge that you will take the whole lot as Gospel.

I read a quote recently which said "don't believe anything that anyone tells you - unless it's a conspiracy theory.

Partly, this attitude stems from the 2016 EU Referendum and the constant belittling of the view of most experts that leaving would be a disaster for the country. It was Michael Gove who announced during one TV interview that "people are fed up with experts". Well, that particular approach to reasoned argument has come home to roost with a vengeance where now, you only seem to be able to offer an opinion on any subject on condition that you know absolutely nothing about it. COVID hoaxers, mask deniers, anti-vaxxers are now having a field day, wallowing in ignorance and superstition that is now the basis of any argument.