The Thamesmead Grump

THE THAMESMEAD GRUMP IS BACK 

Disclaimer - not the actual lawyer.
(dreamstime.com)

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?'

A couple of things have changed my mind. The first event happened earlier in the year and was what got me to thinking that my blog wasn't such a waste of time as I had thought.

Some years ago, a thoroughly disgraced former Bexley Councillor had been involved in a war of words and lawyers for some time with fellow local blogger Malcolm Knight of "Bexley is Bonkers" fame. He had decided to highlight some of the aforementioned Bexley Councillor's unlawful antics and she, being of a vindictive nature, decided, with the complicity of some Police Officers, to pursue him relentlessly. I decided that, as an attempt to divert some of the pressure and to add what support I could, I would reprint some of Malcolm Knight's reports along with some comments of my own.

Absolutely nothing came of this and I assumed that it was mainly because no-one was reading my blog and so didn't know what I had written.

How wrong I was. Earlier this year, and quite out of the blue, I received a letter from the ex-councillor's lawyer threatening me with all manner of dire consequences if I did not remove all of my posts relating to her and also demanding legal costs. This wouldn't have happened if she didn't think I was having an effect.

To be honest, I was of a mind to go with the "sue and be dammed" route, given that I was confident that she would lose. Even if she won, she would still be saddled with a large legal bill that she would never get back off me. (10 years of providing debt advice with the CAB taught me that it is difficult to recover money from someone who doesn't have any).

Anyway, the main thing it has taught me is that even a small effort in the fight against bullying and corruption can be effective.

The second event. Well, there wasn't a second event as such; rather a series of events involving numerous people contacting me and asking when I was going to start up again.

Here I am.

NUMPTY ALERT

Carrying on from where I mostly left off. Here is an example of why it's important to try and fact-check posts on social media before sharing or liking them: this is a perfect example.

The patient on the right is a lady called Margaret Keenan. You have probably already heard of her as she is the first person to be given the new Covid-19 vaccine outside of a trial. Here she is being given the vaccination by Nurse Mary Parsons who is a Matron at University Hospital, Coventry. The gentleman on the left is William (Bill) Shakespeare (that is his real name) who was the second person to receive the vaccine a short while later, also by the same nurse and at the same hospital.

Some idiot seems to have assumed that the William Shakespeare in the picture is the famous bard (1564 - 1616) and so, must have had his jab in Stratford-upon-Avon. 

The picture already comes with a warning on Facebook that it is "false information" so it must have already spread far and wide.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM

The number of spam emails I have been receiving of late would break the bank if they were money. They have reduced slightly in the last few days but they still come pouring in.

While the majority are Bitcoin scams, I have had a good selection of other opportunities to get rich with little or no effort.

Someone called "thank you" has reminded me hundreds of times in the last month that Amazon has a surprise for me. I am getting offers of free gift cards from every retailer under the Sun including several I've never heard of. "Congratulations" is keen to tell me about an unbeatable offer from Boots. (I wonder if Boots know). Hundreds of funeral plans. (Which is a bit worrying, do they know something I don't?) I even had a message from "#Huge Thighs" but I didn't open it.

You have to wonder why scammers persist in sending these things and the only reason is that they must work. What with 5G phone mast conspiracies, chemtrail alerts, Covid hoaxes and brain-dead Brexiters, I suppose there is no shortage of half-wits to be taken in.

I have been told that it is merely symptomatic of how highly though of I am on the world stage and that I should be grateful. 

Another reason why I decided to restart my blog (Thanks Jess).