Children And LJ

On another post elsewhere, I noted that one individual has been putting forth feelers concerning standing for the LJ Advisory Board. His first policy, from the last time he stood for LJ Advisory Board election, is this:-

*Freedom. People need to be free to create content as they desire as long as it adheres to law. This freedom needs to be balanced with the ability to protect children. I am not against a system of journal flagging to achieve this but believe it needs to be improved and clearly blanket bans on searches don't work.

My response, both to him on his post, and here, is this:-

I'd point out that children are adequately protected these days by the provisions of the law. And yet children and adults under the law's fullest protection still suffer and die. You can't bandage up LJ posts in cotton wool. Someone might expose something horrific going on on LJ, only to have her whistle blowing efforts stifled by a cotton wool mentality.

Of far more concern is online bullying, and the harm done to children by their peers. Bullying is far, far more common than the statistical spikes of newspaper horror headlines involving interactions between children and adult paedophiles, and yet bullying goes unreported unless some kid is driven to suicide as a result of it.

LJ must retain an awareness of the possibility of posts with inappropriate content, but what is legal in some communities is illegal in others: a LJ post documenting a romance between two gay men is against the law in Tehran, and a similar post by an Italian teen describing a romance with another 14 y.o. at home (where, in Italy, the age of consent is 14) would raise huge red flags in the UK (legal age 16) and in many parts of the US (legal ages ranging from 16 to 18).

LJ cannot possibly hope to legislate for every possible instance everywhere ni the world, so beyond stating in the TOS that what you say may be considered illegal in the country from whence you are posting (so, e.g. I could not write a post about a romance between two 14 y.o. Italians in Italy anywhere, not even if I was sitting in an Italian cybercafe at the time) and drawing everybody's attention to it from time to time, I can't really agree with a mentality that proactively censors, "just in case."

I'd like to close this post with a simple slogan, namely:-

Life Is Risk.

And Now, Some Local News ...

Apparently, this news article is causing a stir among the local Puritans.

I'm going to have to object to the objectors in an email, calling for a cooler head to prevail.

"... in 1992 local businessman Bob Gray paid for a commemorative plaque to be fixed to the side of the building, which is now unoccupied." (emphases mine)

"Unoccupied" means "unwanted." We are living in a time of housing crisis, and yet this place is unwanted by anyone, hence "unoccupied." If they wanted to honour his memory, how come the whingers of the Crimean War Research Society haven't done anything about that?

The store owners, Fantasy House, are doing everything by the book. Their hope is that the planning committee comprise people who are currently living in this century, and not the 1800s.

Balaclava Ned may be turning in his grave, but just because the morals of the world are no longer those of the world between 1830 and 1927, it doesn't mean we should all be forced to climb into the grave beside him.

Balaclava Ned is not a hero. He is a survivor. The Charge of the Light Brigade is nowadays renowned as a catastrophic error of judgment, a disgusting calamity in a war of calamities that led to avoidable and senseless deaths. A time that ought to be remembered, not with pride and recitation of Tennyson's pompous bit of poetry, but with shame and horror, the same way as we remember the cockups that led to the 95 dead at Hillsborough, and the dead of the Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster. I don't hear anybody singing the glories of "The Night The Ferry Turned Over."

One final point. Nobody from that war is alive today: nobody. Corpses do not move around in their boxes, and ghosts do not hang around to haunt the living. The Crimean War Research Society are looking for an excuse to impose their Puritanical will upon a world which has grown up, a world in which raging, flailing Puritanism is already obsolete and dead on its feet, its brain unable to hear the signals from its body telling it that it is dead.

Come on, you've not given a damn about an empty house up till now. You're only railing against it being a bloody sex shop. If it was a pub or a betting shop, you'd have no objections - despite the fact that pubs and betting shops pose far greater risks to children.

So, to sum up their objections: "The world is no longer yours. It never was yours. Nobody needs your permission to do anything, if you have no legal claim to the property. If you don't own the building, and Fantasy House have made a legitimate claim for it, tough. It's their money. Your objections are hereby noted, and rejected. Now go home, live your life and stop trying to interfere with other people trying to live theirs."

I won't be putting this into the email, but you can get my point.

Edit: Here is, in fact, my email, in full:-

Dear Editor,

Re: Friday's front page news article (12/06) concerning the plans to open a sex shop.

I read that the property in question, supposedly a place of note and of historical interest to some, is lying unoccupied. That is hardly a fitting tribute to a man who survived a calamity of war prompted by a mistake that was outstandingly bad, even among all the other great calamities of that war.

The message is clear. If the property had been so important, why is it derelict and unoccupied right now? If those who care for the memory of a man who died in 1927 have wanted to cherish that memory so much, why have they been letting the building fall into ruin?

I perceive that the real objection here is to the nature of the shop, and not to its siting. Morals are being outraged and provoked to umbrage by the preposterous idea that someone should want to run a business whose products go against the grain of the protestors' morality. Ergo, the proprietors of the shop must seem to have no morality, hence the objection.

The flaw in this is clear. Not everyone has their mind stuck in the 1800s. Many people have moved on from that time, and we are living in the far more accepting and tolerant twenty-first century. A century which is currently suffering a global financial crisis where companies need to make money to survive, and people need to be employed to keep their homes.

If the company attempting to obtain planning permission is doing everything by the book and being straight and honest with the Council, and have a genuine intention to run an honest business from those premises, would there be any objections if the store in question was a newsagent's selling tobacco, a pub, a betting shop, a vendor of baby clothes, a florist's or a butcher's?

If the people attempting to set up the business pledge to maintain the building in good repair, and to honour its prestigious historical occupant, it would be a far more fitting tribute to that person than to leave the building to rot.

I just hope that the decisions will be made in July by people of clear heads, and that reason will prevail over sordid Puritanism.

Yours,


etc.

"Stupid, Thoughtless and Cruel."

Two news articles just caught my attention:-

'Stupid, thoughtless and cruel': Tearful Hazel Blears reveals her regrets at knifing Brown

and

I regret the timing of my resignation, says Hazel Blears

And what, precisely, did she think she was doing by wearing that piece of "rocking the boat" jewellery?

"She apologised for resigning on the eve of local and European elections and wearing a pointed brooch carrying the slogan 'Rocking the Boat' as she did so.

And she admitted her jibe 'YouTube if you want to' after Mr Brown's much-ridiculed video appearance detailing reforms of MPs' expenses weeks earlier was 'thoughtless and quite cruel'.

'I thought it was clever - it was too clever by half. It was flippant and I only realised later how hurtful it was,' she said."

I think the only proper response you can give to this diminutive little back stabber is this, and I hope Hazel's reading this:-

Go home.

Go home to your husband and his cable TV and his channel subscriptions that you'll have to pay for.

Go home, and think about all the constituents you represented as an MP, whom you have let down with an ill-timed, ill-judged protest.

Go home and think about trying to come to terms with an act which you performed, not for those who voted for you, but purely for yourself and for your own selfish, small, personal career.

People may like or loathe the current PM.

But I really loathe shitty little backstabbers.

Cicero Joke

So Cicero finds himself in London in 2009. He gets hungry wandering around the streets, so he wanders into the nearest restaurant - which happens to be a Wagamama's.

So he's looking over the menu, and he calls over a waiter.

"Excuse me," he says, "what are these?"

"Those, sir, are deep fried seafoods and vegetables."

"And what is this?"

"That, sir, is eel."

And Cicero cries out "Oh, tempura! Oh, morays!"




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...




I'll grab my coat. :D

Random News Snippets

Fox steals more than 100 shoes

( One hell of a fetish ... )

Ancient mass grave found on Olympics site

( Things can't get much worse for the London 2012 Olympic bid ... )

Residents fight burglars with flower power

( Behind the cut to see the flower they have chosen ... )

Writer's Block: Teen Time Machine

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Sod being a teen. My teen years were a nightmare. I've enjoyed a far more interesting and colourful adulthood, and I think my younger self would have been proud that I have never stopped wanting to adventure.

Nor have I ever stopped having opportunities to adventure.

I think I'd go back in time just a little bit, and perhaps tinker with the flow of established events in history to make pink shirts and flamboyant coloured clothing fashionable for straight and gay guys alike.

And then I'd dress in the exact opposite of my duty black clothes forever, content in being the shiniest, most extravagant bloody dandy this side of the Bifrost Bridge.

Until then, I'll stick to my blackbird clothes, thank you very much. ;)

Edit: My brother has told me that, should he go before I do, I should forgo my usual attire and indeed attend his funeral dressed in as bright and clashing an outfit as I can find. And not one scrap of black cloth to be found anywhere on my person on the day.

I daresay I shall make this a condition in my own will, too. Everyone in motley. Not one person in mourning garb, and you can wear all the black you like afterwards.

Just not during, thanks. :)

*ahem*

Funny pictures this way