Tuesday 13 April 2010

The wonders of the modern world

So, Labour's desire to be hip and down with the cool kids re: this social networking into-blog phenomena, had the predictable response of stirring up a shit-storm.

The attractive Miss Gellard, paraded before the media to open Labour's election manifesto, had been plucked from her world of blogs and tweets to present some kind of young techno-credible image for Gordon's big clunking iron wank spanner.

I wonder if she would have been hand picked for this occasion if she fallen from the higher branches of the ugly tree? I somehow doubt it. Find that offensive, I assure you it's meant to be a criticism of the world and its image concious ways and nothing more.

Problem being, any words you fire into the public domain, are often preserved for a lot longer than you care to realise. It is quite possible to trawl through somebodies blog and find something that doesn't tally with what you're saying in the here and now. Forum posts are renowned for this. Something said to secure an advantage in a debate, will be squirrelled away by a wounded party to use against you at a later date. Seen it happen, been on the end of it.

The English language is also a wonderful thing that can be twisted into a million and one meanings if you work at it hard enough. I remember once picking through my terms of conditions of employment to contest a decision made by higher management that I had to deal with overspill from the call centre...Arguing the toss over the definitions of 'taking' or 'making' calls. In the end, they stopped arguing with me and I did not have a phone put on my desk. Naturally, the wounded parties would have retreated and simply decided I'd never be promoted. But screw them, I moved on.

So back to Miss Gellard. Well, predictably, a million and one probably Tory bloggers, poured their man hours into finding anything off kilter in her blog, and found it. Hasty denials are issued by the blogger, journalists wade in because they smell something unpleasant to highlight. Other journalists wade in to deflect criticism, and to pour scorn on those journalists who initially waded in to criticise them for their unwarranted criticism. Cue one nice big scat storm.

Don't you just love elections. I'd love to retreat to my bunker of ignorance deep within the mountain of common sense, and push the big red button.

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