In spite of the furore over Nick Griffin’s appearance on last night’s Question Time and the running commentary provided by almost everyone I know during the show’s broadcast, it’s been a quiet week on Twitter.
Quiet, that is, when you compare it to last week. There has been acres of web space devoted to the double whammy of Twitter-power in the previous 7 days.
First, there was the now infamous Twitter campaign to embarrass lawyers Carter Ruck and their client Trafigura to lift the quite bewildering gag order on reporting in the House Of Commons.
Being part of the constant Twitterthon on Tuesday felt rather special. It was like going on a student demo without leaving the comfort of your own living room. Populace action using the web in a way that had previously been unimaginable.
And the Twitter community had only just recovered, when the second huge ’scandal’ of the week erupted. Namely, the now equally infamous Daily Mail article, penned by Jan Moir about the ’strange, lonely and troubling death’ of Stephen Gately.
My partner read it very early on Friday morning and said, rather presciently, ‘That’s going to cause a bit of a stink’. Too right – a stench that Jan Moir herself and the Daily Mail could never have imagined.
In an even greater show of strength than the earlier Trafigura moment, the Twitterverse went into meltdown. The level of astonishment at the column’s content was quite something to behold.
When a friend of mine tweeted that Moir had quite rightly breached the PCC code and forwarded the message to Derren Brown, the die was cast. His retweet flooded Twitter and the PCC was deluged with complaints – in itself a delicious irony given the relentless Daily Mail campaign against Ross and Brand last year – a number that currently stands at around 25,000.
Every development was noted. When the article headline changed and the ads were removed, tweets went round everywhere. When Charlie Brooker published his comment on the whole sorry saga, a link to his article achieved almost equal saturation.
But all good things come to an end. At lunch the other day with some friends, we noted how quiet it had been on Twitter this week, in comparison to the fire and brimstone of the previous seven days.
And we all agreed that actually a quiet week was actually really important. A sense of order and decorum has returned. Changing the world, or at least a couple of small parts of it, takes energy and emotion that cannot be continuously maintained.
Twitter needs time to gather itself before the next assault on freedom of speech and the erosion of liberal values. Let us get our breath back!
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Clearly I haven’t written a blog post for a while for various personal reasons.
And while my blog will not drift into total disrepair, I will probably be limiting my updates to as and when, rather than regular.
Apologies if my wittering was really that entertaining that you feel lost without it, but that’s the way it is, I’m afraid.
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I was tagged by Tamzen for this one and it tickled my fancy early in the morning, so I’m going to go for it.
The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.
1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
I really had to think about this one – given that I switched jobs every couple of years, it’s not that surprising. I was working for a publishing company who no longer exist called Two-Can on a kids newspaper supplement called Young Telegraph for the Telegraph newspaper that also no longer exists.
I was living in St Albans in a small two-bedroomed terraced house with my ex-wife and things were, generally, OK – although I was earning a pittance.
2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?
a) Go and see Sex & The City tonight!
b) Buy some lovely organic pork chops for tomorrow night’s dinner
c) Call the bank
d) Email my sister
e) Catch up on last night’s football on the BBC iPlayer
3. Snacks I enjoy…
A crisp red apple, Mars or Snickers, peanuts, cheese on toast
4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire…
Move to live on the coast, set up my own organic food shop,
5. Places I have lived…
Chatham, Kent; Orpington, Kent; Oxted, Surrey; Sheffield; St Albans; London (mainly south)
6. Jobs I have had…
Sunday paper round, Sales and other assorted horticultural tasks in Knights Garden Centre, Conference and Editorial assistant at Horizon House, Sub-editor, Writer, Editor and various other assorted job titles at other magazine companies who have changed name or no longer exist, Production Editor and Features Editor at Emap, Freelance journalist, and now online bod first at AOL and now at goodtoknow.
7. Bloggers I am tagging who I will enjoy getting to know better…
Hmm, not sure how many other of my friends read this. Clair (although I’m sure you’re not that fussed about doing this), Dale, Cliff, Wendy maybe…
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Apologies if I’m waaaay behind the curve on this one, but thanks to David Hepworth on this week’s Word Magazine podcast for drawing my attention to the fantastic blog Stuff White People Like.
Basically taking the right royal piss out of white middle class Americans (but very, very relevant to us Brits, as well), it alights on subjects such as: White Problems: their children drink wine?, having black friends and (very pertinent this one) marathons.
Very, very funny and very, very accurate!
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