The British people will reap what they sow

Let's face facts, British politics is pretty low right now.  Apart from nothing else, the whole thing is nothing more than a reality TV show, a popularity contest.

Looking back to the dark days of the EU Referendum, which feels like years ago now, the whole debate was a shambles.  Both sides were a joke.

They both used the argument of "this is what Hitler would have wanted and therefore you should vote opposite to that".  Adolf Hitler wanting something to happen, as bad as he was, isn't a prerequisite for us wanting the opposite.

Hitler liked sun-shine, mountains, Wagner, dogs, stories about cowboys and indians along with the laughter and smiles of children.  Does Hitler liking these things make anyone who also liked them a bad person?

He also had a distinct hatred of jews, black people, disabled people, homosexuals, gypsies.... anyone that didn't fit into his image of how the ideal person should look and behave.  Ironically this included the man himself but that's another story.

Everyone knows Hitler is bad, wanting the same thing as him is bad news, right?

Hitler's deep rooted hatred of these things makes him a bad person.  Anyone else that has a hatred for those things is also bad, not because Hitler wanted them but because they are bad in themself.

That's what they tried to make us think.  The dumbed down version of politics now is use this, relate it to this and it equals bad.

This worked incredibly well for the Leave campaign.  Being in the EU means we have to do this, this and this, therefore it's bad news and we should leave.

The main reason given was immigration.  The big bad word.  It's a divisive word.  If you're pro-immigration then you're a "looney lefty", if you're anti-immigration you're a far right fascist. See, assign this to this and you get this.

In actual fact somewhere in the middle is true.

He who wins the immigration debate wins the vote.

Let's take a look at this.  It's a real concern for many people, jobs are under threat (figures mean nothing, especially when those figures are skewed by zero hour contracts, what are the people on the street feeling?)  School places are in high demand, getting yourself a local GP or dentist is becoming harder and harder.  These places are low as it is, if all you hear is that 350 million immigrants are ready to come from the EU to flood your town aren't you going to be worried?

It's not about race or nationality, if 350 million British people lived in some other country but we had a vote in the same circumstances to allow them back in how would you vote?

Although I must admit I do find it hard how anyone who voted to leave the EU can then go on to have five kids.  What if every couple had five kids?  Worrying, no?

This debate then gets hijacked by far right nationalist groups like Britain First who add in things like traditional British values are being wiped away and then anyone who mentions they're concerned with immigration, for the previous reasons like jobs etc, and they then get wrongly labelled racist.

There is more to it than just that but I don't want to get bogged down on a blog about immigration, I'm just trying to point out it's not as simple as anti-immigration means racist and if you're pro-immigration you're a "looney lefty".

The other main story within British politics this summer is Jeremy Corbyn.  This guy really divides opinion.  Politics used to be about Labour vs Conservative but now it's about traditional socialist labour vs new labour vs centralist conservatism vs right wing light conservatism vs UKIP.  Chuck in the Lib Dems, Plaid and the SNP and we could soon find ourselves needing an FA Cup style knock-out competition to determine whom we should have in power.

Labour is so divided right now, it's effectively five parties.

It was a genius masterstroke by Margret Thatcher who said "Tony Blair was my greatest creation", he was her gift to us.

New Labour killed Labour.  The Scots and the Welsh were turned off by his politics so their national parties rose to popularity.  Losing that much needed support killed any chance of  Labour winning the last election.

Who else did well in that election, UKIP, that's who.  New Labour refused to address the immigration problem.  Traditional Labour voters abandoned generations of voting Labour because they saw UKIP addressing that problem.

Any Labour member will know that the membership card contains the word socialist.  Tony Blair just isn't a socialist.  If you want to argue that point with me then you may as well be sitting in front of me trying to argue the Earth is flat (these people are on the rise), I'll listen to you but it's only to humour you because I'm polite.

Because of this many socialists abandoned the Labour Party to join smaller fringe parties, mainly the Greens.

Last week Jeremy Corbyn travelled from London to Newcastle via Virgin Rail.  A young journalist who is doing volunteer PR work for Corbyn's team wanted to do a piece on him for the Guardian.

The point was to talk about the railways and how they're underfunded and in what a poor state they're in under private ownership.

When the article was published on the Guardian's website it contained a short video of Corbyn stating that the train was "ram packed" and there were not enough seats available for everyone.

However yesterday Virgin Rail released CCTV footage showing Corbyn walking through the train walking past empty seats.

Now at no point does Corbyn say that there were "no seats" for him to sit on.  Some will dispute this of course, instead of doing that just provide the proof.

What he does say is that the train was "ram-packed". Now could it be that Corbyn, a man of integrity decided to find a space on the train and wait to see, after everyone else had gotten on, where he, along with his team (<important) could sit?

So, Corbyn boards the train and instead of clambering like an animal to find himself a seat he instead moves through the train, passing empty seats, to find a space on the train, allowing everyone else to board with the intention being that he will take an empty seat if/when available.

Now, important bit from earlier comes in here.  He wouldn't just want one seat for himself, he'll want to sit with his team.  It has later come out that he wanted to sit with his wife, the bastard!

So why does Corbyn make the point of not taking any old seat and then moan about there being "no seats" (he never said that) available to him?

I cant find it now and while its not necessarily important that I do some will say it is but I'm sure I heard him say something along the lines of "I'm a civil servant, is it fair that tax payers pay for me to have a seat while they have to stand?"

That would explain him passing through the empty seats.  He's happy to let the seats go spare to everyone else and then if he can find one for himself after everyone else has one then he will.

45 minutes after boarding the train a seat became available. 

Worst case scenario is that Corbyn lied.  And what?  It's not as if he was trying to claim money back, he was highlighting the fact that there weren't enough seats for everyone.

I want the leader of the opposition pointing that out.

He was pointing out the poor state of our railways, or are they fantastic?

How well would that go down if there was footage of others standing or sitting on the floor while Corbyn is filmed in a seat saying there aren't enough seats?

The issue is not "Corbyn couldn't find an empty seat" something that he never said, it was that the train was "ram packed".  This is something that others, who were on the same train, have claimed.

I want CCTV footage of say ten minutes into the journey.  I assume Virgin Rail have that?  I want CCTV footage of each carriage at exactly the same time.  Then we can count how many seats there were free.

Yesterday Channel 4 news reported that Health Minister Jeremy Hunt lied about having enough money for a '7-day NHS'.  Oh, what's that, you didn't hear about it?  Is that because we're arguing about train seats?

Today Corbyn had a press conference talking about the NHS, what's on the news?  That he reacted "angrily" to a question about Train Gate.

Did you know that last week Richard Branson's health private health company, Virgin Health, gained ownership of yet another health trust.  Our NHS slowly being sold away bit by bit.  I know it's boring, it's not as cut and dried or easy to digest and get your head around as could Corbyn have had a seat or not but I think it's far more important, no?

British politics is just a popularity contest nowadays.  Give it to me in bite sizes, I don't want anything too big or too much for me to have to care about.  I want something easy to tackle, I want something that is easy for me to choose the side of.  Yes, I don't want the Tories selling off our health service but I'd rather talk about Corbyn's train seat as I don't like him.

You'll care when it's too late for you to care.  It might not even be in your lifetime but it will happen.

When you find yourself having a poor run of luck, being made redundant by your company and you can't get a GP appointment.  Not because of immigrants, which by the way will still be paddled out as being the reason your luck is so bad, but because you can't afford it as Virgin Health Care is too expensive for you to pay for.

New Year Challenge

New Year is scary, we set ourselves ridiculously unobtainable goals that we can never achieve.  We're all like "I'm going to go to the gym and get fit" or "I'm going to write that book" or how about "I'm going to relocate to another country", what idiot would do that one!?

We call them New Years Resolutions, as if the start of January is going to be different to the start of any other month, or even this year is going to be different to any other year, when we subscribed to the gym membership.

I'm not criticising, don't worry.  I'm as guilty at this as anyone. I'm always setting myself a target I know I can't achieve, no more tweeting Piers Morgan or David Cameron offensive tweets, trust me, I'll never be able to stop, but this year I thought "what if I did something different?".

I've still got my usual "NY ressies", 'keep a diary'?  Haha, as if!  'Lead by example', me!?  No chance!

Those will come down with the Christmas decs in early Jan but what I will try and achieve is one year, twelve months, one challenge every month.  I'm insane.  It's only 31 days max, if I can't do this then what hope have I got of changing anything for good?

This month, January - Give up social networking.  I know, breathing would have been an easier choice.

I can sense that you can see a flaw with this, I'm blogging, that's a form of social networking but bear with me.

I'm doing these challenges as a form of bettering myself, I use Facebook and Twitter too much to the extent that they become a deterrent or a drug so those are going to be my "cold turkey" for the month of January.

It should be interesting.  There are some positives to come from my social network usage, as a writer and a self proclaimed occasionally funny guy I do come up with something witty from time to time.

Through my Twitter account I just ordered my "Tweet Archive*" that shows me my entire tweet history.  I'm reading back through them and I'm in stitches, ah the memories.

So me not social networking for a month could have a negative affect on this.  What I can do instead is keep a note of this and through that I may be able to work on that diary I was talking about.  So I still get the creative experience which is good.

I currently have a challenge for each month of the year, I'm not letting you know what they are until the month begins, but I'm interested if anyone has any ideas, get in touch.

Leave a comment below, contact me through Facebook or Twitter, I'll read it in February or email me at pauljarvis5001@hotmail.com

What happens if I fail?  Nothing, I log that I failed, I get back up and I carry on.

If, for example I get to January the 10th and I decide that I can't survive without looking at Twitter and then I do take a peek then I'm not going to call the whole thing off.

I'll make that part of the story and carry on.  If I decide that I can't log on to Twitter at least once a day well then so be it, all part of the story.

I'm not doing this for anyone else, I'm doing it for the betterment of myself.  I'm not doing it for starving African kids who couldn't give a toss if I logged into Twitter or not.

I'm also not going to lie, if I do it I do it, if I don't then who cares.  That'd be like playing FIFA on the Playstation, losing and then turning it off until you win.

I obviously can't share this blog very much so I'd appreciate any help on that, especially this month.

You can still message me, I don't need to log into to Facebook to view my messages.

I guess what I'm getting at is it's not about communication or even networking, it's about my crave for information, I'm constantly looking for updates or information but this month I'm cutting that out.

I can still use Instagram, for posting pictures, and I can still use Timehop, which shows you your social network history from the day your looking at it.  From these two apps I can share them on both Facebook and Twitter so you may see something from me pop up from time to time.

Why am I still using Timehop and Instagram?  Because I'm trying to cut out the drug of which I'm reliant, I'm not reliant on Instagram or Timehop.

What will I do instead, I shall imagine Wikipedia's shares will increase, that's a joke, Wikipedia doesn't have shares.  I love reading Wikipedia.

I'll write more, bounce ideas around in my own head and keep a log/journal of them.

I may even go outside, who knows?

*To get you Tweet Archive, log into your Twitter account on a computer, click on your profile badge on the top right hand of the screen, this brings up a menu, click 'Settings' and when in the next screen click Request Archive', or words to that affect.  Imagine David Cameron doing this, it'd be like reading a fictional novel.

11 September 1714

The meaning of this date around the world is one of dread and terror.  Whenever someone mentions this date as in "Oh, we meeting for a drink on the 11th of September?" we instantly think of that awful day in 2001.  It'll no longer be just another day.

In Barcelona it is a day that means something quite different.  The events of that day over 300 years ago are remembered by the Catalan people in a show of defiance.

It began with the Spanish War Of Succession, a major European Conflict spanning 1701-1714.  It started with the death of Charles II, the last Hapsburg King of Spain whose Empire spanned the globe.

Charles' choice of heir to his throne was Phillip V of Spain but it was not without facing resistance from other nations throughout Europe.

Philip was favoured by the Bourbon king of France, Louis the XIV, his Grandfather, who had his own aspirations for dominance.

Game of Thrones enough for you yet?

A number of other nations were against this alliance, among them were England and Scotland who from 1707 formed the United Kingdom, The Austrian Empire, The Netherlands, Portugal, the Spanish loyal to Charles and a little country to the North East of the Iberian peninsula called Catalonia.

With the city of Barcelona laying at it's heart, it enjoyed good Mediterranean trade to the East; the mountainous region with its rolling hillsides also saw the threat of a France/Spain alliance.

In 1701 these countries signed an alliance at The Hague in the Netherlands before declaring war on France and Spain

After 13 years of war the British and the Dutch made peace with Spain and France in the Treaty of Utrecht, leaving Catalonia to fight on alone.

With growing strength the Spanish armies moved further and further inwards of Catalonia until they were eventually surrounding the capital City of Barcelona.

14 months went by until the morning of 11th of September 1714 when the Spanish invaded the city and butchered all 10,000 Catalan troops inside.

Catalonia was no longer separate from Spain.

Catalan nationalism has been on the rise over recent years.

Since 2012 it's been seen as a popular day of protest in support of Catalonia becoming a separate state from Spain once more.  Hundreds of thousands of people have made their way on to the streets, carrying their Senyeras and Independence flags.

However, the most remarkable protest was in 2013 when a 300 mile human chain, known as the Catalan Way was created from the Catalan border with France at Le Perthus in the North, all the way to the southern tip of Catalonia, Alcanar.  It was said to involve 1.3million people.

What makes this year so special is that in just sixteen days Catalans go to the polls to decide their Independence.

I say special. This has happened before. In 2012, there was overwhelming support for independence with around 80% voting for, I believe that those who didn't vote 'yes' voted instead for Catalonia to become a recognised state within Spain.  This vote was not recognised by Spain.

There now appears to be a tug of war in the Catalan independence debate between the Catalan Parliament.  I think it'll happen eventually but only in baby steps.  Catalonia now seems to be saying they want to set up things like their own government department and even an Army.

If they're only talking about doing that now then who knows how far away independence is?  Someone I spoke to said that it could be as little as 18 months away.

Whilst I doubt that I really hope it happens.  Catalonia is not Spain. That's a popular message graffitied on walls.  They're an entirely different people.  Imagine if Germany and Poland were still a joint nation, same thing here.

Pep Guardiola, the former Barcelona player and treble-winning coach, is a vehement supporter of independence saying that he would have played for The Catalan national team if he had been given the chance.  Staying in the world of football, the whole debate heated up this week with Barca central defender Gerrard Pique said to have sent a mischievous tweet gloating over a Real Madrid playing friend at his team's treble success last season.

The tweet was blown out of proportion by the media and Pique called a press conference yesterday explaining his position.  The rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona is only intensified by the independence debate.  Barca are staunch supporters of Catalan Nationalism and events in support of Independence are held at the Camp Nou.

One thing that is offered up within the debate is what would happen to FC Barcelona?  Would they continue to play in Spain's La Liga?  

Personally I can't see any reason why not.  Barcelona is La Liga and vice versa.  It's this question that helps define the case for Independence.  FC Barcelona and La Liga are intwined within each other's cultures.  Catalonia and Spain are not.  Oh and Real Madrid are in town on Saturday playing away at Espanyol.  

The big question in all this of course is will Catalonia get it's independence before they finish the Segreda Familia?

The race is on....

OUTRAGE!! Read all about it!

We all saw it etc...

What do you reckon is worse? 

Scenario A) Katie Hopkins, in her article 'Rescue Boats, I'd use Gunships To Stop Migrants', on the 17th of April, perhaps prophetically, that she doesn't care about bodies floating in the water...

or

Scenario B) Using the image of a young child's body floating in the water to sell newspapers?

The Sun newspaper did both.

Disaster porn sells, we learnt this on September 11th 2001 and then remember Roaul Moat? 

 

I vividy remember that Friday evening.  Everyone was on Facebook, including me, commenting while glued to either Sky News or the BBC News 24.

When does the important task of news broadcasting become the less important task of collecting profit?

If you only got your news from the Sun then you'd think the war in Syria started last week, not three years ago.

It's a shame that it took the death of young Aylan Kurdi before the British press thought it was important to act.  

The Sun's headline on Thursday was "Mr Cameron, summer is over ...now deal with the biggest crisis facing Europe since WW2" and it was accompanied by two pictures.  The one on the left, a baby born in a Hungarian train station on Wednesday and on the right a picture of a police? officer carrying young Aylan's limp, lifeless body.

On Friday they ran a 'crisis campaign' with the headline "For Aylan", detailng 'YOU can aid kids like tragic tot'.

On Saturday, this was followed by self-congratulation of helping raise £350,000 for the 'Help the Children's' campaign along with a smiling picture of Aylan in happier times.  This was accompanied by the 'For Aylan' article.  I'm sure his suffering family are delighted that his picture is being used as a pawn in a propaganda war.

And you just know they thought "I wonder if he had a mobile...... Oh damn, we don't do that anymore!"

I was wondering what news they were trying to bury? 

Then, last night.....  News came out that David Cameron wants to have another vote to bomb Syria.

This is a joke, right?  

This will need to go through a vote in Parliament; the last time that happened was in 2013. Cameron was all for dropping bombs on Syria but it didn't make the cut.

So, I'm thinking to myself "Why the sudden outrage from the Tories right wing press?Where have they been for the last three years of the Syrian war? And why now?!"

Beautifully done.  

First you have to create a fear of migrants, make people reluctant to take "them" in.  "Swarm of migrants".  Then you get the press to tell every that we need to start taking "them" in.

But then there's going to be opposition for this from the far right and the questions are asked, "How many more will we have to take?"

It's a worry, I know.  Too many migrants, we're full up.  There's six inches of space on the Isle of Wight but that'll soon be gone.

We can't leave the migrants to die, not now that a three year old boy has died in such distressing circumstances. We didn't realise people were dying, we just thought they were playing kiss-chase around Europe.

So this is the problem; we can't leave them to die. We need to take in as many as we can but once we're full, we're full. But, we'll be full up and people will still be dying. 

 

What to do?

 

The only thing to do is to bomb Syria.

How long until someone suggests that ISIS are a few months away from getting their hands on WMD, I wonder?

And, that's not all.  The Guardian today is running a story that Cameron 'hinted at' (it's noncommittal so that Cameron doesn't need to confirm or deny anything) that he might abandon the vote to bomb Syria if Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leader race.  A last ditched attempt to prevent people from voting Corbyn.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph is running a story that Corbyn will block help going to Syria.

We can't have someone opposing government austerity measures, now can we?

Don't buy the press, read me instead.  I'll tell you what's REALLY going on.

The Ugly Subject Of Two People Wanting To Do Something Together That You Don't Like Despite It Not Affecting You In Any Way

So we've got this American, what is she, a clerk? Who is refusing to marry homosexual couples in her courthouse in the states.  I believe it's in the state of Kentucky, famous for fried chicken and the derby.

Usually this would be me having a rant about why the whole of the UK is showing double standards because it doesn't want to go to war with the states over their religious extremism but we do when Muslims do it.  It's the pork thing, isn't it?  Pork makes all the difference.

So yeah basically she's a devout Christian and because of that she feels she can't encourage the act of love between same sex couples.  Nothing wrong with that, it's an opinion and remember people just because someone's opinion offends someone else doesn't mean they're not entitled to that opinion.

I wasn't sure what was totally going on here, I mean I wasn't sure if she was employed by the American government, even at local level, or if she was somehow freelance.  I used to work for the Ministry of Justice in the UK. In that court I think we sometimes had judges who were in some way outsourced to us and sometimes judges could "pick and choose" which cases they heard, in fact I think even our permanent judges did that.

It was family law so I'd be interested to know if we ever had a judge that had a similar view to our little homophobic friend, Kim Davis (I think it's time to introduce her name in the article) and if that judge decided that they didn't want to rubber stamp the adoption of a child by a gay couple.  Judges never gave a reason why they wanted to not hear a case.

So yeah basically I wasn't sure what was happening so I decided to do a bit of research/ask someone on Facebook.  I got some good responses that gave me the details.

Basically she is an elected official, by refusing to do this she can be impeached.  If the equivalent of this were happening in the UK and the Tories weren't quick enough to cover it up with another comical story about Jeremy Clarkson helping disabled kids then she'd lose her job and they'd get her a seat in the House of Lords. Sadly there is no such house in the US, everyone has to be elected through some silly outdated system called "democracy".

This reminded me, as I'm sure it did you too, of two similar cases in the last few years in the UK.

One was a bed and breakfast and the other was a bakery.  In both cases they were small business owners and they refused to serve homosexual people due to their prehistoric religious beliefs.

The issue wasn't so much the fact that the customers were homosexual, more to do with the fact that, in the case of the B&B the couple wanted to stay in the same bed, (I mean, the shame) and by allowing them to do this under their roof the B&B owner would be betraying the word of God by endorsing the act of sodomy.

In a similar vein with the bakers, the homosexual couple, I believe wanted a cake showing and endorsing their love for each other.  Disgusting, two people who love each other wanting to share that love with others, what is the world coming to!?

I reckon if one person from each of the two couples went to the respective businesses to use their services and the businesses knew that each of them was gay I doubt they would have been refused service, their view was just that they didn't want to be seen endorsing that view.  Other people doing something with another person that doesn't effect you in anyway can be hard, I admit.

Someone on Facebook made an excellent point that this is exactly the same as if they didn't want to serve Irish or Chinese people and I agree, this is no different than saying you don't want to serve Chinese or Irish people but I really do believe if that's the person's stance, they don't want to serve Irish, Chinese or gay people in their own company then that's up to them, seriously.

They do not share my views, I love everyone, I want to travel everywhere and experience as many different cultures as I can.  I'd happily live six months to a couple of years with Berbers in Morocco, Buddhists monks in Tibet, a Muslim household in Iran and I'd live the way they live, got no issue with that.

By the same token if someone wanted to come to "my country" to live and didn't want to integrate with the culture of "my country" that's okay too.  I'm happy to let people just do what they want.

Let's let people be judged by their opinions.  The shit will sink to the bottom and the good will raise.  Those who endorse equal opportunities to everyone will become pillars of the community and those that hold secular opinions won't get anywhere and will begin to wonder if they're the ones in the wrong.

In the Kim Davis case she is required by law to carry out her orders to serve the public, community, society....  She doesn't have the right to say "but my opinion is this..." That's cute, now do your job. 

She should have to face legal proceedings if she continues with this stance and then she'll lose her job and unfortunately for her due to the publicity this story has received she'll find it difficult to get another one.  Sadly not impossible but difficult.

At the root of this is obviously religious beliefs.  The words of Gods, ie religious scriptures, were written thousands of years ago*.  It could have been that the words of God were misinterpreted?

*In the case of Jedi those words were written a long time ago in a galaxy far far way.  We're not sure how long nor how far but I think one can assume that they're even more to interpretation.

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Facebook, Twitter and Politics (Good news contained within)

As you'd know if you were my friend on Facebook, follow me on Twitter or have ever met me in person I'm very politically minded. I can't help this, nor should I feel the need to apologise.

I remember about ten years ago when I was first getting interested in politics.  I wanted to know who I should be voting for, nothing anyone was saying made much sense to me, I wanted to know who I should be voting for.  I spoke to a colleague about it and she recommended that I go and research the three main parties to find out what they stood for.

That research took a long time and over the course of ten years I found out that I am a socialist.  Obviously then I should be voting Labour, but no, wait! Jeremy Corbyn is a socialist and yet he is being attacked by fellow Labour people.

What I like about the Labour Leadership Election is that, for some reason, Tories are getting involved in "who they would like" as Labour Leader and why.  Err, you're not supposed to like it, it's Labour, not your party.

The way the Labour Party is currently undergoing conditioning reminds me of how Abraham Lincoln must be turning in his grave at the current state of his Republican Party.

I don't understand why we have to campaign to save or even help the week and the vulnerable.  The statistics of the people that have died after having their benefits cut are appalling, why aren't people on the streets rioting?

And people wonder why I'm depressed?

I'm starting to think this is a cycle, it makes me depressed so I share it and that makes me depressed.

On Monday I went on a bit of a sharing splurge, I shared loads of political stuff and I think this didn't help me.  What's more I know a load of people have stopped following me, not necessarily unfriended me, just stopped following the stuff I post.  While I don't need the vanity of having people agree and I'm certainly not going to post something because someone else doesn't like it although I am going to stop sharing the political stuff.

On an anti UKIP page I follow some girl is forever sharing stuff displaying, what she believes, to be racist posts.  I often look at that and I think "is this your life?"  Although she potentially has the moral high ground what's the point?  It's dedicating your entire life to the pointless task of always being right, what's the point of that, you're not winning any friends.

I get frustrated by social injustice, some people think I'm jealous, no, just frustrated.  If I were jealous of rich people wouldn't I be jealous of all rich people? What's more I follow a load of gambling pages on Facebook and Twitter, whenever I see a big win off like £5 I always offer my congratulations.  I believe in karma, be nice to the universe and it'll be nice to you.

People think they've worked me out and know what I think.  They make assumptions based on this and then form ill informed opinions.

I know some people feel opinionated about this, feel free to get in touch, privately or publicly.

But yes, the good news is I won't be sharing political news on Facebook anymore!  Yay...

Opinions

I find it hard allowing other people to have an opinion on me that I neither agree with or can control.  I know, right?  I'm sharing all my hopes and fears with the world, what do I expect?  What's more I want to be successful at something that, just by definition of me doing it, will arouse opinions from others.

If I do go on to be a successful writer, even if I'm the best writer ever, I'll have people that won't like what I write and will form an opinion on it, whether I like it or not and some of those opinions are going to be nasty.  

I don't do well with criticism, I don't do too well with praise either, if I'm honest.  I reckon I can put in the hard craft to create a piece of work that I'm proud of and willing to share but I think taking criticism from others when it's the finished polished article is what I'll find difficult.  Hopefully by then I'll be paid loads of cash and it won't matter but what if I'm not paid a lot and I still get criticism?

I'm in between having made the decision to go for it and having made it, criticism is coming, if I can take on the constructive criticism and ignore the negative nasty comments for long enough then I'll be at stage where it won't matter.

This fear of criticism has prevented me from sharing stuff with others before.  On my other blog, the satirical news blog, I've had loads of stories that I've written but just never shared through fear of someone saying something that I can't control. Their opinion is slightly skewed and is not taking everything into consideration.

The trouble is anyone can have an opinion on anything, even if you haven't had all the facts.  Whose got an opinion on how the universe was created?  Most of us have, were you there? Oh....

People think that having a majority in a debate makes them right.  I don't care if I'm in the only one that holds a particular opinion, likes a particular film, believes a particular theory it's still my opinion and what is right is that we all get the chance to have our own opinions, whether they be right or wrong.

Have your opinion on me, I might find it hard to take at first but eventually I'll get over it.