Members of Parliament and their members. A Rant about Cock Pictures

So a Minister has sent a picture of his todger to a journalist who he believed to be a young female researcher. He is married with 5 children.

Is he sleazy? Yes. Was he wrong to do it? morally wrong? yes. Was he stupid to send a digital copy of his cock over t'interwebs to a woman? yes

Twitter seem to agree, among the humour and cock pictures are some angry tweets about his stupidity and lack of morals.

Already got someone on radio saying about Brooks Newmark it's time to 'draw a line under it'. I say add a moustache and a smiley face too
— P* (@98Apples) September 27, 2014

Pathetically naive and disgusting behaviour with ZERO respect for wife and kids #brooksnewmark
— Dominic Farrell (@DominicFarrell) September 27, 2014

And at first I agreed, after all what sort of creep, married with 5 kids sends pics of his shlong to young women online? but then I had a rethink, what if the MP was a young woman and the journalist had posed as a man? What if the entrapment was the other way round. And again I wasn't alone, lots of people though the entrapment was the disgusting part. That the newspaper and the journalist were to blame, after all, being sleazy is not a crime, betraying your wife, while pretty vile, is a person's own business.

Furious at this Brooks Newmark story. That is not journalism, that's entrapment. Just a disgusting and unnecessary attempt to hurt people
— Darling (@__Darling_) September 28, 2014

A male journo sent Brooks Newmark explicit pics of who knows who as part of a sting operation. Gutter stuff. Shouldn't be resigning issue.
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 28, 2014

And again I was swayed. I thought 'yes he's been a fool but so what. the newspaper was in the wrong even more'

But then my husband pointed out that we are in a country in a state of high alert for terrorism, we have parliament recalled for talks on war, and during all that we have MPs that think it's OK to send pictures of their John Thomas to female researchers on twitter because they believe on the strength of a few tweets that the woman is who she says she is.

@Nickking who sets up a fake profile & puts months of work into trying to see some ministerial cock? That's what I find staggering.
— Andy Smyth (@antisyzygy) September 28, 2014

Because a Minister needs to be more savvy. If a journalist can take the time to set up an account and create a false persona online just to get a willy picture, then what would others do to get things they need? Using a cock shot as blackmail would be a beginning but leading to what? secrets shared, information accidentally given or even given deliberately assuming that this new twitter friend was a researcher in the House of Commons so she must have clearance...it's all ok right? Because people online don't lie do they?!

So for me after all the outrage at the Sunday Mirror, and the laughter at Brooks Newmark's paisley pyjamas, after all the moral outrage on behalf of his family, I'm left thinking that the biggest question is why we allow MPs onto social media with so little training, they do not seem to understand the basic lesson that I teach my 14 year old.

"On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog"

Peter Steiner's cartoon, as published in The New Yorker

It seems to me that the government needs to ensure that MPs and all who work for the government and use social media need some proper security training. And that is the issue this has revealed.

A Utopia of Dystopias

utopia - 1 ( usually lowercase ) an ideal place or state.
            2 ( usually lowercase ) any visionary system of political or social perfection.

Dystopia - noun, a society characterised by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.

I can't help noticing the influx on the YA (young adult) reading scene of the 'dystopian novel'. It seemed to catch fire (see what I did there?) with The Hunger Games and has continued with the Divergent series. Both sagas have been made into films.

There are so many of these novels on the shelves now. Uglies, Matched, Gone, I'm sure you could name dozens. 

Of course dystopian novels are nothing new. There was 1984 and Brave New world. The brilliant Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep (filmed as Blade Runner) and Fahrenheit 451.

But lately two things have struck me. The first is that they are very firnly aimed at young adults rather than adults and the second that they seem to also be aimed at girls. Female leads and heroines have been popular for a long time, Mina Harker in Dracula, Julia in 1984 to name a couple. But suddenly it seems the female lead is back with rather a bang!

Suddenly the 'feisty' (I hate that word!) female is the norm, the woman that notices the rot in the supposed utopia, revealing the horror beneath. The young girl  that dares to kick out against the society that controls everyone including her.


Is this only a blip? Or are our authors (male and female) seeing the important role the female lead can have in society?


Or maybe, they just realise that it's still the girls that do the most reading...


What do you think?


(and are there any great Dystopian Novels I've missed, with excellent female leads?)

 

Benefit Street

I haven't watched Benefit Street. I do not intend to watch Benefit Street. This does not stop me having an opinion on Benefit Street.

One would have to be blind, deaf, living in another country and have no access to any news, to not know about the Channel 4 show Benefit Street.

I have not watched it because the title tells me all I care to know. It cries 'let us be disparaging of those scroungers that lay around all day living on benefits'.

And it seems from the discussions on Radio 4 and elsewhere that I'm not far wrong. Sold to those that 'star' in it as a 'show about community spirit', it appears to be far from that.

I feel sad that the people in the show were so used and so naive to let it happen.

Why did they not guess that a TV show would have an agenda? Why did they not realise that it is negativity that the world loves? Why did they not think to get something in writing as to what would be the tone of the show? Why was the street identified so that now people (and children!) that live there are being bullied?

I'm disgusted that while thousands condemn the show, a huge number of people watch and believe what they see. Disgusted that many who don't believe it, watch it anyway, (adding to the viewing figures) and then mutter their disgust after each episode.

I don't suggest for one moment that all people everywhere are saints. But I do suggest that skewing results is an unkind and deeply cynical thing to do.

I await with some glee a "Politician Street" looking into the lives of a more upper class of 'benefit' claimant. But I'm not holding my breath.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. (A Rant)

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. 

We’ve all been there and done that, we’ve all looked at something and seen an instant fix, a way out of a problem that was oh so simple, and then at the end of the idea implementation or even halfway through we realise there were a thousand and one things we hadn’t quite considered.

 The cane toads in Australia have always been one of my favourite;’ learning the hard way’ lessons. In case you have never heard of it there is more here but in brief, there were lots of bugs that needed removal to save plants, so some predators (the cane toads) were brought in, what a fine idea! No pesticides, all natural, perfect. Except it wasn’t, the cane toads are poisonous and generally nasty, they had no predators of their own so they ran amok (a rather fine image there, toads running amok, like something from a B grade horror movie) and now the problem is not bugs but cane toads. And of course rabbits are not native to Australia …. 

Power is cheap

Once upon a time an elf company sold a magic product. They sold it to 100 people, each person had a chat about what they wanted and paid what the elves suggested. They were all very happy with what they paid and it suited them.

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

 
50 people paid £1000 a month for the ongoing use of the magic. 50 people paid £100 a month but the elves were happy, they needed £55000 to make a profit.

Then a wizard said it was unfair, everyone should get the cheap price. So he cast a spell enforcing the cheapest price for everyone.

Now the company only made £10000 a month! Disaster!, quickly the company elves recalculated the prices,if everyone was on the cheapest price, then they needed to raise it!

£55000 divided by 100 was £550,so they made that the new cheapest price and the higher price £10000. Now everyone paid £550

50 people were very happy, but the other 50 were very, very sad.

The wizard was very happy indeed. But no one had ever liked the wizard anyway.

The End