Saturday, August 15, 2009

Re: #welovetheNHS

Just to dispel a myth: this isn't a Labour initiative, this was started by Graham Linehan, an Irish-born comedy writer who is fed up with all three parties over here and felt that the British public's view of the NHS was being misrepresented by people who should know better over there. (the hilarious Stephen Hawking gaffe, for example) It's disappointing that most of the right-of-centre blogs haven't acknowledged this because in my mind it creates yet another falsehood in a struggle that has too many falsehoods already.

However for UK political purposes it has been hijacked by Labour, indeed it features on their front page. Linehan is also unhappy about this and has started a #makelabourapologiseforiraq trend in revenge. (Not the most pointed kind of attack he could make, admittedly.)

3 comments:

Mrs Ruth Ferez said...

Hi Tom, I did a blog post about you, you can visit it at http://vulgarisrepono.blogspot.com/

Mrs Ruth Ferez said...

Your last tweet to someone implied that I did not ask your consent to post about u on my site. You made your profile public and open to the public's opinion. I don't quote the subjects Twitter page and instead I just tell them that I posted about them so that they wont have to worry or be paranoid that allot of people they don't know will go onto their Twitter page after reading the post.

You also implied my prose was awful. Fine, I accept criticism. But that was all u said, u didn't explain why you thought it was awful.

Lastly, if my post upset you, or creeped you out then I am sorry. It was intended to put the things u said into a creative and in your case, amusing, context.

Tom said...

Yeah, I make the tweets public, but that doesn't mean I consent to my words being misappropriated, recontextualised and reassigned to me in the way you have done. (For example, in the lead paragraph, two entirely distinct remarks have been combined into one unfunny and nonsensical one.)

Honestly I was disturbed by it, so beyond that I don't think I could give any informed criticism. Still I understand why some people might enjoy what you do to their tweets. But just as many will find it creepy and disturbing from an effective stranger, particularly given you use our real names and photographs.

I would suggest if you continue to do this in future you ask for the subject's consent on all aspects beforehand. Personally it's not for me, but I shan't object to you leaving it up. However, I think you should remove the full name and picture of the lady who complained at the very least.

For what it's worth, you might appreciate this response of one of my friends:

"The twitter status is merly a pretext. The things she comes with afterwards are really great. Modern poetry, I suppose :)"