Can we leave them alone now?

I'm not going to go into the playing into the hands of extremism, or even the nastiness that is religion inspired violence. Enough have already done so.

But I will say this:

A man, a father, a husband, a soldier, died this week. In the most hideous circumstances. Poor bloke. And may the perpetrators come to understand and regret what they did.

That's all we need to know about Lee Rigby. He was in the wrong place, doing the wrong job, at the wrong time.

We don't need to see the latest pictures of him alive, at his local kebab shop. We don't need to know about the problems he had, or didn't have, with his wife. We don't need to know what the ex girlfriends of his killers have to say about anything. We don't need the intimate details of the lives of either the victim or the killers.

What we need is to know, BRIEFLY, what happened. We need to know if there is further risk to soldiers or civilians on the streets of London or elsewhere. And that's it.

We don't need extremists to get the upper hand. We don't need to feed the far right hatred, or the Islamist hatred.
We don't need hushed voiced reporters explaining the grief of the family of the victim.

We are intelligent viewers. We already hate the killers, we already empathise with the victim's family. Let his family grieve in peace. They don't need us.

Let's look at the real problems now. Could this have been prevented? Could the thousands of people on MI5 radar be watched 24/7? No. Could the armed police have got there earlier? No.

I hate to agree with the PM. I really REALLY do. But let's not have a knee jerk reaction. Calls for the death penalty, for extradition of anyone who isn't 100% British, are just ridiculous. The knuckle draggers are out in force.

Let's not feed them, like we don't want to feed the very very few extreme Islamists.

I hate also to quote the most trite of popular phrases:

Keep calm and carry on.

And to the press: leave the individuals alone. We do not need to know about their past. We are not emotional vampires. Are we?

A rant about bums and bumps

Must be nice to be a Middleton sister. Living the high life, mixing with the great and good. You haven't done anything wrong that anyone can think of but people hate you for it anyway.

One has, according to the press, a nice bum, and that is now what she has been reduced to. A bum. Someone to look pretty and upstage brides. How dare she try and forge a career for herself writing books or columns or whatever else she may like to do under the glare of the world's paps. Pippa Middleton needs to know her place. She is a rearend, a bum, and anything she ever does other than show off her bum will be derided. Was anyone ever so despised for so little?

And her sister. Took her time to marry her prince and who can blame her after seeing how his mother was hounded and papped, even in death. At least she got a decent 18 month stretch to try and prove she wasn't just a Wisteria Sister (Jan Moir's ever charming name for the two of them) before she ceased to exist. Because now Kate has become a bump. She takes her bump on official duties and the tabloids are on daily bumpwatch. How big is it? It isn't big enough. How dare she not have a big enough bump? Has it got any bigger? Yes, fireworks, it has. The Bump formerly known as the Duchess of Cambridge is now in clear view.

Can you imagine living life like these two? Really? I don't know which one I feel most for? Which one dreads opening the papers more each morning? The one who is relatively free still, has no public role to lead but whose love life and bum is there for all to see? Or the one who, thankfully, has found love but knows that for the rest of her life, whatever she does, she will be photographed? And who now, is no longer a woman, or a Duchess, but a Bump?

It's 2013 and we are still obsessed with women's reproductive capability and the perkiness or not of their rear end.

Really?

Why I am happy to say I am a Mumsnetter

I once blogged about Mumsnet. It was a mixed blog - I mentioned some good but focussed on the bad. I would link to it, but I removed it as it gained too much attention from people who just like to bash the site. As both the Daily Mail and the Telegraph have had a go at bashing the site this week, as well as it being covered on programmes in daytime TV and radio, I have decided to blog about it again.

Mumsnet is a very easy target for lazy journalists. A sitting duck. Particularly for those areas of the press that like to pit women against women. Like the Daily Mail. You can pretty much think of something to write about, and trawl the site to find something that backs up your view. You want to write about negative opinions about Amanda Holden returning to work soon after a traumatic birth. You can find stuff about that, repeat the most negative comments to Amanda Holden and then report her reaction. You can ignore the fact that the vilest comments and articles about her return to work were published on your newspaper's online site when the event actually happened, oh, a good year before this week.

The right wing press in particular hate Mumsnet. I believe that it is because, quite simply, it is a group of women with strong opinions that actually manage to get listened to. The power of social networking has taken the traditional press by surprise, and, let's face it, no-one could have expected 10 years ago that senior politicians and a whole array of stars from authors to actors to cooks would go and talk to people on a site for mums. And that people would then talk about it. But they do.

Recently a lot of people on Mumsnet have been quite outspoken about certain choices made by the press. Linking the manslaughter of 6 children to being on benefits was one thing. And when a Daily Mail journalist went on the site to ask specifically for negative stories about the NHS to fit in with her newspaper's NHS bashing agenda she was, quite thoroughly, flamed.

So because there seems to be so little positive stuff about the site around at the moment, here are my reasons for being a Mumsnetter, out and proud:

1. The fact we can be outspoken and give opinions that people may not like. It's called being treated like a grown up.
2. The fact that when we give opinions people don't like those people can answer back, swearily if they like.
3. The light moderation on the forums makes for freedom of expression. Yes, it can be sweary, but that can be a relief. Yes, there is some flaming which goes on. And like in all parts of life there are some judgemental, even nasty people on there.
4. But there are also heaps of really nice, supportive people on there. Thousands of them. People who drop everything and proffer a virtual hand when someone needs support. People who offer real life support, when there is no-one in real life who can do so. I have read threads where people have actually gone to a complete stranger's house to help her out. Do you read about that in the press? When my daughter was in hospital with pneumonia and I was home alone, ill, with an ill baby, feeling extremely isolated, it is women on Mumsnet who chatted to me, day and night, keeping me sane, reassuring me that things would get better.
5. Light relief. Inane banter. Shared memories of old TV shows, or food, or books. It's all up there. And if it isn't, you can start a thread about it.
6. Specific problem about your dog, or horse, or goldfish, or baby, or teenager? Someone else will have gone through it, be going through it, or be able to point you in the direction of a solution.
7. The Campaign for Better Miscarriage Care. Or the We Believe You campaign. Topics which affect  far too many women. Mumsnet have, via their site and their bloggers, brought attention to these and other issues. And have provided a safe place for people to talk about their experiences.

But do you read anything about the good side of the site in the press? No. It is far easier, and goadier, to take some negative aspects and turn them into a story. Yes, people get flamed. Yes, unfortunately there is a minority of posters who seem to enjoy hiding behind their screens and making spiteful comments. And no, if you don't enjoy really honest feedback on what you say, if you want to be told that you are right all the time, then Mumsnet possibly isn't the site for you.

But most of us are pretty nice. You might be surprised if you pop in for a chat. It's a group of mainly intelligent, sometimes angry, often funny women, and men. Most of us have children, plenty of us don't.

But the press don't want you to know that. They like the plain old wimmen are mean to other wimmen line. Which is getting, quite frankly, pretty boring.

A rant about dancing on graves

Margeret Thatcher is dead. I quickly logged onto Twitter, and logged off again. Same for Facebook.

I will say here, and you probably won't be surprised, that I loathed her, her policies, and her legacy. I loathe those that are following her now, implementing more disgusting policies and once again pitting the rich against the poor.

But I can't say that I am glad she is dead, and won't join those that are talking about dancing on her grave.

Because whatever you may think of her, and like all PMs you may love or loathe her, she was a friend, mum, and grandmother, and there are many people who should be allowed to mourn her.

Those of us who disliked her should stand back and let her be mourned and rest in peace. I am not saying that history should be rewritten to blot out what she did wrong, but jubilation at an old woman's death  is distasteful and hysterical.

Lessons can be learned from what she did, and no-one can deny her achievements and policies had a huge impact on British politics, for better or for worse.

But this is not the time for jokes and snide comments, rather a time for reflection.

A rant about six children and how they are being exploited by the press

Three people yesterday were convicted of manslaughter, killing six children in one fire. The mum, the dad, and a family friend. They apparently set fire to their home, with the intention of saving their children and pinning the blame on someone else. But they didn't save the children. All six of them died. It is tragic. I can't imagine what the last few minutes of those children's lives were like. Hopefully they didn't know that their parents were responsible for their deaths.

It is one of the saddest stories I have heard about for a long time.

So why, instead of focussing on the crime, and the awful loss of six children with so much potential, are certain newspapers using the story to bash benefits claimants? Why is this horrible story being turned into a political rant?

Is this what Britain has become? Twisting a crime such as this to serve political agenda?

This family is not all that is wrong about Britain today. What they did was horrible. But they do not represent any sector of Britain, on benefits or not. They represent a selfish couple. One selfish couple.  Who put their own motives ahead of the lives of their children.

It is the press printing despicable articles such as this, and this, that represents all that is wrong with Britain today. Picking on an extreme example to put a whole group of society under the same label. Bashing the poor at the time that the poor are being shat on from such a height by the political leaders.

Benefits don't make people lazy, and they don't turn them into killers and it is shocking that the press is choosing to tell people this.

And it is an abuse of the memory of six dead children.

UPDATE The Mail have changed their front page. Here is a link to a picture of the original front page of the print version.

A rant about a sad chain of events

There is a certain type of TV show I have never managed to get into. It started with Big Brother, and continued with Survivor, and I'm a Celebrity, and just kept going, like a pair of rabbits. I am not going to say I don't watch any reality TV. Come Dine With Me can generally be found somewhere on TV when I am pinned to the sofa by the baby. Masterchef is pretty harmless too.

But watching a group of people living their lives in a jungle, or a very strange house, and completing ludicrous tasks all in the quest for some kind of fame just doesn't do it for me.

They are unfortunately impossible to avoid completely. They actually make it into the news far more often than is necessary, and the poor miguided X Factor rejects or Big Brother winners or losers from years ago compete desperately for our attention, their dreams of genuine stardom crumbling.

There have been so many of them that you have to wonder why they keep going, why do people keep applying for these shows. To use a cliché they are used by the TV companies, chewed up and spat out.

But continue they do, and a few weeks ago France was forced to look at their celebrity obsessed culture more closely when one of the competitors on Koh Lanta, the equivalent of Survivor in format and trashiness, unexpectedly died during filming. The series was suspended immediately, the surviving contestants (get the irony there?) sent home, and for once we were able to think of one of the contestants as actually human, and not part of a freak show set up for our entertainment. His name was Gerald Babin, and he was 25.

And as is the unfortunate way of human nature, someone had to be blamed, and the finger was pointed by some at the show's on set doctor. Rather than wait for events to play out, and accept the possibility that there was nothing he could do, social media went into overdrive, and the 38 year old Dr Thierry Costa found himself at the centre of an uncontrolled mini-hysteria.

And the doctor, who, as far as I and any other member of the public know performed his duties to the best of his ability, as doctors do around the world, before losing his patient, has now killed himself. In his suicide note he blamed the fact that he had been unfairly blamed for the contestant's death, and said that even in death he does not want to return to France.

I am sad for these two people. One who, in his quest for fame had only fame in death. Had he stayed at home he may have died anyway, and no-one other than his family and friends would be aware of it.  The other who tried to save his life, but was the victim of the blame game which seems to have sprung out of nowhere over the last couple of decades, coinciding with the access we all have to social media and 24 hour news and the sudden ability we all have now to write what we want and have it read by tens, hundreds, thousands of people.

TF1 has now apparently cancelled the show permanently. It is sad that it has taken the death of a contestant to make it do that. His death reminds us that the people who go on reality shows are human. His doctor's death should also be a reminder that, despite undeniable uses for social media, we do have a responsibility for what we say on here.

On Boris and Eddie

Today I have done a guest post for Mumsnet about BBC journalist Eddie Mair's interview of Boris Johnson. Do pop over and have a look.