Why I am staying on Twitter/X

I was asked yesterday "when will you be quitting Twitter" by a good mate. I was a bit miffed in truth, that someone thought I was so indecisive that if I thought a platform was completely untenable, I'd not depart immediately. There has been lots of talk of quitting Twitter recently. Everyone from the Guardian to Clifton Suspension Bridge have left the platform. If I am honest, I've given far more thought to stopping my subscription to The Guardian than I have to 'quitting Twitter'. The reason? Well it costs me a small fortune to buy the Guardian and there is almost nothing worth reading in it. I used to have a whole list of people that I'd check in the morning, as they had something worth reading. These days, it really is only sketch writer John Crace left, as well as Dooensbury on a Friday morning. I buy the Daily Express and The Guaridan every day. It gives me a balance of writing on the right and left. It helps me hone my arguments. Much of what is in the Express political content is complete rubbish, but a trip to Twitter will confirm that there are no shortage of people who beleive it. Let me give you one example. This morning, their political writer Leo McKinstry claimed Labour were wasting Britians reserves of oil and gas by not exploiting them. Think of this logically, it is an absurd statement. The reserves will be there forever, until we extract them. We are simply making a decision not to exploit them now. If that decision turns out to be a mistake, future generations will still have some wealth in the bank. If I hadn't read this twaddle, I'd not have my arguments formed should someone say something so ridiculous. There was a fascinating feature about a crime writer and how his terrifying experience of being abducted as a teenager influenced his writing. The only article of real interest in the Guardian today (apart from Crace & Doonesbury) was an interveiw with Gwen Stefani, where she admitted that Madness and the Specials were two of her favourite bands. Stefani is a big guilty pleasure of mine (don't tell Mrs T). She used to be on rotation at the Gym when I used to do a lot of running on a treadmill. The point I'm making is that as a rational person, I don't spend money on information sources because I agree with the politics of the owners. 

If I didn't subscribe to products owned by people I find reprehensible, I'd never have subscribed to the Rupert Murdoch owned Sky Sports. As a football fan, this would have meant I'd be depriving myself of one of the few things I really enjoy. Of course, I hated lining the pockets of Rupert Murdoch, a man I despise and who I believe has caused more damage to the Uk than anyone since the second world war. But life is full of compromises. Had I not subscribed to Sky Sports, it would have massively impacted my life in a negative way. I doubt Rupert Murdoch would have missed the money I spent, that made its way into his bank account. Ironically, Sky studios in Elstree have actually ended up making a massive contribution to the local economy. I still can't stand Murdoch, but the concept of watching Strictly on the BBC instead of the football on Sky is something that I personally couldn't do. I'd much rather Someone else got the cash, but in our Capitalist society, that is not how it works. We get these powerful billionaires with a monopoly on information and we have to live with it. It is also worth pointing out that before Sky TV, football coverage was far less professional and there was far less opportunity to watch it. The sad truth is that such billionaires do deliver products that make our lives better, even if they do many other things that make our lives worse.

Which brings us to Elon Musk and Twitter. I first heard of Musk when I started using Ebay in around 2002. I made a small fortune trading on the platform. Musk also owned Paypal. Whatever you may think of Musk, Paypal is a brilliant platform and is the payment platform we use for online payments at the studio. For someone despised by the left, it is rather ironic that Musk invested a fortune building the Tesla green brand, which makes electric vehicles and batteries, which are seen as the future of the green economy. Unlike Trump, who is all for a dirty carbon economy, Musk has probably done more to move us to electric than any other person on the planet. You may not like it, but the facts are there. Then there is SpaceX. Now you may see it as completely bonkers. Musk says that it is the only way that humanity can ever survive in the long term. Moving  beyond planet Earth will secure the long term future of humanity.  He has a point, whether you like it or not, it is a worthy goal. Which brings us to his takeover of Twitter. From the moment it was first mooted, it was met with howls of anger from the left. "How dare a zillionaire take over a start up that we like?" seemed to be the refrain. 

Twitter was a company bleeding money. Press coverage indicated that when Musk saw the books, he was horrified. Much of what he's done to try and make it turn a profit has been very painful, but he's not the first boss to fire staff in a loss making business. He's not the first boss to try and wring every penny out of his customers. He's also not the first boss to mess up a product. Twitter is now a horrible environment. Musk welcomed back the likes of Tommy Robinson and all manner of US far right loonies. He made changes that encouraged them to spout bile on line. There is nothing nice to say about it, except that in the West we believe in free speech and sadly that means these sort of people have as much right to spout bile, so long as they are not breaking the law, as woke lefties like me. 

I have my own suspicions as to why Elon Musk has snuggled up to Trump. I suspect the main reason is that he knew Trump would win and it would be good for business. He is in the inner circle. He has the opportunity to shape the future of the USA. Unlike just about every other appointment Trump has made, Musk is actually very intelligent and has acheived things in his life. His wealth was built in tech and in spotting opportunities that no one else even realised existed. How could he not see an opportunity in what the Trump presidency offers? Musk does not come from a mega wealthy background. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, emerald dealer, and property developer. He clearly comes from a family where taking risks and seizing opportunities is in his blood. My assessment and it may be cruel, is that Musk see's Trump as a gateway to realising his dreams of space exploration and destroying the old financial world order. He sees a bloke who appears to be suffering from a touch of dementia, who has appointed a bunch of absolute morons to run his government, because they all tell him he's marvellous. If you are clever, ambitious and a risk taker, what is not to like?

That is not to say I don't have massive concerns, which are probably just due to my paranoid and cynical nature. My biggest is Musk's investment in "The Boring Company". What does every credible Bond style villain have, whilst they are planning to destroy the world with nuclear bombs? A massive bunker where they can be safe. I do wonder if Trump ever watched any of the Bond films with Roger Moore? If I was him, I'd be a tad reticent about snuggling up too close to Musk, but maybe that's just why I don't own Paypal and am not President of the USA.

A friend suggested that Musk wants to be the next President. Whatever you may think of him, that's impossible as he was not born in the USA. It would require a change to the constitution and I doubt that will ever happen. I suspect Musk has bigger dreams. He has his eyes on the whole universe. For him, I suspect the USA is a bit small for his ambitions. My gut feeling is that Musk will be one of the few sane people in the Trump administration and that cannot be a bad thing. What few people seem to understand is that as the owner of Twitter, he has ownership of one of the biggest data mines of personal information on the planet. Every opinion that you've ever expressed on Twitter is owned by Mr Musk. I used to write software that mined information to spot fraud patterns in UK government benefits payments. What we soon learned was that once you start looking at such data, you learn all manner of things. A whole bunch of types of fraud were identified that no one even new existed until the data was crunched. I have no doubt that all of the Tommy Robinsons and their followers are having their data thoroughly crunched as we speak and I suspect that the usage of the data will only become apparent when someone realises how you can use it. I suspect that with AI analysis, Mr Musk will be able to study my Twitter history and tell me what colour underpants I'm wearing, what I'm having for dinner tonight, what time I go to the toilet, what I'm listening to on the radio and all manner of other information that would be highly useful if he decided to destroy me by fair means or foul. Whilst I doubt I'd find myself in his crosshairs, I do wonder if all of these libertarian Americans who he's actively encouraging to share their lives and thoughts on Twitter will be quite so lucky, when they cease to be useful and stand in his way. 

And if you've been tweeting your life away for the last fifteen years and you've quit, it's too late. You've already put it out there.  Every time you've tweeted that a company has badly served you, every time you've posted a restaurant, gig or coffee shop you like, every time you mention someone you know, everything. It's all there and it can all be crunched. Even things like the time you tweet at will give away things. There is also the location you are tweeting from. All of it. Not just Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. All of them. The reason why a loss making concern such as Twitter was worth so much to Musk is because Tech investors understand this. Let me give you a trite example. If Mr Musk owned a rare bootleg album of The Ramones at The Roundhouse in 1977, he could get his lackeys to crunch Twitter and he may well conclude that I'd be a great person to sell it to and send me a Tweet offering it to me. There are far darker things he may want to do with data. Who knows? The sad thing about Twitter and all of these other platforms is you've already put it out there. 

Which brings us back to the title of this blog. Why I am staying on Twitter.

1. It costs me nothing.

2. IMHO Musk is no worse than most other multi billionaires and tech companies.

3. The horse had bolted, my digital history on Twitter is already in his hands

4. I beleive in free speech and much as I dislike nutcases, they have as much right to post crap as snowflakes like me. I don't want to belong to a platform that is an eho chamber for my views.

5. No one has actually made a rational case for leaving, other than their personal dislike of Musk.

6. Twitter is still the best of breed and I see good content on it.

7.  I dislike Rupert Murdoch more than Musk and I still have Sky Sport, so it would be deeply hypocritical to flounce off Twitter just to keep my lefty mates happy.

8. Every review of every film, play and record I've read in the Guardian in the last ten years has been wrong, If they like something, it is invariably rubbish and vice verse, so their flounce off Twitter is most unconvincing.

9. Like reading the Daily Express, Twitter exposes me to difficult arguments from people I don't like, which ultimately makes me better able to argue my case.

10. If Musk succeeds in his aims of moving forward humanities colonisation of space, it may mean humanity lasts a bit longer than it would if we were earthbound. As someone with a vested in the survival of humanity, it seems a worthy ambition.

11. Its the zillionaires that we never hear about who really worry me.

12. Having someone in the Government of the USA who is not a thick, useless Trump yes man can only be good. 

And what would make me change my mind? That is really quite simple. If I found that I couldn't be arsed looking at it anymore. I'd not flounce off, I'd just stop looking at it and unconsciously disengage, like I did with Friends Reunited and Myspace. Or if Elon Musk bans me as he doesn't like this blog.

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Anyway, now I've got your attention, here's another plug for The False Dots gig on Sunday at 2pm, at The Dublin Castle. Please come along. We are launching our first album in 45 years! 

Tickets Here >>>>>> wegottickets.com/event/627785

Our brains are simply not set up to deal with the information overload we get from social media

I started writing this blog in 2008, Friday will be the 16th Birthday of the Barnet Eye. At the time I didn't have a Facebook account. I wasn't on Twitter, Instagram didn't exist and I still occasionally looked at Friends Reunited. I didn't 'share'' the blog anywhere. I didn't tweet new blogs. I just wrote them and if people stumbled across them, then fine. In hindsight it is a miracle that anyone looked at it. I joined Facebook in March 2009 and Twitter in April 2011. When I joined Facebook, it wasn't to promote my blog. It was a handy way to keep in touch with friends and family and share pictures of events etc. I've no idea when I first started posting my blog to it, but it was a fair while after the blog started. In fact to start with, it was my friends who posted it. I had no intention of joining Twitter. It was only constant nagging of friends, who said that it would help get the message across, that I succumbed. I very quickly realised that all of my fears about Twitter were true. It was a toxic environment, where you could fall out with complete strangers and get absolutely slaughtered. I learned that some groups of people (Militant Cyclists are the worst) are absolutely ruthless at organising pile ins. From time to time I deliberately wound them up to generate traffic, but I long since got over the buzz of getting 3,000 blog hits from people who hated my guts, happy in the knowledge that I'd annoyed them far more than they upset me. 

I used Facebook far more to promote my band, I liked to keep the two things separate. I realised that this wasn't possible, quite quickly. When I worked in the Corporate IT world, I ended up doing a whole series of courses about how social media platforms interact with corporate entities. A malicious troll reported me to the company I was working for, stating my blog brought my employer into disrepute. The HR department didn't know what to do. I didn't state anywhere that I had a job with the company and I didn't mention them in any of my blogs. But I did write controversial political commentary. The company had no rules at all to deal with the situation, one way or the other. The Troll wouldn't let it go and proved I had a link, via my Linkedin profile. The HR people didn't know what to do. It turned out that I knew more about social media than anyone in the company. I was asked to help draw up a 'policy' and educate the staff about the risks. I did some research, found a social media Guru and we ended up setting up seminars for safety on the Internet. It was illuminating. In a short presentation, he managed to explain how staff were putting the safety of their families at massive risk of extortion by organised crime syndicates, by having badly thought out social media profiles. He explained how simply wearing a work pass with your name and company on exposed both you and the company to enormous risk, by putting personal information on line. A criminal who knows where your children go to school, who your friends are and when you are at events etc, is a criminal sitting on a gold mine, if you work for a company where there is the potential to make money from inside information or forcing you to commit fraud.

It was the first time I realised that I was completely unprepared to live in a world where social media was an ever growing power. As the platforms evolved, I started to find out all manner of things about friends and acquaintences. Sadly much of it was things I'd rather not know. There are friends who I politely avoid, because there postings have made me realise that I don't really fancy a curry and beer with them. Occasionally one will launch a tirade at me, taking me to task for something I've written in a blog. Generally when I write a blog, I do a lot of research and acquaint myself with facts. The tirades are usually a bunch of opinions that have little basis in reality. This was especially true during the Brexit referendum. It was clear to anyone who did their research that the UK would a) Take and economic hit b) It would cause a massive issue in Ireland c) Would increase rather than decrease immigration and c) Increase the prospects of instability in Eastern Europe, as Russia would see Brexit as undermining the unity of what was the EU block and removing a champion (the UK) of smaller countries that were exposed to threat from Russia. 

The blogs are there demonstrating all of these points. There are several local Brexiteers who have since conceded that their tirades were ill informed. All of them believe that this was because "Brexit has been betrayed" but as I explained that this is exactly what they would say at the time of the rant and subsequent discussion, they have too concede that on these points they were wrong. However, the human brain has simply niot evolved to deal with the amount of information we have to process. University professors specialise in a topic and know it inside out, but a Chemistry professor will simply be a layman when it comes to a chat about Geography or Religious studies and vice versa. Of course there are polymaths, who can seemingly be genius level operators at all of these, but they are few and far between and generally are unknown outside acedemia.

What Twitter, Youtube and Facebook has made us start to believe is that we know as much, if not more than these experts who have spent a lifetime researching a subject. We see Tweets from sources that seem informed, with links to videos that seem to have incontrovertable evidence and we are convinced. We then see some unworldly professor, usually on a platform we don't trust (The BBC, Fox News, CNN, GBNews, take your pick) spouting views and opionions that contradict our carefully formed views, researched over a tea on Google, and we think that we are being conned and lied to. 

Let me give you an example, Margaret Thatcher was an advocate of Neo Liberalist Economics guru Milton Friedman. Now I fundamentally disagree with Thatcher and think that the effects of Friedman's views have massively damaged the wellbeing of billions of people on Planet Earth. But his knowledge of economics was light years ahead of mine. He was capable of present a coherent case that his view would lead to stronger eonomic activity than the Keynesian consensus that previously was considered orthodox in the West. The problem with theories such as those of Friedman, Karl Marx etc, is that the people who actually implement them are too thick to properly understand them. 

What social media has done is make us all think we are capable of operating on the level of such deep thinking experts. The trouble is, reading a few articles on Google, seeing a few Tweets and watching a few Youtube videos does not mean that you have the same level of knowledge on a subject as someone who has a Degree, a Mastecrs a PhD and has spent their life researching a subject. 

When you look at what has happened with things like the anti vax movement, you have millions of people who have no qualifications at all, passionately believing that the establishment is lying to them, poisoning them and killing them. Academic types rather patronisingly say "How can you believe that, there is no evidence", missing the point that there is plenty of evidence to support such views, admittedly most of which is inaccurate or flawed or lacks rigorous scientific evaluation. 

Let me give you an example. I have received covid 19 vaccines. Last year, suddenly I found that my PSA level doubled and my prostate cancer had changed in a matter of months from benign to aggressive. Both of these things are facts. I have read articles on the internet that claim that covid 19 vaccines 'turbocharge' cancer. I could, quite reasobably conclude that my cancer was the result of having a jab. If I believed this, I could make a very sound case, put it in a well produced Youtube video and claim the establishment is covering everything up. Whilst it is possible that this is true, it is extremely unlikely. None of the cancer specialists I spoke to, and they are amongst the best in the world, suggested for a second that there was any link. My brother in law is a doctor and we discussed this. He agreed with me that unfortunately, in my position, there was always a distinct possibility that the cancer would return after HIFU in 2016. I was told that HIFU was experimental at the time, and was part of a trial. But it would be very easy for me to misrepresent the facts.

Sadly we see all manner of people making claims that on the face of it are reasonable but are complete nonsense in reality. Having seen the work that goes into writing a fairly non controversial blog about Capita in Barnet Council, what you'd need to do to properly support a claim that something like my cancer could be attributed to covid 19 would be monumental. I'd need to find everyone who'd had HIFU, see who had covid jabs, who hadn't and whether there was a credible correlation between the progress of the cancer and the jab. Given that prostate cancer is very expensive to treat and usually takes a long time to kill you, the NHS would be crazy to ignore any link. One thing I've learned about the NHS and health. Follow the money. If vaccines weren't effective and value for money, they wouldn't use them.

The truth is that our brains are simply incapable of dealing with the information overload we get from social media. They work to identify threats and nullify them. When we are bombarded with information, we simply lose the ability to rationally analyse it all. I don't know what the answer is, beyond selling social media detox courses. That will be the next big thing!

Social Media is so 2022! Has the greed of Twitter/Facebook/youtube/etc destroyed their business

 Lets start by saying, I enjoy writing a blog. I've been doing it for over 15 years now, and 99% of the time it is something I enjoy. When I started it, I didn't have a Twitter account or Facebook account. I didn't use Facebook to promote my Facebook account and only opened a Twitter account as people kept nagging me, saying that it would make it easier to know when I posted a new blog. At first you could only post short messages on Twitter, which was wonderful. We didn't have to put up with lengthy posts, by people who really didn't have much to say. You'd see the tweets of people you followed and they'd appear in Time order. Facebook was pretty much the same. I found Facebook to be good for catching up with friends and getting back in touch with ones who I'd lost contact with. At some point, and I cant be bothered to check when, Facebook decided that they knew better than me what I wanted to look at. At first, this was just ordering posts so I saw certain freinds posts and others I had to look for. Then I started getting adverts and 'sponsored posts', now all I seem to see is sponsored posts and old posts from friends, most of which I've seen already. If I look through my friends list and randomly click on someone, I find all manner of posts that I've not seen. It seems beyond the wit of Facebook to understand that I want to see posts from all my friends and I don't want to see a load of spam. It is interesting that you can report spam, but Facebook are the biggest spammers of the lot. 

Then there is Twitter. It has gone completely bonkers since Elon Musk took over. It defaults to "For you", which is what Mr Musk thinks you want to see. I was confused initially when Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg posts started appearing. If I wanted to see their bilge, I'd follow them. I am sure some people feel the same about my tweets showing up on their timeline. It is also starting to clog up with ads. Mr Musk claims that he needed to do all of this to stop it losing money. Given that he staged a hostile takeover, I rather resent the fact that he is whinging about the state of the company. If he didn't do his due diligence, is it really fair to inflict this on us? It used to be that sometimes I'd get cross with people on Twitter, now it's Twitter itself that is the problem. 

The bottom line with this is that I am absolutely fed up to the teeth with Social Media. There is little of interest. Most of the people I want to interact with have almost given up posting. For almost a decade, I've done a feature called "The Tweets of the Week in the London Borough of Barnet". I used to enjoy putting a collection of great tweets together and sharing them. The feature works best when those who's tweets are selected retweet the feature. That way, their followers get to see a selection of other interesting tweets, and hopefully all will grow their real follower base. Over recent weeks, there has been a noticeable decline in Tweeters bothering. Sometimes, they will retweet days or even weeks later. This tells me that there is a growing disconnect with Twitter. There seems to be a marked decline in views and engagements. It is a bit hard to tell as the analytics only go back a year for views. I know that far, far less people are clicking throuygh from Twitter these days. Probably 75% less than a decade ago. Now this may be because my blogs are boring, but the direct hits are pretty constant. 

Even more irritating is the barrage of notifications for Tweets that are of no interest. I only want notifications if I am tagged, retweeted or liked. Twitters algorythms are absolutely useless at predicting what tweets I want to see.

Oh and finally a word about Youtube. They've put a feature on where you can't see videos if you have an ad blocker. I think Youtube are massive piss takers as they put ads on my videos, but don't pay me anything from the ads. That was why I put the ad blocker on. I also get ridiculous notifications. I know these companies need to earn money, but they don't seem to have any understanding of the fact that they if they make their platforms too money orientated at the expense of user experience, users will use the platforms less. 

All in all, it seems to me that in the dash to wring every last bit of advertising cash out of mugs who pay to advertise on these platforms, they have totally alienated their customer base. I am not saying there isn't good stuff out there, as there is, but I rarely look at either platform now, unless I am completely bored or have just posted a blog. 

How to properly resolve the problems of Trolls on Social media.

They say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". I've come to realise that this isn't 100% true. It may make you more resiliant, although that is a different thing altogether. They also say "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me". If there was any truth in this, people would have long ago given up making sly digs. Bottling things up and putting on a brave face is very out of fashion. It seems to me that the days where we suffered in silence are gone. Now we have all manner of support and counselling services available to us. There are help lines, charities, self help groups, facebook groups and whatsapp groups for just about everything. I've long been of the opinion that sharing information and supporting each other is the way forward. The concept of 'leaving no one behind' should in theory be one we all buy into. If you'd have asked me a few weeks ago, I'd have had no issue with any of this. However....

There is another saying 'the wolf in sheeps clothes'. In the past few months I've heard several unrelated horror stories of people who have sought support on various web forums, only to fall upon wolves posing as sheep. I'd taken it as read that putting it out there was a good thing. But there is something called human nature that is sadly a fact of life and where there is vulnerability, there are those lurking to take advantage of it. Many Facebook groups exist for all manner of issues, mostly moderated by wonderful people, who give their time fo free. However, I've seen a couple of shocking examples of predatory behaviour recently by members of the groups.

My own experiences of how social media companies deal with trolls has been quite a revelation. They do absolutely nothing, despite clear and repeated reports of all manner of harrassment and other bad behaviours. I'm a robust soul, once I realised that these companies were not on my side, but they provided useful platforms, I developed my own strategy for dealing with the Trolls (block/Ignore/cut off the oxygen). However what happens when someone isn't robust and they let the sharks into their space? They will get no support from the companies that make a fortune from their platforms. What starts as joining a group for benign support can easily escalate into something far more sinister. 

What doesn't kill you may make you stronger, but only if you get the chance to recover. I've had two dear friends lose children over the last eighteen months and it is clear to me that social media groups played some sort of role (how much we'll never really know) in what happened.

As it is clear that the social media giants will do nothing, it is time that the regulators did. To me, there should be some sort of free remedy for those that become aware of problem users on the platforms. As it is clear that the companies do nothing about reports, there should be independent third party review of complaints. This should be funded by the companies, but run by a completely seperate entity. There should be a fixed service level agreement for dealing with complaints. Problem accounts should be suspended within 24 hours. Depending of the severity of breaches, this could be a permanent ban, or a two strike system (if it was a lesser infringement), where a user gets a stern warning, followed by a permanent ban. Of course, some complaints are unreasonable or unfounded, but it should not be up to social media companies to set the rules. What is interesting is that I know of several people who have been banned from Facebook for posting 'inappropriate' images, but no one who has been banned for Trolling (except where blue tick celebrities are involved). I suspect that no one ever looks at 99.9% of reports. Generally if you get anything, it says "No breach has taken place" even when someone has made death threats, incited people to throw stones at your business, put your address and a picture of your house up alongside veiled threats and posted pictures of your underage relatives with threats about you. All of these things have happened to my friends, family and myself at the hands of trolls. I take it with a pinch of salt. Once I realised no one read the troll accounts, or even took any notice of them, I realised it was silly to get upset about the behaviour. But there are people who are vulnerable, people who need proper protection and they are not getting it. This can only be done when Trolls and other malevolent people are slung off and stay slung off. 

The social media companies make billions. There should be a levy taken from their profits, to ensure that their users are not put at risk. As for fraud and scammers, there really should be a mechanism for dealing with them and the platforms should compensate the victims. Advertisers should have to demonstrate that they are proper, bona fide businesses. Private sellers should be made to register addresses and bank accounts. None of these problems are new, but nothing has been done to address it. The social media industry wont, so the government needs to step in. 

The Tweets of the Week in the London Borough of Barnet - 15/3/2015

So here it is. This weeks installment of our fave weekly feature. The good, the bad and the truly bizarre tweets in our little corner of London. There have been a few crackers, let me tell you!


1. The biggest twitter storm this week was the arrival of Russell Brand to give the locals at Sweets Way, who are facing eviction, a little bit of moral support

Russell Brand @rustyrockets  ·  12h 12 hours ago

You can stop hopeless Barnet and greedy Annington developers putting these kids on the street https://www.change.org/p/annington-barnet-homes-we-demand-that-annington-and-barnet-homes-stop-the-demolition-of-the-sweets-way-estate-stop-the-evictions-of-current-residents-and-offer-decanted-residents-the-right-to-return-to-their-former-homes-at-truly-affordable-rents …

2. Sunny Neuroshima saw a sight to behold in Burnt Oak, but behaved like a perfect gentleman!

Sunny Neuroshima ‏@Tube_Driver Mar 12

Young woman changing her top on Burnt Oak platform. Being the gentleman that I am, I averted my gaze.

3. Peter Chenery is less than impressed with Lidl in Edgware. Perhaps thats how they keep the prices down!

peter chenery ‏@peterchenery98 21h21 hours ago

@LidlUK one till open at Edgware. Are you taking the piss?

 4. For those of us in the Borough who use Thameslink, this is no surprise!

commutelondon.com ‏@commuteldn Mar 9

The most commonly used words in Tweets about #londonbridge last week. @Se_Railway @TLRailUK @SouthernRailUK

5. Love this picture from Robert Hogan of a rather novel way to take tea at Finchley swimming pool in the 1930's. When did we lose our sense of style?

Robert Hogan ‏@RobertH1946 6h6 hours ago

"@robnitm: Tea on the diving board at Finchley Swimming Pool, 1938. " Help! Vertigo!

 

 6. The Londonist are getting excited because we've got a Literary Festival coming our way!

Londonist ‏@Londonist Mar 13

#Hendon - there's a free literary festival heading your way http://bit.ly/1MsQXid 

 


7. Yum Yum, you can sample Helens tasty buns at Cafe Buzz today!

Helen Michael ‏@BuzzingHelen Mar 14

Our wonderful real bread. Choose your bread, choose your filling. Get fresh delicious sandwich made for you.Cafe Buzz

 

8. The RAF Museum are holding a special event for International Womens day

RAF Museum ‏@RAFMUSEUM Mar 12

RT @barnetsouthgate: #InternationalWomensDay event 28 March at @RAFMUSEUM #Colindale: http://goo.gl/mT9Xqs  

 

 

9. Michael J HOuse complains that North Londons worst planned event is causing chaos at Mill Hill East this morning. Just shows that the Mill Hill East station is not fit for purpose and needs a serious redevelopment to cope with the massive new development next door.

Michael House ‏@MichaelJHouse 29m29 minutes ago

15 minute wait at Mill Hill East so far trying to get to @northlondonhalf not ideal prep in 5 degrees!










 

10.  Aa great, sultry picture from Rob Finlay, as he starts working on his new album in Mill Hill

Rob Finlay ‏@RobFinlayMusic Mar 13

Working on new tracks for upcoming #gigs @MillHillMusicCo. Getting back to work after the year of the #ear! 

 

Thats all for this week, hope you have a great week!!!!!

The curse of social media

I sometimes wonder if somewhere around the turn of the century, rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused us all to lose our collective marbles. I am not really sure exactly when it happened, but at some point in the last fifteen years, something rather strange has happened to us. That is the only possible explanation that I can come up with for the seemingly unstoppable rise of social media. Yes, I know I am as guilty as the next person, but it has reached the point where I am starting to think that we all need a good shake and ask ourselves the question "What the hell are we doing".

There are several aspects of social media I don't understand. Firstly, why do we become friends on social media with people we'd cross town to avoid in person? If we find them to be crashing bores in the pub, why do we let them fill up our lives with their inane blatherings?

Secondly, why do we feeel the need to to share our personal details with the world. Just suppose there is a fraudster out there trying to persuade the world that he's you. He's hacked your bank account and he's stumped by the security question "What was your first School?". All he has to do is check your Facebook or Linkedin profile and hey ho and off he goes.

Thirdly, we think it's rather charming that our kids use these social media sites, even though there are plenty who have had all manner of awful experiences as a direct result of doing so. Do you know what your kids get up to on social media? Do you even care?

So lets think of how we use social media?
Linkedin? Well I registered for it because I thought it would open the door to a whole world of marvellous job offers, which would make me a zillionaire. What happened? I ended up getting bombarded with spam, mostly from recruitment agencies who were on fishing trips. A complete waste of time. I had a chat with friends and none of the ones I know have ever got a job via Linkedin. Quite a few have used the old form of social networking, going to the pub with ex colleagues and getting a personal recommendation.

Twitter? Well I only joined Twitter as people kept badgering me and telling me that it would help them know what was going on with my blog. So eventually I joined. It wasn't long before I realised it was a terrible decision. Sadly it is psycholically addictive. All of the people who have something interesting to say, tend to do it very seldom on Twitter. It is full of people repeating things other people have said. Even worse it is full of nasty trolls who have found twitter more entertaining than the sort of mags that Boris reckons ISIS love to read, if you get my drift. I do believe it brings out the very worst in most of us (myself included). Did it make more people read my blog? I've no idea, I am sure it hads probably put a few off as they now think I'm a deranged lunatic, as unlike my blog it is a very fire and forget medium.

Facebook? I joined Facebook to keep in touch with friends I don't see very often. In that respect it has delivered as I have caught up with quite a few I'd lost touch with. The problem is that they now think I am a lunatic, as they often don't realise that the mad rantings I post are just things I find hilariously funny, which no one else does. I suspect that most think I'm an alcohol crazed madman with a seriously warped sense of humour. They get this impression because if I posted the truth "Spent 3 hours trying to decide whether the last chord of the chorus of the new song I'm writing should be a D or an F" or "Spent four hours researching a new blog about Barnet Council only to realise there was no story" They'd think I was the most boring man in the universe. The'd probably be right as well.  In truth, My life swings between wildley exciting and hellishly mundane. In truth the best thing about Facebook are the silly pictures and videos of dogs. Sadly, I've also found out all manner of things about my friends that in hindsight, they probably wish they'd never pasted up. Having a row with your loved one is bad enough, but when you see a friend has shared it with the world, I just want to hide. And that is the real problem, because once you've told the world, you can't untell them.

Blogger? Of all the social media curses, blogger is the worst. Up until 2008, the most I'd ever bothered to write was three verses, a middle eight and a chorus for a few rock and roll songs. No one gave tuppence about my views on anything. I'm dyslexic and I am dim. What do I have to say about the important issues of the day? What advice do I have to give those who run our lives? Well if you'd asked me in 2007 I'd have said nothing at all. Then the madness set in. I started to write this blog and people started to read it. This caused me to do something very dangerous. I started to think about things. I realised that of all the biblical prophets, the one I had most in common was is Adam. He was quite happy pottering about in the Garden of Eden, not really giving a monkeys about anything. Then he bit that apple and the woes of the world were on his shoulders. That is a bit how I feel about blogging. I knew nothing about the Council and nothing about politics when I started to write the Barnet Eye. As people seemed to like the blog and trust my opinions, I felt I had to do the job properly. That was where the trouble began. You see the deeper I dug, the less I liked what I found. But it is like Pandora's box, once you have opened it you can't put the mayhem back in. Or perhaps like your virginity. Once it is gone, it isn't coming back and you simply have to move on to the next phase of your life.

And that is the trouble with social media. You know it is out there. You know it won't go away. You know that however vile twitter is, you just have to have a little peek and see what is happening.You know that you feel so het up about something that you just want to share it on Facebook. These social media companies are making billions. Are they worth the hassle they cause us? I seriously doubt it. I do wonder if we'll ever wake up from this madness, or whether it will just keep getting ever worse.

Interestingly, I previously wrote a blog entitled Social Media is Dead. Just as an experiment I thought I'd google the phrase and see what came up. Interestingly Google doesn't really seem to want to play ball. You'd expect a list of articles and blogs making that claim, what you get is quite different. It all makes me rather cynical. Given the huge amounts of dosh this all generates, could it be that we are not encouraged to think too hard about these issues by the web companies that are doing rather well from it all?

Social media is dead!

#CameronMustGo - A hashtag that has been trending on twitter for ages, as part of an imaginative social media campaign co-ordinated by the Labour Party? Actually no, I believe it is the obituary of Twitter as a platform for social change. Whilst it may be fun for political anoraks and obsessives, what normal sane person would be influenced in any way, shape or form by a 140 character message of which 14 are a slogan, presumably thought up by a "media consultant" trying to help the Labour Party get with it. I've never been overly convinced of the power and influence of Twitter in the UK. Initially I couldn't be bothered with it at all. It was suggested to me that maybe it would help me let readers of this blog know that a new blog had been posted, so I succumbed. It didn't take too long to realise what a horrible place the TwitSphere was. A zone where cowardly Trolls roam, looking for ways to anonymously put the boot in to people they'd run a mile from in real life. As to the quality of political debate, it is dire. What tends to happen is you get a right wing nutcase and a left wing nutcase shouting at each other, not listening, until the less robust party triumphantly announces "I've blocked so and so and life is much better now!"

These Trolls sit there waiting for some poor unsuspecting mug to post something, usually about an issue they feel passionately about, and then leap. They use all manner of hectoring, fatuous arguments to support the unsupportable. When a perfectly reasonable retort is posted, it is simply ignored or the subject changed. Engageing with a Troll is time consuming and ultimately a complete waste of time. However annoying they may be, however tempting it may appear to try and reason with them, ultimately you'll never get those minutes of your life back. I doubt there will be anyone who says on their deathbed "I wish I'd spent more time arguing with Trolls on Twitter".

The net effect of the Trolls and their activities has been to transform Twitter into a forum where all we do is preach to converted. What twitter does well is to keep us informed when there is a disaster or a crisis. The 140 character format and the ability to post photo's is ideal for us to instantly know what has occurred. These days you tend to find out breaking news first from Twitter because a subject starts trending. Sadly even here the Trolls roam, often posting messages stating some minor celeb has died. This is met with swift denials.

As I look at Twitter, I ask "what is trending in London" right now. Here's the answer

• Foggy
• #Homeland
• #XFactorSemiFinal
• #UKChampionship
• Judd Trump
• #RememberMe
• #bbcsnooker
• Ronnie O'Sullivan
• Christmas

If this really is a summary of the most exciting things to discuss in London right now, then Lord help us all. In short, Twitter has simply degenerated into a noticeboard to discuss last nights telly and for Trolls to kick lumps out of each other. Is that really worth the trouble.

Then we have Facebook. It is nice to keep up with friends on Facebook, but whilst the instant messaging feature is useful, it has got more and more irritating, clogged up with adverts, sponsored posts, stupid games and reposts of jokes billed as "hilarious" which are mindnumbingly dull and amazing which are banal. In truth, just about the only videos I've looked at recently are ones of dogs doing stupid things, which mostly do what they say on the tin. If all Facebook is really about is recirculating funny dog videos, I'd suggest that it's days are numbered.

What about Youtube? As part of the Barnet Eye Advent calendar, I've spent the week trawling for interesting videos about our neighbourhood. Whilst there are some gems there, the amount of totally Banal crap you have to search through to find anything is truly depressing. As a little test, I searched for the most viewed video with the words "Mill Hill" in.



It is a video of how to drive around Apex Corner roundabout. Now clearly many people will want to know how to learn to drive, but is this really the most exciting thing to ever come out of Mill Hill? I think of all the forms of social Media, YouTube will be the most enduring, but it does seem to me that it's lost its glitter. I suspect that as it fills up with Birthdays and Bahmitzvah's itw ill be ever less seen as a serious place for social interaction and more simply viewed as a useful resource.

In some ways it is inevitable that internet fads come and go. Whatever happened to "friends reunited" and Myspace? Both were leading edge and both are now viewed rather like we view the dinosaurs.

I suppose in many ways Social media platforms are like religious cults. Initially they have explosive growth as the zealots who start them get the message out with zeal and fervour. People get swept up and congregations grow. Then all of a sudden, they find they are just part of the establishment and part of the furniture and the next generation of zealots find it all rather old hat and the cycle starts again.

I do wonder when people will realise that the best way to keep in touch is to actually go and see your friends and family. As to the discussions we have with people we don't like, haven't we had enough of them already at School, work and with the pub bore?

The only question I really have is to ask what will replace the current rash of social illness we call social media companies.