Councillors Ian Driver and Mike Harrison an internet war, humour political correctness splitting the Red Party ranks?

 I have to admit to not really understanding Facebook, I do have a Facebook website and I have it set up so that it automatically puts up the blog posts that I put up here.

I do get various notification asking me to be friends with people, often people who I don’t know, unless the person asking is obviously up to something dodgy or trying to sell something, then I usually ok these requests.

I guess eventually I will do what one does with ITC and that is to fight with Facebook until I understand it.

Anyway last night I had one of these Facebook requests that I don’t really understand and it said:

Ian Driver suggested you like Thanet Says Stand Down Harrison...  I think the link will open this facebook campaign page even if you don’t have a Facebook account http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-Says-Stand-Down-Harrison/391888930837259

So here we have one local councillor mounting a campaign to remove another, which would change the political balance at Thanet District Council from Labour Leadership to Conservative.

This appears to be because one councillor used the phrase “frustrated, dried up bint” on his blog see http://newingtonblogspot.blogspot.com/2012/01/leeches.html

James Maskell already posted about this, see http://villeviews.blogspot.com/2012/02/nonsense-and-oversensibility.html

 Anyway what councillor Mike Harrison said that caused this was: “I see that some frustrated, dried up bint has complained about bus drivers, taxi drivers and tradesmen calling her ‘love’. Is that any worse than those people calling me ‘mate’ I ask. Well no its not.”

I suppose the calling of people you don’t know, love, mate, darlin, brov, and so on, is part of the way people communicate, the general, “I am alive and so are you” type of comment usually associated with humanity. In a way it’s very like Facebook and people who you don’t asking “be friends with me”

I was born in 1953 and when I was a teenager the word bint as a description of a female of the species was still in use, although I think getting a little dated. I think it had made its way into some British films, Carry On, Confessions Of and so on, it had mostly the same sort of meaning as, “bit of crumpet” I don’t recall it being particularly derogatory at the time.

I guess the thing about common parlance is that no one much really thinks to object to it at the time it is common parlance.

What does interest me in what Ian Driver’s motives are in attempting to get the Conservative group back into the position where they control the council. There is also the business of Mike Harrison taking a strong stance against what he takes as homophobic comments, see http://newingtonblogspot.blogspot.com/2012/01/normal-0-false-false-false.html while making what some perceive as outrageous comments about women.

 Would it, for instance be ok for another woman to refer to a dried up old bint, or a homosexual to refer limp queer, but not ok for a heterosexual man to do this?

Well apparently not as Ian was also offended by being called a tosser, see http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/Councillor-quit-Labour-group-row/story-13298085-detail/story.html I guess it wasn’t Pancake Day.

When it comes to local councillors, just about the only way I have of finding out about them is via the internet, my impressions of them are formed there, particularly by what they write there themselves. Frankly councillors without an online presence I find suspicious, anyone who claims to represent local people and has no website, never emits a tweet, is either an techno illiterate, or being secretive and wouldn’t get my vote if I could avoid it. This would be the same for a councillor who didn’t have a telephone, never appeared in the local papers, or was conventionally illiterate.

I will ramble on here, the subject is a bit like a bit of food stuck in a hole in a tooth.