Twittering About

I am a fan of Twitter. As a Tweep, I indulge my passion for political inactivism and playing with words. I am, after all, a self-declared wordsmith. Formative years forced to study grammar, and an undergraduate creative writing course, have borne fruit. Twitter, I assert with conviction, is my one weakness.

But I’m now in a quandary. What is One  to do, when an internationally renowned  Franciscan priest and teacher suddenly ups and “Follows” One? This is serious. 

I am not always polite. I sometimes swear. I am overtly political. What if one of my carefully crafted put-downs puts him off? Or my photo flipping the finger at a Troll gives offence? I could be putting myself in danger of losing my most prestigious follower! 

Oh What The Hell. I Tweet like a real Human. I like to think that’s why he ( ie his media team) followed me in the first place … 

Acquaint yourself with my “dark side” here: @maryeffrancis. 

 

News Round-Up

There's a bit of a controversy over here about right-wing bias in the BBC. It does look a bit skewed to be honest. But these things usually even themselves out. Besides, I am no longer in a position to complain about BBC news, because I no longer watch it. It's a price Auntie appears willing to pay.

So I get my news from my Twitter feed, which is unashamedly biased, but in a GOOD way. I only get the news I want to hear.

I am very disappointed that Peter Phillips is being paid to ask other people to pay to go to his granny's birthday bash in the Mall. Of course I am glad the Queen has made it to ninety as the alternative would be inconceivable, but this 'pay as you party' wheeze says everything about the Upper Class attitude to the rest of us that is going to lead to us into becoming a Republic one day.

A PR firm has the job of persuading me to clean the streets for the big event: it's wasting somebody's money.

I was at a newsy event myself last week, I hauled my lazy arse off to London to attend a Fabian's conference that featured Jeremy Corbyn. Nothing flashy about Jez. He has the quiet, unassuming authoritative air of a man at home in his skin. I like it. He has a mountain to climb though, because people are stupid. Sorry, I have to say it. Look at the facts: Corbyn says something unconventional like let's not waste billions of money we're CONSTANTLY being told we don't have, on an obscene and obsolete weapons system, we can't even use. He is excoriated in the Tory press. Stupid people just can't work out that democracy only works if all sides are heard. I have to listen to enough of that over-privileged, over-stuffed imbecile David Cameron. Come on! Let's have some balance.

That's better!

Sometimes you just have to let rip.

Sorry if I've offended anyone:it was probably intentional.

:)

 

Posted with Blogsy

I Follow Jez:A Twitter Update

My emergence as a political activist has had a surprising result. I have doubled the number of followers on Twitter!

In the interests of veracity, I have to say this was not hard to do, as I only had twenty-something, but nevertheless, I am heartened by it, and every Follower is welcomed and esteemed.

By the way, I learned a lot about twitter and the fickleness of its adherents the day I was unfollowed by Cheltenham. Imagine that! Unfollowed by a town! Thrown aside by 116,000 people in an instant! That, I reckon is an achievement, and possibly a record.

I often intrigue my husband with my obsession over the epitaph destined to adorn my tombstone. I say, 'intrigue', because 'bore', doesn't quite cut it. Intrigue enters the equation when you factor in the certainty that, at my own request, I will not have a tombstone at all. (I'm heading for a woodland burial, under a beech tree...) My long-standing favourite was, " 'She Made Herself Laugh' Phil 4v4", but I am now leaning towards, "'Unfollowed By Cheltenham" Ecclesiastes 1 v 2".

I digress.

Twitter is proving invaluable as a resource for keeping up with the Corbyn4Leader debate, as I follow several newspapers and some commentators, though I am careful to abide by my own confirmation bias and leave 'The Daily Telegraph' and 'The Daily Mail' to get along without me.

So. My eyes are being opened to the weird world of the newspaper comment columns. I am tempted to dip my toe in, but am reluctant to do so, because everybody is so nasty to one another. I don't do nasty, and I know jolly well that engaging in these debates achieves zilch, unless you enjoy swearing in public and shouting over a fence with your hands over your ears. (Which pretty much explains 'confirmation bias' in case you wondered.)

The piece by former Prime Minister Tony Blair accusing Jeremy Corbyn of living in an 'Alice In Wonderland fantasy world'. really caused the fur to fly. Personally, I would have loved to have known what was in those comments that were withdrawn, as the ones that were left up were pretty eye-watering.

I actually supported Tony Blair: he did some good things, and he made some mistakes, (as my brother, when a communist, once famously said about Joseph Stalin). I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt over the Iraq war, at least until the Chilcot Report is published. Duped by the CIA is my opinion as of now ... Therefore I don't come at this as the hard-left fantasist as my commentator- friends are wont to call me: I am a centre-left Social Democrat, who condemns wildcat strikes and zero-hour contracts in equal measure. (As a for instance ... )

However, I think that Mr Blair has misread the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, and here's why:

The current crop of political leaders have insulated themselves from the lives of people who struggle. Leftish leaders, like Mr Blair have swallowed the 'orthodoxy' (challenged by many top economists) that austerity is the only way to make Britain great again. The problem is that, in terms of human misery, the cost is too high, and people like me, run of the mill soft-lefties, are waking up to this.

It is not OK to redefine child poverty so that the numbers could be massaged down. It is not right to introduce further cuts to benefits, so that more people have to resort to Food Banks. It is not humane to remove benefits in order to punish people with homelessness and starvation. (Think of the outrage if Putin announced something like this!) It is not compassionate to cut the benefits of people who are dying. it is not just that the poorest amongst us should bear the social cost of the banking crisis that they did not create.

Those of us who work with the victims of these policies know this, and this is why I voted for Jeremy.

Whom I now follow on Twitter.

Postscript: I read that this week bankers bonuses returned to pre-2008 levels. Because I don't do nasty, I have nothing to add.

Posted with Blogsy

Tweet Tweet

One of the great things about being retired is that I have a lot of time to waste, and  I waste a lot of it on Twitter. When I first heard about Twitter I was very sceptical. That's because I have a regretable tendency to intellectual snobbery, and I'm sorry. I am now a convert. 

I have 15 followers. Not a great number, to those among us who boast thousands, but I'm happy with my 15. The comings and goings of my Followers affords me a fair amount of amusement. I reckon I must be one of a very small minority of the human race that has been 'Unfollowed' by Cheltenham. Today, 'Planetproblems ' took off too, which caused me much introspection. Am I not serious enough? Did my photo of a baby octopus cause affront? Did the planet disapprove of my mistaking the Caspian Sea for The Mediterranean? I'll never know. (I admit I should have spotted an absence of Cyprus, but you know, we all make mistakes, and it's not as if I'm looking to bomb anyone... .) 

You can say what you like on Twitter, and that's just as it should be. Sometimes I read things I don't like, but only because I choose to. It's interesting, I think, as I do, to grab an insight into ghastly people's thought processes, even if only as an excuse to repeat the hypocrite's  prayer. ( 'I thank you Lord, that I'm not like HIM') 

One of my Followers ReTweeted this:

@FreeRepublicTXT: Minimum wage employees who whine about their pay should re-think their decision  (to) have illegitimate children by sperm donors who disappear.

This interested me more than somewhat because I had, within the hour of reading this piece of shit listened to a young father who worked four jobs at four different fast food joints to earn enough to keep his family. Seventy hours a week. Not including travelling time. 

But, to be fair Mr TXT, I have to admit poor people do make some very stupid decisions ( I do to, but let's assume Mr TXT doesn't, for a moment.) 

I use Twitter as a contact point for my online serious stuff: I found the Higgs Boson there, without having to study astrophysics and get a job in Geneva ( which is Out of Bounds). I pick up my daily meditation there, and a wealth of visual images that will, one day, be poems, or jigsaws.

I also access, via Twitter,  'The New Scientist'  - the only online stuff I actually pay for - which is where, today, I found this article:

@newscientist: Poverty can sap people's ability to think clearly http://t.co/Dfa68vPRel

It's the cruel cycle of poverty. The many challenges that come with being poor can sap people's ability to think clearly, according to a new study. The findings suggest that governments should think twice before tying up social-assistance programmes in confusing red tape.

Sociologists have long known that poor people are less likely to take medications, keep appointments, or be attentive parents. "Poor people make poorer decisions. They do. The question is why," says Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But does bad decision-making help cause poverty, or does poverty interfere with decision-making?

To explore this question, psychologist Eldar Shafir at Princeton University and his colleagues took advantage of a natural experiment. Small-scale sugar-cane farmers in Tamil Nadu in southern India receive most of their year's income all at once, shortly after the annual harvest. As a result, the same farmer can be poor before harvest and relatively rich after. And indeed, Shafir's team found that farmers had more loans, pawned more belongings, and reported more difficulty paying bills before the harvest than after.

IQ drop

The researchers visited 464 farmers in 54 villages both before and after harvest. At each visit, they gave the farmers two tests of their cognitive ability: a multiple-choice pattern-matching test, and one in which they had to declare the number of digits shown rather then their value: seeing "5 5 5" but saying "three", for example.

The farmers scored significantly lower on the tests before the harvest, when money was tight, suggesting that their worries made it harder to think clearly. In fact, worrying about money impaired the farmers' thinking almost as much as going without sleep for a full night, and was the equivalent of a 13-point drop in IQ.

Looking at the same individuals before and after they received their pay packet meant that the team controlled for other factors that likely contribute to cognitive abilities, such as family background, childhood nutrition, limited education and exposure to lead or other toxins.

Mental bandwidth

The most likely explanation for the results is that people have a limited amount of "mental bandwidth", and financial worries leave less available for other cognitive tasks, says Shafir. If so, then poor people's bad decision-making may be at least partly a result of their circumstances, not due to any intrinsic lack of intelligence, says Smeeding, who was not involved in the study.

Shafir's study is an important advance, says Ann Stevens, an economist who directs the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis. If poverty makes people think less clearly, then even small social programmes to improve their lot may let them devote more attention to staying healthy, being better parents and the like. That could bring social benefits that are not usually counted in cost-benefit analyses of welfare programmes, she says.

Limited mental bandwidth also means governments should be careful not to add too much paperwork to poor people's burden. "A typical poor citizen comes to you poor in money and poor in bandwidth," says Shafir. "When you give them a 30-page application form [for social assistance], you're putting a pretty massive charge on their bandwidth." 

I think it would be wonderful to engage the brain of Mr TXT with the science that refutes his ideology ... But he's incapable of taking it in. I've chosen to read some if his other stuff, and I know this. This man is a fascist and a fool. His bandwidth is taken up with inflating his pathetic little  ego with ignorant ranting. I like to think my ranting has a little more class... . 

But I know, and can now explain what poverty does to a person's ability to function, and whether this makes any difference doesn't matter. It's that HIS  isn't the only opinion out there that matters. A lot. 

"If Women Over Sixty...

... Said what they really thought, there would be an outpouring of wisdom" 

So a nice lady called Marianne, Tweeted today and I laughed! Lord! How I laughed! Marianne says sweet things, and I do too sometimes, because they do no harm. As to whether they do any good, why, that's another matter entirely. We hope so, Marianne and I. 

Ekhart Tolle says that if humanity was a person sent for a psychiatric analysis she would be declared insane, and I thought about this for a bit, and I think it's true. Stupid, brutish, greedy, fearful, deluded, miserable, manipulative ( and manipulated) unconscious and ... . 

What am I thinking, that could make me so disgruntled? ( What a lovely word! Will I ever be "gruntled"? What are these "grunts" I am dissing?) 

I am thinking of the people who use Twitter to threaten and abuse. I am thinking of the 'Go Home' advertisements being trialled in areas of London, and then I have to stop thinking, because so many other and worse thoughts lie just beyond reach where I want them to stay. 

How does the wise-woman in me, now that I've reached the age of  wisdom, deal with the insanity of my kind? (Presumably, as I have been over-sixty for nearly three years now, I already am... Dealing with it, I mean. )

"Ninety seconds" is the answer. I will deal with it for ninety seconds. See, this is how it works. Your brain senses something that is going to upset you, and releases the bio-chemicals that are going to make you feel mad, and they will flood through you AND DISSIPATE in ninety seconds. How do I know this? Because I have just finished reading, 'My Stroke Of Insight' by Jill Bolte Taylor: she knows because she's a neuroscientist who did the work, and I know because I'm a wise-woman-in-training who did the reading. 

So for a minute and a half you just have to let the body do its  thing, and then the cave-person can go and lie down again and you can choose. I have been mad for a minute and a half, because that's how this body of mine works, and now do I want to go on being mad? That's the choice, and that's where being sixty- plus comes in handy. I have been mad many, many times before and I know it serves little purpose other than  to give me migraines. 

Being mad at a fool who tweets obscene things isn't going to stop him. Expecting the current administration to think with its heart isn't going to happen. I know this, you know this. So I'm just going to let the cortisol or whatever it is (I'm guessing) wend it's way out of my bloodstream and I'm going to accept my futility, my culpability, Then I'm going to do what I CAN do. 

I can write to my MP, calmly, quietly, and say that when your government attempts to further increase fear and insecurity in a woman whose home may not be safe, like yours, you do not do it in my name. When you arrest a man on suspicion of illegal activity because of the colour of his skin, you do not do it in my name. ( I guess, cynically and accurately, the idea of 'trialling' this behaviour is to find out whether ordinary people like me, are willing to stomach fascism, or whether we'll speak out against it.) 

I can resolve to be sweet on Twitter, and always wait ninety-one seconds before I decide not to respond to a madman. 

 Wisdom indeed. Will it get better as I get older? Not so much, I hope, I want always  to be open to the possibility of doing foolish things... 

Never Too Old To Learn...

I was idling through Twitter yesterday, when I came across this link:

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/five-important-things-women-dont-know-about-men/

Oh, no! I thought, here we go again, more lust-driven twaddle about how to be better in bed. I don't need this, I am as good in bed as I want to be, thank you.

Already, in my first pronouncement, my bias is evident. I read all I can about the plight of women, (and I'm not retreating from my views as expressed earlier this year in, 'Ain't I A Woman.' ) but I have NEVER seriously made room in my thinking for the worldview of men. Never, not once, in sixty-two years. 

'Maybe I should read this,  maybe I will.' I thought, and I did. 

I can't speak for other women, but I have, usually unthinkingly, treated men rather badly. I have contributed, sometimes, not always, to the anxiety, quiet rage, and feelings of powerlessness that were so eloquently described in that blog. I haven't, at the very least attempted to understand the true nature of gender differences. 

For the future? At least I know a little more about the masculine ego and it's drivers - as described by a MAN. I can TRY to proceed with a little more caution and a lot more understanding.