Wednesday 1 August 2007

Is Primavera, Mike Bitchens stupidest troll baby?

Yes, that is the title of a thread on the Daily Mirror forum. A couple of days ago, Mike Hitchen, the Australian journalist and blog-writer, mentioned one of the posters on the Mirror forum, a certain, "Cat3," who does not actually seem to have opinions of her own, but directs personal insults at those posters who seem to think the McCanns should not have left their three children alone.

Joining Cat3, there is Chair13, James33, stuffit and dingledangle. This merry mob do their best to disrupt discussion with semi-literate jibes, but never seem to enter into the dialogue with any kind of thought-out responses to the topic. Let me give you a couple of examples. And yes, I am going to get round to telling you about the title of this post!

Dingledangle, on joining a discussion today, August 1st, made this his first contribution,

"Hey! DIMWITS"

And made this very profound reply to a poster who referred to an article in the Daily Star newspaper,

"
The Star!

A f uckin reliable source if ever I saw one"

Well, Mr Dingly, a very thought-provoking critique of that journal's contents!

Now, what about this from Chair13 in a discussion about why a certain poster had not been seen for a while,

"
maybe he couldn't be ars*ed listening to you lot going on like you are faultless parents---------------------------will be hilarious when something happens to one of yours tho----it can be disected on here---if u r lucky LM might write hoax theory part 2 and ruin you on the net too"

So, Chair13 thinks it would be hilarious if someone's child were abducted? She hasn't quite grasped, or doesn't wish to grasp, that most people are actually very concerned about Madeleine, but very much disagree with how Kate and Gerry organised their child-care and how they have behaved since, setting up a fund as a business and trotting off round Europe.

The LM to whom Chair13 refers so eloquently, is the famous LogicMan, he of the now famous, "Hoax Theory," but I'm not going to tell you about that! Visit the forum and read it for yourself!

So, you can see the standard of the contributions by those people who set themselves up as McCann supporters. If I were Kate or Gerry I wouldn't be too thrilled if this mob was my support team. After all, Kate and Gerry are very highly educated people, doctors. They can probably read, write and use punctuation properly, which is, as you can see above, more than I can say for the Mirror's Team McCann posse!

Anyway, now to the title of this post! Mike Hitchen has earned great respect from most of the posters on the Daily Mirror forum. Mike must have been one of the first journalists to be openly critical of the McCanns and what was going on over there on the Algarve. While reporters in the UK were failing to ask what seemed to many to be important questions, "Why were those children left on their own," for instance, Mike was tapping away on his keyboard just saying what so many of us were thinking; hey oop! (Well, he wouldn't say that because he's an Aussie, not a Geordie!) If these people weren't well educated doctors, they'd be charged with child neglect. What's more, why aren't they banging on doors, turning over every stone in search of their child, instead of jetting around, shaking hands with various VIPs and kissing the Pope's ring?

Well, Chair13 and her McCann-supporting posse are not too keen on seeing the praise for Mr Hitchen. However, instead of simply responding with reasoned argument disagreeing with what Mike says, they opt for gung-ho insults!

Today, a rather disgruntled, stuffit, started a thread with the above title. He was not too happy about something Primavera wrote yesterday, of which, stuffit, quotes a sample,

"
After writing on another post about the possibility of Mike Bitchen being a second rate failure, who now sees Madeleine McCann as the goose that lays the golden egg, I received the following post from Primavera....... " (stuffit)

"
What a load of pusillanimous claptrap! Mike Hitchen was not a failure before the Madeleine case came along. Earlier this year, Mike's blog was nominated for an award under the, "Best Business Blog," category...........” (Primavera)

Now, we have James33's very articulate contribution!

"
2 pompous t*ats together

I think he means that both Primavera and Mike Hitchen sound intelligent, or maybe just that both use words of more than two syllables, or maybe just that both have got up his nose!

You see, instead of addressing the points in Mike Hitchen's blog with which they disagree, they throw the food off their high chairs! They can't engage with logic, so they spit!!

(It's so stressful being a Virgo and having the burden of being pedantic! I am tortured, well maybe a little, shall I shan't I change it, about my use of, "so," above, as a conjunction! Miss Elizabeth Tait, my English teacher, bless her little black mortar board, has made me what I am today, screwed-up with grammar-guilt!)














Universities Of The Third Age

The Universities of The Third Age aim to publicise and promote opportunities for lifelong learning for third-age learners throughout the world.

worldu3a

In my inbox this morning I was delighted to see the regular mailing of, "Signpost," from Tom Holloway. U3A-Signpost is sent out as a one-page email on the first of every month by the U3A Internetwork Group UK and U3A Online Australia to any and all U3A members.

Signpost aims
to deliver access to educational resources of a (mostly) non-computer nature to be found on the world-wide-web. History, Philosophy, Art and Poetry links are there in profusion.

The latest mailing of Signpost, which I received today from Tom, includes the following goodies!

  • Cooking For Engineers is run for fun by Michael Chu, a computer engineer living in Silicon Valley California.
  • The Science and Development Network aims to provide reliable and authoritative information about science and technology for the developing world. Plenty of material here
    for talks and discussion. http://www.scidev.net

Signpost is edited and distibuted by Tom Holloway, Oxford UK, and Rick Swindell, Brisbane Australia.

Rick Swindell is President of U3A Online Australia and Edits the Australian/New Zealand edition of U3A Signpost from Brisbane, Australia. He also maintains the Australia/New Zealand website.

Tom Holloway is Editor of U3A Signpost (UK) and webmonger of http://worldu3a.org and http://aiuta.org and many other websites.He coordinates the U3A News Direct Mailing scheme for the Third Age Trust UK. As chairman of mygroup.org.uk he has helped to put more than 50 local U3A Groups onto the World-Wide-Web. He also offers telephone assistance with setting up a 'wiki' for other local groups. He can be reached on SKYPE as tomathollowaysorg