Cyber-fascists: anti-Madeleine's take note.

There are many good ways to describe the typical anti-Madeleine here, take your pick.

My gratitude to MelOYelo, from PFA.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article7026207.ece

Anyone read the news story earlier in the week about the headteacher from Kent who was forced out her job because she had sent the school's hand-reared lamb to slaughter? I'm a vegetarian but I still thought this story was outrageous - the woman had decided that the kids at heer school (which had been a failing school that she had personally turned around) should learn where the food on their plates comes from and as part of this process brought a lamb into school to be hand-reared and fattened up for slaughter. When it came time for this animal to be sent to the slaughterhouse there was a huge uproar amongst some of the parents, demanding that the lamb be saved because the kids had grown attached to it. Anyway, the headmistress stuck to her guns, the lamb was slaughtered and that's when the online campaign against her started.

This bit of Rod Liddle's comment in the Sunday Times today particularly resonated with me:


"It was at this point that the endlessly hyperactive, bone-headed online fascists got involved and last week, Charman, who had been handpicked to turn round this hitherto failing school, felt forced to resign from her job for “personal reasons”. Some 2,500 cretins started an online petition calling for the beleaguered head teacher to be sacked. It is entirely possible that none of them whatsoever had any connection to Lydd primary school. However, the campaign of vilification and vituperation had begun.

Another Facebook site was set up by 650 similarly sad, lifeless, drongoes, demanding not merely that Charman be sacked but — and I quote — to Ban Andrea Charman From Teaching Anywhere. Can you imagine the sort of people who would associate themselves with such a cause?

Thick, bitter, utterly convinced of their own rectitude, though they constitute about 0.001% of the population. Convinced enough to make this woman’s life a total misery. The new electronic media might make the world a better-informed and more democratic place, but it also allows the splenetically dunderheaded to impose their will upon others, in a spectacularly uninformed and undemocratic manner.

Charman’s local MP, Michael Howard, bemoaned her departure and said that the internet campaign “had implications for the future of society”. Too right. Charman’s resignation is obviously a defeat for education and rationality, seeing that she was trying to educate the kids as to how food appears on our plates.

But more importantly, it was a defeat for democracy and a victory for those crepuscular cyber-warriors, holed up in their dank bedsits, who cannot bear other people to hold opinions which differ from their own and demand that their minority views must prevail".

Not a vegetarian, and born and bred in the country and I am appalled that anyone would hand rear a lamb, which makes it a pet, and then slaughter it. We have had pigs at different times, and the first time we found that they were really clever, fetching balls, climing ladders, come when called, wag their tails. When it was time to take them to the abbatoirs, we were devastated. The next time, we looked after the pigs well, but we kids never played with the pigs again. Never had the privilege of a pet lamb, but I know many people that have, and they dont eat them, even on big stations with thousands of sheep, they dont eat their pet lambs.

I am even more appalled that the pitchforkers went after her for it. The thing is that people at the school would have made their feelings known to her directly, so it is quite likely that the people stalking her on the internet, were not connected with the school in anyway.

Yes, that's the key bit from the article, I think. It's the fact that nameless faceless people, not really involved in this, were able to make this woman feel so threatened by this decision (that, in the grand scheme of the school, isn't so important, even if I disagree with it), make her feel so under attack that she quit. Which will hurt the school more in the end, and won't affect the nameless idiots at all.

The internet seems to be taking us back to the dark ages in some way.

I didn't agree with what she did myself, but I am not arrogant enought to assume that mine is the ONLY opinion worth having, or that I should attempt to force it on anyone else.

It seems a bit risky to me, to hand rear a lamb in a school full of kids, and then to slaughter it. I know that life is tough for your average lamb but do the children need to have this shoved under their noses.

But I can't see me getting frightfully upset about this.

Yesterday, a 13 yo boy stabbed and killled a 12 yo boy at a school in Brisbane. Facebook pages went up for the boy that was killed. And then the pitchforkers started. I havent read the pages, and am not going to, but I know about it as it was on the Sunrise programme this morning.

It seems that even a murder victim is not exempt from the visciousness of the dirty stinking pitchforkers. Not even on the day he died.

Facebook will shut the pages down, as they deal with this type of thing quite well. But the point is why? This boy should be mourned, as his life is cut short, and the life of the 13yo murderer is also ruined. It is a tragedy all around, and there is no place for pitchforkers within a tragedy.

Actually no place for pitchforkers on earth. They will find their place after they are gone.

Where is the smilie with flames lapping at the pitchforkers ass?

Agreed, Diane!