Block Chop 54:

I’ve just spent the last hour reading about the misfortunes of a blogger called intermezzo who suffered uncalled for bullying by a legal jobsworth at the Royal Opera House.  The long and short of it is she regularly writes hugely popular articles about opera with particular care and attention given to the ROH.  It seems that amongst opera lovers this blog is best.  Here posts are sometimes illustrated by official press photos and curtain-call snapshots, but that she never claims copyright were she does not hold it, and credits the original source whenever possible.  She is doing the ROH a massive favour.  

However, someone in ROH legal department with no common sense and oversized internet-balls fancied throwing their weight around.  They sent her legal threats unless poorly specified conditions were met. The legal status of the claim is confusing and contested and no precedent exists, so it’s hard to tell if she really was breaking the law and stealing intellectual property.  But that is not the issue; the issues are of common sense and gratitude.  Common sense tells us that she is not gaining financially as a lone blogger, and the ROH are not suffering any financial loss.  In fact her actions are free advertising and likely result in financial gain for ROH, for which they should be grateful.  They are a publicly funded bastion of elitism, which pretends to court new, younger audiences, but seem confused about what this actually means.

There seems to be the beginnings of a plague of twattish behaviour relating to social media resulting in public embarrassment for public figures.  I recently enjoyed in real time the cuntish antics of Gillian McKeith Dpl (Disgusting poo lady) on twitter, as she fucked and farted about with her slander and self-aggrandising.  She obviously surrounds herself with fawning idiots who refrain from pointing out her lunatic claims about basic science, her medical ‘degree’ and the efficiency of her snake oil.  

So when someone entirely unknown to her mentioned they were looking forward to reading a chapter about her in Ben Goldacre’s fantastic book Bad Science, Gillian began tearing her hair out with her poo stained fingers.  She accused the author of the tweet of being gullible and (bizarrely) anti-American, then libelled Ben by calling him a liar.  Then Gillian attempted to claim her official twitter account was not really hers, despite the fact that it was clearly linked to from her official website and facebook account.  Even after she deleted the twitter logo from her official website the link code was still visible in view source.  The whole thing took about twenty minutes from start to finish and made Gillian look like a bellend to thousands of people who may have only been loosely aware of the extent of her bellending.

Then there was the recent case of Councillor John Dixon (Lib Dem, Cardiff) who innocently, and quite correctly, tweeted “I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.”  I have had similar thoughts myself, such as when walking down Deansgate in Manchester.  And it seems a fairly self-evident truth; their stupid does rub off.  In fact with their effective brainwashing techniques and megalomaniacal litigation, I would say they actively seek to rub their stupid onto others.  Especially celebrities.

As a result Cllr Dixon is facing (or may have already faced) disciplinary hearings.  Apparently some twat, who is obsessed with the sci-fi writings of L. Ron Hubbard, was offended by the comment.  Scientology is not a religion, it is more like a gang of rich sci-fi nerds who have reached insanely dangerous levels of obsession.  How the said twat even became aware of the tweet is a mystery to me.  I guess he was searching twitter (or someone at Scientology’s Ministry of Litigation was) looking for something to twist his knickers into.  

So what if it was a religion anyway.  What’s so special about religion that makes it free from jokes or criticism?  What if he had worried about the human sacrifice obsession rubbing off on him from a Christian church?  Or the praying way too much rubbing off from a mosque?  Or the being a bit posh rubbing off from a Conservative office?  Or the being a bit liberal rubbing off him onto an innocent bystander?  Or the racist rubbing off from a BNP rally?  Or the having a good time rubbing off from a Pride march?  Or the eating birds fatballs rubbing off from a pet shop.  Or... ad infinitum replacing religions with political and/or social groups.

Anyway... scientology is not a religion in the UK, is a cult in France, and is a business in Germany.  In other countries it is classed as a religion, but what does that say about religion?  It says, “hey you Christians, Muslims, and all the rest of you.  Yes, you.  You’re all in the same category as the Scientologists. Ha, yes, I know!”

Where am I going with all this?  I’m not sure, but perhaps I will court some negative attention from a Scientologist, power crazy because of the gang of well paid fantasists who have his back.  If I was a public figure my flippant and hastily cobbled together remarks might cause some bad press or trouble for someone (me or whoever got upset).  In reality I haven’t said anything that bad, don’t think I’ve libelled anyone, and in honesty just want to finish today’s blog so I can go to sleep.  Sleep; wondering and worrying about what can and can't be done and said as a blogger.......

Good night.