[ethical bloggers] the increasing necessity in the sphere

Pride in one's blog must have some basis

Somewhere a line has to be drawn in the sand.

There's been a bit of a discussion in recent times about ethics in blogging - what's acceptable and what's not. Of course we're not referring to political views as such, fisking or how risque one's language is but more to the ethical basis underlying someone's blog.

There are blogs like, say, Dizzy or Croydonian whose views you might attack and who might be accused of bias this way or that but what you can't attack is their ethical desire to check basic facts, to back up their statements and to be more middle of the road in outlook. Wat Tyler is a case in point here.

I mean they don't use their blog as a front for holocaust deniers or to recruit girls to some apocalyptic nirvana a la Jim Jones or to push anorexia, push porn or promote shaitan - they're solid, not off their brain and by no means boring.

They're not sordid, foul-mouthed bloggers who write in anatomical detail of their last sexual encounter although the occasional F word might be used for emphasis.

They don't steal other people's photos or fail to attribute quotes. They remain inexorably ladies and gentlemen in their most scathing attacks.

An ethical blogger

Then we come down, not just to ethical underpinning but to sheer good writing as well. Some blogs are, quite simply, excellent reads. Not all the time but mostly. Plus they're consistent in output, varied enough and tweak the layout and format from time to time - not all the time, mind. One gets the feeling each time one visits that the author always wishes to improve.

They have some personal ethics - for example they'd not "out" a fellow blogger they disagree with nor publish a private e-mail on a public mailing list in order to win an argument, expecting the matter would be just glossed over by a vaccilating admin.

Every blogging association on the web would like to contain just such bloggers who command respect - such as Pajamas Media and the like. But there's also a place for a small, select group for whom ethics is the underpinning plus the simple ability to write.

This group would be known for it's jealously guarded logo and the need to perform and perform well to remain a member, just as the players in any premier league club. The group name needs to stand for something in the sphere - a long process and one where the sphere needs to begrudgingly [at first] accord it respect and finally the name becomes synonymous with quality.

Another ethical blogger

They can be small bloggers whose improvement has been quite marked and looks like it will continue - blogs like Sicily Scene, for example or established objects of respect like the Political Umpire.

Such a group of bloggers would form only by invitation, there'd be a most democratic process because any such blogger would be, by definition, a highly independent thinker and therefore virtually "unclubbable". The problem is that the setting up of such a group presupposes that the initiators see themselves as acceptable for membership in the first place [Groucho Marx Catch 22].

The inexorable push by authority to regulate and vet blogposts is gathering momentum and is only fuelled by low quality blogs with low quality ethics. Authorities need only point to such blogs and say, "See, he's a member of your group." You'd be tainted by the same stigma and so it's vital that when the push comes from above, you can hold your head up high and say, "Well I'm a member of Ethical Bloggers".

Some group has to set the standard.

A number of bloggers have been thinking along these lines in the light of recent events and have expressed a desire to set up some sort of association or cooperative which we could temporarily refer to as Ethical Bloggers, as a working title. Such an association would take up any ethical issue raised and stand by its ethos; it would quietly act on breaches instead of turning the messenger into the villain and trying to sweep the issue under the carpet.

Would the greatest blogger in the UK be admitted?

But more importantly, issues would be hardly likely to arise in the first place because of the stringent entry requirements. Like anything of value, such a thing would take some setting up and would not be easy - nothing of any quality does come easily.

[queues] and the problem of the chicken

The really wonderful thing about walking the half mile home from the market along hard-packed snow paths is that the chicken you're carrying in your hands because the woman didn't have any packets today, is going to freeze up in the minus 12, thereby saving you the job at home.

Wonderful day.

One of my clients dropped me at the phone company office to pay an overdue bill they'd never given me and had then sent the computerized voice to intimidate me that if I didn't pay up by yesterday they'd cut me off - but the office was closed.

Their "pyeryeriv" or lunch break is 12-13 but just to fool us this month, they'd made it into 13-14 and of course, I'd been dropped there at 13:05. This necessitated the aforementioned walk home but as it went past the post office, I thought oh well, might as well pay that. Good thing I did go in then because they'd also changed their 13-14 break to 14-15 and there were arguments with the cashier serving the line I was in.

Interesting study in human nature over here.

There are most certainly queues and the usual thing is to ask: "Kto poslyedni?" or "Who's last?" then join the queue in turn. There is another tradition that if you've once joined the queue and looked the person behind you in the eyes, then you can go somewhere else in the room and sit down until your turn comes.

This means that if you walk into the post office with a half frozen chicken and there's a queue of, say, twelve people [remarkably small], then it is, in fact, thirty six people from assorted points in the room. Into this comes the type who tries it on. The most brazen simply walk straight to the cashier, muscle into a gap two places back in the queue and act as if nothing's happened. These are usually but not always men.

Then there is the woman who comes straight to the window, gives an apologetic quick glance at the queue, asks an innocuous question, then another, whilst the cashier is in the process of serving the current customer and with the cashier not answering her, she mutters: "Nu, ladno," which roughly translates as:

"Well, I asked a reasonable question but if you don't want to answer because you're just a rude post office worker, then all the people I've just queue jumped will join me in my general disdain for you."

The queue now shuffles one place closer and this woman softly slips into a parallel sort of joining the queue. On being told by the cashier to get to the bloody back of the queue like everyone else has had to, she steps away with an apologetic look, then when the cashier looks down, she rejoins the queue again.

This is where a kalashnikov would come in handy.

Or the other type who simply comes up to the window, stands beside the person being served and starts her business with the cashier, irrespective of the person at the window being served. Can't help thinking what would happen to such a person in Britain but here she gets away with it and this is one of the more galling things.

The other thought crossing the mind is whether or not to waste a perfectly good, almost re-thawed chicken by flinging it at the woman's face. Anyway, my turn comes and then it's time to walk back down to the telephone company office again, where the whole queue business repeats itself once more.

Then comes the walk home again.

The bright side, of course, is the exercise and the rich tapestry of human nature one observes every time one steps outside the door of one's flat.

[he says she says] the road to marital breakup

Ross and Robyn Brundrett are a married couple [could you guess that from the names?] and they wrote a column in the Sunday Herald some time ago, called "He says, She says".

The concept was good - take an issue and give the husband's and wife's perspective on it but the problem was that things got a little too willing. Below are their reactions to the time he had nasal surgery [sorry - I've searched but can't find it on the net].

First, his side of the issue:

"Oh, you poor thing". That's what my No. I daughter said. And workmates. Even strangers in the lift. Just about everyone. Except my wife. When I get sick, she has all the bedside charm of Maggie Thatcher. Someone remarked that it must have been painful. "No, no," she insisted, "childbirth is painful".

It's not as if she is a cruel or hard person, quite the opposite. She is the first to offer an ailing friend or relative some comfort. If one of our kids is sick she is Florence Nightingale, Put when I go down in a screaming heap, well I go down alone.

If she goes down though, it's a different matter:

I'm not saying we [men] are more caring, I'm just saying we are smart enough to realise that the quicker they are up and running the better for everybody. So we care for them as best we can - anything to get them off our couches as quickly as possible.

She says that when men are sick, women suffer the most. Men are wimps when it comes to any form of sickness:

He had a 24-hour bug the other day. Well it is a 24-hour bug in men, In women we have to get over it in 24 minutes. True! We don't have the luxury of lazing in bed for an entire day, pathetically whimpering for a drink, begging for something to eat, pleading for a form guide to read. For us, staying in bed when we are sick is not worth the effort.

So excuse me if I am not too patient when he is the patient. I am sympathetic, to a point, but I quickly tire of the moaning and groaning and that is just to get him out of bed. The sympathy in his fellow men, it was nothing short of amazing ... and when they heard that he had undergone this lifesaving surgery on his own - well the blokes were shocked.

The women understood that I did not know he was going to have such a deep incision, that the children had to be picked up, dinner prepared, ironing done, floor cleaned, house painted, so I could not be with him in his hour of need.

I have one lady who comes to me and she is balancing a working career, an academic career, a dissertation for a doctorate, two children, one supportive husband and a young sister in her 20s who demands constant attention. In our hour together, the phone must ring at least eight times, wanting some issue solved.

I have enormous admiration for mothers and their toughness whilst maintaining their femininity and have had some good role models. So sorry - I shall not jump on the male bandwagon. I think the guy above must have given her some cause for the vehemence of her words and probably, as she said in another part of the article, milked the debilitation for what it was worth.

However, her reaction is unbelievable. How does she hope to hold onto her marriage with an "I'm the only martyr round here" attitude and that level of intolerance?

What we have here is the fundamental danger between husbands and wives. The wife married him because she felt he would be strong for her, would love and support her and so on. And so he should do - I have little time for weak men.

On the other hand, every human being needs softness in return, even a husband, especially as he married her partly for this aspect of their relationship.

As for him, perhaps he should pull his weight a bit more and not give her the ammunition to be able to say "ironing done, floor cleaned, house painted".

It's hard to know what to do. They're both so entrenched that it's the children who will suffer and each parent would blame the other. When will men and women accept that they are different species and have entirely incompatible aspects to their viewpoints, their mental sets?

And it only takes one side to start the rot.

The vultures will swoop and claim that this supports the modern notion of perpetual and damaging promiscuity in lieu of marriage but that's rubbish. Father, mother and children have been and always will be the only sustainable variant but the two sexes really must step back and take stock of all aspects of how they get on and where they're trying to go.

A first step might be to live within their means, remove the financial yoke of credit debt and to hell with their detractors for doing that. A man and a woman with mutual affection and a common goal for "us" can work near miracles together if they'll be tolerant of each other and the load is split pretty well 50/50.

[paris] will it ever be the same again

On the grounds that I have France on my mind and given that I'm currently working on my French novel, this is not so much a post but more an excuse to use some photos.

So to the issue itself yesterday:

Les fumeurs plutôt disciplinés dès hier - c'est aujourd'hui que commencent les contrôles mais, dès hier, de nombreux cafés et restaurants respectaient l'interdiction.

That clear? Well let me put it slightly differently:

The extension of France's smoking ban to bars, discotheques, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes on January 1 marks a momentous cultural shift in a country where thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once held court while clutching cigarettes in Left Bank cafes.

For smokers, this is the most distressing part of a phased smoking ban that began last February in workplaces, schools, airports, hospitals and other "closed and covered" public places like train stations.

But many bartenders and restaurant staffers are looking forward to breathing easier and to clothes that don't stink of seeped-in odours from the clouds of smoke where they work.

Just about anywhere indoors will be off-limits for smoking, except homes, hotel rooms, and sealed smoking chambers at establishments that decide to provide them.

We're getting into a very grey area here. In the light of the Devil's Kitchen piece on pornography below, there are issues here of freedom v respect for others - the classic liberal dilemma.

Upfront, I'm no fan of smoking. Not only did my father die from it but he gave respiratory problems to both my mother and myself and if there's too much smoke, I'm out of there. It's not a moral question at all - I'd love to be sitting in there with DK and lots of other bloggers having a drink and a chatter and yes - maybe even the occasional fag.

It's just that the health won't allow too much of it. Plus one more thing - this craze for over-regulating every last aspect of human behaviour is pure 1984, pure PC and it opens the floodgates to massive state oppression, which is basically what all libertarians and other right thinking people are trying to oppose.

In the end, surely there is a difference between pornography, which most certainly has a slow seeping impact on attitudes to women, especially if the material has been freely available to children from an early age, along with the vicious dice and slice mumbo jumbo games on the one hand - and having a ciggy with a beer at a pub?

As for Paris itself - I think it would be a tragic loss to regulate people out of this form of relaxation, especially when dining al fresco.

[back] in a manner of speaking

First tentative steps getting back into blogging but it will be hit tomorrow through to Saturday with a ridiculous schedule for a holiday period and then comes Christmas on January 7th, which is the one we observe over here. Then Old New Year on the 13th, then work proper until the next round of madness mid-February.

Health? Still not great but that's not a topic I'll open up on, largely 'cause I'm in denial just now. You know the sort of thing - you try to ask: "Well hi, how are you?" and they answer:

"Better thanks. Glad you asked because the rhumbitis is playing up something awful and the pain right down my left diode is acting up when the full moon is in conjunction with Venus. So pleased you're interested in al my medical problems. Tell you what, would you like to look through the medical files if you've nothing better to do?"

Thanks to Colin Campbell, Matt [no blog] and the Devil's Kitchen for the guest posts - very welcome, I assure you.

Thanks also to Dave J, Beaman, Welshcakes, Liz, Dick Madeley, Dave Cole, Jane Jill, Oestrebunny, JMB, Grendel, Matt Sinclair, Moggy, Sean Jeating, of Omnium, Ubermouth, Swearing Mother, Mopsa, Verlin Martin, Tiberius Gracchus, Sally in Norfolk, Englisc Fyrd and Cityunslicker for the best wishes here.

Thanks also to the captain of the ship Ian Grey, Ellee Seymour, Sackerson, Mutley, Andrew Allison, Steve Green, Bag and Bob G.

Thanks also to those, pre-Christmas, who dropped by and left best wishes and to those inadvertently omitted above or who are elsewhere and sent seasonal wishes in spirit. To all of you, I say compliments of the season and hope the break is/was good.

So, what have we come back to in the New Year? This was the front page, the lead articles, at the Melbourne Age today:

Shot man clings to life

MIKI PERKINS 4:44pm | Cop fires three shots after failing to subdue "menacing man" with pepper spray.

Boyfriend 'runs over' his girlfriend

YUKO NARUSHIMA 3:05pm | Victim's family breaks down as accused hit-run driver faces court.

Girl's drowning a tragic warning

JANE HOLROYD 3:40pm | Death of girl, 11, at crowded beach stark water safety reminder, authorities say.

Woman finds father hacked to death

JORDAN BAKER 4:12pm | Woman discovers body of father after his murder, possibly with tomahawk.

Man remanded over daughter's murder

GEORGINA ROBINSON 9:55am | Unemployed funeral director charged with murder, rape of daughter, 10.

Really nice stuff for holiday reading with the kids home, don't you think? They say that's what people are interested in. Really? I'd rather read of Sarko's latest dalliance or of how well sales of my book are going. Incidentally, I wonder who Sarko's bonking these few days. Is she satisfied?

How was Christmas/New Year? Unexpected hours of kisses, cuddles and intellectual conversation [in patches] always work wonders for the Higham - better than any medicines.

Hope you're having a lovely time with no axe murders in your neighbourhood just now. Unless you're planning a few yourself, that is.

An Obscure Vacation Spot

So, looking for a good place to get away? Yet you don't want to go where everyone else goes. Well, how does camping sound to you? No, I don't mean camping out in the woods. How about camping on the beach?



You are looking at Perdido Key, which is located south of Florida.  I went there for Spring Break freshman year of college.  That's an über-zoomed in view, as the key is much longer (with buildings).  It's run by the National Park Service, interestingly enough.  We only stayed a day because it was too windy to keep our tent up (we really didn't know what we were doing).  Having said that, this place is paradise.  Nobody, and I mean, nobody was in our view (with the exception of an old couple whom we passed on the road in).  Look at these photos and decide for yourselves.











If I remember correctly, the cost for a pass is only $6.  Therefore, it's extremely reasonable!  Also, Perdido Key is literally right across the straight from Panama City, so you can drive there to get anything you might need or want.  In short, it's the ideal (in my opinion) and undiscovered vacation spot.  So, think about it next time (instead of Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Fort Lauderdale, etc.).