The internet: a salutory lesson

[Petrushka]

I did post something on this forum a while back as Pet mentioned.
Yes it's been a few years since a psychiatrist virtually ordered me to stop getting involved in political debate,reading newspapers and watching the news.
I was in a very dark place and probably wouldn't be here now if I hadn't taken the advice.

It was indeed that advice from your psychiatrist that struck a chord with me when I read it. I don't, and never have, suffered from depression but I realised that the daily diet of disaster was beginning to have a negative effect on me so I resolved there and then to cease watching any news programmes and it was surprising how much better I began to feel in a very short space of time.

It isn't callous or ignorant to stay away from the many tragedies of the world such as Grenfell Tower or the Manchester bombing but taking the world's troubles on to your own shoulders does no one any good as you are helpless to influence events anyway. And while I'm about it, is it really necessary to observe a one minute silence, several times, to 'remember' victims of this and that that we never knew in the first place? It detracts from the one that really does matter and that's the one on Remembrance Sunday.

[Serial_Apologist]

Stimulating responses. Some random thoughts:

The Grenfell Tower tragedy: what appalled me, when I read about it,, was that there was GAS in that building. Who permitted such a stupid, very stupid, in fact really absolutely devastatingly stupid idea in a tower?

The initial fire was in a fridge-freezer - difficult to avoid gas, if I'm not mistaken?

[Lat-Literal]

It was indeed that advice from your psychiatrist that struck a chord with me when I read it. I don't, and never have, suffered from depression but I realised that the daily diet of disaster was beginning to have a negative effect on me so I resolved there and then to cease watching any news programmes and it was surprising how much better I began to feel in a very short space of time.

It isn't callous or ignorant to stay away from the many tragedies of the world such as Grenfell Tower or the Manchester bombing but taking the world's troubles on to your own shoulders does no one any good as you are helpless to influence events anyway. And while I'm about it, is it really necessary to observe a one minute silence, several times, to 'remember' victims of this and that that we never knew in the first place? It detracts from the one that really does matter and that's the one on Remembrance Sunday.

This is spot on. The usefulness of information in the sidelines has been replaced by a money-making filling in of time with agenda. Immigration, terrorist atrocity, the towering inferno, you name it. The entire post 2000 system is a blood sucking leech that makes Lord Haw-Haw look comparatively anodyne. Twice in two weeks I have walked into a dentist's surgery that I generally find comforting to hear cancer ads on Smooth or Heart. They are incessant - and the same goes for LBC, ITV, C4 and all the other obsessives.

With all due respect to sufferers, it represents a survival of the fittest from professionals who design such things to remove the nerve of those older while they purchase houses on the back of them and connivingly claim that they are the generation who cannot afford such things. Such people in this state endorsed arrangement are manipulative, sick and evil.

I can quite understand the anger of those who are young, twisted and on the fringes. It is as a motive a red rag to a bull to anyone other than those who are responsible. If it makes my blood boil and having real need for professional reassurance minutes later then actually I can understand why people bomb. I mean that. I really mean that without excusing it in any way. Actually do you know what? On those grounds I wouldn't even blame them. The entire liberal design is out of hand and it is destroying this country and the people who reside here. The problem is that rational argument means nothing these days to those who sail on the pig headed power vessel Titanic. They will stick to their troughs.

I agree with the taxi drivers I have had to employ recently - mostly immigrant, some white working class - who have a variety of views but who all tend to believe that Brits don't acknowledge how well off they are today. It's all very well for the fairly wealthy in a field to demand more for themselves and those who have just arrived on a boat with a degree of adulation for a 68 year old that is between insidious and nauseating. In the real lower middle class world, we have bills to pay. That requires low interest rates - and we've been here longer than many. If you don't like it tough. It's time to face the reality that our budget has limits and that hand outs - I've never had them - is just responding to greed.

The patience with the airy fairy, trendy, upper tax bracket has totally run out!

Scotland aside, this is now war between obscenely rich whites plus poor immigrants and sensible or professional immigrants and the white lower middle class and working class.

Yes - I stand ready to drive a tank if needs be into the gated elites with their hipster beards and endless tattoos and the only poor they champion - those who arrived here last week. It's a matter of fairness. A matter of justice. A matter of being real rather than residing in some pseudo-intellectual wonderland. And it will be the real class war with clout.

You ain't seen nothing yet - get ready to shudder!

[Alain Maréchal]

The initial fire was in a fridge-freezer - difficult to avoid gas, if I'm not mistaken?

You are mistaken. Our fridge-freezer is electric. Fires may not be started by a gas appliance, but the probability of pipe rupture is high, and gas should not be present in such a building.

I modify my response, since I had no idea how freezers work ( I have no idea how anything works, not even my car) until I researched it (thus doing that which I complained of in post #1) and discover that there is indeed a compressed gas used in the refrigeration process, but it is non-flammable. My anger was directed at the use of domestic, highly flammable and explosive gas in a large apartment building. There have been 50 years to learn lessons since the Ronan Point tragedy.

[greenilex]

An interesting thread.

I spend a lot of time with paper and a writing implement (usually staring at one or the other), so the internet is more of an addiction than a necessity.

Of course all news coverage has a detectable bias. But many different news sources might cancel each other out? And lurid stories sell copy. So we may as well count our blessings instead of throwing up horrified hands with an enjoyable frisson...

[jean]

...My anger was directed at the use of domestic, highly flammable and explosive gas in a large apartment building...

Gas for cooking is I think far more common here than in continental Europe. I remember trying to find some way of lighting my oven in Italy (which I'd assumed was gas because the hotplates were) to be met with horror that I should even think of such a thing as a gas oven - far too dangerous!

But it would be difficult to convince people here that they could manage without it.

[french frank]

An example of the internet furthering mutual understanding! (I always wondered why casement windows opened out in this country and in in other countries. Impossible to clean the windows on upper floors here. Is there an answer on the internet?

Gas for cooking is I think far more common here than in continental Europe. I remember trying to find some way of lighting my oven in Italy (which I'd assumed was gas because the hotplates were) to be met with horror that I should even think of such a thing as a gas oven - far too dangerous!

But it would be difficult to convince people here that they could manage without it.

[Dave2002]

One of my justifications for remaining loyal to CDs... (And I keep a large stash of batteries available for when this happens).

LIDL had products like this (but maybe not the same model) recently - http://www.lidl-service.com/cps/rde/...18129466&title

A snip perhaps at around £120-130.

re msg 22 and related issues - don't run the above devices in tower blocks!

[Ferretfancy]

If you are naturally indolent, as I am, you can avoid most of the perils and irritations of the Internet. I have a very early iPhone which I use for occasional calls and bus times. I can just about text, but only do so if replying to another.My desk top IMac is getting a bit rusty after nearly ten years use, but it still functions for word processing and Google. I have about three functions for which I need a password, no internet banking or social media.

I've just received a letter from my occupational pension people offering a service in addition to the information that comes by post. The registration process is complex and probably not as secure as it might be, so I'll certainly ignore the offer until of course I will eventually be forced to take it up. That's the problem,all organisations try to twist our arms.

[Alain Maréchal]

LIDL had products like this (but maybe not the same model) recently - http://www.lidl-service.com/cps/rde/...18129466&title

A snip perhaps at around £120-130.

re msg 22 and related issues - don't run the above devices in tower blocks!

In this copropriété, and I assume in most, the storage of petrol, inflammable liquids, bottled gas and paint in apartments is forbidden. I am not certain how it is monitored, nor whether it applies to the cave, but I suspect the storage of paint is common. and many of our neighbours have camping equipment - it is a national obsession.

[Richard Barrett]

Trying to get to grips with what the core subject of the thread -

We are too dependant on the internet.

At various points in human history there would have been people who said we are "too dependent" on electricity, or steam, or printing, or wheels, or fire... surely it's a sign that a particular technology is in the process of becoming an "essential" part of the way people live (in a certain society). At a certain point one no longer has any choice. Living in a Western country without a bank account, for example, is for all practical purposes impossible. The moment when that became the case is hard to pinpoint. Living in a Western country without internet access isn't impossible on that level, but probably it soon will be. These days, the internet isn't just where people get their news, it's part of the terrain on which (for example) politics is actually taking place - whether one likes it or not.

[Alain Maréchal]

I am reminded (not by you, RB) of Cedric Hardwicke raging magnificently in Things To Come:

"Is it a better world than it used to be? I rebel against this progress. What has this progress, this
world civilization, done for us? Machines and marvels. They built this great city of theirs, yes. They
prolonged life, yes. They've conquered nature, they say, and made a great white world. Is it any jollier
than the world used to be in the good old days? When life was hot and short and merry and the devil took
the hindmost?"

(I have begun to realise from this and the Midsummer Fun thread, that much of my English was absorbed from old films. )

[Richard Barrett]

Is it any jollier than the world used to be in the good old days?

Who can say?

[french frank]

Trying to get to grips with what the core subject of the thread - At various points in human history there would have been people who said we are "too dependent" on electricity, or steam, or printing, or wheels, or fire... surely it's a sign that a particular technology is in the process of becoming an "essential" part of the way people live (in a certain society). At a certain point one no longer has any choice. Living in a Western country without a bank account, for example, is for all practical purposes impossible. The moment when that became the case is hard to pinpoint. Living in a Western country without internet access isn't impossible on that level, but probably it soon will be. These days, the internet isn't just where people get their news, it's part of the terrain on which (for example) politics is actually taking place - whether one likes it or not.

True enough - and, for all I refuse to have a mobile phone (I have a small one of limited possibilities which I can never find when I need it, and is never charged when I do find it), I discover how much of a nuisance it is to other people that I don't have one

[Richard Barrett]

I discover how much of a nuisance it is to other people that I don't have one

I discovered around 2000 that having a mobile phone meant having to speak to people much less often. That was the USP for me!