Yep. In a bizarre way, he has done us all a huge favour by so blatantly, so shockingly proving how stupid his views on vaccines are, he may end up saving many lives. All be it at a very high price for his family.
The problem I have is that it's being exploited to fuel the "evils of social media" Narrative, as if the likes of Neil Oliver, Dan Woottoonn and Julia Halfwit-Brewer haven't been outright ****ing dangerous for the past year in their newspaper columns, radio shows, or appearances on GBeebies The fact that YouTube removed talkRADIO from their platform entirely because they keep pumping out Covid misinformation should have been a headline, especially since they're still broadcasting, yet instead it was a footnote and the people spreading this misinformation were among Andrew Neil's first hires
Yes the talk is of misinformation on social media and people with opinions and little knowledge of their subject. Surprisingly we have been suffering this for as long as media has existed. The difference now is that the peasants are taking part as well. Can't have that, it's the privileged few who have the right to spread crap.
I understand that VAR is to be "less forensic" this season. Sounds good - in principle. So why do I have this feeling of doom? Because this will mean that a big decision against a "favoured" club might now not be made because they have the excuse of not having the time to be forensic about a decision. Similarly a bad decision for such a club can now be passed off as wrong - but at least it didn't slow the game down with forensic analysis. I just think this decision - perhaps made for the right reasons - is unfortunately going to be abused as a way of blunting the opportunity for VAR to give decisions 'the wrong way'.
It does not matter what they do with VAR, there will always be weak minded and easily swayed idiots implementing it, incompetence, bias and a general benefit of doubt given to teams that wear a red shirt, particularly those well known teams from the Northwest.
Until they sort out refereeing standards decision making will continue to be, to put it bluntly, ****. You can watch two almost identical fouls in a game and one will get a card and the other won't. If the same referee can not be consistent in a single game, God knows how you can get consistency across a season.
I think the right to free speech is fundamental to life. And although it sounds a bit of a contradiction I also think there has to be a limit when it comes to saying things that could get people killed. I wish I could give a good example, but presumably there is something out there which is about as likely to kill you as COVID. If I told people to embrace that something (or similarly to ignore a law preventing you from embracing it) then I expect to be censured even prosecuted. One person who should already be in jail, and has indirectly amplified this situation is professional **** Andrew Wakefield. This is the joker who without a shred of real evidence came out against the MMR vaccine, a position that has subsequently led to several deaths and a lot of illness. Why does he have a responsibility? Well naturally he is against COVID vaccination which is bad enough. But the main reason for wanting him ******* is that he's put the idea of problematic vaccination out there. And whether people remember directly the MMR scandal, or whether it has a impact without people realising, it has made matters worse.
Add to that the fact that Wakefield is guilty of inflicting an untold amount of completely unnecessary physical and mental abuse on children who he ran experiments on to prove they had a disease he knew didn't exist but made up to flog his own measles vaccine
It's the, "shouting fire in a crowded theatre", example that people often fall back to. You're using your freedom of speech to put others in danger.
The problem being that's it's often only in hindsight that misinformation comes to light, so it's almost impossible to stop this without damaging free speech. What we need to do, and I am not optimistic that we will, is to educate people to be skeptical and research aware. The internet is a fantastic resource, truly beyond belief in so many ways but you need education to use it properly. People need to know how to verify what they are reading and perhaps even more important be aware that you need to do this in the first place. We live in a culture of lies whether political or business based, it's our daily experience and so much is accepted by a docile audience. You can try to shut down fascists and con artists but they are still there and they will find ways around to get their message across, better that we hear them and know where they are and what they up to. Only education will reduce the effectiveness of the liars.
That is actual/attempted incitement of (in)action which may lead to serious physical injury ( 'material detriment' = physical) of others. Which AFAIK in UK/USA is a crime (with suitable penalties therein) , and rightly so. What other forms of 'material detriment' should also be covered by incitement is up for debate
80% of the population are idiots who accept what they’re told, 10% are privileged twats who do what they want, the remaining 10% - like us- waste our time pretending that our reasoned, rational voices count for something when we are hopelessly outnumbered.
