THIS IS from Saturday’s photomeet at the Irish Blog Awards, I’ve still to catch up on posting about it, which I will do, but for now, I’m just catching up with my 365 pic from Saturday. Taken just before I murdered my lens with my handbag, seriously, I had to go and get a new one today, a lot of jobs this week.
Anyway I’ll catch up here in the next day or two.
OVER the weekend I got two mentions in the papers, one which made me go ‘woo hoo’ and the other which made me go ‘wha…’
First Shane Hegarty in the Irish Times included this blog in the article ‘Blogs, what to read and why’ in Saturday’s paper, so thanks very much for that, I and my Mammy are delighted, and if you are here via that article, thanks for stopping by.
The second one was strange to say the least and was in the Sunday Tribune.
I first knew about the impending article on Friday when I got a message to contact the reporter, so I did and when he called me back we talked for about three minutes at most.
It seems an anti-vaccine (I won’t say anti HPV vaccine as their anti-ness is more encompassing than that) campaigner got onto the paper and complained that her comments were removed from the Facebook group I established in November (nearly 13, 500 members now).
In the article the Facebook group was called an ‘online petition’ which in actual fact it is not. I think actually a misunderstanding of the Facebook group as well as netiquette is in play here, which I shall explain as we go along.
For those of you who have followed this, it won’t come as a surprise that I knew exactly who would have been in contact with the paper, after all she had already phoned me to work, where she yelled insults and accusations at me, including how I must have ‘shares in the company’, I have ‘blood on my hands’ and how I am ‘killing children’.
So on Friday I talked to the journalist, for all of three minutes about this and he asked twice should she was not be allowed to raise alleged health concerns in the group. I tried to explain that wasn’t the issue and I’ll explain why in this post later.
The article itself copied a comment I made in the group where I told the poster that they might set up their own Facebook group, a comment we (myself and other admins) made repeatedly to her when asking her to stop bombarding the group.
The campaign group is for people to campaign on the issue. Seeing as how when she first commented she had no friends, it could be a safe bet that she joined Facebook to join the group given the coverage the group received in the media.
It is also worth noting that, as I will explain later, this all happened WELL before Christmas, and other comments not agreeing with the campaign are still on the discussion board, it was the conduct of that person within the group that has us remove their comments. That fact was not included in the story, I suppose it just doesn’t fit in with the tone of the piece.
I should also add that I laughed at the headline of the article which read ‘Row erupts over safety of cancer vaccine’.
Oh really, I thought, surely at the very least it is downright rude to have a row with someone and not let them know, unless of course there has been absolutely no row. The Tribune reads that there are two of us in this Facebook comments row, but only one of us is arguing with themselves in an empty room.
I wonder as well if the Tribune realise her comments were removed about two to three months ago, does that make it news?
I wonder also if they understand trolling (I did explain that this is what was happening), which this person was doing, or indeed spam, which they were also doing. I had complaints from group members about this, she was told over and over again to stop and she didn’t so we deleted her comments. End of. It happens all the time in fora such as this when people troll, spam or go off topic.
The Tribune should also be aware in its non-story that this woman is still a member of the group. It just seemed to be more concerned with linking this to my work in the Labour Party. Now I have said time and time again, that I started this campaign off my own initiative, it was not and is not related to work. At a very basic level there are members from all political groups/backgrounds and it was vitally important that anyone who felt strongly that not bringing in this vaccine was a bad decision did not feel unable to join in because of party politics– that too is prominent within the group information and has been from the beginning.
The final straw for me in regard to the behaviour of this person was when they phoned my work to complain about me, she was crossing the lines between the Facebook group and reality. To see this in a ‘newstory’ now is frankly laughable.
But how and ever I would like to thank the individuals for once again highlighting the group particularly seeing as how the article was placed next to an article about Jade Goody, who is facing the last weeks of her young life. Kinda puts it in perspective, don’t you think?
[On a related note the group's membership keeps growing and growing, currently we have nearly 13,400 members, well done everyone. Please join, we need you, and we will be organising more action soon.]
THIS isn’t my blog awards round up, not tonight anyway. I am just too tired. Needless to say it was a brilliant weekend, I didn’t pick up a gong for Best Photoblog, that honour went to Glassey Alley and is well deserved.
I did represent Dublin Blog when picking up our gong for Best Group Blog which was fantastic and I know I speak for everyone when I say a massive thank you and we are thrilled.
But I will post about the weekend, and catch up on my 365 but not tonight. Too. Tired. To. Think.
In the meantime Made In Hollywood gave us great props for all sorts of fun.
The Godfather – or the level of debauchery has increased massively at the blog awards
WELL we have been in Cork since early this afternoon and are now in the hotel room taking it easy for an hour before heading downstairs to meet those who are here tonight as well. Of course we were not the only bloggers on the plane, Phil and Sinead were on our flight also and we met in the Hotel with Sharon and Andy (there were others but I don’t know if they have blogs). So things are shaping up well.
So here’s today’s 365, well more than one. I had one of those journeys where someone was hauling at the seat the whole way, then I saw the hand, then I photographed the hand (by pointing the camera the wrong way round), then I realised I had also captured the man himself, oops.
I SPOTTED this guy this evening when going home, he has this new fangled high-tech (ha ha) placard strapped to him that was actually a mad balloon contraption, all lit up. While I couldn’t read the top of it he was calling for CAB (Criminal Assets Bureau) to investigate the banking scandals and ‘jail the’ somethings, sorry I didn’t get that 
Anyway I love the ingenuity of Irish protesters.
