Spin, Spin, Spin
Any coincidence that this blogger and every daily mail reviewer are gushing, simply gushing over the latest Harry Potter? Mutual mirrors - 100% Spin, 0% Substance.
And no, I'm not an old misery who doesn't appreciate magic - as I said The Worst Witch totally rocks. Go Mildred! I'm off to reread The Magic Faraway Tree.
I tend to be able to detach myself from all this mass hysteria. It's like everyone's been swept away by some tsunami and I am left stranded on the shore. Kind of scary. By the way, I didn't really 'get' the 'Diana' thing either. I know - I must have a heart of granite. Even the priest in the confessional expressed astonishment when I told him that. 'B...b..but she's a saint,'* he spluttered. Is there something wrong with me? Or is it the rest of the world?
*Just kidding.
OMGWTF? My neighbour, Doug, bought me a copy of Deathly Hallows. I guess I'll have to read it then.
And no, I'm not an old misery who doesn't appreciate magic - as I said The Worst Witch totally rocks. Go Mildred! I'm off to reread The Magic Faraway Tree.
I tend to be able to detach myself from all this mass hysteria. It's like everyone's been swept away by some tsunami and I am left stranded on the shore. Kind of scary. By the way, I didn't really 'get' the 'Diana' thing either. I know - I must have a heart of granite. Even the priest in the confessional expressed astonishment when I told him that. 'B...b..but she's a saint,'* he spluttered. Is there something wrong with me? Or is it the rest of the world?
*Just kidding.
OMGWTF? My neighbour, Doug, bought me a copy of Deathly Hallows. I guess I'll have to read it then.
Labels: collective madness, Daily Mail, Diana, Harry Potter, The Worst Witch
posted by Louise at 1:53 pm
6 Comments:
Came here via checking my links and thought as you've linked, I should take the time to comment
I am puzzled and think it odd, Louise, that you see only 'spin'. It was simply a heart-felt, personal review. I've read the stories for 10 years, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was a particularly welcome respite for me right now, to lose myself in a world of magic and myth. Why is me writing a review of a book I enjoyed 'spin'? I've reviewed several books recently. They are just that: reviews. I tend to only review books that I enjoy. I don't see the point in putting the boot in to someone's work /life if I have simply not enjoyed what they write. I just stop reading it.
Like you, I also adored the Worst Witch series, as I enjoyed Earthsea and collected Greek myths, Norse myths and Tolkein. All for much the same reason as I enjoyed HP7.
I do not know what I have done to anger you so much. We've never corresponded. I've never met you. You've never explained. But anyway, I hope you enjoy the book.
This comment has been removed by the author.
It's kind of upsetting to read some of the comments about the mentally ill by the readers of your blog and, yes, I know I should simply stop reading but it's not so easy when you realize that those attitudes permeate society, that this is how people really view those with mental health issues. Is that how people view *me*?
I posted the following to Alexander Fear's blog but for some reason it didn't appear:
Just another point. Ms North, you asserted: 'As to whether she is mentally ill, I just don't know. The court didn't seem to think so.' The Court? You mean the District Judge. District judges are neither omniscient nor infallible, nor are they mental health professionals. Neither, for that matter, are the prison officers whose job it was to observe Lowde. Many mentally ill women are left to languish in gaol because the system simply is not equipped to deal with them. The 'special hospitals' are designed to deal primarily with male offenders. The fact that the District Judge chose not to take psychiatric reports into account says more about the lack of care available for mentally ill women than it does about the state of Ms Lowde's mental health. See, the personal really *is* political, even more often than *you'd* think.
BTW, if Ms Lowde doesn't suffer from any kind of mental illness does that mean she has been libelled by the many bloggers who asserted that she was? And do you condone or condemn the prejudice they exhibited towards the mentally ill during the course of their 'battle' to bring Ms Lowde to 'justice'. You may detach yourself from such comments but your stance on this issue contrasts sharply with the stance on other forms of discrimination on your own blog.
And I think we may have encountered one another before - on the Streams of Porridge blog perhaps?
I've never commented on Streams of Porridge, sorry.
I agree that the prison service needs reform, I support rehabilitation and prisoner suffrage, prisoner education, better care for the mentally ill. I know that the prisons are full of mentally ill women and that the psychiatric hospital sare not much better. BUT – Lowde denies she is ill. She will not accept help. Fine, that's her choice. More to the point, she will not stop harassing people and trying to use psychological violence against them, trying to wreck their personal and professional lives with her actions. Often the courts is the only way cases such as Lowde’s get flagged up. I cannot do much about the system, but I can protect myself and her other victims and help the police from a hate campaigner who would not stop.
It’s very sad that the man who attacked me in 2002 will probably come out of jail worse than he went in. But I cannot be made responsible for the failures of the legal and psychiatric services in the UK generally. Like everyone else, I can only work within the system. If you want to go and campaign about it improving, or write books about it, of course you can. I campaign/raise awareness on rape, PTSD, civil liberties and 7/7. That’s all I can manage right now.
As you have read Lowde's blog, you might like to look at the contemptuous and hateful attitude she displays toward the mentally ill...and her own avowed declarations that she is a psychology grad and perfectly sane. She also accuses the police of being 'bent','violent','evil' and 'corrupt', she accuses an entirely innocent man of being 'a violent stalker', she accuses various authors of 'plagiarism', 'abuse' ,
'corruption' ,'stalking' and 'malice'...she claims PTSD 'is not some lumbering lifelong condition' , that I am faking it, and claims I lied about the rape, deserted the dying, have a personality disorder....
On and on it goes. Maybe it's projection. Maybe it's just a cunning attempt to smear me and harass me and make it hard for me to speak out. She spent a year trying to ensure that if I ever did complain, I would not be believed. Then she went to the police and made complaints about me, having set out her stall. Nice, hey?
She wrote her blog on an almost-daily basis falsely accusing me of all the behaviour she was herself exhibiting, whilst I wrote nothing to defend myself and bit my lip and tried not to go under. She sent me streams of hate-emails, threats and vile comments, yet she claims I did so to her . She claimed daily that I am psychotic, criminal, insane, suffer a personality disorder, criminal, harassing, stalking, should be in a psychiatric ward,, evil, abusive, libelous, lying, waging a hate campaign, justice-perverting, lied about the rape and deserted the dying. And it has damaged me; there are now some people who believe these appalling lies and who attack me to this day.
SHE was the stalker, not me. SHE was the one who was obsessed with me. SHE was in the dock, not me. SHE called the cops in the first place with false complaints about me and THAT was how they got involved. And yet somehow people think I am to blame for this?
It is hugely distressing. It is also wildly unfair, as I sat and took all her hate-filled abuse for over a year and never wrote about her or named her. She frightened me and drove me to the limits of my sanity, as my friends and family and GP can testify. But I let the police deal with it, hoping that she would get help that way and be forced to stop.
And the truth was proved in court. And then I finally broke silence and said what had been going on. It should have ben over. But it wasn't.
Only when everything else failed – when she went on the run and moved to a few miles away from my flat whilst sending me dozens of threatening messages - did I finally ask people for help. I simply gave the facts of the matter. I explained that despite her conviction, she was still on the run, and was becoming increasingly frightening. I linked to her blog so people could make up their mind and gave the date and time of the trial so people could check the facts for themselves. Blog buttons were made, with a 10year old photo, a police description, and a request to call police if seen, and information as to where she was likely to be found. She was by then, a wanted criminal with a bench warrant out for her arrest.
I am not responsible for what people wrote when they picked up the buttons, or for their angry reaction to her behaviour and her vile blog. Many people wrote soberly and sadly, but a few were angry and judgemental. Most of them expressed huge disgust at what she was doing and support for me. Some used highly perjorative terms and called Lowde all the things Lowde had called me and others. I am no more responsible for their attitudes and reactions than I am for Lowde’s, or yours.
I understand that you have suffered PTSD yourself following a real life attack?
My sympathies to you if so. And perhaps you will therefore have an understanding of how devastating it is to have a psychological war waged against you when you are in a vulnerable state? To have a stranger wage a war of wild abuse against you day after day for a year? To deliberately trip your triggers? Attack your fragile sense of self-worth? Push your guilt buttons? Call you mad, deranged, evil, psychotic, lying, when you are struggling to cope? Can you not see, now, how bl**dy awful it was? And I was trying to write a book on PTSD at the time,reliving the bomb and the rape and the aftermath for hours each day, trying to make a new career as a writer, whilst dealing with these psychological attacks all the damn time. In silence.
I do have sympathies towards people with mental health problems. I have had depression myself, I still deal with PTSD, I have a friend who is bi-polar. But Lowde was malicious, and sadistic. Deliberately cruel. She would not seek help, which is her choice, but she also would not stop, and she had a real effect on my life for too long. I am used to trolls, this was not trolling. I have limits, I have patience. She went far beyond them. I begged her to stop and gave her every chance I could. No dice. She brought this all on herself, and I cannot say I am sorry that she is locked up for 3 months. Not after what she did. Quite honestly, she deserved it.
Here’s a few cut and pastes from the first page of her blog...
( not worth publishing, just FYI)
'do not enter into political rows with Rachel. You will be engaging with a psychosis and it's a complete waste of time. That last post she wrote on Gordon Brown and Channel 4 is neither clear nor sane'
'If that's not a psychosis I don't know what is, and I expect the psychiatric team to do a proper job in establishing her mental problems. No one should be encouraging her condition.'
'The following exchange just occured on her increasingly insane looking blog ( take into account that the commenter has believed her rubbish about me being mentally ill and guilty - which is also complete libel; I have no mental problems, I am a qualified psychology grad to boot....and I think what I have to say about Rachel's behaviour is pertinent ;-)) :'
'Rachel is a troublemaker in a league of her own and I am sincere when I say that her mind is a matter for psychiatry.'
'The ripperologists, some of them convicted criminals of serious offences, have contributed to another hate blog full of libel about me, weirdly called 'Ministry of Truth' parading masks etc. and she is advertising it. They are notorious for their sabotage, libel, author abuse, criminal behaviours and Internet abuse. The behaviours of some of them are well outlined on this blog.'
'Don't deal with her Internet mob's visible insanity. I'm not responding to it, except to express sorrow for her level of hatred, her desperation and her mental condition.'
'I've seen her recent latest ghastly propaganda exercise. It ought to to be laughable, it's so grim and criminal in appearance, only she keeps going in her madness. Ignore her completely, it's clearly a case for psychiatry; it's the Court result that matters. I print it all off as evidence against her. Her madness doesn't worry me, I just think she needs clinical attention.)'
‘The Court has yet to see the stream of appalling emails she sent me, the abuse I've been continually receiving from her mob, and the abusive libel that she has been continually publishing. Not to mention the illegal wanted notices, the hate campaign, etc. etc. Which are visibly barking mad.'
'Don't respond to the Oxford Mail reporters, they live in a cess pit of their notorious abuse, and any communication with them is beneath my readers, who will only be caused endless distress. Their recent slanging off double page spread is an exhibition of the editor's criminal tendencies, and constitutes some of the most abusive and criminal stalking of an innocent person people have seen a newspaper come out with. This raises considerable questions about the newspaper editor and his obsessions, one of these being that he may have a serious criminal record himself, which would in part explain his obsessions, his psychopathic mentality, and his regular abuse. I have held their article up as a clear example of the depths to which both Rachel's mob and they will stoop in their stalking and abusive hate campaign.'
'As if I would respond to a double page/front page defamed and abused picture of me collecting a sought after diploma and the shrieking lies they also printed on their front page by responding to the Oxford Mail reporters' invitation to throw mud back at a false accuser who is clearly suffering from mental problems, and currently seeing a psychiatrist. And at this stage in the judicial process! Their reporting reminds me of the gutterings of a deranged psychopath, drunk, knocked on the head, waving his cranial aimlessly from one side to the other and coming out with the first thing communicated by the damaged neurology above his forehead.'
'The law will deal with her ultimately for this outburst and going on; if she weren't so afraid of that she wouldn't be going on a press rampage. Lots of guilty people have tried to control stories and Court cases by going on press rampages,* but it makes no difference- except to alienate the Courts.'
'Despite the ongoing extreme malice of her campaign, the witch hunt/ harassment campaign she is heading and the depths to which she has sunk, you can't help but feeling some pity for her Rachel North in her increasingly apparent mental condition. Her ranting hate campaign against me is so very obvious now. She links to losers, political vendetta seekers and hardened criminals- some of them convicted murderers- many of them, well known harassers. She extensively distributes unauthorised 'Wanted' notices which most playground delinquents would dismiss as an utterly crazy idea. She 'poor me' posts that are conspicuously seething with uncontrolled anger and fury. '
'Her vendetta must be transparently obvious to the public, who must be appalled at her, and think her comp-letely mad. I don't like to see any woman make such a spectacle of herself'
'People must think her mad, it's sad.'
'Today I'll print up alot of detail relating to Rachel North and her malicious harassment, stalking, and perverting justice- lying to police and so forth.'
' She has been seeing a psychiatrist throughout the period I will here describe. It will be interesting for the lawyers to observe her psychiatrist's notes, if permissible. She claims that she's been seeing the specialist for post traumatic shock, but colleagues and friends of mine have suggested that she's more likely to have been seeing him for self inflicted problems relating to a long standing personality disorder.'
'I do have my doubts that her one time rape claim to the police was genuine, thought I would never say so abusively. And it will perhaps be interesting for my lawyers to have a look at those files. Perhaps he's appealed. It might be at the CCRC. I personally think Rachel is capable of inventing a rape claim: alot of women do it. It's a terrible thing, but women do invent or strongly elaborate such allegations on occasion. '
'Rachel's campaign in the light of all manner of informed criticism appears to be nothing but an attempt to secure what seems to be an extremely insensitive 'limelight' quest for herself, in order to promote an otherwise unsuccessful research/ writing career, manoeuvre the press, and escape responsibility for abandoning those who lost their lives underground in the tube station on July 7th 2005. ( an action PC Weinert says he condones.)'
Louise. There's over 800 pages of it,going on for the best part of a year, if you care to look. It includes some of the most contemptuous attitudes towards the mentally ill that I have ever seen, never mind the libel.
Hi Louise,
Not sure why your comment didn't appear, I would have let that through no problem.
I think there was a little hiccup at some point the other day, but if you do try commenting again and get problems let me know.
Sorry about that.
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