I have always thought that social media was a good thing.
I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts on facebook and reading the thoughts shared by others.
Sometimes they make me smile, sometimes they make me think and sometimes I am genuinely challenged.
Occasionally I am offended.
But that's the thing with a big society which is open access and in which people are free to share their thoughts.
Recently however I have detected an unwelcome and pernicious tendency.
In the past few weeks it seems that there has been an increase in what I consider to be offensive attacks on folk who for whatever reason are relying on state support at a difficult time for the economy and for domestic budgets.
Most of it can be ignored but some of it is being shared and what prompted this blog was a particularly offensive piece which arrived by email and which was immediately marked as spam (someone should invent a piece of software that offers a traffic light warning for offensive emails).
With high unemployment, with low paid and often temporary jobs being all that is available, there has been an increase in comments, often quite objectionable comments, about people who are forced to subsist on state benefits.
It is easy to see how the rhetoric of the Con-Dem coalition leads to this kind of comment.
The language of strivers and shirkers simply doesn't help and creates a totally false distinction between those who rely on benefits to house, clothe and feed their families, those who earn their poverty and those who struggle to keep their heads above the rising waters of the economic tsunami that threatens to overwhelm us all.
The rhetoric of shirkers and strivers is being echoed in different ways, none of them especially pleasant and are, increasingly, accompanied by a certain xenophobia, which again seems connected to the current debate about our future in Europe.
Interestingly two of my recent correspondents in the twilight zone, demanding that the Government abandons its welfare strategy and along with it, the post war settlement, don't actually live in the UK but are ex pats, (interesting that the British abroad are always expats but foreign nationals in the UK are always immigrants!).
The latest nonsense being perpetrated is of course alarmist propaganda aimed at the supposed thousands of Bulgarian's and Rumanian's lining up to troop across the channel and sign on.
Whilst it is clear that the elderly consume far and away the greatest share of the welfare budget and that, with the economy flat lining, the level of tax income is declining, creating a vicious austerity circle of decreasing national income, increasing pressure on national budgets, increasingly hysterical government statements and the pernicious nonsense with which the social media is being swamped.
It is just possible that as the Con Dems become a two nation party that Ed Milliband's call for Labour to offer a vision of how One Nation, which is to say a nation united behind a common purpose, can begin to turn things round.
The hubris of the bankers cannot be allowed to result in the nemesis of a nation.
There is a need for a national rebuilding project in which we seek to build a new settlement for the future which will include not only work and welfare but health and national well-being.
I suppose it is too much to hope for and somewhat naive but I do hope that we can begin to use social networking positively to build a consensus for a new social order in which individuals are respected and the common good promoted through a culture of generosity and good will.
I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts on facebook and reading the thoughts shared by others.
Sometimes they make me smile, sometimes they make me think and sometimes I am genuinely challenged.
Occasionally I am offended.
But that's the thing with a big society which is open access and in which people are free to share their thoughts.
Recently however I have detected an unwelcome and pernicious tendency.
In the past few weeks it seems that there has been an increase in what I consider to be offensive attacks on folk who for whatever reason are relying on state support at a difficult time for the economy and for domestic budgets.
Most of it can be ignored but some of it is being shared and what prompted this blog was a particularly offensive piece which arrived by email and which was immediately marked as spam (someone should invent a piece of software that offers a traffic light warning for offensive emails).
With high unemployment, with low paid and often temporary jobs being all that is available, there has been an increase in comments, often quite objectionable comments, about people who are forced to subsist on state benefits.
It is easy to see how the rhetoric of the Con-Dem coalition leads to this kind of comment.
The language of strivers and shirkers simply doesn't help and creates a totally false distinction between those who rely on benefits to house, clothe and feed their families, those who earn their poverty and those who struggle to keep their heads above the rising waters of the economic tsunami that threatens to overwhelm us all.
The rhetoric of shirkers and strivers is being echoed in different ways, none of them especially pleasant and are, increasingly, accompanied by a certain xenophobia, which again seems connected to the current debate about our future in Europe.
Interestingly two of my recent correspondents in the twilight zone, demanding that the Government abandons its welfare strategy and along with it, the post war settlement, don't actually live in the UK but are ex pats, (interesting that the British abroad are always expats but foreign nationals in the UK are always immigrants!).
The latest nonsense being perpetrated is of course alarmist propaganda aimed at the supposed thousands of Bulgarian's and Rumanian's lining up to troop across the channel and sign on.
Whilst it is clear that the elderly consume far and away the greatest share of the welfare budget and that, with the economy flat lining, the level of tax income is declining, creating a vicious austerity circle of decreasing national income, increasing pressure on national budgets, increasingly hysterical government statements and the pernicious nonsense with which the social media is being swamped.
It is just possible that as the Con Dems become a two nation party that Ed Milliband's call for Labour to offer a vision of how One Nation, which is to say a nation united behind a common purpose, can begin to turn things round.
The hubris of the bankers cannot be allowed to result in the nemesis of a nation.
There is a need for a national rebuilding project in which we seek to build a new settlement for the future which will include not only work and welfare but health and national well-being.
I suppose it is too much to hope for and somewhat naive but I do hope that we can begin to use social networking positively to build a consensus for a new social order in which individuals are respected and the common good promoted through a culture of generosity and good will.
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