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News and Comment May 2021

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26 May (Part 1) - Contact Us - but not as easily as before

It’s been a bad year hasn’t it? More than a year actually and I have felt increasingly depressed about it, so much so that for the past few months I have ignored the Covid rules and met up with whoever will have me for the sake of my mental health.

Yesterday I had done everything I planned to do by 11 a.m. which left just the four walls for company. I tinkered with the car that let me down in a software sort of way at the weekend and I think I now know what it demands and where I went wrong. And then the phone rang.

It was young Danny Hackett, that’s Councillor Hackett to you, who detecting a less than happy voice suggested a visit to the pub might be in order. Last time I was in a pub was 1st March 2020 and I wasn’t mad keen on the likely petty rules but I went anyway. A whole half pint and an orange juice downed. Well I was driving!

I was trying to work out when I was last with Danny. It was certainly 2019 and it may have been the middle of 2019 because I remember walking to his preferred pub in daylight. Frightening to think how quickly two years may have flashed by.

One reason for not being full of the joys of life is Bonkers. It keeps me busy but the amount of abuse it can generate gets steadily worse. I alluded to it way back in January and more recently. It has got to the stage that I am afraid to open my email Inbox for fear of what comes next. Twice recently I have made serious stress induced mistakes with my written work, once on this blog and again in a letter and it impinged on the well being of friends. I don’t think I have ever dropped such large clangers before.

The wickedness out there is almost unbelievable and on one occasion I reported a threat to the police. One 101 call handler was so incredibly rude that I rang off and called again. Number 2 was much better, I now have a crime number. (No one any of you would know.)

Which brings me to the point of this pitiful blog. I used to have my phone number on the Contact page and that was soon abused and I had to buy one of those Truecall devices to block unknown numbers. Now I am doing the same for email.

The address that has been displayed at the bottom of each BiB page has gone and in a day or two it will cease to work. Regular and trusted correspondents have always used a different address but casual contacts will have to use the Contact Form in future. I am fed up with opening the email and getting another unwanted surprise from the deranged, the obsessive, the irrational, the aggressive, the unreasonable and the demented.

What remains will be much the same as often used commercially, I confess I don’t like it but there will be no email, just a Contact Form and if necessary I will reply from a No Reply address.

Twitter DMs remain open but that has a block facility which email does not.

All my regular contributors and correspondents should be unaffected and if they are a one off reminder via the Contact Form will fix it.

Obviously I don’t have any need to use the Contact Form myself so apologies to those who have been putting up with a broken banner image on it. I increased banner resolution and the Contact page had not been updated. Fixed now.

The Contact Form does not have a fully functioning menu either. It is far too difficult and time consuming to keep it up to date.

 

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