Letter
by Tommy
Just sent off a letter to the editors of the Irish Times and the Irish Independent in regard to the whole Eircom scandal and #picturegate. Don’t know if it’ll be published in either paper but hey, you can read it here and at least I know the editor of this blog well and I know for sure it’ll be published anseo :)
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Dear Madam
I am one of Ireland’s youngest bloggers, and recently, I have felt the need to inform my readers, who are both local and international, about the changes in Irish society. Not only do we allow a private company to decide what internet websites we are and are not allowed view, (Eircom agreeing to block file sharing sites after complaints from some in the music industry), but now we have a government who feels the need to censor what news items are shown on Irish television. What has happened to freedom of speech?
Yours, etc.
Tommy Collison
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I was keeping it short and snappy in the letter to increase my chances of it getting published but now I can expand on my points a bit.
Firstly, my jibe about Eircom: I blogged about this. I don’t download music, and Eircom don’t provide me with internet, so this doesn’t really affect me, but I’m against it on principle. I mean, we don’t allow dictatorships in Ireland – yet Eircom will happily let people walk all over them and list sites that they dislike.
Eircom are invertebrates.
Second issue I rose was #picturegate. I mean, talk about making a mountain out a molehill. There’s a phrase:
Never wrestle with a pig, as you’ll both get dirty but the pig will enjoy it
By everyone talking about it and it trending on Twitter and the blogosphere going nuts over it, the artist is getting tons of publicity that he wouldn’t otherwise be getting had the gallery just taken the picture off display and not made such a hullaballoo.