Dylan's Demise

Before I go any further could I first of all apologise to those of my readers that don't know of the politics of Kentish birding and just simply enjoy my posts about my wildlife rambles, because I'm angry and need to have a rant.

There is an excellent blog out there, written by one Dylan Wrathall and called "The Dumpton Non-Comformist". Now as the title suggests, Dylan's blog doesn't always conform to what is the normal back-slapping chat that goes on between other blogs on wildlife in this area, but it is always well written and to me at least, always makes perfect sense. I was absolutely fuming this morning to read Dylan's latest posting and find that as a result of his latest opinion on a subject and at least one reaction, that Dylan has decided to bring his blog to an end, at least for the near future.
How did he upset somebody - he challenged the thinking behind the creation of the new bird in Kent, the "Channel Wagtail", an honest opinion with some sensible facts. As a result he received a comment that he felt unable to publish because it was likely to be offensive to other readers of his blog and what's more, that pathetic twat even hid behind the "anonymous" tag. Because this has happened before over his opinions Dylan now feels writing such stuff is pointless and therefore we lose one of the few alternative blogs in the area.
Like Dylan says, the whole reason for creating one's own blog is in order to be able to have, where necessary, an honest and different opinion to the mainstream without it being censured by the closed ranks of those cliques that control things like Forums. But it would appear that even on these now you can find yourself being involuntarily censured by anonymous people forwarding comments unwise or unsuitable to publish.

The alternative? you join the type of blogging circle that is prevalent at the moment whereby you write stuff that is never ever provoking and outside of the old-fashioned Enid Blyton view of the world, even if you do sometimes do nasty things really, and you confine it to simple, boring lists of birds. In that way your fellow blogging circle will love you and when you throw in a few hard done by's every now and then they will pat you on the back and say never mind, it'll be alright tomorrow. And one last thing, you have to patronise their blogs with similar comments otherwise they ignore you.

I guess if you don't do all of that, then as Dylan has found, they can grind you down one way or another. Will I be ground down, I hope not, even though I might be the only one reading my blog, there's very few replies these days. One thing is for sure, I always try to be honest with what I write and do, I don't deliberately hide some of the nasty bits, such as pest control.

I sincerely hope that Dylan re-thinks what he has said because an honest and thought provoking opinion is always very much needed in society and for me, Dylan will be sorely missed.