Monday was a flurry of activity and I got a lot done. Tuesday was less great. Much less great. I just couldn’t get going. Instead, I fannied and faffed around, aimlessly doing nothing, pretty much.
The big distraction was the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. I’m not usually bothered about the party conferences, but this one was special as it was our new prime minister’s maiden speech to conference. There’d been so much speculation, so many complaints before anyone even knew what he was going to say, I wanted to watch it for myself and just give the guy a chance.
He didn’t take the podium until just after 2pm, and he spoke for well over an hour. It was a good speech, he seems to be making a good start, even if he was addressing the party faithful. But, oh, the fallout. All over social media.
Why isn’t he doing this? Why isn’t he doing that? Why is he taking this off me? How is he going to pay for it? And why is he stopping that when it hasn’t even started yet? You can’t take something away that isn’t even there yet.
This country has a lot wrong with it at the moment. There are so many things that aren’t working, such a long list, a list that’s built up over years and years and years. This guy has been PM for weeks. Do they really expect him to fix everything in his first few months?
He’s not going to please all of the people all of the time. He can only eat the elephant one bite at a time. And it’s a BIG elephant. I’d personally be interested to know how the moaners would tackle things and in what order. I have so many battle cries on my bingo card, but so many of the knuckle-dragging ignorant oiks don’t even know what I mean by that.
So that’s what distracted me for much of the day.
Just so I could say I did something, I did go and catch up on some of the daily competitions. It was about all I was good for. I had a story to write and a book to edit, but all I could summon the energy for was a few competition entries.
And then the Yahoo balloon went up when I received their latest terms and conditions. Basically, anything I send via Yahoo Mail, while they agree I will still own any intellectual property (gee, thanks!), their AI ‘has the right’ to use it in however way they wish, now and in perpetuity, in ways already known and not yet known and in the future, and another great big long list of legal jargon words that in effect mean we’re handing our material to them on a plate. So many red flags.
But we still own the IP so that’s all right…
Not all right.
I won’t close my Yahoo emails down, but I will be looking elsewhere for new providers who don’t assume the right to steal all of my property. I’ve already started by downloading Thunderbird again. The one I choose will be the one I use for sending my work out. It’s going to be a ball ache changing the email address on everything, but it’s something I think is so important I’ll carve out the time and do it, even if it’s just a little bit every day.
One bite of the elephant at a time.
This post appears on Words Worth Writing and Medium.
