I've been coming to HH for just over a year now, and don't know a lot of the personal politics/history etc, and I don't blog anywhere else at all.
I know that it's easy to misunderstand someone, and vice versa, and it should hopefully be equally easy to amicably sort out, but what I can't fathom on any of the sites here is trolling ( obviously I'm not referring to you, or Grufty etc, I'm just generalising here). What does someone get from going somewhere and enjoying starting a ruck or winding people up ? For example, I could never be bothered/ arsed to hang around the Spectator, talking about political issues from a left wing perspective, purely to wind them up and get personally insulting. What on earth would be the bloody point ? I'd seriously wonder about myself. It beats me, that's for sure.
It's easier to write criticism and insults than to write credible praise or do the work to engage and consider an argument.
I know of a band whose music is really beautiful and essentially non-political, yet they've actually had to suspend message board use on several occasions because it gets too heated.
I don't like it here when people resort to barbed sarcasm and insults (even though I've done it myself), and for the most part we can appeal to people's better nature here. Explaining that chest-beating and point scoring doesn't actually make anyone agree with you - quite the opposite - makes someone choose which one they'd rather have and 99 time out of a hundred folks here do re-engage. No matter what their opinion pretty much everyone who's ever posted here has reasons for their position and is smart enough to express them intelligently, and wants that position to be considered.
I do think we should pick one another up in a friendly and respectful way on inflammatory things as they start - this thread, which is by no means the worst ever, shows what happens when we don't.
I know that it's easy to misunderstand someone, and vice versa, and it should hopefully be equally easy to amicably sort out, but what I can't fathom on any of the sites here is trolling ( obviously I'm not referring to you, or Grufty etc, I'm just generalising here). What does someone get from going somewhere and enjoying starting a ruck or winding people up ? For example, I could never be bothered/ arsed to hang around the Spectator, talking about political issues from a left wing perspective, purely to wind them up and get personally insulting. What on earth would be the bloody point ? I'd seriously wonder about myself. It beats me, that's for sure.
I wouldn't go on a Spectator forum either, but then I don't debate things on The Guardian one either. The difference here is that HH is made up of four different beasts. I came to it because I'm a fan of the man himself so I visit the idle chatter and the music forums. Because Cope's back-catalogue entails so many different facets it's attracted fans of many different genre's. I guess I come from the post-punk angle and the songwriter aspect, others are here because of his later dalliances with 'rawk'. Even this leads to disagreements, so asking us all to agree on something as personal as politics is gonna be a recipe for disaster!
Just because someone likes the type of music that gets discussed on Unsung, doesn't mean they have to conform to a certain political line. Neither does it mean that because someone likes Cope's music they have to adhere to his political views or that they can't take his Preaching Revolution material with a pinch of salt.
Consequently I tend to avoid this forum more than not because I don't like a lot of what I read - there's so much negativity and hatred, and the same old generalisations become tiresome. But every now and again I pop over and usually regret that I have. But I refuse to believe that my opinions are any less valid than others here, and although GP's views don't mirror my own I stand firmly in the camp that he should be allowed to voice them. Otherwise this site is nothing.