On censorship and abuse

I am beginning to wonder if I shall be able to leave this blog alone for a couple of months, without people coming on and here and accusing me of censorship, abuse and various other things! The last time that I stopped blogging for a while and got out of the habit of checking here regularly, there was spamming  on an industrial scale. At least a hundred spams were making it past the filter and clogging everything up.  Because I did not wish to have to come here every day and delete them: I switched on the moderation. I blogged about this at the beginning of October. That way, I could just skim through the comments every week or two and then publish the genuine ones.  I did the same thing last week, when I decided to leave this blog alone until the spring. Inevitably, somebody found this sinister and chose to accuse me not only of censorship, but also, almost unbelievably, of abusing Lisa Amphlett and her friends. Here is the comment:

This comment won't be published because Simon is currently employing censorship, but the only reason recent discussions have been so fierce is that Amphlett et al fought back, unusually. Most people just take the abuse in silence and they did not.

The idea that it was I who was being abusive, is more than a little staggering! I have been perfectly courteous to Lisa Amphlett and her cronies who have come on here to comment. In return, I have been called a cunt, by two different people, a rat, told that I have paranoid delusions and read various other vulgar language, spanning the whole gamut of crudity from fuck to shit, piss to crap. All the abuse was directed against me and none was directed by me against Lisa Amphlett or anybody else. 

I will now hope to switch on the moderation and forget about this blog for a while. I must ask those who comment to exercise a little patience. If it takes a week to publish your comment, that is not censorship, but rather an indication that I am busy with other matters and am likely to be so for at least two months. A delay in having a comment posted is not censorship; at least not in the normal meaning of the word.

A final word about posting comments on a blog

This really will be the final post here; at least for the next couple of months. I have been trying to get to the bottom of the accusations being made by Lisa Amphlett and Raquel Toney, which involve my having mentioned the names of children and consequently upset their parents. I have now commented twice on Lisa Amphlett's blog, attempting to get her to tell me why she is spreading these stories about me. She says, in answer to my latest comment:

 Whether or not you understand it YOU ARE HARASSING ME despite me having asked you to stop. I will ask you once again. Please leave me alone.

This must rank as the strangest reaction from anybody to a comment on their blog!  She posts about me, using my name and accusing me of something pretty unpleasant and when I ask what grounds she has for saying these things; she tells me that I am harassing her. It's a good job that I didn't feel that way, when her friend Raquel came on here today and called me a cunt! I suppose that this means that I could post anything I like about a named person and then, if the person commented here, trying to set the record straight; I could claim that I was being harassed by them.