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.