Why is this here?
Hi, I’m Bunnikins (@Bunnikins on Twitter) and this is my blog. Its not very pretty. I may change that in future if I can be bothered. But what it is is a place for me to organise and publish my thoughts.
Not sure what will ultimately make it on here, but given the current state of things, I’m expecting it’ll probably be quite a lot of my political opinions that don’t fit in a tweet. In fact, the thing that made me finally put this site together are the events of the week of 21st June 22, when the UK Government decided it was time to opt out of international Human Rights conventions and put forward its’ Bill of Rights’, which would be more accurately be named a ‘Bill enabling us to curtail your rights’, and the SCOTUS decided that individual states should have the right to decide whether women should have any say in their reproductive rights and reversed Roe vs Wade.
Because its likely I’ll get a bit political on here, I’ve opted to use my Twitter handle and not my name for the title, and will refer to myself (and if appropriate my family) accordingly. Its not that I wouldn’t be willing to say anything I plan to write here in public, but I do have a job I like in business I respect, and both current and hopefully future customers who may have their own opinions, and realistically ‘all opinions my own’ doesn’t really cut it if you plan to actually express opinions on the internet.
Who am I?
By polarised, I mean slightly left of centre, but that’s enough right now for many supporters of the Tories to dismiss you as a ‘woke leftist remainer’ and for a significant chunk of the Momentum brigade to dismiss you as a red/yellow Tory (insert as appropriate).
Actually, I’m neither a red or a yellow Tory. I flirted with Liberal Democrat membership in the past but found myself somewhat disenfranchised as I live up in Scotland. I believe Scotland should have the right to chose its future, and that the current rhetoric of the Lib Dems up here that #IndyRef (or #IndyRef1 as some of my friends would like it to be) was a once in a generation decision and shouldn’t be allowed to be repeated is not an acceptable policy to me. That’s because I believe that Brexit changed the political landscape in the UK so dramatically, and particularly so dramatically away from the significant majority of Scottish voter’s wishes, that it is ridiculous to not allow Scotland to re-evaluate if it wishes in the light of such a seismic shift.
That’s not to say I’m hardcore pro-independence. I’m yet to be convinced of the financial case for it, but based on the current political divergence, unless the current trajectory of politics in the UK changes I’m tending towards for it on political grounds. Either way, I’m definitely for the right for the Scottish electorate to decide.
I’m also not really pro-SNP – their hearts may be in the right place but as a government they’re somewhat lacking in the ability to execute. I’ve seen the effects of, for instance, their implementation of education policy first hand and it isn’t always pretty.
Which is to say I’m not 100% aligned with any political party. However, I am electorally aligned with any party to the centre or left in any constituency which stands the best chance of evicting a Conservative MP based on the behaviour of the current government.
One more salient point my be my religious leanings. I am, at least technically, a practicing Christian. By technically I mean I attend a church and I’m at least mostly convinced I am a believer. What I’m probably not, depending on your point of view, is a ‘good’ Christian, at least if your definition of that is American Evangelical Baptist or strict Catholic.
I don’t tend to talk about it as much as I should for a practicing Christian. I’m not concerned as to your opinions on whether or not I worship ‘an invisible space wizard’ as I’ve heard it put. But I am bothered by potentially being dismissed as the sort of lunatic you see on US TV (or in the Lords apparently) demanding that fundamental human rights be curtailed to satisfy their warped take on ‘good’ Christianity.
There’s a whole blog post on how I square all of this in my head, bible interpretations etc. but for the record, I believe in:
- God
- The big bang / evolution / quantum theory / actual evidence-based science
- Fundamental and equitable human rights for all people regardless of creed, colour, gender or orientation (see Roe vs Wade comments above)
- That thing Jesus said about ‘be excellent to one another’. Oh, wait, no that was Bill and Ted. I mean about he greatest commandment being love. Although I’m not always as good as I’d like to be about it when confronted with objectionable opinions.
Okay, that’s quite a lot about me, and doubtless there’ll be a lot more detail on my opinions on various topics as time goes on. A bit more on the site.
A bit more on the site
Okay, so, as I said, this site is for me to generally muse on the state of the world, and possibly if I get round to it, maybe some techy stuff as I’m also a massive nerd and work in technology.
With that in mind, whilst I suspect that this site will probably only ever have about three viewers, I’m going to set it up with the possibility that it may have a few more than that, and that it may even find itself under attack from the aforementioned groups who may consider me to be either a woke leftist remainer elite, a Tory-loving centrist scum or a terrible excuse for a Christian. I also harbour delusions that if it ever becomes useful for other like-minded individuals to have a sounding-board, I may make the site available for them to post too. With that in mind, I’ll be taking a few steps to keep things as safe as possible:
- I’m going to secure the site as best as possible to keep it from being hijacked, taken down or breached. I do have more than a little experience of this so fingers crossed!
- I’m going to require registration to comment on anything to stop bots from hammering the site
- I’m going to put in place a privacy policy, but rest assured any data gathered during registration will be used solely for the purposes of ensuring posters are not bots
- I am going to put moderation on comments to ensure that nobody accidentally or maliciously adds any personally identifiable information on the site that might point to the identity of me and mine. The plan is to filter for keywords and only hold comments that might have our names, addresses etc in, so apologies if you share a name or locale with the family Bunnikins – I’ll get to your comments as soon as possible. Making the wild and highly unlikely assumption that anyone comes here or wants to comment of course
Think that’s about it. If you got this far, well done! I hope over time you’ll find something of interest on this site.