Breaking news: Programs intended to protect children from online pornography and in-head dirty thoughts are filtering out sites whose names include the words Essex and Sussex. Wessex wasn’t mentioned, and I’m not even going to try to explain that.
So there you go. You heard it here first. Or possibly second, since the BBC broke the story. I’d give you a link but it doesn’t seem to be online.
What, you say, an earth-shattering story like that?
Indeed. And I’m sure there’s a conspiracy out there to suppress it.
Screamingly irrelevant photo: What we do on a winter evening
Notes from the U.K. 
I lived in Richmond, Middlesex, Surrey.
I should have been banned. Probably anyway.
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Fear not. I’m sure you have been. By someone, somewhere. And no doubt for good reasons, which you will remain unaware of.
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Tell me about it. I work at the University of Essex and many of our applicants don’t receive our e-mails. They go straight into their spam folder, as our name contains “sex”. Huh.
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Unbelievable. Maybe you need to experiment with University of Essix, or University of Ess*x.
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Priceless!
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I just love screamingly irrelevant photos. Now will you get this if I type Essex. ;-)
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I did get it, but I’m sure we’ve been added to some government agency’s list, somewhere. I’m okay with that–I’m already on so many lists that one more won’t matter–but are you sure it’s all right with you?
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I’m probably on the same lists. See you in the interrogation room. :-D
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I’ll look forward to that.
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I feel so much safer knowing that Big Brother is on the job.
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I’m sure we all feel safer. And if it leaves a few blank spots on the map, well I’m sure it’s a price we’re willing to pay.
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Politically correct thinking is a communist ideal. This is ridiculous…
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I’d have said that restricting other people’s thinking is a great temptation to anyone who’s in power. Sometimes, even, with the best of intentions.
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Are you sure that irrelevant photo doesn’t involve some sort of sex? Looks highly suggestive to me.
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Okay, you want all the secrets of the household? The dog and this cat aren’t into anything at all, ummm, intimate, but the dog does occasionally hump the other cat, who isn’t visible here, and they do love each other. Mostly platonically, but she does keep trying…. And in case it’s relevant (as far as I can see, they don’t think it is), the dog’s female and the cat’s male.
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When I was teaching I found that the school internet filter banned loads of sites. It was done with the best intentions but meant that sometimes the children couldn’t actually use the internet for research because so many sites were blocked!
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The serious side of the story is that access to sites about various health and social issues has been blocked–breast cancer, HIV, probably birth control. The law of unintended consequences.
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Stars and sparkles, Ellen 💖💥😍🎶Somehow you got dropped from my Reader (a pox on WordPress for a number of reasons!!) and all this time I thought, “Well, Ellen’s not blogging because she’s off on book tours autographing her newly published novel.”
Then I acquire said novel, read it in one sitting, laughing at every other paragraph (exercise jiggling my belly muscles) and craving animal crackers and a baby to spute raspberries at me (I made up that word spute) and discover on the last page that I haven’t seen NotesFromTheUK.com for a very long time and I better see WTF is wrong and, sure enough, WordPress screwed me over!!!
I LOVED The Divorce Diet – terrific wit, spark and story!! And this week I’ll make time to scroll through your recent posts because I last left you after a dasterdly road trip where you tangled with your GPS (or whatever it’s called in the UK, but I know it can’t be a word or acronym that ends in SEX!!!)
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Damn, I’ve missed hearing from you.
It seems the days of the book tour are mostly over. I asked about one, prepublication, and my editor said, “Put your money and energy into an online presence.” Which translates to, “We’re not going to put any money into a book tour” as well as, “They don’t seem to do a hell of a lot of good anymore.” So, no, sadly, I haven’t been running around the world signing copies and doing readings. I do miss those days, even with their absurdities, including the reading where only four people and a dog showed up (the dog loved me) and another where only one person, other than me and the bookstore clerk, appeared, and that person was my nephew.
I love the word “spute.” It fits, somehow. And thanks for the kind words about TDD. It’s good to hear them. Or, well, read them.
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Right … quit procrastinating and ordered my copy. (It’s been in my Amazon wish list for a while, but my credit card was hacked so I couldn’t buy when I planned to. So glad to have seen this reminder!)
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Its a sad (to me as an Englishman at least) fact that a lot of our yoof wouldn’t know about Wessex, a beautiful part of the ancient land.
Personally I think such filters are a great idea, setting them as default level “uberzealous” however, isn’t.
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Yes. See the comment below (or is it above? probably above) about emails from the University of Essex getting dumped into Spam because of the dread syllable “sex.”
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Yes I read them, ’tis a strange world we live in.
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Yeah, that’s been my impression as well. Although who knows what they get up to in Essex, eh?
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This is madness.
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I can’t argue.
Oh, hell, I probably could argue–I can argue with almost anything–but for once I won’t.
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I heard that in British schools teachers can’t use red pen any more – because it’s psychologically damaging to the little darlings. More madness…
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Right. If you can’t (or–let’s be honest–won’t) address the actual problem, change the color of the ink. Makes sense to me.
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I also heard that they have to sing ‘Baa baa rainbow sheep’ now as ‘black’ is politically incorrect ;)
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I hate to turn down a chance to laugh, but I have to part ways with you this time. It seems to me that “politically correct” is all too often what someone says when they want to be offensive but don’t want to hear about it. So (apologies: we’ve been having such fun, and I hope we will again) I can’t laugh at this one.
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No worries – it’s probably bullshit anyway ;)
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Irrelevant question – are you the dog or the cat?
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I had to go check which picture I’d used before I answered. I’m the cat who isn’t in the picture–the young, black, sleek one.
I wish.
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