We’re all incredibly conscious of our public image. How do people perceive us? With the meteoric rise of twitter as a mass-communication tool, people are forgetting just how powerful it is, and getting caught out. One such unintentional victim of open-ness is Sarah Baskerville, whose name is now synonymous with “what not to do on twitter”.
It’s not her I want to talk about though. It’s what this says about us as a society.
Letts’ harsh, cruel criticisms of ‘Baskers’ is indicative of how we are beginning to treat problems in society as a whole. To go slightly off tangent and into the complex web of issues that is Higher Education, as I see it, the core problem in the education sector is lack of choice outside of University. More choice which will automatically decrease numbers, therefore reducing the financial strain of funding students. Slashing budgets and increasing fees dramatically only serves to solve the symptom and not the root cause of our problems.
This seems to be our approach to absolutely everything, including, sadly in Sarah’s case, ordinary people. Something goes wrong – cover it up and pretend it’s not there. Someone is unhappy or talking about something we don’t want them to – shut them up. We are forgetting that civil servants are humans, too. Unbelievably, they have feelings and opinions! Of course, you wouldn’t expect Ed, Dave or Nick to be tweeting about their ‘epic hangover’, but we shouldn’t put pressure on ordinary, hard-working people to be shining paragons of virtue, either.
In the last week or so, a friendly dragon by the name of Puffles has wandered into our midst on twitter. There is quite a big fuss around Puffles now. They have amassed followers very quickly – from all parties, and all viewpoints.
Despite a lot of questioning and assumptions about Puffles, the person behind the account has remained resolutely silent about themselves, conversing with curious users in the third person and posting links. They are a civil servant and live in fear of being discovered; of losing their job through trying to educate people about what is really happening – with information which, for the most part, stems from official websites that few people look at.
Interestingly, Puffles has imposed a few house rules upon their twitter account – no remarks about specific parties or politicians, and sticking to issues under the PCS Union umbrella. Certainly no references to themselves. They tweet links to government websites (with information already in the public domain) that the public wouldn’t otherwise find or even think of looking for. Tweets are focussed on encouraging people to engage with elected representatives, making people aware of their legal rights – and always strongly against violence as a way of addressing problems. Puffles highlights issues, providing further information for what we should be concerned about and adding them to debates – but this is always done in a “I think you should know this” way, without judgement or opinions.
Concern of becoming known has prevented Puffles from starting a blog providing information that everyone can learn from. I hope it doesn’t put them off for long, because thirst for transparency and clarity of information is growing rapidly. Under a government whose core members spin u-turns like it’s a baton race and brazenly lie to the public time and time again, who can we trust? We are dependent on those on the inside and it is our duty to protect them from exposure.
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