Hi all

I’ve not been around much, writing my blog or reading or commenting on other articles as I’ve had quite a bit on my plate.

However this week a friend emailed me and said - have you seen the comments on so and so article. So I went and had a scout around and I was actually dismayed at what I found.

I first came on to the Newsshopper site as I stopped getting it delivered at home and I like to keep up with local news. I soon got drawn in to commenting on stories and finally plucked up the courage to write my own blog.

Throughout my time here I think I have come in to contact with a few people whom I now consider friends.

I understand that the comments section are here so people can leave their opinion on the story, talk to other people and maybe have a debate if they don’t agree, and in the past sometimes these debates did turn lively. In fact it was because of some of the “debates” getting slightly out of hand that the Newsshopper decided that you needed to log in and register before you could comment.

I have just had a quick look on the “most commented” stories and on all these stories it seems the comments section has turned in to a school playground. If someone doesn’t agree with your opinion, they must be stupid, and on it goes to the point where people just insult each other - the two stories that jump out at me are of course “The Culling of Foxes” and “Armed Police and six teenagers”. In each case you had to scroll though about 50 comments of drivel to find 3 or 4 that actually related to the original article. I just really can’t see the point…….

Whilst I like healthy debates and I applaud the freedom of speech, this kind of silly, pathetic, childish behaviour is quite frankly boring and is ruining the whole spirit of a local paper.

It is a shame really that those in charge of the comments sections at the Newsshopper let this carry on (I know from previous blogs the paper will let the comments continue unless they are threatening or use bad language).

Hopefully my little blog will be a haven of calm in this madness and we can all play nice here.

Take care.

Tinks X