The blocking wave

It seems I’m not the only one to be abruptly blocked on Facebook. Birmingham Live (The Birmingham Post & Mail) reports Facebook deletes ELO rock legend Bev Bevan’s account

He is the fourth person to have contacted BirminghamLive after accounts have been blocked, including Tamworth show-home furniture businesswoman, Gemma Pountney, grieving Birmingham mum, Alison Cope, and cafe owner Sarah Exall.

Coverage in America also complains of abrupt blocking of accounts of those deemed ‘too popular’. It’s very probably just some stupid mis-management decision cascading down the system, although Putin must be happy that management dunderheads and their drones are effectively doing his work for him.

Well sod ’em, I’m gone now. There were only four Groups of interest there, other than mine, and three of them were only sporadic and weren’t all that useful. Indeed one Group, run as a front for the local Socialist Workers Party (or whatever they call themselves now) was only visited for a chuckle.

Now that Elon Musk is set on buying Twitter and restoring free-speech, I might even get an account over there at last… when he takes over there. For re-posting blog-posts only.

Burslem Canal Arm in the 1940s

Interesting bird-eye map of Middleport, from The Burslem Port Trust. I just couldn’t figure it out, until I realised it’s not now or the future. It must show Middleport way back when the Trent & Mersey Canal Arm (‘Burslem Port’) was still flooded. Which would put it at the 1940s, and with the map presumably being drawn from the late-1940s RAF pictures of Stoke-on-Trent. The allotments above Rogerson’s Meadow are in ‘full spread’. A large chunk of them were fallow when I lived there. Interesting that the Meadow may once have had a shallow pool in the centre of it (seen on the far left of the picture). It always was a bit damp.

Re-Form Heritage is now calling for Middleport memories and objects, for their refurbished terraces in Harper Street. Especially “those authentic items that would have been in the house – ordinary items small or large”. These can be donated or given on-loan.