Tony, Nice to hear from the voice of common sense. I thought I and gone deaf, such is the silence.
It will sound like an obscure analogy, but I did taxi work for decades as a means of light relief and fun. There used to be a saying that big mouths and know alls who sound off about having been taken the longest way and even run into a house to claim they never even used the taxi, suddenly go silent when the police threaten to lock them up, take them to court and reveal them for what they are. A police officer in Scotland once mused that it never ceased to amaze him that people who had never used the taxi pay the fare for the taxi they never used when being threatened with "being locked up by the polis".
As I would admit, an obscure analogy, but, for my part, it never ceases to amaze me that people who rush to push that send button on social media to give themselves their only source of oxygen suddenly go silent when offered definitive evidence that they are talking absolute ballocks (excuse my French, moderator). As far as social media is concerned, I ignore the rantings of many of the idiots that post elsewhere (all Firenet members excluded from such a description), but I did not want my genuine friends on Firenet to be misled by the same misinformation that is spread on other social media.
Chums keep me informed as to what is said so that, when anyone crosses the line, we will not hesitate to instruct solicitors. The last person to do so, a building control officer from Hertfordshire, is now paying the cost of the agreed defamation damages, all of which are going to McMillan Cancer Support, having agreed as part of the settlement to publish a retraction and unconditional apology. Of course there is also the IFE Ethics committee as a route for complaint about spreading misinformation.
With regard to disabled people, their fire safety has been a personal hobby horse of mine for donkeys years (though I dont need social media to shout about it). My own personal initiatives have included engaging with the pager industry to enable me to write the section on fire warning for deaf and hard of hearing people in BS 5839-1, and a change in the originally intended scope of the first version BS 5839-9 so allowing me to draft the very first recs for EVCS for disabled people in refuges. I didn't need rants on social media to instigate either piece of work.
Similarly, I have been working for about a year on technological solutions to resolve the problem of disabled people in blocks of flats with the encouragement of a number of good pals. I am currently trying to find funds for a trial installation and have been warmed by the trust of colleagues in the profession who are going to assist such funding for the equipment. No point in telling the haters and radicals, as they commonly hate for hate's sake, as they would drift back into obscurity without a cause.
