Neil Harding is at it again. The thread that started with me apparently having nightmares over mobile phone tracking is rapidly descending onto farce. Neil tells us that in his utopia we will all be tracked and catalogued from birth; now he tells me that I have given consent to being tracked:
longrider: you may have no desire to be tracked but you consent to it by owning mobile phone. I have never seen anything written on your blog to complain about this.
Er…. No, I don’t think so.
While I am more than happy to engage with people who disagree with me, this is becoming akin to wading through a river of treacle. I make my case in plain English, I use simple words rather than complex ones, my case is made in a logical and reasonable manner, so why is it that the left in this country seem to be using a variant of English that means something entirely different to that understood by everyone else?
At no time have I ever proffered consent to being tracked. Sure, mobile phones may be used to track people (providing they are switched on), but the companies that offer this service explicitly require the consent of the phone’s owner. I’m not sure which part of “I have never granted such consent” is difficult to comprehend, but Neil is struggling with it.
So, aside from on his own blog where I said this:
Neil, owning a mobile phone is not consent for tracking. Nowhere have I ever indicated that I do consent. What part of the English language do you have difficulty with? Because you certainly do not appear to be using the same version as the rest of us. Just because mobile phones can be used for tracking does not mean that owners consent to it happening. I have never given consent, therefore you cannot assume that I have. The only conclusion you may draw from my ownership of such a device is that I may wish to make the occasional phone call – that, and that alone. Any other conclusion is a product of your imagination.
I will add; your grasp of logic, reasoning and discourse is becoming increasingly tenuous. You have long used the strawman and the non sequitur to make non-existent comparisons; and we have become used to this if somewhat weary of it; but to tell me that I have given consent when I have clearly done no such thing and to assume anything other than what has been explicitly stated merely makes you look a bigger fool than you have managed to do so far.
Let me make it plain, just so that you are clear on this:
AT NO TIME HAVE I EVER CONSENTED TO BEING TRACKED BY ANYONE, ANYWHERE, EVER.
Ownership of a mobile phone does not constitute consent to tracking. Ownership infers nothing other than the desire to make phone calls. That’s it, nothing else; nil, non, nada, zero, bugger-all. Now, are we clear on this? And can we please stop dropping into some weird parallel world of Orwellian newspeak where nothing makes sense and perfectly plain English is twisted round to mean the opposite of its intention? My head is in danger of exploding.
Oh, and I’m not under any obligation to complain about private companies that offer this service. I choose what I want to complain about on this blog and this one just isn’t an issue at present – unless they start to do it without consent; then you will hear from me.