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Mr Bircumshaw has plenty more to say but he was trying not to do so because it's making him feel angry, and he doesn't like that feeling, it's negative, dark, and unpleasant. Said Mr Bircumshaw has no need of advice about how to behave 'in a slum' (I quote) I didn't just grow up in the world that phrase denotes but I live in it: I have a little anecdote for how to deal with threats of getting kicked. The other year, one night in this pub, this huge bloke, about six foot seven and muscle-bound like Mr T, threatened to take me out, little Vicky, all five foot four of her, zimmer frame and all, stood in front of me and said to him 'if you hit him (me) you have to hit me first'. Mr T crumbled, like all bullies he depended on acquiesence. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 9:52 PM Subject: Re: abusive list behaviour Mr Bircumshaw may have nothing more to say; but I - the target for his bile - shall now speak. If he tried this in a slum he'd get kicked. I know. I grew up in one, but I don't try to special plea on the back of it He has today, amongst other things, without provocation or apparent stimulus asserted I want to be a gatekeeper, a managerial controller, a massager of who's in who's out (of poetry), of disengenuosness and hypocrisy and has distorted completely what I said played the _I come from a slum and everyone's against me nonsense_ and has pretended that I started the attack It would be one thing if he had offered any justification for these remarks, but he just side stepped that invitation. He is entitled to think what he wants of my poetry and I know that he has the ability to argue his case when there is a case and he can bothered. As to the distortion of what I said, I am content to let people judge as he published the originals that he was distorting. But there remains the assertion of control and hypocrisy and, I thought at one point, corruption, implying he knows things that have not been aired here. These are calumnies and it is not good enough to shrug, not when the tone is one of _I am right_; because he is not right; he is making it up I want an apology because if I do not get one it is more likely it will start again, as it has before. He has himself published here the evidence of that which I chose to keep private for his benefit. I want an apology or a sustainable justification, not what seems to him or what is claimed to have been heard. What gates do I keep? Whom do I control? What actions or words of mine are hypocritical? Whose name do I massage? I have no such power. If he believes he has evidence that I am being disengenuous, one of his charges, let him give it or retract the charge. I want that apology because I take this matter very seriously and find his inexplicable malice upsetting. I don't like being bullied and that is what is being attempted.