This morning, I received an e-mail newsletter edition that talked about discovering the good in yourself after you started looking for it in others.

Unless you know about the good in yourself, however, it’s very hard to see it in others. If you know that you are not a good person, you’ll expect everyone else to be the same, right?

But there certainly is a feedback effect.

I’ve become increasingly negative about humans after I moved to England.

I also find the negativity here very hard to deal with.

What do I mean by that?

Well, one of you English folks recently described the way English people communicate – the British national character – as “passive aggression”. I find that this can be immensely erosive. It erodes and prevents trust. I find it a waste of precious time and I find it unpleasant. Childish. It’s something that recalcitrant teenagers do.

Where does the English passive aggressive style of communication come from? How did the habit of not being straight and instead saying things like “Don’t worry about it” but meaning “Piss off!” and saying or writing “with the greatest respect” but meaning “I think you’re an idiot” come about? Because then you can never be accused of being disrespectful.

Massive inequality. The English class thing. The absence of automatic mutual human respect, respect for one another regardless of socioeconomic status. Having to suck up to people who you can’t be straight with because there would be serious repercussions if you did.

This effect occurs in other cultures too – of course! – but it’s not as bonkers as it is in England.

This is also why the English are so afraid of strangers. Because they can’t read them and don’t know what the repercussions might be if they were to interact with them.

Speaking of which, one of the most baffling things I was told since I moved to England was that attending Chamber of Commerce meetings is safe for women.

I’ve NEVER considered whether attending professional network meetings or any other kind of public meeting might not be safe for me, as a woman. Not in the US, not in the Netherlands and not in the UK. But I have once sneaked out of a hotel lobby in Southampton where I had agreed to meet with an FSB representative – thankfully not at my home – while he took a bathroom break because I found him horrendously aggressive and pushy. I don’t do business with bullies.

The next similarly baffling thing was “X went to primary school with Y so X would never betray Y”.

You English have a culture in which people do not feel safe and secure. You believe that you cannot afford to trust anyone who you haven’t gone to primary school with.

That’s not healthy.

Changing that starts with you.

Since I moved to Portsmouth, which happened at the start of 2009, I’ve been dealing with relentless sadism. Loads of all kinds of hacking, postal theft, lock-picking, animal cruelty, destruction of property, theft, harassment, ID theft, cyber stalking, malicious unauthorized interference with equipment and utilities, defamation etc etc etc, but only very limited loitering. I don’t know who it is coming from but it’s not something that I can possibly have caused as I didn’t and still don’t know anyone here.

Someone who’s often manipulative and extremely controlling and has a great deal of IT knowledge is persistently trying to cause as much loss in my life as possible (including loss of life). It’s vile. It’s really really vile.

(And it’s enabled by Portsmouth’s horrible misogyny and gerontophobia.)

It needs to stop.

I don’t think that this is done by one person – in spite of the many hints that it is one particular person who is doing this, which isn’t even logistically possible, and besides, there’ve even been occasional hints that Gerald Vernon-Jackson has something to do with it, which is plain nuts – and I don’t know whether it is 4chan/8chan where this is coming from. It has a pretty massive feel to it and there is a lot of contempt behind it. (That and the completely over the top obsession with genitals, anuses and sex as well as the fact that it seems to involve a lot of slightly odd local single men such as a postie and a hacker and local young, mostly white males who work at places like O2, Asda and Virgin Media Business and who take offense at the idea of a woman supporting herself is why I’ve wondered if it is coming from the incel community. That would be my best guess.)

I’ve asked around but NOBODY in Portsmouth EVER admits to knowing or having heard of anyone else here. Because I wasn’t born and raised here?

Whoever is doing this needs to start looking for the good in himself.

I cannot fix you or heal you. I cannot. The healing needs to come from within you.

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PS Portsmouth Police: YOU SUCK! (You’re a bunch of gullible fools as far as I can tell.) Last month, I spent a big chunk of money on further beefing up my home security again. (It does enable me to advise others better and better.)

It sucks to have to live in fear – it’s a visceral thing, not a conscious thing – of one or more unknown individuals who constantly pick the locks.

No, folks, candy bars do not walk into my place all by themselves, monitors don’t move around on windowsills all by themselves, CoQ10 bottles don’t empty themselves and so on and so forth (and no, it is NOT for example landlord staff who does this either, let alone Gerald Vernon-Jackson, for that matter, or this other Charles person who I have looked into and who seemed a really good match when I looked at his CV but had nothing to do with it, as it turned out, unless he’s an extreme psychopath but he doesn’t seem to be one at all). I don’t know who’s been doing the lock-picking at my current address and I don’t know who was picking the locks at my previous address either (and, no, it was NOT staff of The Flat Agency and it was NOT my landlady either).

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For the record, I am making an educational video about stalking in which I use two older actual stalking cases to show how stalking can come about.

So any of you paranoid gerontophobic and misogynistic neighbors who happen to overhear me can relax. (Man, how I hate this stupid country.)

And after I typed that – “Man, how I hate this stupid country.” – I went to The Guardian and got this. 15:40…

THERE IS NOTHING GOOD IN ENGLAND!!!

NOTHING?

(besides coffee?)

On the plus side, this morning and last night, what struck me was that all five police officers in the Tyre Nichols case are black. That gave me hope. Because we need to abandon the sometimes toxic black-white debate – although I fully understand where the black side is coming from, after my own experiences as merely an older white foreign woman in England which is nowhere near what black people experience – but “race” is a social idea, not a biological reality, and the issues in the police are far more complicated – and even worse.

THAT IS WHY WE HAVE TO DISMANTLE ALL POLICE FORCES AND START OVER.

We need to be brave enough to do it and brave enough to ignore conservative politicians like Keir Starmer (who is almost just as farcical and tainted as Boris Johnson, in my opinion; I can’t see much good in him, in the sense of him being able to deliver much for Britain, now that I am talking about “seeing the good in people”).

The word “auction” often makes me really nervous these days, I’ve noticed. Anxious. Why? Because I associate it with “police”. Because of the phrase “police auctions”. I did not see that coming. The word “auctions” makes me see blue flashing lights.

I experience the police as a threat, at a visceral level. This did not used to be the case at all. I’m a well-educated white able-bodied woman in her sixties.

All over the world, police forces have become a public health and safety threat and agents for corporate interests. We, the citizens, pay for that from our own pockets. We, the citizens who pay for that should change this. That takes guts but the rewards will be immense, also for (good) police officers.

(Here’s another thought. The Met and other English police forces with abusive and often sadistic rogue officers who are now all facing court simply represent English society, the world’s most openly misogynistic society bar Taliban-controlled areas.)

While I wrote the above, I filed a complaint against a woman in a non-English police force. At around 16:50, to be precise. Because my silence would have made me complicit. Police abuse has to stop. Me keeping my mouth shut = me condoning that other people, possibly more vulnerable, less strong people, or children, experience abuse from police officers. That’s not me.

If you are a police officer, I pay you to serve in my service, and not just mine, but I am also paying you to protect others. I am most certainly NOT paying you to protect rich industrialists’ and polluters’ interests, just to name two examples that (should) have nothing to do with policing.

Every time I keep my mouth shut when I see wrongdoing, I am doing wrong.