MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

1984 All Over Again

By

www.MyPE.co.za: Sometimes a broken window is not really a broken window. The MyPE Daily Newsletter of 31 December 2010 that had the unfortunate task of negotiating the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality e-mail server was blocked for the following reason:

Unwanted or Sensitive Content Detected

A banned word, phrase or sensitive information was detected. The item has been removed.

Context: ‘[HTML Text]’
Content Rule(s): ‘Sex (English) > Sex (English)’

Your Email has been blocked based on certain rules governing email usage at the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.

The ‘offending’ article contained in the MyPE Newsletter was this one: Well I Never – 5007 Comments and Counting – if you read the article you will see that it refers to inappropriate pat down techniques by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) operators in American Airports and contains reactions from no less an august body than the American Civil Liberties Union – I suppose you could say that the ACLU is the loose equivalent of the Black Sash or even the ANC prior to the fall of apartheid.

Now this got me thinking:

  • What happens to mail is about gender (sex) complement of metro employees?
  • What about combatting of HIV and AIDS?
  • What about the distribution of condoms?
  • What about important statistical information for BEE?
  • What about a scholarly dissertation on sex?

Get a life Mr Metro e-mail server – if it had anything to do with the dreaded porn watching epidemic sweeping the computers of metro employees bored out of their minds as the result of the crash crisis it certainly would not have been passed on with the word ‘sex’ in it!

How is it that we trust Metro employees with millions of rand but cannot trust the majority of them to be adult enough to not steal time and resources in the pursuit of a few illicit glimpses at a naked breast (plus some other stuff!). Seems to me that the Metro’s resources would be a lot better spent in changing the moral climate and catching the real generators of ‘fruitless and wastefull expenditure’.

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.