Yes of course you're right Royce, it is unhelpful, cowardly even, to hide my
identity. My only explanation is that some of the people on this list who
seem to take least responsibility for themselves and prefer to snipe from
the sidelines than to get involved, use pseudonyms. My chosen topic is a
sensitive one and I perhaps shamefully, chose to keep my identity out of
it - I had enough trouble with Pete and have no idea how much to trust those
that speak the same language.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Royce Creasey" <royce@...>
To: <easton_bristol@...>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 8:07 AM
Subject: Re: [easton_bristol] Pete Taylor, an alternativ obit


>I barely knew Pete Taylor, although I am aware that your view of him is
> not unique. However I believe your comments are substantially devalued
> by your remaining anonymous.
>
> It seems sad to me that several subscribers feel unable to reveal their
> identities here.
>
> Royce
>
>
> FreeFire wrote:
>>
>>
>> Over the past few days, there has understandably been much talk,
>> sadness and some postings on email lists about Pete Taylor (of
>> Greenbank) who died last week.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, I know that one isn't meant to speak ill of the dead, etc. but
>> I'm sure that I can’t be the only person who is breathing a sigh of
>> relief now that Pete Taylor is gone from us. Of course I don't like to
>> think of anyone dying alone in an asthma attack, I'd rather he'd
>> realised his various dreams/fantasies of moving to Ireland or Spain.
>> But, in reading and hearing some of the (frankly nauseous glorifying)
>> tributes to him, I wonder if we're talking about the same Pete Taylor
>> (?) And if we are, then I think that this genuinly meant counter
>> will perhaps be uncomfortable, but not out of place.
>>
>>
>>
>> I certainly don't want to rid our community of difference, of
>> mavericks, of 'characters', far from it, but Pete Taylor was a hateful
>> (full of hatred) angry man who could be aggressive and violent when
>> he'd drunk too much or when he was psychotic. He was an entrenched
>> misogynist and would also pick on disabled people in the area as
>> objects of his hatred. There are people – adults and children who
>> still bare the scars of his persistant episodes of terror against
>> them, some are still here and others had their lives made such a
>> misery that they felt forced to leave the area.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think now, as I did while he lived, that he raised some difficult
>> moral conundrums for us that we could hardly acknowledge - a tireless
>> environmental campaigner who did have a 'love' for the planet, but who
>> also had something of a deep-set hatred of those people who live on it
>> (particularly those of a female gender and those physically weaker
>> than him). Somehow the ‘environmentalist’ (representing much that is
>> ‘good’) seemed to stop us seeing the bad bits.
>>
>>
>>
>> Whilst I don’t want a community that holds resentments and grudges, I
>> do question how forgiving the 'green' lobby and wider community were
>> of this man - I wonder why they could somehow see no further than
>> ‘Pete the local /character/’, ‘the maverick’ or 'Pete, the bolshy
>> activist/campaigner' and sat by and watched, laughed off or took his
>> tireless rudeness, aggression and even violence with little in the way
>> of challenge. This was a man whose ‘green politics were more akin to
>> the (‘right wing’ and ‘redneck’) early US Earth First movement than
>> anything that I thought that most green lobbyists here (including UK
>> EF offshoot movements) would sanction. A man who’s social politics
>> were more BMP than ‘liberal’.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, we may have lost something in Pete dying, but if the local
>> community and worse, the green movement needs and makes a hero of
>> someone like this, then I really do worry about our priorities.
>>
>>
>>
>> I feel an overwhelming sense of relief and can’t but think that the
>> area will be a better and safer place without him.
>>
>>
>>
>> (Fashionably) Anonymous.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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