{"id":3552,"date":"2018-07-17T21:20:36","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T20:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/?p=3552"},"modified":"2018-07-18T13:00:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T12:00:05","slug":"a-sad-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/?p=3552","title":{"rendered":"A Sad Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was greatly saddened to hear from BrownhillsBob<\/a> that we have to say goodbye to The Plastic Hippo<\/a>, a man who made the local blog scene so much the richer. <\/p>\n

This blog is just a random (and infrequent) outpouring of what I do, and what I think. It strays away from political comment most of the time, and my writing could never be described as eloquent or witty: there’s locals much better at that than me, and now we’ve lost one of them.<\/p>\n

The Hippo, together with the also sadly departed Mark Blackstock<\/a> did so much to help build up a local online community that I only ever managed to be on the very periphery of. His shock at the loss of Mark is still there<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I only wish that he’d been well enough recently to turn his talents loose on the huge cock-up that is Brexit, and the everlasting cock-up that constitutes the governance of Walsall Council, because it needs it. I just don’t have the imagination or writing talent to do it justice, unlike him.<\/p>\n

I met him in person only a couple of times, but he was a nice guy; likeable, sociable, witty, and caring.<\/p>\n

His online prescence made a huge impact for someone who claimed to be a technophobe, whether it was picking apart all that was wrong politically, or giving the odd arsehole a well-deserved kicking in the comments. I’d hope his blog remains online for a long time to come.<\/p>\n

I’d like to pass on my sympathy to his family and friends, and just say rest in peace. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was greatly saddened to hear from BrownhillsBob that we have to say goodbye to The Plastic Hippo, a man who made the local blog scene so much the richer. This blog is just a random (and infrequent) outpouring of what I do, and what I think. It strays away from political comment most of … Continue reading A Sad Loss<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}