Lesley Brain welcomes the social media revolution, but wishes the trolls weren't so beastly

ONCE upon a time wherever in the world, however dramatic the circumstances the people were in, you would see a can of Coca-Cola. Now it is a mobile phone with internet access (incredible when you have businesses in Cirencester struggling to get fast broadband).

At home everything changed with Lee Rigby's murder in May 2013. Disaster and horror unfolds. You can also know that it has become harder for governments and dictators (often the same thing) to hide the truth. People will at least have more information, even though it is hard to tell real from fake.

And isn't this good? What does it matter if young people exchange news of what they have just eaten for breakfast and share 1,000 selfies a day?

One in three long-term relationships started on the internet, so that is part of mainstream society.

I have had a website for nearly 10 years but am a recent convert to Twitter, engaging with it cautiously and, as much as is possible, on my terms.

I am not interested in gathering 'followers' as I have nothing at all to sell. Did you know you can buy them?

I just want a relatively small number of key people so I can learn what is happening in certain areas that interest me. Information gathering.

It is exciting to hear what people are doing in our local cities and feel the positivity about where they live and the future they are carving out.

But there is a downside, and it is a serious one. Trolling is online bullying. It can be difficult to define. Criticism is one thing and to be expected, even desired, if one puts ones head over the parapet. It's easy to say, well shut the machine.

But it's a skill, this trolling, like any other, and insidious. Done anonymously, hiding behind what they think are 'clever' false names, the trolls make personal remarks.

Fat, ugly, old. These are easy, but what is more difficult are the unfair comments. Untruths.

I have been called a Conservative, insensitive to the poor, mentally unstable, fascist, the list is endless.

The danger (as a life-long Labour voter, a fierce supporter of the Trussell Trust, a European remainer, a worker for a cause which supports people at risk, and only slightly mad) is that you get dragged into telling the trolls more than they have any right to know.

Put your name to a criticism and we might be able to have what normal people have. A discussion.

It couldn't possibly work for me... but it does

This Country has been reviewed and analysed. By now this television mockumentary will be the subject of a PhD thesis and standard viewing for sociology students. Though come to think of it sociology itself is a phenomenon, having been the subject of choice for anyone in the Sixties and now virtually extinct.

Anyway, Daisy and Charlie Cooper, brother and sister, have written and performed as Kerry and Kurtan, living a life of isolation and despair in the Cotswolds.

It's about anomie, alienation, deprivation and all those other words sociologists loved.

It's the other side of the idyllic Cotswolds so beloved of Londoners who think Chipping Campden is 'countryside'.

I came late to it and with trepidation. I worry about recommendations. "You will love...." being doomed words in my experience. They are what we English thrive on. Words that mean the complete opposite.

"You must come for drinks", meaning, never cross my threshold.

"You look well," means fat.

"You will love Gerald," means I can't stand him and want to pass him on to you.

A television show about deprivation in the Cotswolds heralded by the chattering middle-classes as the best thing since artisan bread invented Stroud couldn't possibly work for me.

"So amusing, darling," just sounds so very patronising. Forget all that. Forget Durkheim and Weber and Talcot Parsons (except for the occasional University Challenge questions).

This programme is one thing we haven't seen on television for years. It is wonderfully funny.