Thursday, October 29, 2009 

How very cosy.

Nadine Dorries, that noted flag carrier for lying and libel, has managed to wring a whole £1,000 from Damian McBride over the supposed libels he sent to Derek Draper while they were considering the setting up of the now infamous "Red Rag" website. McBride, fairly enough, decided it wasn't worth the potential cost of going to court, even though these remarks about the sainted Ms Dorries were never actually published, were private remarks sent from one person to another and which would never have entered the public domain had Derek Draper's email not been "hacked" by persons unknown and sent to Guido Fawkes. It would have been fun of course for McBride to argue in court that Dorries had no reputation to defend, and considering that Dorries' lawyer has turned out to be Donal Blaney, hardly the most feared silk in the libel capital of the world, you would have rated his chances.

Alas, it was not to be. It is of course completely irrelevant that Dorries spent that weekend herself making clearly libellous accusations that Tom Watson knew about McBride's behaviour and did nothing about it, something which both the Mail on Sunday and the Sun have now paid far larger sums out in damages to Watson for repeating. It is also by no means hypocritical that Guido, a person who laughs at libel laws and declares that he is above such things, has profited from delivering the writ to McBride. Fawkes is also, of course, a libertarian blogger and in no way associated with the Conservative party, despite the fact he has earned from delivering a letter on behalf of a Conservative MP, the other of which was also delivered by a piss-poor Tory blogger, and which was from the offices of the equally piss-poor Donal Blaney, a Tory blogger. Is that clear? Good.

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10/29/2009 11:56:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 10, 2009 

The prime mentalist is back.

Have you missed the glitz and glamour of politics over the summer?  The spirited debates, the back and forth, the agreeing to disagree, the rapier wit of the finest of their profession, crushing their opponents with humour whilst also making serious substantial points?  Or have we just all been waiting for Peter Mandelson to get in trouble again for going on someone's yacht?

The old cliche or witticism, depending on your view, is that politics is show-business for ugly people.  The difference surely is that while show-business might be viewed as a game, politics is the ultimate one.  The two do now though overlap more and more: Bono gets up on his soapbox while Gordon Brown rings Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell to make sure that Susan Boyle is "OK".  Politics has always shared the bitchiness which is inherent in celebrity culture, and smearing is old as the delusions which both grandeur and power bring.  Margaret Thatcher was a mad old bat; John Major tucked his shirt into his underpants and was the ever gray man; Tony Blair was a liar and messianic, both of which more than had an iota of truth in them; and now Gordon Brown, formerly accused of being autistic and of various mental disorders, is said to be taking one of the MAOI class of anti-depressants.

According to who?  Supposedly, as always, these rumours have been circling Westminster, and it takes one "brave" individual to finally give voice to them, of course much easier in these days when you can say whatever you like about anyone on this glorious interweb and someone will inevitably believe it regardless of any evidence.  That person was John Ward, who has his legion of sources and naturally the psychoanalysis to back it up.  Since he first posted on it, it's been picked up by "The Mole", Simon Heffer, Matthew Norman, who should really know better, and now finally by Guido, who demands to know who will ask Gordo about his drug addiction, since if it's on the internet it simply must be true.  John Harris' piece in today's Graun also seems to be an indirect response to it, but is far too kind to come out and play with the rumours.

It's tempting to not give any credence whatsoever to these stories and to ignore them completely, but seeing I'm writing this mess I've obviously decided otherwise.  It's also equally easy to point out that even if true, Brown is hardly the first politician, let alone prime minister to suffer from mental health problems, and that others have dealt superbly with their demons whilst in high office.  There's also the fact that if you weren't under severe strain while prime minister, especially considering the far from benign conditions which Brown has faced over the last year, if not two years, then there's probably something wrong with you anyway.  There is however also an argument to be made that if true, then the public deserves to know, even if fraught with difficulties.  It's only too obvious from the comments of most, including Guido, that there is still severe prejudice and a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to mental illness, as ably illustrated by his continued use of Brown as a clown with a legend which includes the word "bonkers".  Arguably, there was a case when David Blunkett was still home secretary and suffering from something approaching severe depression as a result of his relationship with Kimberley Fortier that he could have be "unfit" to hold such a high post of office.  Yet equally clearly it's apparent that the only person who should be able to make such decisions and offer such advice would be an actual psychiatrist; if Brown is taking MAOIs, then he doubtless has been prescribed them by one.  If he considered that Brown could not continue in his job as a result of his illness, then he would have told him so, just as that doctor would have told anyone else that they should consider taking time off in the same circumstances.  This doesn't seem to be the case.

There is however also a case to be made that this is politics of the very worst kind.  It wasn't so long ago that newspapers were outraged, disgusted and so deeply deeply shocked by the smears which err, they printed, from private emails between Damian McBride and Derek Draper.  These were rumours, as many accepted, which had been swirling around Westminster.  Nonetheless, it was a disaster for Brown, there were allegations that Brown had to have known, as well as other ministers in close proximity to McBride, which individuals later had to apologise for after legal action was taken.  Only on Monday did Guido deliver to McBride a writ from Nadine Dorries for comments which were allegedly made about her in the emails.  Four days later and the exact same person is indulging in what are almost certainly also libellous claims were they to be proved to be unfounded.  If I were McBride and Draper's legal advisers I would suggest that they argue that Dorries doesn't have a reputation to be libelled, but whatever you think of Brown's tenure as prime minister, a case can at least be made that he does.

All this comes just as there actually is genuine politics to be discussed for a change, and after a month in which the Conservatives have been common consent been piss-poor, not helped by Daniel Hannan or by their "Broken Britain" week, highlighted by Chris Grayling's claim that some parts of the country were as bad as the Wire.  The economy seems to be improving, there is no real plot against Brown, despite what Martin Kettle thinks, and the left finally seems to be realising that there's still something to fight for.  Instead we're back to the sewer.

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9/10/2009 10:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 

Spinning and kicking while down.

One of the things that newspapers specialise in is kicking people when they're down, usually after they were the ones that were primarily responsible for building them up in the first place. A recent case in point was the sudden deflating of James Corden and Mathew Horne, having been ridiculously over praised for the middling Gavin and Stacey, who were little less than assaulted over their film, Lesbian Vampire Killers, their piss-poor eponymous BBC3 sketch show, and a charity appearance which was deemed to be little better.

More pertinently politics wise is the way that Damian McBride has been set about since the "smeargate" emails emerged of him batting about ideas for a blog in which Tories had their private and personal lives appraised for gossip value. The latest example is in today's Graun, where McBride is linked to an "infamous incident" back in 2004, so infamous that this self-confessed politics nerd has no recollection whatsoever of it. More astonishing than the fact that McBride was fingered as the person responsible for leaking details of the meeting to the Sunday Times is that a "secret investigation" was launched in which phone records and presumably security assets were used to find the culprit. It says more about Downing Street's paranoia and fury at the slightest criticism at the time than it does about how much of a "wrong 'un" McBride always was.

Peter Wilby pointed out yesterday that prior to the last two weeks McBride had hardly been mentioned in the papers, his existence and apparently his dark arts of no interest to anyone when both sides were profiting from his dripping of poison. In 2004 the Graun mentioned McBride but once - and that was in a City diary. Even last year, at the apparent height of McBride's operations, he was only mentioned in dispatches 34 times, and 5 of those were in the little read online lobby column by "Bill Blanko", the rest mainly coming from reports concerning the defenestration of Ruth Kelly. As spin doctors go, you can hardly get more visible than Alastair Campbell, while it seems you can hardly get less visible than McBride was. Only once he had fallen on his sword did we learn about his work in the shadows, mainly briefing Tory newspapers, the ones so outraged by the smears which would never have emerged and seemingly never have been used if someone hadn't hacked Derek Draper's email account, with venom about under performing ministers. Almost every whisper about plotting by various pretenders to Brown's throne seems to have originated with McBride - either that or he's just a handy receptacle to now blame.

There is something in the argument made by various bloggers that the journalistic lobby at Westminster, because it is complicit in the spinning, cannot be trusted to tell us the whole truth about what goes on there. At the same time, the idea that blogs can be trusted to do just that is equally spurious, if not more so. However much bloggers denounce the MSM, the two are inseparable because they cannot operate without each other. Guido had to sell the emails to Sunday newspapers because they would have not gained the same coverage that they would have on his site, however much he and Iain Dale boast about their visitor figures. Gossip is well suited to the web because it requires few resources: just a few indiscreet individuals. Genuine investigative journalism however, such as that which brought down Jonathan Aitken, or more recently exposed the rendition programme or the Saudi slush funds needs constant backing up and funding. Even when it comes to videos which expose the truth, such as the one showing Ian Tomlinson being pushed over by a police officer, it requires the reach of a paper like the Guardian for it to truly spread quickly: if it had simply been sent up to YouTube or a blog like the dozens of others of the G20 protests, it would have taken days for it to reach critical mass.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the pique and faux outrage which followed McBride's resignation then is that it wasn't a blast against the spin culture, which after all cannot operate without the media's connivance, even as they decry it, but rather because one of their finest sources for muck had been forced outside of the circle. The motto was and remains, "don't get fucking caught". That applies to journalists and spin doctors equally.

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4/21/2009 08:10:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 

Spin, smears and faux outrage.

"Let's go to work."

Having finally been reconnected to the joyous environment which is the internet this morning (turns out it was nothing whatsoever to do with the East London cable outage, so it could have been fixed early last week if it wasn't for Tiscali saying to me that it was), I've been following the McBride/Draper smear "scandal" with something approaching detachment, which all things considered is almost certainly the best policy. All the adjectives you can use to describe the emails sent between McBride and Draper which mysteriously found their way into the (dirty) hands of Paul Staines, something which itself is curiously not being remarked upon, couldn't really begin to do justice to what is one of those stories which energises Westminster and the lobby hacks, and now also the insular world of "popular" political blogging, and which everyone else is just mystified and turned off by.

Probably the most ludicrous notion inspired by this faux outrage is that Labour could lose the next election because of it, and that the party has suffered "reputational damage" thanks to emails exchanged between a civil servant and a spin doctor handed the most poisoned chalice in current British politics. Labour will lose the next election because in the words of Roy Hattersley, the party is neither new enough nor Labour enough. Its one remaining claim to power was its economic record, a record which has since been flushed into the gutter. The only surprise of the last few months has been that the Conservatives have not built a bigger opinion poll lead, which is almost certainly down to just two factors: that the Tories' policies, those which they have, are only likely to make things worse; and that David Cameron has not yet sealed the deal with the electorate to the extent which Tony Blair did.

The other only slightly less ludicrous factor is the amount of sheer hypocrisy being exhibited by all of those involved. You would require a stomach of iron constitution not to feel sick at Staines describing the emails between Draper and McBride as "obscene"; this is the blogger who has variously implied that Mark Oaten was a paedophile, that routinely referred to the prime minister as the "prime mentalist", suggesting that he suffered from high functioning Asperger's syndrome without a scintilla of evidence and who has unmoderated comment fields where the invective and insults would be unfit to print on toilet walls. Staines' propaganda and self-promotion is that he provides the stories which the newspapers and "mainstream" media won't touch, but he is in fact as parasitical of them as any other blogger. The reality is that they give him stories and he gives them stories, all while claiming that he's about to blow the mainstream away. The sort of gossip and smears which are evident in the Draper/McBride emails is Staines' meat and drink, and he uses the old fallacy of urging those skewered to sue if his claims are false, hence the still unsubstantiated claims from him that John Prescott had an affair with Rosie Winterton, which you would have thought might have came out by now if it had happened.

At its heart, there is a fundamental lack of honesty from all those involved. The material which Staines acquired is the kind of gossip which most engage in, however untrue much of it is. Only last October there was the "scandal" involving George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and yachts, where we learned that Mandelson had dripped "poison" about Gordon Brown into the ears of his supposed political enemies. Osborne's error was to blab to others what Mandelson had told him; his comeuppance came when Mandelson revealed that Osborne might have attempted to obtain a donation from his host. The golden rule of all this is don't get fucking caught. These are not new developments; the briefing and counter-briefing is as old as politics itself. What is relatively recent is the venom with which the briefings are given, and that does originate with New Labour, although even John Major had his moments, such as his "bastards" comments. Both Brown and Blair surrounded themselves with such ardent followers that they would do almost anything to attack the other, hence we had Brown being described as "psychologically flawed" and it being put about that he was gay, while Mandelson, the master of the "dark arts", was himself smeared on various occasions. This is still continuing today, such was the rift created, hence Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn not hiding their satisfaction at McBride having to resign.

Again, if it wasn't so vomit inducing the Conservative response to this would be hilarious. Their attempts to pin this directly to Gordon Brown are understandable, although still repugnant. Yes, he kept McBride around, knowing full well what he was capable of and indeed what he had done in the past, but that he would have personally authorised the smearing of his opponents is nonsense. If anything, the Tories' efforts to paint themselves as completely above such tactics is setting them up for a fall in the same way as Labour did. Cameron has more or less done everything but pronounce himself a "pretty straight kind of guy" and that he will be "purer than pure". Let's be clear: if the Tories genuinely wanted to put an end to the age of spin, the very thing they would not have done is emulate Labour in appointing a former tabloid journalist as their chief media strategist. Say what you like about Alastair Campbell whilst he was in Downing Street, at least he never had to resign because of his journalism, or found himself accused of leading the bullying of those under him as Andy Coulson has. The Tories also know that they don't need to engage in such smearing to such an extent as perhaps they and their opponents have in the past: they now know they can rely on the likes of Staines and other malignant bloggers to do that for them. That those that can't write a sentence without using the word "cunt" or similar have been so celebratory over this "scandal" ought to tell you something about the sort of discourse which politics has now sunk to, which blogging has in many cases only made worse.

The only thing that has been got right by all involved is that Labour simply doesn't understand the internet and doesn't understand why it's so unpopular online. The broad reason is that those in government are always in opposition when it comes to the internet, as those opposed have more that unites them than unites the supporters, but the other main reasons are that the internet provides alternative voices not represented elsewhere, hence why libertarian blogs are so popular, and that British right-wing bloggers have taken their cue from the originators in America, like the Drudge Report. The Red Rag site which Draper was looking to set-up was meant to be an attempt to beat Staines at his own game, something which it was never going to achieve, and which also fails to understand that you have to fight gossip and intrigue not with more of the same, but with content and argument, which as Sunny points out is where the left in America succeeded. Draper's LabourList was an honourable attempt to do something similar, but was doomed to failure because Draper himself was involved, far too associated with the past and inextricably linked with the party itself. LabourList was and is simply not critical enough, while ConservativeHome, nicknamed Continuity IDS because of its to the right of Cameron stance, gets it right. Mr Eugenides recognises this, praising Liberal Conspiracy because it is the best attempt so far by the left to get organised and push things forward in a similar way to the American left. Its success is also though because while Labour supporters or sympathisers are contributors, it is completely independent of any party.

The biggest mis-step of all though was that Draper and McBridge imagined that those identified needed smearing. Nadine Dorries, after all, is possibly the biggest joke in British politics, and she has lied and mislead people on so many occasions that no one needs to make things up about her to show just how disreputable she is. Likewise, the idea that the public themselves will be turned off by such tactics is ignorant: they themselves call politicians every name under the sun, often quite deservedly, and the contempt in which they are held only continues to grow. You feel like telling all those involved to stop protesting so much whilst also suggesting that they get over themselves. This will be remembered not as another great New Labour scandal but yet another example of the Westminster bubble getting excited with itself while everyone else is just bemused and alienated.

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4/14/2009 09:04:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 

Going lower than ever thought possible.

Out of all the joys that the internet has brought us, the ability for those with a tendency for hypochondria to self-diagnose themselves via the easy availability of the symptoms for every disease known to man is one of the lesser benefits. Even worse though is those who then take these self-same symptoms and rather than diagnosing themselves, attempt to pin the diseases and disorders on others, especially those involving mental health. This level of sub-Freudian projection is contemptible enough when it's directed against celebrities and others in the public eye, but when it enters political discourse it represents something resembling a new low in gutter-sniping.

Witness then Guido bringing the question completely out into the open, behind the witless low-level building up of the idea which has been going on for several months now. Gordon Brown, fairly and simply, is quite possibly bonkers. The evidence presented for this is weak beyond belief. It amounts to around three things: that Brown was labelled "psychologically flawed" long ago by Blair's briefers during one of the internecine battles between TB and GB; that Brown has been acting strangely, apropos an article by that man noted for his own completely rational and inoffensive behaviour, Bruce Anderson; and lastly, that even by the standards of a politician he's been making increasingly bizarre statements. To this you could add the pathetic diagnoses by the green ink brigade of autism, or Asperger's syndrome.

You don't have to have even the slightest medical training to treat such facile, shallow nonsense with the contempt it deserves. It ought to be remembered however though that this isn't just the imaginings of the usual suspect squad of bloggers getting ever more drunk on their own delusions of grandeur: George Osborne joked when asked by Mary Ann Sieghart whether his own knowledge of dinosaurs when a child was "faintly autistic" by saying "we're not getting into Gordon Brown yet"; and for a while it almost seemed to be Conservative policy to treat Gordon Brown as weird, hence Cameron's description of him as "that strange man in Downing Street".

To give these claims the sort of scrutiny which they don't deserve, we're for a start dealing with highly conflicting descriptions of what Brown genuinely is like. While some may class him as a Stalinist or a control freak, others have talked of his mildness, even warmth in private, and have been disillusioned by his failure to show this in public. Even if we take at face value the stories of Brown's rages, almost all delivered, incidentally, by either Blairites or those predisposed against Brown, of the smashing of mobile phones and otherwise, they don't even begin to be explained by mental illness or autism: rather, this is a person under intense pressure and stress, reacting at times in ways which he doubtless instantly regrets. It might be someone not enjoying the job which they so coveted, but it is not even slightly abnormal, let alone descending into mental ill-health.

More than anything, this perhaps comes down to what you regard as the qualities that a politician should always have on display. We seem increasingly to want our politicians to always be presentable, to always instantly know what to do, and at the same time to be incredibly open with everyone. In short, we never want them to put a foot wrong, be off-message, or be consumed with anything other than constant public service. This, more than anything, is what is currently delivering us identikit politicians, overwhelming upper-middle or upper-class, with next to no experience other than from within political parties, all of whom look more or less the same and indeed, offer more or the less the same. They can deliver a speech brilliantly, pretend to empathise, emerge as brain-shatteringly normal or at least act like it, and pass the barbecue test, but none of this qualifies them in the slightest to actually run a country. Surely we ought to have learned this lesson by now, whether by the examples of either Bush or Blair, yet we seem more than ever to lap up the spin we so profess to detest while railing against the outsider, the abnormal, those who don't seem to fit in.

Surely the greatest example of how you don't always need to be of complete sound mind, even if you are, when in a position of such authority is Churchill. Everyone is aware of his life-long battle with depression, of the "Black Dog" as he called it, yet its effects did not prevent him from serving as arguably the greatest prime minister this country has ever had.

This is not of course to suggest that Brown is on anywhere near the same plain as Churchill; he quite obviously is not. Yet the whispering about his own mental ill-health, completely unsubstantiated, is designed to put the final nail in his coffin, to ostracise him completely, to persecute him for daring to be anything other than he really is. The political reality Brown has to face is that he never forced his hand early enough to force Blair out when he could still have averted Labour's apparent inexorable decline. However much some want to pin all the blame solely on his shoulders for the economic weather we are now facing, the main opposition party cannot even begin to explain what things it would have done differently to Labour, or what it would have cut or not funded to the same extent as that as Brown did. He has chosen the entirely wrong policies to pursue since becoming prime minister, such as 42 days detention and the expansion of the school academy system, not to mention the 10p tax rate debacle, but there is no evidence whatsoever, indeed, some to the contrary, that another leader would do any better. The Conservatives are heading back to power, but if they or their cyphers think that they'll earn any kudos for descending to the politics of the sewer, lower even than that which New Labour has at times sunk, then they are certainly sorely mistaken.

Related:
Lib Con - The 'Gordon Brown is insane' meme

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8/26/2008 09:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, June 09, 2008 

The Dorries deficit.

Today has not been a good day to be Nadine Dorries. As Unity and Lib Con both report, Dorries has been asked to explain her use of the incidental expenses provision to fund her blog, something which the rules state it is not to be used for online campaigns against political opponents, something that Dorries has most certainly breached. The parliamentary standards commission can be relaxed about such breaches on occasion, but whether it will considering the current high level of scrutiny of politicians' use of expenses, and Dorries previously being reprimanded for inappropriate use of Commons' stationery is an open question.

Meanwhile, over on said blog, Ms Dorries has been ranting and welcoming her newest employee:

It has not been a nice weekend.

The frenzied attack against Conservative MPs and MEPs, orchestrated by and emanating from the left wing BBC and press has equalled that of an animal in its death throes. The more terminal the position looks for Labour, the more desperate the BBC and the left wing press become.

Ah yes, the old conspiracy theory. The Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation is out to get the Tories! That other often indicted left-wing instrument, the Guardian, has been pushing the Spelman expenses story to such an extent that it put it back on page 13 this morning, with a notably sympathetic report suggesting that Spelman's employment of a nanny had its roots in the local constituency parties' sexism.

Still, what's this?

My daughter Jenny, who is 20, begins work for me this week for six weeks as a paid intern.

She told me I shouldn’t put what she earns on the blog as it is against her human rights. I told her that as an MP's daughter, she doesn’t have any. She is being paid £7.50 per hour.

Just then as it becomes a bit of a no-no for politicians to employ members of their family to do work for them courtesy of the public purse, Dorries has decided to go against the grain. You have to admire that kind of opposition to the current orthodoxy; where would we be if a few MPs weren't such mavericks?

Guido however, that noted slayer of right-wingers (is this right? Ed.) decided to take up Dorries' offer of enquiring whether Jenny actually was working from her staff office. She happened to be out when he called, but he had his call swiftly returned by none other than Dorries herself, who was not impressed by someone actually doing what she invited them to.

There is of course another dimension to this, one slightly forgotten in the fallout surrounding the abortion vote. Last year Alex Hilton (aka one of the writers on Recess Monkey) featured one of the Dorries's daughter's Facebook pages, complete with apparent racism. Dorries was so angered by this slur on her daughter's character that she threatened to involve Schillings, noted tenacious legal rottweilers for Alisher Usmanov. Her outbreak of outrage was slightly tempered by the fact that she had previously splashed photographs of her offspring all across her blog; now she's directly employing one of those that she pledged to protect and called to be kept out of it. First implication of this? Being subjected to the usual amount of lewd comments on Guido's blog. Is there no beginning to Dorries' brilliant deflecting of criticism?

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6/09/2008 09:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 

Minor blogging transgressions.

Interesting to note tonight that one of Paul "Guido Fawkes" Staines' seen elsewhere links is to a Labour candidate arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography. Strangely, he's found no space to report on his own transgressions:

Off to the rack with him! The waspish Westminster blogger "Guido Fawkes", who is devoted to making life uncomfortable for political trough-guzzlers, joins his historical namesake in finding himself at the sharp end of the legal system.

Lobbyists, aides and parliamentarians from all sides of the Houses – particularly those with something to hide – will be delighted to learn that the famously thirsty troublemaker, real name Paul Staines, was up before the beak at Tower Bridge Magistrates Court last Thursday.

He admitted driving while under the influence and without insurance after being stopped by the Plod in the small hours of 17 April, driving his wife's Volkswagen fast and swerving across lanes in south London. He was breathalysed and found to be almost twice the legal limit. Asked by District Judge Timothy Stone whether he had an alcohol problem, Staines said: "Possibly."

Sentencing is on 15 May. It is his fourth alcohol-related offence and second drink-driving reprimand – he was banned for 12 months in 2002 – requiring the judge to consider a jail sentence.


Seems to be little chance of this also being mentioned in his comment sections - which are most assuredly on moderation. Still, at least it seems unlikely he'll have to worry about this for much longer.

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4/30/2008 10:10:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 01, 2008 

Hey Guido!

Stop being unutterably pathetic.

Thanks.

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2/01/2008 08:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 30, 2007 

Guido and his sock-puppets.

NSFW:

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3/30/2007 08:26:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 

Guido and that Grauniad report.

For those of you who are intrigued about the two decades old Guardian story about the blogger Guido Fawkes' alleged dalliance with the BNP when he was a student, then you can read it in full here.

I'm linking to the article in question purely because this blog was previously similarly gagged, as others have been now, when I republished photographs of the News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood that were already in the public domain. The difference between then and now is that Guido was one of the other blogs that received the same injunction; this time it's Guido that's threatening to send in the lawyers.

I make no comment on the story, and as I previously mentioned, I feel it is wholly unfair and potentially counter-productive to make an issue out of what an individual's politics were when they were a student. I do however think that Guido's behaviour smacks of hypocrisy, and that those who want to read what other blogs have only been allowed to talk about rather than republish should be able to. I was not involved in the setting up of the blog that republishes it, and only found it from reading another blog, one that has only been involved in the periphery of the whole "blog war".

If Guido wishes to provide me with the retraction which he states he has, then I will also be more than happy to reproduce it here, or reconsider my linking to the article.

Update: Guido has since provided me with the letter from David Rose, which in my mind closes this whole issue. I still feel that those who want to read the article should be able to, so the link will remain, but they should do so with the knowledge that David Rose later wrote to Guido and made clear that he had changed his mind about Guido's motives in contacting the BNP. It does not amount to a retraction from the newspaper, but it does as a personal one from the journalist himself. This makes me wonder why Guido has made such an issue out of a story which doesn't have any legs, but that is up to him.

Related posts:
Chicken Yoghurt - The last laugh
Big Stick Small Carrot - Freedom of Information
Ministry of Truth - Knives and Fawkes

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2/14/2007 05:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 12, 2007 

Ceasefire?

Iain Dale, in his smug and condescending way, has offered something of a ceasefire in the blogging civil war, even if it doesn't really look anything like one. He also offers something of a explanation over the "nihilist" incident, which while not going far enough, is enough for me to remove the liar button from the sidebar.

When Tim at Bloggerheads launched his opening attack on Guido, I was on the fence. Since then, the behaviour of both Paul Staines and Dale towards Tim, as well as that from comment makers on both of their blogs (especially from Caroline Hunt, who if I was being unkind about would suggest was one letter out from being perfectly described by her own name) has led me to be increasingly sympathetic to Tim's cause. Attempts to paint Tim as either a New Labour hack or a Brownite are laughable, as anyone who took the time to browse his archive would realise.

Equally amusing was Guido's flailing about yesterday, muttering darkly about m'learned friends, after a number of blogs picked up on a couple of decades old report about Guido wanting to link the Federation of Conservative Students group with the BNP. Untrue and ancient as it might be, and I personally feel bringing up such old stories is counter-productive and petty, it showed Guido, who had previously mocked attempts to silence him through the libel laws and stated that he was untouchable, as being just as quick to jump to potential litigation as some of his own victims.

Tim himself has replied to Dale's post, and Unity has as ever made a typically excellent response which addresses and explains many of the issues of what has happened over the last month or so. Guido has agreed to an interview with Sunny, which should be interesting, while Curious Hamster, who found himself involved, has also made clear his views. Let's see how long, if at all, it holds.

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2/12/2007 05:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, January 15, 2007 

More bloggocks, and some personal shit.

Infighting in the horribly named "blogosphere" has existed since its very inception, and will of course continue until its dying day when the offspring of Jordan, Chantelle and Jade, genetically modified by mad scientists in order to appeal both to the Heat-buying masses and the Torygraph/Grauniad reading pseudo-intellectuals, win power and immediately destroy mankind by accidentally pushing the red nuke button, thinking it alerted their lackeys to their desire for a bucket of KFC chicken. There hasn't yet been though such an apparent opening blast of civil war as that directed from Tim "Manic" Ireland towards Paul "Guido Fawkes" Staines.

I'm in the strange position here of having an at least tenuous involvement with both. Tim has considered my half-baked rants worthy of linking to, and in my short-lived battle last year with the representatives of a certain Mazher Mahmood, Guido offered moral support, as we were both threatened by the legal might of Farrer & Co. I'm therefore somewhat wary of some of Tim's more strident attacks on Guido's blogging.

While undoubtedly his apparent fiddling with comments is a breach of acceptable if unwritten blogging etiquette, and I have in the past found his self-promotion rather amusing, I think it's going a little too far to accuse him of being lower than a red-top. As readers of this blog will know (all 2 of you), the Sun at its worst excesses is the equivalent of TV's Naughtiest Blunders, except in a crude, ugly, misleading political propaganda form; a unending cavalcade of the very worst of absolutely everything. Worst of all, it's almost impossible to get any right of reply in the Sun, or News of the World. They will only print what they want you to see. The letters are hand-picked so that there is hardly ever any deviation from their own chosen line, and the only way to get any kind of recompense, unless they've committed an utterly huge blunder which would almost certainly lead to damages in a court of law, your only hope is that the Press Complaints Commission, which has Les Hinton, News International's chairman on the code committee, will listen to your complaint. If your complaint is about their political coverage rather than something about you personally, then forget it.

This is, I think, the difference between Guido and the tabloid press. Guido, because of his very presence as a blogger, can be taken to task by the community which surrounds him, as Tim today has shown. The Sun, for all the rivalry it has with the Mirror and the distaste amongst the liberal broadsheet press for its crude propaganda, cannot be held to account adequately by either the press or by bloggers. For the press to do so would result in all out war, something which hacks who despite differing political allegiances would resist, and with the resources that Murdoch has, would result inevitably in the defeat of those who rise up; and for bloggers, who cannot possibly contend or deal with every single abuse of power that is wielded, every story that is not just wrong, but horribly wrong, and warped by the politics of those behind it. Just trying to keep up with the worst excesses, as this blog tries to, is tiring and time-consuming enough. Guido, on the other-hand, can be held to account. His output is nowhere near that of a newspaper; he can be challenged on other blogs, and his refusal to reply to accusations would be telling. When it comes to taking on the might of the Sun, all you hope for is that you reach a few people who might otherwise be taken in, that you correct the worst of its mistakes and show it up for what it really is. You know that you will largely be preaching to the converted, but the whole "blogosphere" is based around doing just that, more or less anyway.

The fallout between left and right blogs, and between fact checking blogs and others shows that this contained internet community can (mostly) moderate itself. Where Tim is right to be concerned I feel is about the influence of far-right neo-con bloggers, such as Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, etc. They're the ones doing the dirty work of the current US administration; abusing, smearing, distorting and attacking, with all the more ferocity because their own masters can no longer do it themselves. They in some way mirror what MediaLens sets out to do, except taking on the whole of the "mainstream" media, which they regard as liberal, defeatist, anti-American, etc, as their target, while MediaLens sets out only to take on the actual liberal media. Both are utterly convinced that they are right to do so, and as a result both have gone way too far, MediaLens with Iraq Body Count and George Monbiot for instance, the far-right with the concocted Jamil Hussein "scandal", the hysteria that the massacre at Qana was somehow contrived entirely by Hizbullah, as if they wanted the children to die in order to use them for their own purposes, and over the targeting of Red Cross ambulances by Israeli laser-guided missiles, which they denied actually happened. Unlike MediaLens, these bloggers have major influence; they're making waves, especially on the likes of Fox News, and they're getting their claims into the mainstream media, true or not. They genuinely can discredit blogs as a whole. Guido doesn't wield anywhere near as much power.

Tim is also on uncertain ground over the legal aspect. Guido may boast that he is untouchable, but that is as yet untested. He certainly received an order, along with this blog, to take down the photographs posted of Mazher Mahmood, and had his case not been such a potential blow to freedom of expression online, as well as argued by incompetents, we may well have had to provide damages to the scourge of celebrities everywhere, not to mention the innocents he has entrapped in the Victora Beckham and red mercury plots. Rosie Winterton, one of John Prescott's other presumed mistresses, also realised that if she tried to sue Guido over his accusations that she risked letting everything out of the bag. Tim is right to be worried that the likes of Guido could soon use such potential blackmail against innocent targets, but that ought to be perhaps dealt with when it happens.

Most of all, I feel there has to be a place for someone like Guido out there, as Nosemonkey also argues. To claim, as Guido himself sort of does, that he's an online Private Eye is to give him way too much credit, but he does occupy that sort of niche that is fun, humourous and less demanding than that of other political blogs. Private Eye's own financial dealings are reasonably secretive, also. While Private Eye may not have the ideology behind it that Guido perhaps has, how many Tories devoted to the party would come out on their blogs like he has today and imply that cannabis ought to be legalised?

I won't then be joining in with removing Guido from the blogroll, although I'm sure that now these points have been put across that many more eyes will be on him, watching his moves a lot more carefully than they perhaps have been.

On a personal level, Tim's wider points about anonymity, funding and background as much affect me as they do Guido. My own operation here, however pathetic, is based around anonymity. The original name I used here, Simon Verwest, is not my real name. The main basis for my anonymity is based partly on my own cowardice. However paranoid it may be to think, the attacks that I make here on the Sun/Murdoch make me an obvious target for eventual "revenge", or at least some sort of "expose" or smear, and to make a comparison, although I am in no way comparing what I do here to what Tommy Sheridan has done as a politician, something on a far lower level to what has happened to him is something, however ridiculous it might seem, that I fear.

This farcical reason for anonymity though is no excuse, nor is it the only one. Although a lot of blogging is surely down in at least some way to vanity, one thing I certainly am not seeking is fame, even among my peers as it were. I am, it has to be admitted, something of a solitary animal. Not only do I not like being identified, I'm scared of it. The cliché goes that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, yet though I probably don't really have anything to hide, I still fear.

It's only right then that I at least give some background. I don't know how much the average reader cares, wants to know, other than to maybe read my convoluted ramblings, but in line with Tim's idea for something of a voluntary code, I'm going to at least come a little out of the shadows. I'm 22 years of age. I'm currently unemployed. For the last three years I've been slowly but surely recovering from severe depression, brought on by a number of factors. I had planned to go to university, 3 years and 2 years ago respectively, but the first time I decided it was best to give it another year, and the second time I found I just didn't have the mental strength to go through with it. I have no plans to try again as yet.

Half the reason I started writing here was to distract my mind somewhat. It's worked, and in conjunction with other things, I now feel a lot more confident both about myself and life in general. I hope to start looking for some sort of job shortly. I'm also going to change my name used here to septicisle, while still remaining something of my anonymity. Whether I fully "come out", we shall have to see. And in case you couldn't tell, I utterly loathe writing about myself. Trackback links are also now enabled, which for some reason I didn't previously have on, and you also now have to be registered to comment, which I doubt will affect things much.

Related posts:
Chicken Yoghurt - Off the artistic roll call
D-Notice - Bloggerheads vs Guy Fawkes
Bob Piper - Bloggerheads on the Plonker

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1/15/2007 06:38:00 PM | | | links to this post

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