This entry was posted on
Friday, January 9th, 2009 at
9:53 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

WARNING: There’s a gang of thugs on the loose that like to use personal data as a tool for bullying. It’s less a massive conspiracy, and more of a ‘bad neighbourhood’; the result of a poor moral/debating standard that’s common throughout most of the right-wing blogosphere in the UK. Standing conspicuously at the centre of it all is the website of Paul Staines and the comments he runs like an open sewer… where personal attacks and multiple personality shenanigans are widespread and openly tolerated until someone dares lay a blow on the author (or something/someone he supports).

Allow me to show you (for the umpteenth time) what this kind of thing leads to:

Tory activists associated with Conservative MP Anne Milton tried it on me. At least one of the people involved in that incident was a self-proclaimed fan of the ‘Guido Fawkes’ website, active in the comments, and both were fans of using sock-puppets to attack opponents.

‘Top’ Tory blogger Phil Hendren tried it on me. He also is a long-time comment contributor to the ‘Guido Fawkes’ website, and a fan of using sock-puppets to attack opponents.

Paul ‘Guido Fawkes’ Staines tried it on me himself once in his own special way (with Donal Blaney’s help); he’s even made creepy “back off and you won’t get hurt” type comments in the direction of people he thinks I am married to. Paul Staines is also highly adept in the use of sock-puppets to assault and silence critics (and has been caught red-handed in a personal sock-puppeting, defending himself while pretending to be somebody else, the sad bastard).

And now we have this:

Old Holborn – Blog closed and GONE

This is my last post

Today, a fellow Libertarian decided to post my name , address, email address, business address, photo of me and my children on the web. Because he was angry with me over my stand on Israel.

Tonight, my wife and family have read the consequent death threats and insults to them that have poured in and asked me to close this blog.

Many people now know where I live, where my children go to school, how I earn my crust and I will not put my family at any further risk.

So I am closing my blog.

It has been fun, I have thoroughly enjoyed it but now I must think of me and mine.

I thank all of you for your support.

I will be deleting this blog in 5 days time from now. They won. I knew they would.

The douche bag that published links to OH’s personal data was ‘Obnoxio The Clown’.

Both ‘Old Holborn’ and ‘Obnoxio The Clown’ are regular comment contributors to… the ‘Guido Fawkes’ website.

In fact (and some people are struggling to have sympathy with the chap because of this) it was on the ‘Guido Fawkes’ website as well as his own that ‘Old Holborn’ showed his willingness to name names and publish photos and other personal data relating to the Baby P case… in violation of a court order, no less. A difference in scale, one might argue, but not of principle.

(Paul Staines would love to pass this off as an ‘everyone stops at Waterloo station’ thing in order to duck responsibility and/or deflect negative attention away from the two-bit banner advertising network that benefits from the resulting page-load overloads, but the brutal truth of it is that Phil ‘Dizzy’ Hendren and ‘Obnoxio The Clown’ are key comment contributors on his site, and often the first in line willing to kick heads when Staines feels he can’t defend himself on his own damn ‘blog’. Staines also likes to claim that he’s been the victim of personal data bullying himself, but it is hard to tell how much of what he claims is truth when he is an almost-unrivalled bullshit artist to begin with, will scream ‘stalker’ at the drop of a hat, and leaves a mysterious money trail directly involving an unknown number of relatives for reasons that are still unclear.)