Tim Ireland on tabloids, media, blogs and politics
The Political Weblog Movement
Clubhouse rules
6th Sep 2010
Greetings! The post you are reading at this moment is appearing simultaneously on four websites:
Bloggerheads (post permalink) – my personal site
The Sun: Tabloid Lies (post permalink) – a media watch site targeting The Sun
Daily Mail Watch (post permalink) – a media watch site targeting the Daily Mail
Express Watch (post permalink) – a brand new media watch site targeting Express newspapers
I’m not the gaffer for all of these sites, but I have had a word with the relevant writers and webmasters about what I’m about to share with you, the reader, so you know what to expect from these media watch sites targeting The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express:
All three sites will now operate as open clubhouses for the following writers and bloggers, all of whom have a solid track record* and ongoing interest in blogging and media watchery:
– 5cc :: @
– bigdaddymerk :: @
– Adam Bienkov :: @
– Chris Coltrane :: @
– D-Notice :: @
– Daily Quail :: @
– Dave Cross :: @
– Kate Griffin :: @
– Daniel Hoffmann-Gill :: @
– Tim Ireland :: @
– MacGuffin :: @
– Hannah Mudge :: @
– Carl P :: @
– Nadia Saint :: @
– septicisle ::
– Sim-O :: @
– Uponnothing :: @
– Anton Vowl :: @
(*I could be more effusive if I weren’t in the list myself. Damn my modesty.)
From today, these writers will be free to submit original content and/or reference or mirror articles from their own sites about The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers.
Don’t expect everyone to come rushing in at once; the whole idea is that we can all drop in as and when we please; i.e. whenever we have time to report/share clear examples/evidence of these newspapers deceiving their readers.
(I’ve started by popping a couple of backdated mirrors about the Dunblane incident and a recent dash of homophobia and hypocrisy in Express Watch, BTW, and you will probably see more like these appearing over the coming days/weeks as we go about the process of populating the newer site with a little historical data on a writer-by-writer basis.)
There are bound to be varying degrees of tolerance between writers and over time, but we will continue to avoid ‘hating’ on tabloid readers generally (this being existing policy on the two older media watch sites), as we recognise that even the worst elements are victims to a degree if they base their fears/prejudices on misleading information fed to them by these newspapers – and we are ultimately out to bring some of them on board with the whole ‘honesty in media’ policy (at least to the extent that they cease reading, funding and otherwise enabling these media outlets that play so wilfully on the fears of others).
To put it bluntly, we as a group (a) seek to remind the readers of these tabloids that they are being lied to on a regular basis, (b) will attempt to call their owners and editors to account where possible/appropriate, and (c) aim to chip away at their circulation in the process by the devilish means of repeatedly exposing their fraud… when we each have a few minutes.
This ‘clubhouse’ approach should be enough, one hopes, to keep all three media watch interests ticking over a steady rate, and keep the documentation of the worst of these tabloids’ deceits relatively central and readily accessible.
With that newly-centralised relevance in mind, from an SEO (search engine optimisation) perspective, I also have designs on all three sites eventually earning very high placement for the name of each newspaper title; Daily Mail Watch is at present 7th for ‘daily mail’ in Google UK and prone to go higher, and The Sun: Tabloid Lies has just recently entered the top ten for ‘the sun’ (i.e. it is now 9th in Google UK).
Keep an eye out for our clubhouse members as they begin to appear over the coming week. Oh, and do add the following to your sidebars, readers and bookmarks, because these sites are about to become your first stop for any news involving any of the following tabloid newspapers:
The Sun: Tabloid Lies
Daily Mail Watch
Express Watch
Cheers all.
Iain Dale: the hack
4th Sep 2010
OK, so Iain Dale, the publisher of the ‘unbiased’ junk-mail magazine Total Politics is busy assuring us that what Andy Coulson certainly didn’t do (summary) isn’t quite so bad, because guessing someone’s password isn’t really hacking, according to his close mate Phil Hendren (‘Dizzy’; the same bullying ratbag who says publishing my ex-directory* home phone number in two parts in two consecutive comments isn’t anywhere near as bad as publishing my ex-directory home phone number all in one go):
Iain Dale – Coulson’s Accusers Can Go to Hell
Dizzy’s take is interesting HERE. And he takes to task those who refer to hacking and tapping without really knowing what they are talking about… “Calling someone’s mobile, waiting for it to go to voicemail and then entering their four digit pin (0000) is not hacking. Hacking is about circumventing security, not being presented with them and passing them”
But when Grant Shapps (another senior Conservative in charge of communication) was caught in a pathetic astroturfing/sock-puppeting attempt, and used as his excuse that someone must have accessed his account using his “all too guessable” password (’1234′), Iain Dale declared that guessing a 4-digit code WAS hacking:
Iain Dale – Shapps Denies Astroturfing Allegations
This all seemd [sic] a bit odd to me so I went to the horse’s mouth and have got a categoric [sic] denial that Grant did anything of the sort. It appears that he had a very easily guessable password on his Youtube account (it was 1234 !!!) and someone hacked into it.
Further, I’ve checked with someone who actually knows the law (thank you, Jack of Kent) and I can confirm that the law specifically recognises that intercepting a voicemail is the same as intercepting an actual call being made:
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 | Section 2. Meaning and location of ‘interception’ etc.
(8) For the purposes of this section the cases in which any contents of a communication are to be taken to be made available to a person while being transmitted shall include any case in which any of the contents of the communication, while being transmitted, are diverted or recorded so as to be available to a person subsequently.
There it is in black in white, and unchanged by anything Iain Dale and his mates might say about what does or does not classify as ‘hacking’… which they are wrong (or lying) about, by the way:
Wiktionary
hacking: (computing) Unauthorized attempts to bypass the security mechanisms of an information system or network.
Of course, the word has other meanings, as does the word ‘hack’, which Iain should be painfully aware of having been called one so many times… and with good reason.
Guessing a poorly-configured password is still hacking in much the same way as walking through a door or gate that is poorly secured is still breaking and entering.
This is just another case of Iain Dale and Phil Hendren attempting to bamboozle their readers with bullshit and despite his ready-made protests (“I quote Dizzy not to condone the practice”), by minimising the alleged offence(s) in this way, Dale does in effect seek to make excuses for what is actually hacking/interception.
He has since levelled a false accusation at a Guardian editor because they dared to point this out:
“I absolutely did NOT defend phone hacking. How dare you suggest I did. How typical of The Guardian to mislead and smear.” – Iain Dale
But defending the act of phone hacking is exactly what Iain Dale did. He tried to make excuses for those alleged to have engaged in this type of hacking by claiming that it wasn’t really hacking.
Why he would bother doing this when he claims to be utterly convinced of Andy Coulson’s innocence is unknown at this time**.
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[NOTE - Dale is already backpedalling by claiming he didn't actually say it wasn't hacking himself, and that he was only quoting somebody else's view. Well, from here it looked like he was heartily endorsing that view and using it to support his argument.]
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(*Iain Dale denies being the source of this ex-directory number, which I mistakenly trusted him with in his role as a publisher. I have my doubts, especially when Hendren’s story about how he got it keeps changing and Iain Dale has flat-out lied in previous denials.)
(**Iain Dale also ends his post with the declaration that “Coulson is innocent until proven guilty.” But he didn’t feel that way about Tom Watson when he was so convinced of that man’s guilt he was knowingly using false information against him, he has no comment to make about his friend Nadine Dorries making false accusations about police investigations that never took place (most probably because he’s a primary instigator of the same smear), and he doesn’t seem to think the same way about one of Coulson’s accusers when he says that man was “sacked by the paper for persistent drug and alcohol problems” and wonders out loud; “You don’t think he might have a grudge, do you?”)
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UPDATE (05 Sep) – I’m happy to note that I’ve made the distinction between ‘hacking’ and ‘password cracking’ myself, but this was when Rod Liddle was making excuses that were so vague, it risked giving the wrong impression about the security of a whole site, not just a single account. In the instances cited here, Iain Dale takes one position on ‘hacking’ of specific accounts by guessing a 4-digit password and then takes the opposite position on ‘hacking’ of specific accounts by guessing a 4-digit password. That he and his mate Hendren would pretend the two events are comparable and make such a big deal of it after spending all of yesterday ignoring the challenge to their semantic bullshit is only further evidence of their intent to deceive. Further, we have yet another example of Iain Dale only ever engaging when he thinks he has the upper hand (a classic tabloid tactic); when he is making excuses for not engaging, he will claim that he has been given professional advice to ignore me at all times. Like Dorries, he is lying through his teeth, and busies himself smearing me privately, or using his friends to smear me on his behalf, while he ‘ignores’ me and plays the victim. Dale’s real problem is that he cannot engage with me openly without admitting to some really quite awful behaviour that’s not in keeping with his brand. (I’d say ‘public image’ but more and more people are seeing through this charlatan, especially now the Tories are in power and he’s busy making excuses for them every other day.)
Iain Dale: crocodile tears for a fellow Tory
2nd Sep 2010
Iain Dale is currently very busy putting himself about in the mainstream media taking a ‘principled’ stand against the way Paul Staines (‘Guido Fawkes’) has been running his site like an open sewer. To cover his arse, on TV/radio he speaks vaguely of his own regrets about what he has allowed/published on his own site in the past, but offers no specifics.
In 2006 both Paul Staines and Iain Dale refused to condemn two political activists who were using blogs/comments to ‘innocently’ air questions about a political opponent being a paedophile, despite evidence I had published clearly establishing their involvement.
(The same men were also comment contributors to either/both sites controlled by Iain Dale and Paul Staines. To give Staines some credit, he did see the sense in deleting one comment linking to the main smear, but he was most ungracious about it, as if I were worrying about nothing and somehow owed him a favour.)
What follows is a copy of the email where Iain Dale refused to cover the story and expose the two people involved:
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From: Iain Dale
To: ‘Tim Ireland’
Cc: ‘Guy Fawkes’
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 3:34 PM
Subject: RE: Guildford Conservatives in ‘paedo’ smearThink I’ll keep concentrating on Prescott if you don’t mind…!
Iain
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Iain Dale never did get on with focusing on that Prescott ‘story’ as he claimed he was doing, which is kind of good thing because this ‘story’ appeared to be yet another example of Paul Staines recycling Westminster tittle-tattle and other unsubstantiated claims about where Prescott had put his penis.
So, to summarise, Iain Dale refused point-blank to publicly condemn two activists who were ‘innocently’ airing claims their political opponent was a paedophile, and used as his excuse his desire to focus on the Paul Staines ‘story’ that involved yet more gossip about yet another person’s sex life.
Perhaps this is one of the regrets he speaks of… and perhaps he plans to continue to pretend as if this never happened because the target of this smear was a Lib Dem and the MP closely associated with the smearing activists was a fellow Conservative and a friend of his… Anne Milton:
Iain Dale also refused to condemn Paul Staines when that ‘blogger’ heavily implied that a Lib Dem MP was a paedophile, equating homosexuality with paedophilia in the process.
More recently, Iain Dale refused to take a stand against a campaign of harassment against me where I was smeared as a paedophile*, to the extent of not only refusing to participate in the relevant criminal investigation, but going on to use my attempts to contact him about that to generate a false claim of ‘stalking**’ that he maintains privately to this day, despite the belated deletion of this claim (and others) about me from his blog.
The long and the short of it is that all of the targets of these smears were people that Iain Dale sniffily refers to as ‘lefties’.
William Hague, on the other hand, is a Conservative and a member of Cameron’s cabinet, and if Dale is going to come out against these smears targeting Hague while not specifically regretting or even acknowledging any of the above I am going to dare to suggest that he does so for reasons of politics, not principle.
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[*The man who originated this smear also happens/happened to be a personal and political associate of Anne Milton, but that's for another day.]
[**In fact, it needs to be noted that after I confronted Paul Staines about exactly this kind of thing years ago and revealed his shady political past involving strategic overtures to the BNP, Iain Dale responded by portraying my concerns as a personal attack and allowing his mostly-anonymous comment contributors to slag me off on his site (as 'obsessive', a stalker, and worse). Further, Iain Dale's own smears about my stalking him and others began with anonymous claims made on his own site by ardent supporters of Anne Milton; most likely the very same people behind the 2006 paedo-smear. That Iain will now repeat these claims privately but not test them in court or even expose them to scrutiny should tell you all you need to know about what's really going on here; Iain Dale's actions amount to no more than a whisper campaign, and - like his mate Nadine Dorries - Dale engages in this activity knowing that his smears are being repeated in public, sometimes alongside my home address.]
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UPDATE (12:30) – I dared to approach Iain Dale for comment on this one, as he appeared to have changed his tune, and I wanted to be sure. I asked him if he had any regrets about any of the above, and this was his response:
“Oh, fuck off!”
How nice. Still, at least it does tell me in a roundabout way that he’s a long way from regretting any of it.
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UPDATE (07 Sep) – Iain Dale still doesn’t regret any of it, even though he knows my wife and kids are in the firing line now. What a deeply unpleasant individual.
Top 10 Biggest Liars in British Blogging Poll – 2010
13th Jul 2010
In honour of Iain Dale’s repeated attempts to have his slightly-less-rigged blog-poll taken seriously (see also: Top 100 Worst Blogs Poll) I’ve decided to conduct a poll of my own based on my own interests… i.e. exposing liars and watching them squirm like cut snakes.
Instructions follow:
Top 10 Biggest Liars in British Blogging Poll
1. Email me [bloggerheads DOT com AT gmail DOT com] with a list of anywhere from 1 to 3 nominees for ‘biggest liar’ including their name/nickname and a link to their main blog
(Please rank them in order of their dishonesty, according to your own judgement, based on what you can prove.)
2. If a blogger dedicates the majority of their efforts to having an impact of British politics (and tells lies in the process), they qualify as a potential nominee. Yes, even if they’re an expat and/or have recent/past form for skipping the country when the heat’s on.
(People who engage in micro-blogging on Twitter also qualify, but I reserve the right to chart these liars separately. Ditto for journalists/columnists who pretend at blogging on newspaper websites, but couldn’t hold their own in a comments-based conversation if they tried.)
3. For each nominee you list, you must show an example of a clear intent to deceive and provide relevant link(s)/evidence to back it up.
(If there’s no single article that summarises/exposes the evidence, you may consider writing one. If you wish to base your claim that someone is lying on evidence that no-one is allowed to see, then please piss off and have a seat over here, next to Ian Hislop.)
4. Nominations close at midnight on 13 August, 2010
This last measure is designed to discourage/discredit certain people who are likely to dismiss your claim as a personal/political attack while running around making unsubstantiated claims about you or other people being liars in the process. I’ve learned from bitter experience that this comes as naturally to some liars as breathing.
Please note that while a single post/event involving multiple lies should (in theory) be acceptable, you are broadly restricted to one example/event for each nominee, so please make it a good/illustrative one. I’d include an example* or two to guide you on this point, but that might skew the results, and we can’t have that. If I have any doubts about your submission, I’ll ask.
(*I will take the time to clear up a common point of confusion: an error/mistake is not a lie, but it quickly becomes one when the author refuses to acknowledge they were wrong, despite the evidence.)
The final chart will be decided on a balance between how many times a person is nominated (i.e. whose proven lies had the most impact?), how highly they are placed in comparison to others (i.e. how serious do others regard their lies to be?) and the variety/strength of examples listed for each nominee (i.e. who tells the most lies?).
Above all, keep in mind that I will as a result be hosting a post that declares a number of potentially quite litigious people to be some of the biggest liars in British politics, so I will want to be very comfortable with the body of evidence. If you wish you vote/nomination(s) to count for something, the onus is on you to provide what liars hate the most; evidence.
Happy voting!
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UPDATE (29 July, 2010) – I’m calling this one off on the basis that I have other priorities at the moment, and won’t have time to give all nominations due care and attention. (calling someone a ‘liar’ is serious business, and you need to be damn sure of your ground). If it’s any consolation, unchecked entries wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway; Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries were streets ahead, and no-one else came within shouting distance (not that this stopped Phil Hendren from shouting anyway).
Expenses: fancy a little data entry?
12th Jul 2010
The delightful Ms Humphrey Cushion spotted some fresh expenses data released on July 8, 2010. There’s no master page for it that I can find, sorry, but if you visit this page and click on most MP’s names, it should appear as ‘Personal Additional Accommodation Expenditure 2009-10′
It’s easy to be thrown off by the title of the release (and the date it was released) but these are the accommodation-related claims for April, May and June 2009… i.e. these forms and claims were submitted as the expenses scandal unfolded last summer. I’ve only browsed through a small percentage of the data myself, but I’m already seeing a clear pattern of MPs backing off on expenses claims and/or stopping entirely during this period, and it’s fascinating.
A few of us Twittery bods have taken it upon ourselves to organise this data into a spreadsheet before the Guardian/Telegraph (and/or in greater detail), and if you have any spreadsheet experience (it doesn’t take much) then I invite you to join us. Instructions follow:
1 – Email me for an invite to access the spreadsheet on Google Docs: [bloggerheads DOT com AT gmail DOT com]
2 – Pick a set of MPs no-one else is working on (they are arranged alphabetically and grouped by first letter of surname; it is easy to spot areas where people are working as completed rows are coloured yellow)
3 – Starting here, click on your chosen letter/group. then click on each MP’s name in turn, and see if there’s an entry for ‘Personal Additional Accommodation Expenditure 2009-10′, and…
(a) If there isn’t, or if the only form is one of these, then just put ‘N’ in the column marked ‘Did they file claim(s) for 2009/10 (Y/N)’, then enter your name under ‘Data input by’, then colour the row yellow, and move on to the next MP. (Psst! Don’t forget to fill in the column telling us who entered this data!)
(b) If there is, but it looks like the forms have been filled in with crayon by an idiot, then move on to the next MP and try again, or give up entirely knowing you just don’t have the patience for this
(c) If there is, then take note of the date on the main form(s), labelled ‘PAAE 2′ in the top right hand corner (ignore the stamped date; you want the date range listed in ‘Claim details’ right under the MP’s name) and just enter the relevant numbers in the correct columns (‘Mortgage Interest’, ‘Rent’, ‘Gas’, ‘Electricity’, etc.), do this for each month (i.e. 04/09, 05/09 and/or 06/09 where applicable) then colour the row yellow when you’ve entered all visible/relevant data, and move on to the next MP.
(We’ve been adding columns where new claim types emerge, but if you are in any doubt just stop work on that row and move on (i.e. leaving it coloured white). The same applies if you’re in doubt about things like multiple forms for single months, forms in the wrong order, random scans of bills that have no relevance to the figures quoted in the main form(s), etc. etc. etc.)
I won’t pretend to have time to handle more than a dozen entries myself today, but if enough people chip in, we can get this done in good time and release the itemised/organised data for wider analysis this week.
Jeremy Hunt: when only the freshest information will do
29th Jun 2010
[MINI-UPDATE (Sep 01) - Please scroll down for an important update. Jeremy Hunt has, as predicted, deleted his apology and every comment made in response, as if it never happened.]
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Jeremy Hunt has recently suggested that hooliganism caused the Hillsborough disaster in which 96 people died, then apologised “IF his comments caused any offence” (which many regard to be a more offensive gesture than his original remarks). There are, at the time of writing, 150 comments published under the short apology on his website.
But the people leaving comments on Jeremy Hunt’s ‘blog’ deserve to be warned that Jeremy’s apology is scheduled for deletion (probably within a month) along with any comment(s) they contribute.
No, I am not extrapolating wildly from Jeremy Hunt’s recent mass deletion of tweets; I have interviewed Jeremy Hunt about this matter specifically, and it is his stated policy that only “fresh” information be displayed on his ‘blog’.
In roughly 30+ days, Hunt’s apology will be removed, and every published comment submitted in response will be removed, too… and while this Portcullis-headed website may not be funded from Parliamentary Allowances and Hunt is free to conduct himself within the law on his own property:
1) It strikes me as a wee bit disrespectful (to the extent that it further undermines this apology)
2) I would question the integrity of a man who demands transparency from the BBC (for example) while systematically erasing his archives
I’m also of a mind to preserve this data, regardless of what Jeremy Hunt may think about its importance.
Below is a copy of Jeremy Hunt’s ‘Hillsborough’ apology, plus all of the comments published under it. This post will be updated frequently, acting as a mirror of the original post (until that entry is removed from Jeremy Hunt’s site, when it go on to act as an the archive, and will be formatted for easier reading once all the copying and pasting is behind us).
Einy90: the adventures of Einy Shah, agent of WIN
23rd Jun 2010
The Tories almost lost one of their most effective undercover activists last night, in a criminal act of sabotage that many suspect to be an assassination attempt.
Einy Shah (codename Einy90) showed the pluck she is famous for by shrugging off the attack and immediately taking charge of the relevant investigation, resulting in two strong leads (three if we count ‘broken britain’ as a suspect):
[For security reasons, Einy90 cannot reveal who has ordered her to cease tweeting or blogging at this time, but we do know that she has cleverly bypassed this order by tweeting her thoughts and then later - sometimes immediately - deleting them (a technique pioneered and approved by the new Tory Minister for the Internets, Jeremy Hunt). Our thanks go to HumphreyCushion, who managed to screen-capture what the EinyBot missed.]
While Einy90′s detective skills are second to none, we would like to take this opportunity to launch a public appeal, and present this photo of Einy90′s bicycle before the attack (source) in the hope that it might trigger someone’s memory and/or provide some clue as to who might have attacked it, and why:
Currently, forces that oppose a Conservative government (i.e. the criminal element) are suspected of what may be a random attack, but it is equally likely that Einy Shah has been specifically targeted in order to silence one of Boris Johnson’s top agents.
Her exact role when working in support of London’s mayor is an official secret, but FOI requests have revealed that she is – or perhaps was – paid £8.50 per hour on a casual basis as part of the Peer Outreach Team, leaving her well funded and free to act with autonomy.
Here, we should stress that this may be a clever cover story designed to throw off nosy leftists, bloggers, journalists and other agents of evil, but Einy90 can be heard in action in this recording of a 2009 radio broadcast (skip to 8:30), feeding a planted question to Boris Johnson with the ruthless efficiency she is famous for.
Obviously, with Boris Johnson approving of such techniques on the wireless, it follows that he would be just as willing to allow it to work in his favour on the interwebs, but one should not place too much weight on this assumption or succumb to any knee-jerk reactions elicited by pejorative terms such as ‘astroturfing’ and ‘sock puppeting’, because this is what secret agents do for a living (see: Andrew Gilligan), plus they do, after all, participate in these relatively minor deceptions while fighting for a the greater good of Conservative dominance:
Andrew Gilligan in OCTOPUPPET: a short film about sock-puppets from Tim Ireland on Vimeo.
Take, for example, the very real fact that Ken Livingstone is 65 years old. Should the Conservatives be penalised just because lefty spin means this is never mentioned by their activists? Obviously not. Therefore it is both logical and fair that someone like Einy Shah should fill this gap by posing as a disillusioned Labour/left activist who is concerned that poor old Ken is past it (a technique pioneered and approved by the Tory Campaigning Brain, Grant Shapps):
Of course, the temptation is there to ask the Mayor’s office if No2Ken this is an official/approved or independent mission, but you’d be better off asking David Cameron for the Trident launch codes; some secrets are too big to share, and if they fell into the wrong hands…. why, even Boris Johnson’s bicycle wouldn’t be safe from the forces of leftism.
Private Eye magazine (and why I don’t read it anymore)
27th May 2010
Excuse me, folks. I know you many of you are waiting for an update on the Nadine Dorries situation, but I want to be absolutely sure of the circumstances in which she made these false allegations before going any further, and this (open) letter is long overdue.
I will continue to update you on Twitter as and when. Cheers all.
To: Ian Hislop
CC: Adam Macqueen, Louis Barfe
From: Tim Ireland
Subject: Your baffling refusal to regret or retract a childish outburst
Image via Wikipedia
Dear Ian,
After yesterday’s discussion it’s clear that you are completely averse to a retraction of comments made under the umbrella of your organisation, despite your knowing how they have been used against me in the past and how they are being used against me to this day.
Still, knowing and understanding are two different things (which may be what G.I. Joe was banging on about in between explosions) so here’s what doesn’t fit into a two-minute conversation:
The first aspect you struggle to understand is that I am not being overly precious about my reputation, but instead merely trying to protect my family. I expose liars and get lied about often as a result, but people attacking me online are now armed with my home address thanks to a man called Dominic Wightman. This has resulted in the publication of my home address alongside claims that I’m a stalker of women who sends death threats to MPs. The same people also recruit unwitting newcomers, arming them with these false allegations and my home address (an act which has so far successfully slipped through the cracks between potential criminal and civil action).
Glen Jenvey claims to have been duped in a similar manner in the event that kicked off this major disruption in my life; he was armed (he claims by Wightman) with my home address and the false allegation that I was a convicted paedophile. The result; today, over a year after they were first posted, there are still some 50+ repeats of this dangerous smear live on websites hosted by Google, who refuse to remove them (and often take months to remove private data such as my home address when they claim to have a 48-hour response time).
The second aspect you struggle to understand is that the people most instrumental in these attacks are using Macqueen’s childish outburst and your ongoing silence to part-justify their allegations/actions.
Iain Dale actually tried to take political advantage of my being smeared as a paedophile while simulataneously libelling Tom Watson as a smear merchant. He went on to similarly exploit a man on the brink of suicide and the repeated publication of my home address. He did this primarily by lying about the context, the circumstances and the specifics of attempts to contact him about these matters, falsely giving the impression that he had made a valid complaint of harassment (which quickly evolved into an outright claim of ‘stalking’) and it was your man Adam Macqueen who popped up at the crucial moment on the website of another Private Eye writer, Louis Barfe, likening my correspondence with your magazine to the rantings of a “nutter on a bus”.
Macqueen then went on to lie about the context, the circumstances and the specifics of what he did/said, and I could prove that to you if you’d care to give the evidence some consideration, but I am fearful of how you or your staff would portray any attempt to contact you privately in the circumstances.
Adam Macqueen and Louis Barfe may know Iain Dale from way back when, but people change and nothing changes them faster than politics. Even some of Dale’s most ardent supporters have been forced to admit an even greater change in his behaviour since the Tories finally negotiated their way into government.
Recently, a young man submitted to Dale’s site a polite comment correcting him on one or two claims he made about the expanding protest in Parliament Square. Dale reacted by publicising the man’s home address and reporting him to his employer for shirking… over nothing more than a difference of opinion! He then went on to write and publish a series of comments alleging, theorising and contending all manner of sins without a scrap of evidence to back any of it.
Link:
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/05/shouldnt-you-be-at-work-mike.htmlIain Dale is such a two-faced cockweasel that people don’t often see this side of him, but I saw it as early as 2006, when he knowingly allowed another ‘lefty’ to be smeared as a paedophile (yes, he has done this twice now), most likely because taking a public stand against it would have harmed his friend and political ally Anne Milton. At the time, political blogging was still in its infancy, but Dale had one of the most influential Tory blogs around and one or more of the people involved in the smear appear to have been regular comment contributors during and after this period.
The latter is hard to prove definitively because Iain Dale is second only to Paul Staines when it comes to running a political blog like an open sewer and allows his supporters to pose as several different people when it suits him, but what can be said for sure is that Dale went on to repeat anonymous comments submitted to his site claiming I had stalked Anne Milton as if this were a statement of fact.
Iain Dale went on to repeat this smear and variations of it, privately with other MPs, and at public events attended by MPs.
These repeated smears have also been used to good effect by his allies.
In fact, Nadine Dorries, a particularly close ally of Iain Dale’s, has followed the same dirty playbook. The only real differences arise from the lessons I have learned from Dale’s assault (don’t give them anything they can distort, and record, record, record).
Despite the urgency of some matters, I have only emailed Nadine Dorries 10 times in the space of two years, and each and every one of these emails related to her falsely accusing me of being mentally unstable and/or a stalker. She went on to misrepresent these emails anyway, portraying these attempts to address the smear of stalking as evidence of stalking (!) mainly by giving a false account of the emails’ contents and their frequency.
(Your man Macqueen pulled much the same stunt. He smeared me as a nutter, and portrayed my attempt to confront him – and you – about that as proof of what he claimed.)
Hearing of these and other lies Dorries was spreading in private and in public, during the recent election I went along to a public hustings event in Flitwick to film proceedings. Dorries reacted by declaring me to be a stalker in front of the entire gathering (twice) before storming out… and neatly avoiding having to answer her constituents on camera as a result.
When smearing me as a stalker, she described hundreds of abusive emails that were never sent and spoke of police investigations that never took place. Since this extraordinary outburst, she has even gone on to publicly liken her position to that of Stephen Timms, as if I am likely to stab the woman! This is no better than (and similar to) her ‘brink of suicide’ hysteria during the expenses scandal, but it carries the added bonus of casting me as a man with a violent, criminal character.
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjOr9vYg9dQ
http://adamcroft.net/2010/05/nadine-dorries-tim-ireland-and-flitwick-what-really-happened/
http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2010/05/to-nadine-dorries.aspI have no criminal record. I haven’t harassed anyone in the legal sense, and I certainly haven’t ever stalked anyone. I’m also of sound mind; it’s the situation that’s crazy, and you knowingly continue to be a part of it.
For that reason, I cannot trust you or your magazine on any claim where you are the only source. Given Macqueen’s extraordinary distortions over this (that you stand by), I can’t even trust the context in which you present claims where you are not the only source.
This is why, after ten years of buying, reading, trusting, endorsing and publicising your magazine, I don’t read Private Eye any more, and even advise others against trusting you or anything your staff/magazine put forward.
(Have I Got News For You, I turn off because I can’t stand seeing your smug, slap-headed face eating up the applause like a prize felcher, but I won’t pretend it’s unrelated.)
If your writers are going to distort the truth and tell outright lies and you are going to stand by them, it undermines everything you attempt to achieve with your magazine and everything you claim to stand for.
If you were a man of probity and honour, your refusal to be answerable to the PCC would be a grand gesture indeed, but without the vital ingredient of integrity, you’re just another publisher who seeks to avoid accountability… who does so under a banner of holding others to account!
And do you know what? This is exactly my beef with Iain Dale, and it always has been. This is the tabloid mentality I campaigned against long before Dale arrived to declare himself the king of bloggers (in polls he conducted himself), and it is something I will continue to fight for as long as I am able.
I honestly thought I would be fighting that fight with Private Eye at my back, not stabbing it. The way things are shaping up, the newly sober David Yelland appears more principled than you. David Yelland!
I am shocked and saddened because I genuinely thought you were better than this…. or at least smart enough not to be taken in by the likes of Iain Dale and his dirtbag mates.
Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.comPS – Regardless of the ill will I feel towards you, I know you have suffered broadly similar attacks in your lifetime (e.g. the closest parallel; Piers Morgan repeatedly smearing you and interfering with your personal life while playing the victim) and I sincerely hope that one day you come to better appreciate the enormity of an accusation of child rape without having to endure the smear yourself. I can also guarantee you that, unlike some ‘leading’ bloggers, if I am ever to confront you over this again, I will do so openly, honestly, and under my own name.
For those who are wondering, I ran into Ian Hislop in Westminster yesterday. He agreed with me about how unacceptable this situation was… right up until the point where I pointed out how his staff were involved and how much good a simple retraction would do. His response; “Conversation over. Not going to happen.”
Ian Hislop also stated quite clearly that he would not be covering any of Nadine Dorries’ extraordinary outbursts in his magazine.
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UPDATE (28 May) – A greatly appreciated response from Louis Barfe. Incorrect/misinformed in places, but at least someone’s communicating.
That’s the most insidious thing about this ‘stalker’ smear; the people accusing me do not have to come out and have their allegations tested… because they claim to have been advised not to talk to stalkers. Iain Dale lied, Adam Macqueen lied and Nadine Dorries lied, but any attempt to address those lies is then presented as further evidence of stalking. Witness, for example, Dorries portraying somewhere between 2 and 10 polite emails into hundreds of vile and abusive messages. They are serial liars hiding behind a shared, self-reinforcing lie.
(Yes, I have tried backing off. It only made the people attacking me bolder. They are scum who put me and my family at risk, and their reasons for wanting to silence a left-leaning blogger are pretty easy to guess at.)
To: Nadine Dorries
24th May 2010
“I have lived with the worry that people would think there was no smoke without fire. It was vitally important for me to clear my name.” – Nadine Dorries
Hi folks. What follows is an open letter to Nadine Dorries in response to her latest public outburst, which made the pages of her local newspaper yesterday. What you glimpsed on Twitter and/or in Bedfordshire on Sunday yesterday is barely the half of it; wait until you see what she tried to pull in her full statement. I was literally speechless myself.
Dear Nadine,
As you should be aware, this is my first email to you since 30 March, 2010.
I am reluctant to contact you by email at all given how you have portrayed/described my ten emails to you over the past two years (especially when each and every one of these emails was written in response to your repeated outbursts about me), but you give me little choice.
Today I write to you to demand that you immediately cease broadcasting any further suggestion or assertion that I have a violent, criminal character.
You have presented no evidence to justify it, the claim is extraordinarily damaging, and further (as has been repeatedly explained to you and your associates) it is a claim that puts me and my family at considerable risk because of special circumstances that you appear determined to exploit.
On Friday afternoon (21 April) I was contacted by Bedfordshire on Sunday. In a process you likened to “a form of torture” during the recent expenses scandal, they sought my response to a statement you had issued about the closure of your Twitter account and (I was surprised to hear) your ‘blog’. To their credit, they declined to include the reference to Stephen Timms in the resulting article, which I include in this open letter as clear evidence of your intentions in this matter:
“Tim Ireland lives in Guildford.
“He is not a Mid Bedfordshire resident and therefore I am not answerable or accountable to him in any way whatsoever.
“I have been in consultation regarding his behaviour with the Westminster division of the Metropolitan Police, and the House of Commons police, for more than a year.
“Their advice was to close down my blog and Twitter account and thereby remove the ‘oxygen’ upon which he fed.
“As an election was imminent, I ignored this advice.
“Following the Stephen Timms incident last week I have decided that I should pay attention to the police advice and have therefore closed down both Twitter and my blog for the time being.”
On the 1st sentence, I can only stress that until recently you were convinced that I was from Croydon (and that your fellow Conservative Anne Milton was the MP for Croydon). Some people might take this error as a warning that they should look closer at the evidence they are relying on, but not you apparently.
On the 2nd sentence, I must ask; if you really feel this way, why do you continue to praise and endorse the work of Iain Dale, Paul Staines, Harry Cole, Phil Hendren and other Tory bloggers who repeatedly blog about MPs from outside their constituency? (There’s a wider point about my rights and our democracy that you’re missing, but given your narrow outlook, this question is your best path to it. Good luck.)
The 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th sentences are highly defamatory, not least because the innuendo is one of my having a violent, criminal character. You cannot possibly hope to justify this; I have no criminal record for violent crime or any other kind of crime (though I may have strayed over the speed limit when going past a speed camera once). In fact, outside of the activism that occasionally puts us at odds, I’ve not had even a hint of trouble with police; certainly nothing that could support the idea that I am capable of criminal acts and/or violence toward others.
Yet in the above release (as in your outburst at Flitwick hustings) you present as a statement of fact (NOT an expression of opinion) that I have repeatedly engaged in criminal acts and represent such a danger to you that my actions have prompted a police investigation and hampered your capacity to communicate with your constituents to the extent that a range of extraordinary security measures are now required to ensure your safety! Your wish to include specific reference to the stabbing of Stephen Timms makes your intentions absolutely clear in this respect.
This is an allegation so serious, the sting of it would not be removed by a right of reply, and it is an allegation you continue to make in public and in private, despite a total lack of evidence and some very clear dangers to me (i.e. beyond the damage one might normally expect from defamation such as this).
What follows are two emails I sent to your local Conservative association that you were CCed on (i.e. two of only three emails I have sent you this year). I repeat them now to reinforce their plea, and to show the public the “barrage” of messages you have been passing off as “vile” and “abusive”:
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From: Tim Ireland
*Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 2:19 PM
To: admin@midbedsconservatives.com
Cc: dorriesn@parliament.ukDear Andy,
I write to you today about the conduct of Nadine Dorries.
It is no secret that I am highly critical of Dorries’ and have repeatedly blogged about her, but:
1. She cannot classify this as harassment while supporting a campaign like #KerryOut (and/or continuing to endorse those behind it)
2. Dorries has published accusations about my mental state and my involvement in what she claims are attempts to prevent her free access to Twitter, but she cannot back any of this with evidence because none of it is true.
3. I’ve certainly gone out of my way to make Dorries more accountable (in much the same way that her friends pursue other MPs, often with far less justification), but nothing I have done warrants the repeated publication of my home address online, threats of violence, and other measures designed to intimidate me (if not put me at actual risk of harm).
While Dominic Wightman is the main ringleader, a man named Charlie Flowers is behind most of the attacks I have described in #3. He claimed in front of witnesses to have engaged in these online attacks on behalf of Nadine Dorries, and also claims to have emailed her and other pro-Tory bloggers (including Iain Dale and Paul Staines) to advise them of his actions/intentions.
- If Charlie Flowers is telling the truth about these emails:
Nadine Dorries chose not to alert me after receiving those emails. Why is that? Nadine Dorries has since published a vague claim about forwarding some unspecified emails to police, but she won’t provide me with any data that allows me to confirm her story and/or connect her report with my ongoing efforts to end this harassment. Why would she refuse to do this?
- If Charlie Flowers is lying about these emails;
Why would Nadine Dorries refuse the opportunity to immediately discredit him and perhaps even disown the campaign of harassment while she’s at it? Certainly it’s convenient for Nadine and many of her friends if I am so hampered by this harassment that I am unable to press her for answers about the £50 in her bra and the alleged drugs in her wash bag on Tower Block of Commons (just to give you two examples) but perhaps she – or you – can put forward some other likely reason.
- Regardless of the truth about the emails:
Nadine Dorries is well aware of what has been going on these past months and the harassment I have suffered after exposing the lies of two ‘amateur terror experts’ formerly associated with fellow Conservative MP Patrick Mercer. It cannot have escaped her attention that Mercer himself is using false accusations of stalking to avoid any questions about the matter.
Dorries may also be under the impression that I am mentally ill, or she may only be using the accusations/implications she has published about this for further cover/gain. Either way, the claims of mental instability put forward mostly by Dorries and her friends (Iain Dale, Phil Hendren and Harry Cole) rest on their dual assertion that (a) they have no case to answer, and (b) I hold to a grand, nonsensical conspiracy theory. Well, they do have a case to answer, not least because the conspiracy I described to them earlier was recently confirmed as genuine in front of witnesses; Dominic Wightman, Charlie Flowers and their associates have been repeating what these bloggers defend as ‘opinion’ and passing it off as fact. (Whether or not their continued/collective silence on the matter and their refusal to withdraw damaging/dangerous lies about me when they know how they are being used amounts to a wider conspiracy has yet to be established, but certainly can’t be ruled out.)
Dorries is also aware that accusations/’opinions’ published by her and close friend/ally Iain Dale form the bulk of the evidence behind the claims by Charlie Flowers and his associates (the ‘Cheerleaders’) that I am a stalker of women.
To put this into context, to avoid a repeat of earlier web account closures, Flowers and the ‘Cheerleaders’ are now recruiting other people to do their dirty work for them. When briefing new recruits, they tell them I am a stalker of women, and provide them with my home address. I fear for what may happen in those circumstances, especially in light of what happened after Glen Jenvey was convinced (by Dominic Wightman) that I was a convicted paedophile**.
Nadine Dorries could clear the matter up and significantly reduce the relevant dangers with a simple public statement, but she chooses not to.
I’m assuming she does not regard me to be an actual stalker, as she has yet to lodge any formal complaint about me, she hasn’t even threatened civil action, and mostly she is very careful about not identifying anyone when she publishes claims/implications about stalking.
Even if she does regard me to be a stalker, I would contend that relying on a vigilante response is an inappropriate way for an MP to behave.
I would further add that, in the course of investigating the many lies and deceptions of this MP, I have encountered and uncovered quite a lot of personal data. I have no interest in publishing or exploiting this data in any way, and I even take care to avoid reporting/publishing details that might lead people to this same data. (The most recent example of this being a report on [xx name snipped xx], whose personal details are entirely unprotected and all-too-accessible.) I have no interest in ‘harassing’ this MP, and if I did, there would be far easier ways to go about it other than publishing my criticism of her under my own name on a UK-hosted website. By contrast, the Tories who so often attack me on behalf of Nadine Dorries (Iain Dale, Phil Hendren, Harry Cole etc.) do so on US-based websites (making any potential civil action prohibitively expensive) or through a variety of false identities. At least one of Dorries known associates (Phil Hendren) has also sought to intimidate me through the publication of personal data in a related dispute. If you or anyone else seeks a ‘tit for tat’ justification for what Wightman, Flowers and the ‘Cheerleaders’ have been up to, you won’t find one in my corner.
In fact, twice now I have found myself in possession of data that would help Nadine Dorries track anonymous attacks against her, and twice I have offered that data to Dorries unconditionally, and in good faith. Both times I was ignored while Dorries allowed me to cop the blame for some aspect of these anonymous attacks. In the latter instance, she specifically accused me of being behind the attack, and maintained that accusation, even after I published the relevant evidence. This goes beyond poor manners. There’s no other word for it but ‘malice’, and I suspect that malice is what is keeping Nadine Dorries from acting responsibly in this instance.
Assuming the personal animosity Nadine Dorries and her supporters feel towards me hasn’t spilled over into the local Association, I’d like to ask that you take what action you can to resolve this matter. (I could pursue Dorries directly through a number of channels, but I fear any such attempt will be portrayed as ‘further’ harassment and used as an excuse to avoid the entire issue.)
The first matter I’d like to clear up is the claim by Nadine Dorries to have forwarded emails (we can only assume from Flowers and co.) to police somewhere in London. I’d like to know what she forwarded, when she did this, and which branch/officer she forwarded this data to as a matter of urgency.
I would appreciate a response by email today, please.
Tim Ireland
PS – It also bears mentioning that Nadine Dorries implied that the late Frank Branston was somehow stalking her. She refused to withdraw this politically-motivated smear, even after the poor chap passed away.
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From: Tim Ireland
*Date: Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:50 AM
To: admin@midbedsconservatives.com, dorriesn@parliament.ukAndy,
To repeat: The first matter I’d like to clear up is the claim by Nadine Dorries to have forwarded emails (we can only assume from Flowers and co.) to police somewhere in London. I’d like to know what she forwarded, when she did this, and which branch/officer she forwarded this data to as a matter of urgency.
It has been over a month now, and you’ve not even afforded me the courtesy of a reply. I fear your sense of urgency is lacking.
Meanwhile, the people orchestrating this campaign of harassment continue to benefit from Nadine Dorries’ silence and continue to put me and my family at risk with anonymous claims of stalking published alongside my home address. Regardless of what Dorries thinks of me personally, she cannot excuse giving tacit approval to vigilantes like Charlie Flowers. Further, if she is telling the truth about her report, she is withholding information that would help me draw together an effective case against the people attacking me in this way. [xx snip detail xx]
There is no legal obstacle I’m aware of that would prevent Nadine Dorries from informing me of the name of the officer (or at least the department/station) she reported this matter to. Unless he was lying about having reported it, obviously, in which case her best bet (and yours) would be to refuse to answer any questions about it and yell ‘stalker’ at me if I dare press the matter.
Please advise me today of your intentions regarding this matter.
Tim Ireland
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I have not yet heard back from the Mid Bedfordshire Conservative Association, and similarly you have shared nothing useful with me, when you seem to be witholding evidence that might establish (and thereby halt/minimise) the harassment targeting me, and even appear at times to be taking active measures to exacerbate this ongoing problem (while claiming all the while that it is you who are the true victim of harassment)
If you’ll pardon the vernacular; just what in the bloody hell are you playing at?
You are quite aware of the danger you expose me to when you cry ‘stalker’, and rather than address/minimise the danger you appear to be going out of your way to maximise it (by the very act of accusing me of being a danger to you).
That you would defame me, especially in this way, is a disgrace. You have no credible case to put to the police (who would have contacted me long before now if matters were anywhere near as serious as you make out), and instead you seek to air wholly unsubtantiated statements about my being guilty of stalking you… and capable of worse!
Regardless of what you believe, there can be no excuse for your repeated airings of these statements when you know how certain vigilante elements are reacting to them.
In closing, I will repeat my demand that you cease any further suggestion or assertion that I have a violent, criminal character immediately.
If you cannot understand the relevant moral and legal imperatives – that apply regardless of which constituency I live in – then please have someone explain them to you (and by that, I mean someone other than Donal Blaney).
Also, if you seriously claim to have received hundreds of abusive emails sent by me or in my name, then please honour my FOI/DPA request and share this and other relevant data with me. I would happily help you to trace/identify the source of these hundreds of emails, regardless of potential outcome (all I know for sure is that they are not coming from me).
Please acknowledge receipt of this email immediately, and reply soonest.
Tim Ireland
PS – I just saw you turn your back on the Speaker. Class act. You’re a credit to democracy.
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[*Note how more than a month passes between these urgent requests. I was very concerned about how Dorries might misrepresent multiple attempts to contact her. Surprise, surprise, she went ahead and misrepresented these few emails as a "barrage" anyway.]
[**The claim that Dominic Wightman convinced Glen Jenvey I was a convicted paedophile has been published previous to this, but I now have further evidence to support that assertion, which is why it is stronger in this (now public) letter. I repeat this and all other relevant/tangential assertions here, in public, with confidence. Dominic Wightman has published an account where he described giving drunken residents in my village a tour of my street to see the front door of "the biggest nutter, stalker on the web", and he makes similar dubious claims to Dorries about 'advice' he has received from police. The 'Cheerleaders' also claim to have enjoyed positive exchanges with police, extending at one stage to the quite false assertion that I have "37 retraint orders" (sic) against me. For the record; I have no restraint orders against me. Acting mostly as a bankrupt and/or beyond the reach of affordable civil action, Wightman has published a series of false claims about me, some of which he is merely confused about, but most of which he knows to be outright lies. His willingness to knowingly lie should be balanced with his claim to have contacted Iain Dale and his claim to have received positive communication from a large number of unnamed Tory bloggers about this matter, but the overlap in tactics and the similarity of claims/inventions from the two camps cannot be denied; the two camps are clearly communicating to some degree, even if they are only responding to what the other says or does in public.]
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UPDATE (28 May) – Chris Paul shows that Nadine Dorries deleted her Twitter account ONE WEEK BEFORE the Stephen Timms incident (and her ‘blog’ not long after that). She can’t even blame mild hysteria for referencing it, then. I struggle to see what options are left other than malice, delusion or time travel.
Jeremy Hunt: a minister and his memory hole
20th May 2010
My main issue with our new Minister for the Internets is the scant regard he has for the general web community. At times, it’s almost as if our ways are completely alien to him, and stuff that seems obvious or second nature to us completely escapes him. That, or he’s one of those two-faced bastards who really don’t give a tuppeny stuff.
[Psst! I suspect the latter given the way he's repeatedly turned a blind eye to local Tory web activists smearing an opponent as a paedophile (and me as a computer criminal). You need to be a special brand of bastard to stand by and allow that kind of stuff to go on in your neighbourhood when it suits you.]
Recently, I revealed that Jeremy Hunt doesn’t maintain an archive on his ‘blog’; he just throws old entries away, comments and all, never to appear again. He doesn’t even understand (or care) how impolite this is to the people who trust him with those comments.
And now the election is over and he’s got what he wanted from his Twitter audience, Jeremy Hunt has just deleted almost every tweet he made during the election. Tellingly, he has had time to make dozens of manual deletions, but has not even bothered to update his profile, which still reads as follows:
Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for South West Surrey and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Here’s a screen capture of the only tweets left on his Twitter account today:
And here, for the record, are twenty of the tweets that Jeremy Hunt tried to erase from history.
Note how it begins with a pledge to his constituents; the link to this has been erased, and the pledge itself is also due for deletion soon (along with everything else that turns up on his ‘blog’). Does Jeremy Hunt not know or care what message this sends about his commitment to that pledge or any other?
- My pledge to South West Surrey: http://www.jeremyhunt.org/
blog.aspx
12:41 PM May 3rd via web- Good canvassing in Haslemere yesterday, visiting Frensham, Wrecclesham, Godalming & North Farnham today
9:06 AM May 1st via Twikini- Nick Clegg contradicted LD policy on benefits, Steve Webb says JSA should be unconditional #leadersdebate
9:47 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Oh so Nick does support anmesty now….#leadersdebate
9:27 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- U turn on anmesty by Clegg after u turn on euro – what next? #leadersdebate
9:25 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Ahem Brown visited manufacturer today where worker told him company was flourishing DESPITE him #leadersdebate
9:15 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Clegg shameless u turn distancing himself from euro which he championed last year #leadersdebate
9:06 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- So Nick Clegg has never accepted donations from fund managers then? Mmmmm#leadersdebate
9:02 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Best explanation from DC ever on why Conservatives will rein in bankers #leadersdebate
8:59 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Who are the vice chancellors of parties Nick?#leadersdebate
8:46 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Keep grinning Gordon wins us millions of votes #leadersdebate
8:44 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Just arriving in Chippenham to help our brilliant candidate Wilfred EJ & greeted by a downpour. Need a Wiltshire cuppa
12:30 PM Apr 29th via Twikini- Just been canvassing in Portsmouth with our candidate Flick Drummond & didn’t meet a single LibDem voter
11:05 AM Apr 29th via Twikini- Wilkinson_David: Off to BBC London Election Special in Stratford with @jowellt @jeremy_hunt @thomasbrake @georgegalloway Hope I can get a question in
4:48 PM Apr 27th via web
Retweeted by Jeremy_Hunt- #leadersdebate Gordon Brown just made biggest gaffe of campaign but denying responsibility for Labour leaflets
9:02 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini- Don’t think Miriam will be inviting DC for tea and cake #leadersdebate
8:54 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini- @leadersdebate best exposition ever from DC of Big Society
8:50 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini- @leadersdebate Clegg ‘u can’t keep a lid on sin’ does he want to be next pope?
8:39 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini- @leadersdebate Nick Clegg script: there’s always an easy answer even when there isn’t e.g nuclear
8:33 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini- @leadersdebate Brown hasn’t flown because he shut the flipping airspace
8:27 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini
[Twitter users may note that Hunt begins the Leaders' Debate a little bit confused about the difference between a username and a hashtag. I've left these dead links in place, as they're instructive. You may also note that there are no replies. Yes, this sample is typical. To Hunt, Twitter was very much a one-way channel.]
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UPDATE (1pm) – Jeremy Hunt has responded by (finally) updating his profile… and deleting the three remaining tweets on his account!
I think by this stage it’s pretty safe to guess what the underlying message is from the new Minister for the Internets:
UPDATE (8pm) – Almost forgot to update with a link to today’s Telegraph article, including a response from Mr Hunt’s office:
Telegraph – Jeremy Hunt deletes all tweets critical of Nick Clegg and Liberal Democrats: Many of Mr Hunt’s tweets criticising the Lib Dems are potentially embarrassing given the Lib-Con coalition, but a spokeswoman for the minister denied there was any attempt to airbrush the past. All of the South West Surrey MP’s campaign tweets have now been deleted because his ministerial role represents “a new chapter and we are starting afresh”, she said. The spokeswoman added: “They were pre-government and we are now tweeting post-government. He is going to carry on tweeting, and his updates will appear on the DCMS website.” She confirmed that Mr Hunt updated his Twitter account personally, and would continue to do so. He has more than 3,000 followers.
Jeremy Hunt later attempted to reassure us in person with this tweet, in which he appears to imply that some concerns may not be genuine:
Problem is, no-one’s really buying it, and that he thinks this to be the issue shows once again that Hunt hasn’t even begun to get it.
[Psst! Jeremy! It is not just about what you do/don't have to hide. It is about the way you pretend that things were never said. It is about the way you refuse to stand by what you publish and simply erase it instead. If those tweets were of no consequence, then why not leave them be? If you regretted them and didn't wish to stand by them, why not issue a retraction and/or an apology to Nick Clegg (and others)? Oh, and perhaps have the courtesy to explain to us voters why your position has changed on any/all of it. Don't pretend the latter concept is insignificant or alien to you; during the election and long before that, throughout your political career, you've challenged others to stand by or account for their past statements, and you damn well know it.]
