April Fools’ Day: spot the difference

The foundation on which Iain’s joke rested…

He’s really a very good writer, because he had 90,000* visitors a month (he claims) and he’s on the telly a bit. And at least he’s not as impolite and as grossly overweight as Derek Draper. Oh, and these are the qualities that make him deserving of comparison to George Orwell:
Iain Dale – Why I Can’t Accept the Orwell Prize”

The foundation on which our joke rested…

We’re not lying comment cheats like Iain Dale and his followers, and we’re quite confident that (almost**) everybody knows that:
Justin McKeating – CLASH OF THE TITANS: Bloggerheads vs Chicken Yoghurt, Drunk vs Sober
Justin McKeating – Tim Ireland and Iain Dale: time to knock it on the head
Tim Ireland – Justin McKeating is a sock-puppeting git
Justin McKeating – Me and Tim Ireland: time to come clean

(*Psst! Iain! Not every visit is a vote for you.)

(**Well, I say ‘almost’, but Iain’s most faithful readers don’t really count, because they receive – and trust – the carefully edited version of reality. Also, Iain repeatedly publishes false accusations of sock-puppeting about people when they can’t deny it because he’s banned them for complaining about abusive sock-puppeting on his site.)








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Justin McKeating [NOT] is a sock-puppeting git [April Fool!]

[UPDATE (1 April) – Oh, of course this was a joke. Happy April Fools’ day everyone!]

To be honest, this is not an easy post to write but I’m glad to finally get it off my chest, and I don’t really have any choice now that Justin has gone way, way too far with his sock-puppeting.

Yeah, you heard me… though it won’t come as quite so big a surprise to some people, I’m sure.

What started out last night as a friendly game of ‘sober blogger vs. drunk blogger’ ended with Justin making an inexplicable false accusation about me surfing porn and masturbating (!) while were arguing.

This followed his getting far too drunk and turning on me over Iain Dale’s stunt that followed Glen Jenvey’s paedo-smear.

Iain Dale gave an excuse for his actions that was extraordinarily pissweak, and then hilariously insisted that I accept his excuse *and* keep it confidential. I shared that excuse with Justin McKeating last night, which was a BIG mistake, because Justin was so pissed by that time that he took Iain’s side and attacked me in a dedicated post.

I asked Justin to delete the post, but he refused.

Then Justin McKeating had the temerity to accuse *me* of sock-puppetry while he himself was sock-puppeting on his own website (which is quite possibly the saddest thing you can do, and is itself pretty damn close to masturbation).

He produced as ‘evidence’ of my surfing porn a link in one of my comments on his website that he himself changed soon after I submitted it.

[Appeal to witnesses: please come forward if you watched the exchange last night and saw the URL change.]

Several other comments soon turned up backing Justin’s version of events (before and after he suddenly flipped moderation on), but these were so obviously sock-puppets that I had to say something.

And here’s the bombshell… this is not a first for Justin by any means. He’s been at it for years.

Many if not all of the major posts about sock-puppeting on this site have been aimed at least in part at Justin, in the dim hope that the thick-headed badger-faced twunt would get the message, but no. Instead, he would usually turn up and say “Right on, Tim!” etc. under comments or on his own site, and then go right on doing it.

This has really been weighing on my mind (and getting on my tits!), but I haven’t said anything before now, because:

1. We are political allies, and we have had an agreed policy of never criticising each other

2. I was genuinely worried that the lying manipulative two-faced blog-cheat Iain Dale would use it as ‘proof’ that he and his allies are innocent of all sock-puppetry on his website and others.

“How long has Justin be doing this?” I hear you ask.

Since before I was even accepting comments on this blog is the answer. Even before ‘Chicken Yoghurt’ existed. Oh, and well before the notorious blog-cheats Iain Dale and Paul Staines turned up and mastered the art of sock-puppetry themselves.

Fittingly enough, Justin used to run a website called ‘Bar Room Philosophy’.

[How’s the hangover this morning, sport? So sorry that it’s the least of your problems, but you brought this on yourself.]

Infuriatingly, the wanker used query strings in his URLs on BRP, so very few actual threads have been stored in the Web Archive, but here’s a glimpse of a rare comprehensively-archived page from 2003 that should also explain why I didn’t call him on it when I first caught him at it; we had anti-war protest to get on with, and I was not going to start slagging off allies over a few lousy sock-puppets (especially when I was so busy building/producing/pitching weblogs for others that I didn’t have time to finally sort comments for my own damn site).

‘Bar Room Philosophy’ came and went, but Justin returned in 2005 at ‘Chicken Yoghurt’ to fight the good fight in the general election that halved Blair’s majority.

Well, I say ‘fight the good fight’, but I was constantly forced to delete sock-puppeting comments on Bloggerheads *and* Backing Blair, especially as polling day came and went.

I’m holding back on evidence from my own website until Justin emerges (I don’t want The Privacy Princess bitching needlessly about my publishing old IP addresses) but here’s an example I remember on Justin’s own website that really takes the biscuit; it’s under a post accusing Tony Blair of astro-turfing!

I clearly recall having to delete an exact duplicate of this comment from my own website, because the IP address used to submit it matched Justin’s at the time, and my post didn’t even mention Celia Barlow. I’ll be asking Clive if any deletion logs exist for that example, but I have puh-lenty more; some from my site, and lot and lots and lots and lots and lots from Iain Dale’s.

At one stage, Justin was totally out of control and making ridiculous fake comments in *support* of Iain Dale and trying to make them look like obvious sock-puppets.

Not only is in unfair to frame another webmaster like that (even a blog-cheat like Iain Dale), it’s downright confusing to have to think the sentence; ‘Justin McKeating is pretending to be Iain Dale pretending to be an anonymous supporter’ (and that’s one of the more straightforward examples!)

So, enough is enough. I should have called time on this ages ago, but we’re finally here now, so let’s get this over with:

Justin McKeating is a sock-puppeting git… and I have proof.

Comments shall remain closed until such time that Justin alerts me via private email that he is (a) awake, (b) sober, and (c) ready to answer for his *years* of sock-puppetry.

And if he denies it, I have a pile of evidence ready to show the world.

[Your sock-puppeting ends here, Justin. Ditto for our friendship. But you still have one chance and one chance only to explain yourself at Bloggerheads, and then you are BANNED.]

UPDATE (10:40am) – Justin is still ‘asleep’. This’ll wake him up:








Posted in The Political Weblog Movement | 16 Comments

Sober Vs. Drunk: who will win?

Well, me, obviously… but do try to act surprised:

CLASH OF THE TITANS: Bloggerheads vs Chicken Yoghurt, Drunk vs Sober

Just between you and me, I think Justin’s talked himself into a bit of a corner here. For starters, my six-pack for the evening only cost a couple of quid.

:o)

(Comments are closed here for the moment. One thread at a time, thank you.)








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Don’t blog drunk

[Note – This post is not about Iain’s ‘blog wars 3’ nonsense (which I will get to shortly), but is instead a reponse to a recent twitter by Justin.]

First of all, I would like to make it clear that I’m not perfect myself, and that little thing they call experience usually comes with learning from mistakes.

But I’m here to tell you that IMO you shouldn’t blog or twitter – or even send emails or texts – after a few drinks* any more than you should drink and drive.

(*You should also avoid it when drunk on power, but that’s a slightly different issue that applies mainly to Iain Dale, who does not drink alcohol, but fails to realise that he can still get tipsy at times.)

I know there are plenty of people who disagree with me on this point (hell, there’s even a ‘blogger’ who disagrees with me on drink-driving and thinks it’s all a big joke), but bear with me:

Your. Words. Can. Do. Great. Harm.

Some bloggers like to pretend that words are only harmless jumbles of letters when they’re laying into someone (even if they often freak out when someone publishes harmless jumbles of letters about them), but what I or anyone else sends as a private message or publishes to the web must have some form of impact, otherwise we wouldn’t be bothering at all, yes?

Let me give you an example:

A few months ago, Iain Dale and I had quite a cordial chat by phone, where many things were discussed and revealed. It was quite a frank conversation, with at least one positive outcome, but while the conversation and the outcome can be discussed quite openly in general terms, a sensible person would realise that there are aspects of that conversation that must remain forever private, regardless of what details may or may not be a big/important secret.

(Note – I am not making out that there are any big/important secrets to be shared. So calm down.)

However, the ‘sensible’ part of your brain usually goes wandering off for a little nap when you’ve had a few drinks.

Another quick example; Paul Staines (aka ‘Guido Fawkes’) emerging from a long lunch thinking that he could shut me up with these pathetic legal threats

(On that note, here’s a not-very-good-lawyer doling out advice on libel action in the latest edition of Total Ashcroft. I’m sorry, but if Total Politics were a politically neutral magazine as they claim, they would get a quality lawyer to issue advice, not some hopeless far-right loser who does legal favours behind the bike shed for ciggies. It should also be noted that while Blaney and Staines were flailing about, it was Shane Greer, the upchucking and upcoming Executive Editor of Total Politics who decided to help his right-wing mates by declaring me to be “obviously unbalanced” and grouping me with a convicted stalker. Friends don’t let friends buy or read Total Politics. This article is proof, if you need it, that Iain Dale is just as ready to cheat his print readers as he is to cheat his ‘blog’ readers. A sincere and politically neutral editor would have insisted on an expert for that article, not a discredited far-right chum like Blaney.)

Anyway, getting away from useless lawyers and drink-driving hypocrites, and back to that conversation with Iain Dale:

Alcohol can fuel many things, including the heat of the moment. All of this can happen while the sensible part of your mind is patiently waiting for you to sober up and/or sleep it off.

It is in such a state that you are likely to completely blind to what is sensible an what is not. It is in such circumstances that you are far more likely to blurt out something that is private, and should have remained private.

You know; the kind of blurtage that can change your relationship with someone forever, even if you weren’t friends to begin with.

And once it’s out, it’s out… even if you’ve only shared it with one person (and not, say, published it all over the interwebs).

I’m using this example mainly to show (a) the universal nature of the risk with friends and enemies, and (b) the irreversible nature of the deed; scale, I’m sure you can appreciate all by your lonesome (especially because we all have our secrets).

There’s also the possibility of saying something in drunken anger (or even well-lubricated jest) that isn’t true, not what you really feel, or not what you have others think you feel (see: Mel Gibson).

When you’re out on the lash on a Saturday, the chances of any/all of it being remembered are greatly reduced, as almost everybody else will be pissed too… but you do risk an ‘oops mobile’ moment, which itself should be a enough to give you pause for thought.

Imagine yourself a few drinks in and blabbing about – well, just about anything, really – and ending up on YouTube the next morning… or perhaps calling an old flame or two in order to burn a few bridges (or propose that which is currently beyond you).

If you can see and appreciate the risks of that, why would you voluntarily transmit or publish anything with your computer or crackberry while in a similar state?

Further, why in heaven’s name would you risk getting into a war of words with anyone when in that state, when you put yourself at risk in much the same way that you would in a drunken fistfight?

Even if the other bloke is drunk, you’ll still take hits that wouldn’t normally get past your defences. Hell, there’s a good chance you could break a nose, arm or leg without their help.

And if you’re drunk and they’re sober…? I’m sorry, but you haven’t got a hope in hell; you may as well donate some blood and teeth now to save time.

Don’t blog drink, kids. Ever. You’ll wake up regretting it, even if you get away with it.








Posted in The Political Weblog Movement | 11 Comments

Iain Dale hates me *this* much

There’s likely to be a longer version of this post on the way, but Iain is still playing silly “I’m ignoring you!” games while allowing his comment contributors to slag me off (again), so I figure he needs a wake-up call about how serious this matter is.

(For the record – this turned up and made itself fully apparent from about here, not long after after Iain made Justin McKeating out to be an insincere, untrustworthy stooge, presumably because Iain was at his precious best and couldn’t hack a little criticism):

You may recall Glen Jenvey’s recent attempts to convince the internets that I’m a serial paedophile and ‘sex beast’.

At one stage, Conservative MP Patrick Mercer was still publicly aligned with Jenvey, and it was vital to get word directly to Mercer, as (I suspected at the time and later found to be true) his researchers were not passing any information on, even after Jenvey started making false claims that I was a convicted paedophile.

I explained all of this to Iain and pointed out that he was in a unique position to help, and settle some bad blood between us (more).

All he needed to do was contact Patrick Mercer and make sure that Mercer was aware of what was going on.

Well, the short version is that Iain Dale broke his promise to contact Patrick Mercer, and then lied about it.

He did this while knowing full well that I was under the impression that Patrick Mercer now knew about Jenvey and his antics, when in fact he didn’t.

(Just one thing I have Iain to thank for: I went through a long, sleepless night thinking that I had to again deal with an MP who was aware of paedo-smears and willing to stand by and let it happen… just like Anne Milton did. Mercer and I were both a bit surprised when I found his mobile number and called him myself.)

So… be warned that if you are falsely accused of being a paedophile and Iain Dale doesn’t like you or your politics, then Iain will stand by doing as little as is humanly possible, even when he’s in a unique position to help.

I’ve watched him do it twice now, and I have the email records to prove it.

On this latest occasion, he added the extra insult of lying to me about having done something I had specifically asked him to do… and if Iain wants to counter any of this, he can either hire a lawyer or do it here under comments. I am not going to engage in a conversation with him on his weblog about this, because whenever he is put on the spot and he’s the host of a conversation, he cheats. Every bloody time.

If Iain says anything about this anywhere else, you may as well regard it to be heavily spun version of what may be the truth or a bald-faced lie, as he’s clearly not willing to discuss it when he can’t hide behind anonymous abuse and delete comments when the debate’s not going his way.

[Psst! Heaven knows what Iain thinks of Patrick Mercer, but not making sure that he was aware of this put Mercer at risk of being aligned with Jenvey when the paedo-smear stunt blew up in his face.]

UPDATE (10:30am) – I gave Iain Dale a clear preview of the guts of this post before it went live, and I’ve just seen his response to that on Twitter:

“Looks like Tim Ireland is about to try to start Blogwars 3. Don’t worry. I won’t be playing.” – (source)

Yeah, I called myself a paedophile and then forced Iain to do sweet bugger all about it (again!), just to get at him. What a pillock.

[Explain yourself under comments or piss off, Iain. I’m sick to death of the way you cheat your readers and the appalling way in which you treat people you don’t like. More people need to know what a manipulative, lying, uncaring bastard you are, and if you want to call that ‘Blogwars 3’ and pretend you’re not playing while your mates lay into me (again!) then so be it. After all, that’s your trademark; why get your hands dirty when you can simply stand back and let others do it for you? I’m sure a quick Twitter or two will get attention from the right people. Or you could simply share our private emails with your key go-getters, just as you have in the past.]

UPDATE (29 Mar, 6pm) – Iain Dale refuses to discuss this in public and still insists that his excuse remain confidential. Having seen it, I can’t blame him, but now he’s accusing me of harassment and making out that he’s on the verge of a police complaint.

The most likely purpose of this is to undermine me and make out that my wanting to discuss this at a venue where he can’t cheat with comment bullies and arbitrary deletions is an unreasonable thing to expect. I doubt he has any intention of following through, as he’s cried “Wolf!” on this front many times in the past, and he isn’t actually stupid enough to waste police time.

Judging by past events, he’s probably waiting for me to publish the relevant email so he can have a nice, distracting hissy fit about that… even though Iain has been caught trying to secretly share our private correspondence with others in the past.

My current intention is to publish, but I’m giving Iain some more time to come around and deign my humble weblog worthy of his presence, not least because I have a *genuine* harassment complaint to progress with and Iain’s got in the way of that once already.








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Paul Staines punks out

OK, taking as read that Derek Draper is just as shameless a spin-merchant and just as crooked a blog-cheat as (if not more so than) Paul Staines, check this out:

Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) and Derek Draper on Daily Politics – Thursday, 26 March 2009:
[Extract from 01:50 to 02:10]

Paul Staines: When he was starting up, he phoned me up for advice, he had lunch with Iain Dale, and then quite disgracefully [to Draper] you go and smear… Dale… as a racist

Derek Draper: I didn’t say he was a racist…

Paul Staines: But who put you up to that? Because…

Derek Draper: … I said he was an apologist for racism.

Paul Staines: But who put you up to that?

Derek Draper: Nobody put me up to that…

Paul Staines: Damian McBride put you up to that!

Derek Draper: Well, look, already…. [he gestures at Staines]

Paul Staines: I’ve seen the briefing paper done by Downing Street; “How to get Dale”

Derek Draper: Well, publish it.

Paul Staines: I will publish it this afternoon

Then, later that afternoon, instead of the promised knockout document, we get this:

Now, don’t go putting me in the Draper camp like the knee-jerkers are bound to (there’s plenty of bullshit from both of them in this broadcast; in fact, with the amount of bullshit they’ve managed to fit into just over 5 minutes, I think they may have broken some sort of record) but Paul Staines used this platform to declare that there was a Downing Street conspiracy to ‘get’ Iain Dale, and even promised to produce a document proving it that very afternoon.

Only he didn’t do that.

Instead, he decided, real cool like, that now might be a good time to retire limp from the field and suck on a few oranges.

Paul Staines has punked out… again.

He’s got no game.

And, it must be said, no head for telly.

(Psst! Meanwhile, here’s Iain Dale being a petty, dishonest and partisan twat. Again.)








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Do not feed the animal

Charlie Brooker on the subject of media coverage and mass murderers (via):








Posted in Old Media | 1 Comment

Phew!

As you can see, I’ve been a busy boy this lunchtime.

Below is the first round in what I hope won’t have to become a series of open letters:

Open letter to James Harding (editor of The Times)
Open letter to Lloyd Embley (editor of The People)
Open letter to Dawn Neesom (editor of the Daily Star)
Open letter to Rebekah Wade (editor of The Sun)
Open letter to Paul Dacre (editor of the Daily Mail)
Open letter to Peter Hill (editor of the Daily Express)
Open letter to Martin Townsend (editor of the Sunday Express)

Apart from the minor overlap with the Dunblane matter, today’s list of targets in this (ahem) polite letter-writing campaign results from a quick run-down of newspapers running with a recent Anjem Choudary story, those carrying older stores likely to involve Glen Jenvey and his unique brand of ‘research’, and/or names shamelessly dropped in some as-yet-unpublished audio in my possession.

On the subject of the recent Anjem Choudary story, I will happily state that so far it merely stinks of Jenvey’s involvement, and there is only the suspicion* that Jenvey was trying to flush out Choudary and/or his supporters when he planted false claims in Anjem Choudary’s Wikipedia entry claiming [sic]; “His wife left him when she found out he was Gay in 2008”

(*It’s clear that he did this thing, but we cannot be sure of the exact motive at this time.)

Meanwhile, Jenvey is still at it in more ways than one, spreading his smears each and every night until the wee small hours, and more than one provider of interwebs services is proving to be a little bit useless on the customer support front. Ho-hum.








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Open letter to James Harding (editor of The Times)

Dear James,

I am writing to you about the ‘terror expert’ Glen Jenvey (aka ‘Richard Tims’) and his associate Michael Starkey.

In January, The Sun published a story for which Jenvey was the primary source in which it was claimed that a number of celebrities had been targeted by extremists.

Evidence later emerged suggesting that it was Jenvey himself, posing as a radical Muslim, who had posted the relevant forum messages and named these celebrities as ‘targets’.

The PCC has since launched an investigation, and one of the celebrities named (Alan Sugar), has announced that he is taking legal action.

I’ve been looking into it myself, and I’ve uncovered further evidence proving Jenvey to be a fraud, a liar and a fantasist (first link is a summary if you can’t be bothered with evidence/depth):
http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/obsession-pundit-in-meltdown/
http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/patrick-mercer-mp-makes-statement-on-glen-jenvey/
https://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/03/michael_starkey.asp
https://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/03/glen_jenvey_audio.asp

Keeping in mind that Glen Jenvey’s response to all of this has been to declare (a) that the PCC is in league with extremists and (b) that I am a notorious sex criminal…

– Could you (please) get back to me with a statement about the reliability of Glen Jenvey’s claims and if you still regard him to be a credible source?

– Could you also (pretty please) provide me with a complete list of stories on extremism or terrorism that are based in whole or in part on claims made, evidence presented or research conducted by Glen Jenvey (or Michael Starkey or a ‘Richard Tims’)? I’ve included a link to what I suspect to be a recent example:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5908534.ece

There’s no big rush with the list, but if you could issue that statement immediately/today, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Cheers

Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com








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Open letter to Lloyd Embley (editor of The People)

Dear Lloyd,

I am writing to you about the ‘terror expert’ Glen Jenvey (aka ‘Richard Tims’) and his associate Michael Starkey.

In January, The Sun published a story for which Jenvey was the primary source in which it was claimed that a number of celebrities had been targeted by extremists.

Evidence later emerged suggesting that it was Jenvey himself, posing as a radical Muslim, who had posted the relevant forum messages and named these celebrities as ‘targets’.

The PCC has since launched an investigation, and one of the celebrities named (Alan Sugar), has announced that he is taking legal action.

I’ve been looking into it myself, and I’ve uncovered further evidence proving Jenvey to be a fraud, a liar and a fantasist (first link is a summary if you can’t be bothered with evidence/depth):
http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/obsession-pundit-in-meltdown/
http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/patrick-mercer-mp-makes-statement-on-glen-jenvey/
https://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/03/michael_starkey.asp
https://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/03/glen_jenvey_audio.asp

Keeping in mind that Glen Jenvey’s response to all of this has been to declare (a) that the PCC is in league with extremists and (b) that I am a notorious sex criminal…

– Could you (please) get back to me with a statement about the reliability of Glen Jenvey’s claims and if you still regard him to be a credible source?

– Could you also (pretty please) provide me with a complete list of stories on extremism or terrorism that are based in whole or in part on claims made, evidence presented or research conducted by Glen Jenvey (or Michael Starkey or a ‘Richard Tims’)? I’ve included a link to what I suspect to be a typical example:
http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=madonna-targeted-by-muslim-fanatics-over-israel-s-attack-on-gaza&method=full&objectid=21032190&siteid=93463-name_page.html

There’s no big rush with the list, but if you could issue that statement immediately/today, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Cheers

Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com

PS – Not that it matters, but is reporter Daniel Jones a relative of your deputy editor Gary Jones?








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