This entry was posted on
Monday, February 4th, 2008 at
10:14 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

[Psst! Arrving late to the party? Read this first.]

Over at LabourHome, some points are being raised regarding Alex Hilton and Jag Singh (who are involved in MessageSpace and LabourHome) about their relationship with Paul Staines. People are also asking why LabourHome should bother linking to Paul Staines’ right-wing gossip-rag and pseudo-blog (the ‘Guido Fawkes’ site).

1. Paul Staines replies by addressing the latter point only and says; “If you close your eyes you won’t see me, but you will be worse off.”

Not entirely in keeping with his past position that – if you don’t like something – you should merely look the other way. And dropping a link from a blogroll is not the same as ignoring a blog. A minor point, but I make no apology for leading with it because (and here’s the real point) that’s all Staines had to say on the matter.

Onward…

2. Alex Hilton does try to address the matter of relationships (this is not a question he can afford to dodge in a Dale-like manner on his own turf). He states here that his involvement with MessageSpace “is semi-detatched these days,” and also says here that; “This article is the first time I have heard of Guido suing Tim. What for? I don’t know and can’t really be bothered to look into it.”

Well, Alex may not feel the need to investigate this, but someone involved with MessageSpace (other than Staines) should take the time. I’ll tell you why in a moment.

3. Matt Wardman, a sane and sensible chap to whom I am loosely acquainted, also chips in with this; “Most of the relationships in the “complex” don’t compromise anyone. In particular I’d suggest that Jas S, Mike R and Alex H (and Chris M – the Devil – who you don’t mention) are quite able to separate professional IT (MS + MS Creative) work from political arguments, I’d make the same comment re: Guido where business is concerned. They wouldn’t bother to waste the time and take the risk of confusing the two.” (emphasis mine)

Well, I have some doubts about that myself, but with lawyers on the loose, I can’t really say anything without proof.

[dramatic pause]

So it’s a good thing that I have some proof to back my doubts, isn’t it?

I really didn’t want to do this, but it’s become clear now that I have no choice…

If you read my side of the correspondence with Donal Blaney, you will note that – even though the ‘evidence’ presented by Staines relates specifically to the image/animation uploaded to the servers of MessageSpace – the threatened complaint relates specifically to images that were not. It should be clear that a concerted effort is being made to keep MessageSpace out of it.

The only problem is that the IP address used by Staines (posting as ‘Object of Obsession’) to launch his legal threats (213.1.210.34) belongs to a range assigned to these serviced offices in Clerkenwell.

The address of that building is 1 Sekforde Street, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0BE

This is also the registered address for MessageSpace / EOS Online Media Ltd

So, my question to Jag Singh (Chief Information Officer for MessageSpace and by all reports a good egg) is this:

To what extent are the resources of MessageSpace / EOS Online Media Ltd being used to pursue this campaign of harassment and would you care to make a statement regarding same?

[Folks, I really don’t want to jeopardise the income MessageSpace provides for many bloggers… but if MessageSpace is also in the business of blogger harassment, I think people have a right to know what they might be contributing to when they host MessageSpace banners on their site. Oh, and please be careful under comments on this site and on your own blog. So far, all I have is an IP address telling me that Staines was in the same building as MessageSpace when he submitted these two key comments to my site, not necessarily the same office.]