OK, so what are my options?

This entry was posted on
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
at
11:40 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

Iain Dale has ignored my specific request not to be involved in his inherently biased weblog poll, and has just deleted this comment of mine from under this post on his ‘weblog’:

I don’t believe you, Dale.

I blogged about this, and I even emailed you about it weeks ago.

I did not want to be part of this charade, and I said so very clearly and quite specifically.

I regard it to be damaging to my reputation to have anyone in this field think that I would endorse your poll or participate in your poll in any way. That includes allowing myself to be included in it and ranked by it…. even if you do pass it off as a bit of fun when it suits you.

We even went over this A YEAR AGO when you got in touch and were forced to drop me from your Who’s Who for this same reason.

And yet you’ve gone ahead and done it anyway.

WTF?

Have you seriously gone to print including my name and weblog in your charts when I have refused to take part in the past and have clearly expressed my wish to NOT take part this year?

I seriously do not want to appear in his book of charts, and I told him so. Apparently, it’s already gone to print and today I find out that – despite my wishes – Iain has me listed as a participant in the poll.

What are my options?

UPDATE (03 Sep) – May I begin by pointing out that Iain Dale is a big, fat liar?

“Yes, you emailed me privately. And I do what I always do with all of the hundreds of other emails which you hassle me with. I put it straight in the Junk box. And then I did the same with the next one. And the next.” – Iain Dale (Aug 29)

I keep all the emails I get from Ireland. You never know when they might come in useful. I can find no email from him saying he didn’t wish to be included in the poll. Normally when he goes off on one he barrages me with copies of various emails has sent. Some of his emails go straight into my Spam folder anway, so it’s perfectly possible that this one did.” – Iain Dale (Sep 02)

(Note – He wasn’t talking about the ‘poll’ email specifically on Aug 29, but one of the hundreds dozens I’ve sent him earlier this year. These number in the dozens only because Iain keeps ignoring them or pretending not to have seen them. It is also possible that Iain will inisist that there is no lie or contradiction here because he used the word ‘junk’ and not ‘delete’.)

Not that his not seeing the email matters, as Iain himself described my actions as a ‘boycott’, and unless he’s going to claim that he doesn’t know what the word means, my post alone should have been enough for him.

But it’s nice of him to acknowledge – in his own special way – that he would have acted differently had he seen my email.

Then again…

“But either way, I don’t really care if he wished to be included in the poll or not.” – Iain Dale (02 Sep)

Ah. My bad. So what Iain is saying here is that – even if he had known for sure that I didn’t want to be involved in or associated with this poll in any way – he would have included me anyway.

The following point has already been raised (and ignored), but it’s similar to the point I raised with Total Politics yesterday (gosh, I hope they get my email) and it applies now more than ever:

Instead of honouring this request, Iain Dale went ahead and included me anyway, the upshot being that the poll is now – through no fault of mine, because I DID NOT WISH TO BE INCLUDED – actually specifically biased against my weblog because I was included in the poll (against my wishes) as I urged my readers not to vote.

Dale knows this. He’s not a complete idiot, and he must know how voting works because he lost an election once.

UPDATE (04 Sep) – Well, there you have it. I sent several emails seeking a reasonable and peaceful solution to this yesterday, and Iain ignored them all.

Iain Dale, who goes on and on and on about how he gets picked on for no reason, has decided to go ahead and be difficult about it by including me in this chart and peppering this post, which includes the following highlights:

“Liberal Conspiracy encouraged a boycott of the whole exercise…”

No. They didn’t. Sunny Hundal did. Iain knows this and was reminded of it several times. But it’s in his interest to make something more of it than there is, so he just lies about it. Speaking of which…

“Absolute Unique Visitors (is now) the yardstick by which blogs are judged…”

Pfft! As if Iain doesn’t recall why this is the case for him especially. And he’s lecturing newspapers for their misleading use of meaningless use of metrics?

Well, he’s clearly taking the piss.

Remember this any time Iain tries to get anyone to take this poll of his seriously (trust me, he will) or asks you to trust him with any position of power; he diddled this result just to have one over on me.

He’s a vagina.








About Tim Ireland

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