This entry was posted on
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at
8:32 pm and is filed
under Teh Interwebs.

Tameside Eye – WHO Smeared Jonny Reynolds?: Labour are well underway in the process for selecting a new candidate to replace Stalybridge & Hyde MP, James Purnell who resigned in February. As with any selection, it wouldn’t be complete without a good old fashioned smear with candidates battling it out with each other for the £64k job…

When I see stuff like this, the first thing i usually do is run the relevant IP(s) through Wikipedia’s back-end, because usually the type of person who’ll attack others from behind a sock-puppet in email and/or on blogs will do the same there, usually with the same target. (I could name names, but I’m trying to discourage onanism this week, to see us through the recent hanky shortage.)

The most important thing to keep in mind is that the IP address referenced in the above post that resulted in a catch today (195.8.168.252) is one that is likely to be used by many people working for Tameside Council. So I am not by any means suggesting that this is the same person, only that it’s an interesting place to look.

Two lightweight but amusing examples from a quick scratch of the surface:

1. This effort, lashing out blindly at James Purnell raised a smile:

He backstabbingly betrayed Gordon Brown and the Labour party in a effort to somehow further his career.

2. This is clearly ‘link spam’. Someone working for Tameside Council spam-linked the website gmpchelp.com and they can’t even spull pripper:

[http://www.gmpchelp.com Computer Reapir Company (Greater Manchester)]

Lots more to find by browsing through past anonymous edits of Wikipedia via the IP 195.8.168.252

There’s also a whole page here with nothing but people talking about the many questionable edits made to Wikipedia using this IP address, but I’m sure the locals will be able to make more sense of this spoor than I will, and anyone in a hurry need only look at this summary from one of the editors in the relevant Blog Logs: “Long-term vandal. has been using this address for a year. registered to a council but no evidence of good-faith users using this IP”

I’m sure any hunt through that lot will be a long and happy one. An unknown number of people have been blundering about for quite some time, and it looks like a gift that’ll keep on giving.

[Hello, Tameside peeps. Happy hunting. Here’s one or two we bagged down my neck of the woods. God help us when the bastards get smarter than this.]