Conservatives and the dangerous games they play

A campaign of harassment began against me soon after I uncovered evidence of the falsification evidence of Muslim extremism involving The Sun newspaper and the office of publicity-hungry Conservative MP Patrick Mercer.

One of the key parties involved is (one hopes was) a political and personal associate of Patrick Mercer and fellow Conservative MP Anne Milton (who I have been very critical of in the past); this person arrived on the scene armed my with home address that they went on to share with a mentally unstable individual, along with the (false) accusation that i was a convicted paedophile.

(When this accusation was published by that individual, an associate of Mercer’s, staff in that MP’s office ignored my every appeal to call it to a halt. Iain Dale was at the time in a unique position to get word directly to Patrick Mercer. He agreed to do this, then did the exact opposite of what was requested, then claimed he had called Mercer, which was a lie. Dale has not gone public with any account that seeks to justify his behaviour in this respect; privately, he shares one of three different excuses which contradict each other; in fact, one is so messed-up, it contradicts itself. Little wonder he refuses to go public with any of it. Tragically, this is not the first time he has stood by and allowed a ‘lefty’ to be smeared as a paedophile when it suited him. Further, this earlier false claim of paedophilia involved close associates of Anne Milton, who she refused to disown at the time.)

This same person went on to smear me as a benefit-scrounging alcoholic, an associate of religious then political extremists and, ultimately, a stalker.

All of the accusations bar the last quickly fell by the wayside, but the accusation of stalking was, seemingly, backed by MPs… those MPs being Patrick Mercer and Anne Milton.

(Both of these MPs have relied on this accusation privately to explain away scnadals involving their respective offices, but they will not test it publicly with a criminal complaint or even civil action. Recently, Anne Milton released a statement suggesting she had not shared this accusation with anyone. But to suggest this is a lie. I have evidence to hand that Anne Milton shared the accusation of stalking with fellow Conservatives behind closed doors.)

As with Nadine Dorries (also a Conservative MP) and Iain Dale (who tried and failed to become a Conservative MP many times), there is NO evidence of ANY of them making a formal, credible complaint to police about anything they claim I have done. Had they made any such complaint, I would’ve become aware of it, as police procedure is to interview the accused party/parties before proceeding with the expense of a full-blown investigation. I know this having been a target of harassment myself; I have never been convicted, investigated, cautioned, or even informally chatted to by police about any criminal behaviour on my part.

But still all of these Conservatives continue with what amounts to a coordinated whisper campaign, sharing accusations that are entirely unsupported by evidence; crucially, when they know this accusation is being published alongside my home address.

At its worst this accusation is presented alongside my home address as follows; that I stalk women and send death threats to MPs.

And it gets worse.

Recently, someone involved in this ongoing campaign of harassment began publishing material targeting my wife, my children, and other members of my extended family.

This has included false accusations aimed at my kids, making specific allegations of criminal behaviour that are not only entirely untrue, but extremely damaging (and, it must be said, upsetting).

While we’re here, I’d just like to say a quick ‘thank you’ to Iain Dale especially for forcing me to go public with this; my family has enough to deal with that the moment, and all we want to do is get on with a very difficult period in our lives. But it’s clear from his past conduct how Iain Dale will portray any further private attempt to alert him to this danger, and he leaves me no choice.

(Last year, Iain Dale went through a disturbing period where he authored long, rambling letters accusing me of repeated libel and stalking that were signed off by a bargain-basement lawyer. In one of these letters Dale made clear his intention to take the concern I had expressed for a man who was on the brink of suicide and present it as a threat of violence against him (and not for the first time). This is not hyperbole; there was an earlier, documented, suicide attempt and police recognised the risk of self-harm and I have reliable witnesses who can confirm that this man was greatly agitated at the time by claims about me that appeared primarily, if not only, on the website of Iain Dale. Iain refused to remove these claims at the time, though much later he deleted some relevant entries/comments from his site – without notation or retraction – in order to protect himself.)

So far this campaign of harassment targeting me has resulted in two police investigations.

The first investigation went nowhere mainly because both Patrick Mercer and Iain Dale withheld their cooperation. It would have stood a far greater chance of success had police been made aware of the role played by the (hopefully former) associate of Patrick Mercer and Anne Milton much earlier, but while Dale refuses to discuss what he said to Mercer when he eventually did contact him, Mercer obviously became hostile from this point on, and refused to share information or even alert me to the role played by a man he suspected was involved and knew to be thoroughly unscrupulous.

The second investigation failed for lack of evidence (see: anonymous web accounts), and it would now appear that not only did Nadine Dorries lie about one police investigation, but also that she knowingly withheld relevant evidence relating to another (i.e. an email where one of the parties involved appears to have indentified themselves and admitted to specific acts of harassment). She refuses to share this evidence, even today.

Had I the resources (i.e. money), I would be able to pursue civil action that would greatly minimise the threat to me, and my family.

Had I the smallest amount of cooperation from Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries especially, even today, I would be able to pursue criminal action that would greatly minimise the threat to me, my family, and the public at large.

To close, we pass over to Iain Dale, who contradicts his behaviour with the following statement, made yesterday in his excruciating attempts to defend Andy Coulson:

“I would never, ever defend anyone – no matter how strong the tribal loyalty is – if I thought they were guilty of a criminal act… in the end, if you believe someone is being traduced unfairly, and you don’t speak out, what sort of person are you?” – Iain Dale

A seemingly strong defence of his position, but when I try to email Iain Dale about this matter, he will pretend never to have received notification(s) about the specific danger to me and others resulting from the false accusations he has used to shield himself from mere criticism. He has even pretended not to have seen evidence that has been passed on through his cut-price lawyer.

I tried to call him the other day; he laughed in my face and hung up. On an earlier call where I again raised this issue, he told me to “fuck off”.

My children are being targeted with false accusations of criminal behaviour. My children.

Dale is aware of this latest development. He cannot pretend otherwise. Yet still he continues to rely on this dangerous whispering campaign,. He even dares to portray my attempts to combat it or contact him about it as evidence of stalking (privately, of course).

When exactly will these people recognise that this political game of theirs has gone too far? If they sincerely believe they have been harassed, why have they not taken action? They don’t face the same barriers that I do, especially because the criticisms they describe as ‘attacks’ and ‘stalking’ were all published under my name. None of them are so short of resources that they can’t afford civil action, and if what they claimed or implied was anywhere near the truth, they would have no problems initiating a criminal investigation.

But none of them have taken a single, credible step down this path. Instead, they knowingly rely on the action of small group of Conservative-aligned cyber-vigilantes who intimidate me on their behalf.

If you believe someone is being traduced unfairly, and you don’t speak out, what sort of person are you? The answer as far as I am concerned is; a Conservative*.

[*If you’re a Tory and you think that’s unfair, then (a) take a public stand against it, you’ll be among the first, and (b) also consider this: I have taken the matter of the published accusations of paedophilia as far as I can with Google without resorting to expensive litigation; at the top of the ramparts is a woman who has personally refused to address the matter of the multiple false claims of paedophilia that only Google can remove from their servers. This same person also refuses to acknowledge extended delays in the removal of my home address from Blogger.com and YouTube accounts, and will not even investigate my being impersonated using another service of theirs; Gmail. This person is the Vice President of Public Policy & Communications at Google. Her name is Rachel Whetstone, and she is the former Political Secretary to former Conservative leader, Michael Howard. Her partner is Steve Hilton, the director of strategy for David Cameron. Cameron’s office is also aware of most if not all of this, but they refuse to discuss it. If there’s no conspiracy, this appears to expose a particularly unsettling subset of the Conservative mindset and I challenge anyone to defend it.]

UPDATE (08 Sep) – Iain Dale responds at last… 1 year, 5 months and 20 days after he initially claimed to make a call that never happened and later lied about. Now he has finally graced us with his presence and answered questions he’s been dodging for over a year, it emerges that instead of calling Mercer directly, as he agreed to do, he called the office that he knew wasn’t passing messages my on… and didn’t even ask them to pass his message on! Further, by his own account, he did not even mention (never mind stress) that I was being smeared as a paedophile by Jenvey at the time, which was the point of the entire call. Unbelievable. No wonder he didn’t want to discuss the details.








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 5 Comments

Clubhouse rules

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.








Posted in Old Media, The Political Weblog Movement | Comments Off on Clubhouse rules

Iain Dale: the hack

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**.

[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.]

(*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?”)

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.)








Posted in The Political Weblog Movement, Tories! Tories! Tories! | 11 Comments

Iain Dale: crocodile tears for a fellow Tory

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:

From: Iain Dale
To: ‘Tim Ireland’
Cc: ‘Guy Fawkes’
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 3:34 PM
Subject: RE: Guildford Conservatives in ‘paedo’ smear

Think I’ll keep concentrating on Prescott if you don’t mind…!

Iain

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 and 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.

[*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.]

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.

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.








Posted in Anne Milton, The Political Weblog Movement, Tories! Tories! Tories! | 4 Comments

To: Andy Rayment (Re: Nadine Dorries)

Note – Andy Rayment is a former Conservative councillor and present Chairman of the Mid-Bedfordshire Conservative Association. Yes, I can prove that Nadine Dorries MP lied about a police investigation that never took place, and after months of research I found nothing on record to suggest that she even went so far as to make a formal complaint. Worse, it would appear that Dorries failed to report actual harassment targeting me, and went on to knowingly exacerbate that harassment with accusations she knew to be false.

Dear Andy,

I make no apologies for this being an open letter, as my past correspondence with your office has been grossly misrepresented by Nadine Dorries, and I feel some daylight is required to get this issue addressed at last.

I originally sent you an email on February 18 about the conduct of Dorries and followed this up with a further email on March 30. Neither email received a reply.

I called your office in June, and was told by a woman named ‘Pippa’ that you had been on holiday since February. I hope for your sake that this isn’t true. (I also hope that this person isn’t one of the two people named ‘Pippa’ known to Dorries who she pays with taxpayer’s money, because it would be unseemly for person in such a role to be playing a central/long-term role in your party-political office.)

I then called a week later on June 18, and was told that my letter had been forwarded to you, but the woman who said this was very rude and abrupt, and refused to give her name or say when my letter was forwarded.

Initially I wrote to you after I was harassed by a small group of unbalanced people involved in the repeated publication of my ex-directory home address alongside the damaging, dangerous and entirely false accusation that I stalk women and send death threats to MPs. This followed a campaign where I was smeared as a convicted paedophile that involved many of the same people including at least one associate of Nadine Dorries (Iain Dale).

While Dale may not have originated the ‘paedophile’ smear he certainly sought to take advantage of it, and he personally built on the ‘stalker’ smears that began as anonymous comments on his site. Prior to May 2010, Dorries herself had repeatedly implied* that I was stalking her and made out that a video link I had sent her (a clip from ‘The Omen’) constituted some form of threat from someone who was mentally ill and therefore dangerous.

Both parties continued this behaviour even after they were advised that their false accusations were being published alongside my home address.

One of the people doing this claimed to have been in contact with Dorries, declaring that they did this on her behalf.

When confronted about this, Dorries made a vague claim designed to give the impression that she had forwarded the relevant email to police, but I have serious doubts that anything like this happened, especially after what followed.

In late April, during the general election campaign, I received multiple reports that Dorries was misleading constituents at hustings events with unsubstantiated and sometimes contradictory claims. Rather than take these reports at face value, I sought to record an event to get some of her alleged claims on tape, which is why I attended the hustings at Flitwick and secured permission to record and broadcast it.

It was at this event that Dorries twice stood up to declare that I have been stalking her and other MPs. She claimed I lived in Croydon (why?**), described my website as “incredibly offensive and rude”, spoke of a “barrage” of “vile” and “abusive” email messages sent to herself and other MPs, and at one stage even said she couldn’t comment further because a police investigation was in progress.

None of this was true. Dorries lied about it all, and even invented a police investigation out of thin air.

Since then I’ve made a series of FOI/DPA requests and they suggest that Dorries hadn’t even made a formal complaint, even though she went on to claim that she had been given advice by police to close her weblog and Twitter account in order to address the ‘threat’ I posed.

If Dorries was given any advice like this, it was most likely generic advice police give to anyone who claims to have been harassed as a result of what they have published online. It was certainly nothing like she portrayed it when she contacted the local newspaper, associating my activities with the stabbing of Stephen Timms (an incident that took place a week after she closed her Twitter account).

Her assertion that I have a violent, criminal character was combined with repeated claims that I was undermining democracy, topped by this:

Nadine4mp: Tim Ireland @bloggerheads distorted a great British tradition tonight by lying to my constituents and deliberately disrupting a husting

[Tweeted by Nadine Dorries on 4 May 2010 21:35]

What she describes is the opposite of who I am and what I do, and it is not the first time she has attempted to portray me as an enemy of democracy. Doubting that anyone can be this confused, I firmly believe it to be a deliberate smear.

Further, these entirely false allegations were all made by an MP who knew that her smears were being repeated alongside my home address by someone who claimed to be acting on her behalf.

Concerned about what may have been passed to/though Dorries office by those harassing me, I submitted a combination FOI/DPA request to Dorries’ office. Yes, I am aware that MPs have the privilege to ignore an FOI request if they wish…. but they do not enjoy the same luxury with a DPA request.

Dorries’ office has ignored this request for 150 days now, for reasons that are pretty easy to guess at, despite the uncertainties left by her obfuscation; the DPA request compels Dorries to provide me with, among other things, a copy of all correspondence sent to her office in my name, and any sincere attempt to deliver that data would reveal that no “barrage” exists, or that I have been impersonated (possibly by the same people publishing my home address, who have impersonated me elsewhere).

In the same statement that portrayed me as a violent enemy of democracy, Dorries claimed that she is not answerable to me because I am not a constituent of hers. I beg to differ. In my view, Dorries became answerable to me and every other human being subject to our laws from the moment she embarked on a national anti-abortion campaign, and there is no question of her moral obligation to answer for the smears she has aimed at me (and others) in pursuit of her personal/political goals.

What is especially galling is that, while Dorries claims to be a victim of harassment, instead of pursuing credible civil or criminal action (which would be easy if anything she claimed were true), she knowingly and repeatedly relies on the actions of vigilantes, up to and including lies about police investigations that never took place.

The situation has now reached a point where Dorries’ actions are largely indiscernible from those of the unbalanced fantasists targeting me (who also make entirely false claims about police investigations). However, Dorries is not a bitter outcast operating on the fringes of society, but a serving Member of Parliament, and I find it incredible that is so difficult to call her to account.

I would like to know what your intentions are regarding this matter, and why it is taking you so long to address it.

Regards,

Tim Ireland

* Why I say ‘implied’ and not ‘claimed’; often Dorries would blur the line between myself and blogger Chris Paul, probably in the hopes that she would be able to smear us both without making an accusation specific enough to be actionable. Just in case this is the last we all hear of the matter for some time, I want to go on record and say that while I was being smeared by Dorries, I dared to save copies of some of what she was publishing, and I hold evidence that she made a very misleading tweet aimed at Chris Paul at the time. This example was a rare, direct shot (Dorries had her blood up)… and it was an entirely false allegation that she has has yet to withdraw. It is completely wrong to suggest that Chris Paul had journeyed from Manchester to confront Nadine Dorries in her constituency during this event or at any time during the election, or ever. As for “seriously disturbed,” that judgement call of hers is most likely based on events that only took place in her imagination (and pretty bloody rich coming from a woman who claims a 21-week-old foetus can punch its way out of the womb):

Nadine4mp: Labour activist @chrislol came from Manchester to my village – seriously disturbed.

[Tweeted by Nadine Dorries on 4 May 2010 21:25]

** Her certainty that I lived in Croydon is one of the aspects that makes me concerned about impersonation (that, and I have previously been impersonated by the people targeting me; something that Gmail still refuse to address, BTW). The IP address of a person involved in both the ‘paedophile’ smear and the later ‘stalker’ smears used an IP address that initially appeared to resolve to Croydon, and that person has a track record not only of using false names/indentities online, but also manipulating opposing, non-communicative parties. I suspect this same person to be involved in a sequence of communications that gave the impression that Iain Dale was in direct contact with Glen Jenvey while Jenvey was smearing me as a paedophile (when it was probably more a case of this person trawling the web for ‘dirt’ on me and happening across most of it in the comments on Dale’s site); this was a key matter that Dale was refusing to discuss when he claims I ‘stalked’ him, and Dorries is being equally unhelpful with her wall of silence in this case. If she claims to have hundreds of vile and abusive messages from me, then let’s see them. If she can’t produce them, then she’ll have to wear being called a liar who knowingly uses damaging and false accusations against her critics. After ‘Smeargate’ she may think she’s immune to such accusations, but those in the know should be appalled by her hypocrisy. What kind of politics is this? One minute we’re to be shocked that Nadine Dorries might lie about her expenses, the next we’re all supposed to chill out when she lies about a police investigation. How can Nadine Dorries possibly convince those around her that she told and continued to maintain this damaging lie (knowingly putting my family at risk in the process) with the best possible intentions?








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 3 Comments

MAD Magazine #203: a brief retrospective

I was reading a copy of MAD Magazine from March 1979, and was impressed by how far we’ve come since then. (Part I)

source: Pg 16, MAD Magazine 203, March 1979

I was reading a copy of MAD Magazine from March 1979, and was impressed by how far we’ve come since then. (Part II)

source: Pg 6, MAD Magazine 203, March 1979








Posted in Inneresting | 1 Comment

Patrick Mercer claims Tory conference is terror target. Maybe.

Let me do you the courtesy of explaining why I think Patrick Mercer’s ‘Tory conference terror alert’ story is a crock of beans.

To begin with, Patrick Mercer claims his sources are retired police and Army intelligence officers:

Sources in Northern Ireland said that the October conference in central Birmingham had emerged as the prize target on a hit list drawn up by resurgent republican paramilitaries. Patrick Mercer, ex-chairman of the Commons subcommittee on counter-terrorism, said former senior police and army intelligence officers had informed him that dissident splinter groups had discussed targeting David Cameron’s first conference as prime minister. (source)

Elsewhere this is reported/repeated as “sources in Northern Ireland” or even “police/intelligence sources in Northern Ireland” but really this should carry the health warning “according to Conservative MP Patrick Mercer…” because as Mark Townsend and Toby Helm (authors of the original Observer article) noted at the time;

Sources for West Midlands police said they had no intelligence of a specific threat against the Tory party conference. (source)

So this is not from the official song sheet and we only have Mercer’s word to go on that anyone sang otherwise. As far as the police charged with policing the event are concerned, there is no evidence of a specific threat. (You may wish to add ‘that they wish to discuss at this time’, which changes little about what follows, even if true.)

This leaves us with the possibility that this is (a) a leak, (b) the opinion of one or two retired officers, or (c) wholly imagined bullshit

(a) Exploring the possibility that it is a leak from the active police/intelligence community, we encounter the minor problem of Patrick Mercer’s recent embarrassments. Anyone in the loop will be aware of criminal investigations into/involving (hopefully former) associates of Patrick Mercer who, crucially, turned out to be conspicuously if not spectacularly discredited as sources of terrorism ‘intelligence’. Any proper cop on the job should also be aware that Mercer very recently involved police in a childish and damaging tabloid claim about his former mistress. Similarly, no serving soldier can afford to be associated with Mercer’s HIV bomb fantasies/alarmism. Ultimately, Mercer offers as much integrity and discretion as a pair of crotchless panties. If there’s a genuine threat to the Tory party conference that needs to be leaked for some reason, there are far more credible channels at present (if not in general). I’d sooner believe the NHS were issuing leaks through Nadine Dorries.

(b) If this is the opinion of one or two retired officers, years of anti-corruption regulation and legislation are working against them in an effort to keep them out of the loop, so at best they are making a judgement based on material in the public domain… or passed on in a public house. If they are privy to anything beyond that, they are most likely breaking the law if not the terms they agreed to upon employment and then retirement. If so, then to what end? One has to ask what the purpose of such whistle-blowing might be if the threat is real and it is not the wish of the authorities that it be known (see ‘a’ above). If it is as Mercer implies and there’s a pattern of senior police and army intelligence officers privately expressing concern about a specific threat to the Tory party conference, why is this specific threat not being dealt with through the usual channels? Most probably because it doesn’t exist:

Laurence Robertson, a Conservative MP who chairs a British parliamentary committee on Northern Ireland, told Sky he had no information that dissident nationalists planned a mainland bombing campaign…” (source)

(c) This leaves us with the possibility that Patrick Mercer’s sources have succumbed to bullshit or fantasy, or (more likely, in my view) Patrick Mercer himself introduced/positioned mention of a specific threat (while simultaneously leaving himself some wiggle room for later);

[Mercer] said: “They want to kill by the end of August in order to get themselves poised for whatever operations they can mount in September leading up to the Tory party conference in early October. There are doubts over whether they have the capability, but the aspiration is certainly there and West Midlands police would be crazy not to take the threat seriously.” – (source)

“I have no doubt there is an aspiration, a hope, a desire to bomb the mainland (Britain) and probably the Tory (Conservative) or indeed any of the party political conferences,” Mercer told Sky News. – (source)

In short, I fail to see how this is any different to past media alerts by Mercer that threaten to do more harm than good, and I suspect the primary component of this alert is Mercer’s wish to gain some positive publicity and re-establish himself as a credible spokesperson on terrorism.

[Psst! If CCHQ plan to play up the perceived threat in order to pressure police into providing added security for their conference that the taxpayer will have to pay for (i.e. neatly keeping anti-Tory protestors at bay at no cost to them while simultaneously associating them with militant elements), then Cameron may as well start rolling tanks into Heathrow and be done with it.]








Posted in The War on Stupid, Tony 'King Blair | 10 Comments

Total Politics : junk mail from Iain Dale

To: Webmaster

From:
Jessica Freeman
jessica.freeman@totalpolitics.com

Message:
Dear Mr Ireland,

Each week Total Politics interviews a top political blogger. Would you
be available for a phone/email interview (it’s only about ten
minutes) sometime this week?

Kind Regards,

Jess Freeman

Sent from (ip address): 81.136.230.228
Date/Time: August 11, 2010 2:22 pm

Dear Jess,

I must politely decline on the grounds that your publisher, Iain Dale, knowingly allowed me to be smeared as a paedophile, and was refusing to cooperate with the relevant criminal investigation while simultaneously libelling Tom Watson (as a smear merchant, no less) when he further smeared me as a stalker in order to mask his embarrassment.

Had you read my blog in any detail, you would know that.

Had you merely scanned the front page, you would have noticed that I also recently described your executive editor Shane Greer as an “amateur propagandist and professional bullshit artist”.

But thanks for revealing how poorly researched these invitations are. Perhaps it will make other recipients think twice before pouncing on your sincere generous exclusive ordinary offer.

Tim Ireland

PS – Ask Iain Dale why he didn’t call Patrick Mercer as he agreed (and promised) to do. He tells some people he did and gives others an excuse for why he didn’t.








Posted in Tories! Tories! Tories! | 7 Comments

Battle of the Tims

I’m doing my first ‘Pecha Kucha’ style presentation at an event in Guildford this evening but was in two minds about showing off the current status of one of my long-term search results. Being second to Tim Berners-Lee is one thing, but I wasn’t sure if I liked being slightly less popular than Mel Gibson:

Tim Ireland and some other Tims

Happily, by breakfast this morning, it had all sorted itself out:

Tim Ireland and some lesser Tims

BORING FINE PRINT – This is a brand new result (I can’t recall overtaking Berners-Lee before) and Google runs multiple servers offering slightly different results at times, so your mileage may vary, especially if you are signed in to Google and have set some search preferences. These searches are from a UK perspective, and will appear only for UK-based users of Google. Currently I’m 37th in Google’s .com database. Search positioning should not be used as the sole indicator of the quality of your Tim(s).








Posted in Search Engine Optimisation, Updates | 4 Comments

Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed.

Hi folks.

Bit of an extraordinary post, this one. Apologies for bending your ear.

After a rotten 18+ months facing some quite extraordinary harassment from a range of Conservative-aligned dastards and assorted supporting fruit-loops, I face one of my greatest challenges in the coming months.

It is not a legal challenge or a sudden increase in bullying by anonymous cowards or anything like that; it is a deeply personal challenge, it is as serious as it gets, and it is going to eat a BIG chunk of my time as I work to care for those I love.

I wish I could tell you more, but I’m not at liberty to share the full details, and in the current circumstances I fear there are those who would take advantage of even scant details. (They’ve certainly stooped lower previous to this.)

So…

I will be offline for two weeks from tomorrow.

After that, I hope to continue blogging and working, but you may note that both my blog and my services have now been updated and streamlined.

I hope this will allow me to continue the mix of blogging and work that’s sustained me for the past decade (details of which are now finally available through a single, searchable database, BTW).

If you would like to help, there are two or three things you can do:

1. Check out my new series of articles on the subject of SEO (and the related seminar product) and bring on any link love as you see fit:

SEO Seminar: Understanding Google, Relevance and Optimisation

Relevance #1 – SEO: Search Engine Optimisation
Relevance #2 – Weblogs, Twitter & Social Media Marketing
Relevance #3 – Viral Marketing & Link Generation

2. Refer potentially interested parties to my new seminar/services through other means. Such as email, conversation or carrier pigeon.

3. Cut out the middle man and just send money (a ‘donate’ button has been added, top right, along with the rest of the gubbins).

I apologise for the poor timing, but there’s no getting around the way things are, and the way they will be.

Comments will remain open for today, and will then be suspended for two weeks.

Cheers all.

UPDATE – Comments may be on and off today, too. IntenseDebate is taking much longer than expected to process previous comments. Apologies if your comment is held over. You are in a very long queue behind a series of historical comments.








Posted in Search Engine Optimisation, Updates | 2 Comments