No response from Shane Greer yet.
But, thankfully, the creepy emails from a well-known right-wing blogger who shall remain nameless (for now) calling me a ‘nutter’ *and* threatening to somehow source my ex-directory number and call me at home have dried up.
The last time Paul Staines (aka ‘Guido Fawkes’) went charging around with threats of lawsuits, several bloggers took it upon themselves to take a closer look at his past.
Well, stuff me steadily if it’s not happening again:
Richard Bartholomew – The Libertarian Right and Southern African in the 1980s: Some Brief Notes
The Yorkshire Ranter – Mirrorball: Paul Staines and those “Liberals”
Oops.
Let’s play some more music while Paul has a little think about that…
Artists United Against Apartheid – Sun City
[Psst! Iain has finally fixed his comment permalinks! Hurray! And it only took the better part of a year for him to add a single letter to his design template.]
1. Iain Dale blogs about the bugging of Sadiq Khan when visiting a constituent in prison.
2. John Hirst, who has some experience and expertise relating to all sorts of laws and how they apply to prisoners, offers his input.
3. Hirst’s reward is to be taunted, maligned, and accused of benefit fraud.
4. And Iain Dale allows it. OK, so his new rules on comment moderation allow him a little leeway, but I’m seeing plenty here that “could be contrued [sic] as libellous” and – regardless – it’s a shitty way to treat a guest.
5. John Hirst has blogged about this latest Dale-hosted attack on him here, and I’ll be leaving a comment of support in 5, 4, 3, 2…
[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.]
Do you remember Shane Greer, who filled in for Iain Dale on his blog for a while?
Well, he’s decided to post this objective piece.
And just when I thought this afternoon was going to be a wash-out*.
(*I’ve not received any email from Staines or Blaney at all today. Not a whisper. How jolly it is of them to want to leave this hanging over the weekend.)
UPDATE (2 Feb) – Link to Shane Greer article corrected/updated. Shane Greer migrated to WordPress over the past day, and the location of this article changed as a result. This migration may also be the reason why Shane Greer has yet to publish my response under comments on his website.
UPDATE (2 Feb) – Yes, it was migration complications to blame. I missed whatever period the original attempts were live for on the old format. Mike Rouse explains here and the thread under Shane Greer’s article is now accepting comments.
OK, I’ve been making some calls to people like the Legal Complaints Service and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and it’s all terribly complicated, but here’s the situation in a nutshell:
If I wish to complain about a solicitor who, when no actual legal proceedings are taking place, harasses me for data he has no right to, or essentially compels me to hire a lawyer when he knows/thinks that I can’t easily afford one, then first I need to build a case by… hiring a lawyer.
Chewy, huh?
UPDATE – Sorry. Forgot again. Music…
I’m a victim, me:
Moving Pictures – What About Me?
UPDATE – Well said, Unity:
Ministry of Truth – Cry libel! And let slip the dogs of wingnuttery
When in contact with Paul Staines’ lawyer, I highlighted this entry on Staines’ own ‘Guido Fawkes’ website as proof of my claim that he’s an image thief (and that he publishes lies about me on his website):
http://www.order-order.com/2007/01/no-comment.html
Recently, Paul deleted that post from his website with no notice, no indication, and no explanation.
What a shame for Paul that it’s stored in the Web Archive, and he’ll have to block *all* archiving of his site to get rid of it.
:o)
UPDATE – Just as I post this, it magically appears again. Oh well.
UPDATE – I’ll happily and voluntarily withdraw the scrubbed content above. Blogger.com’s whole system was up-and-down and on-and-off a few days ago, and there’s no proof that Paul Staines’ finger so much as paused over the ‘delete’ button in this case. But he does steal images and bandwidth and publish vicious lies about me on his website without proof or apology.
And now, back to the music…
[Psst! Sorry about the earlier database glitch. Now fixed.]
If you are on the list below the fold, I would like to bring the following to your attention:
Recently, I wrote an article about Paul Staines (you know him better as ‘Guido Fawkes’) stealing images and bandwidth. Now I’m getting threatening emails from his lawyer, Donal Blaney (you can’t see those, but you can see my replies).
To put it bluntly, I suspect that I am being targeted not because of what I said, but because of who I am.
Blaney appears to be very closely aligned to Staines personally, professionally and politically. He also appears to be an odd choice of lawyer for a libel case (if indeed one is truly in the offing), as his specialty/background is tax law.
Via Donal Blaney, Paul Staines has been badgering me to reveal my home address or retain the services of a lawyer in an effort to bully me into silence without true recourse to law.
It’s The Alisher Usmanov Affair all over again…. and I’d appreciate your support. Again.
After all, if some jumped-up blogger with a lawyer for a mate came after you, I’d be in your corner and slugging it out without hesitation.
Thank you.
Tim Ireland
PS – I’ve been doing work in the background and have a statement to make on the current UK libel laws and where we stand against moneyed tosspots (i.e. pretty much alone). Please allow me to sort this timewasting dipstick first. Ta.
[———- fold ———-]
You might recall that, quite some time ago, Paul Staines introduced a silly bit of code to his HTML that ensured that all links to his site from Bloggerheads would redirect to his t-shirt shop (in most browsers).
At the time, I didn’t make any concerted attempt to bypass this, not least because it made him look stupid for as long as it was in effect (over 9 months now) and it would have led to a silly level of escalation. But TinyURL recently introduced a neat little gadget that allowed uses to choose a ‘preview’ version of their service.
Lately, because referring to specific areas of Staines’ website has been made necessary by his bullshit, I’ve been using this to direct my readers (and his lawyer) to evidence hosted on his pseudo-blog.
I didn’t think for a minute that Staines would go so far as to redirect any traffic from TinyURL, thereby rendering the many other links of this (very common) type to his website useless… but that’s what he’s just done:
And, you can clearly see by its placement in the head (of every single page on his website), that pissing me about and avoiding scrutiny is his top priority.
How very grown up and not at all desperate.
And now, some more music…
Tim Finn – Fraction Too Much Friction
Donal Blaney: Got in touch last night after I put it to him that he had not yet commenced proceedings, and informed me that he was awaiting instructions from the client. Read my reply (1 Feb, 8:40am) here. Can he say that he intends to proceed or that proceedings have already begun? Clearly, at this stage, he can’t.
Paul Staines (‘Guido Fawkes’): Still hasn’t mentioned this on his ‘Guido Fawkes’ weblog, and he’s normally quite up-front and bold about such things. I’m sure he’d love to bully me into submission without looking like a total hypocrite, but he can’t.
Iain Dale: Has launched a new web design that includes a new set of rules for his weblog (please remember that I have been banned from his website for complaining that he did not follow his old set of rules). His new rules state that – rather than deleting any anonymous abuse outright – he instead “reserves the right” not to allow anonymous abuse as and when he sees fit. I’m sure he would love to conduct ‘debates’ on his site without the aid of a bunch of anonymous thugs, but he can’t.
Phil Hendren (‘Dizzy’): Got in touch at 6:30am to try and start a fight with me. No doubt as a ‘chip in’ effort to further waste my time (he has past form of doing this and admitting to it). I’m sure he’d love to deny that, but he can’t.
CCHQ: Haven’t got back to me in a timely manner with satisfactory answers to any of these questions. Because they can’t.
In short, what you are looking at here is a shower of can’ts.
UPDATE – How silly of me. I forgot to include music:
Mental As Anything – Brain Brain
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