I assume “guest” is himself the Guido/Dale-obsessed Tim Ireland?

Puts Sunder’s pompous and pious ramblings of yesterday in perspective, anyway.
Back to the real issues….phew!

But, erm, wasn’t it actually the ST and NOTW which published the emails?

“Back in 2007, Guido spent months attempting to convince his blog’s many readers that Gordon Brown had been photographed on a rocking horse wearing a nappy, and to utilise the power of search engine optimisation and Google to spread this ridiculous tale across the entire internet. It even made it onto Wikipedia, and when I tried to remove it, some patsy came along and reverted my edit.”

I love the idea of you running around trying to protect Brown’s “reputation”.
Sad and hilarious in equal measures.

There are legitimate criticisms one could make of Dale and guido but involving the obsessive Tim Ireland is not the way to go about it.

Heh. I’ve been accused of sock-puppetry by a sock-puppet. Always amuses.

Also funny to be called ‘obsessive’ by someone who is so (ahem) persistant in their sock-puppetry.

cjcjc, NOTW and ST would not have been able to publish the emails had Paul Staines not released them (for pleasure or profit). He also had the option of releasing a censored version and withholding the actual names from the smears.

Witness, for example, how he talks of the email(s) about him and Dale without actually showing them to anyone. (Assuming they exist, of course.)

How silly of me; I forgot to include an outright denial for paranoid hypocrites.

I am not ‘Guest’, and I am not a secret contributor to LC. I always use my main online identity (and my name as it happens) when contributing to LC. Unlike some people.

And those national newspapers had the same option.
Desperate stuff.

(Oh, and McBride had the option of not sending them in the first place.)

But not so desperate as running around changing poor ‘ickle Gordon’s Wiki entry.
That really is hilarious.

Is Anthony Barnett a “sock puppet” too.
He commented on the bloggers’ code thread:
Although I don’t at all share Paul Staines’s Murdoch style culture, or his apparent loathing for all politicians, the fact is that he has done a great public service in this case and this should be acknowledged.

Fair enough, as cj says, it kinda puts Sunder’s ethics thingy in perspective, but a nice video nonetheless.

Yeah, like I want the open sewer that Paul Staines boasts as the turd in his crown.

(rolls eyes)

cjcjc, I don’t think much of the newspapers’ conduct, either. And neither did Frances Osborne. McBride shared them with one person and talked of sharing them with everybody on the internets (I have already said that I regard this to be unacceptable)… but didn’t. Staines – who is a savvy media-watcher who says he hates all polticians – had to have known how newspapers would treat this… but released the smears intact anyway.

While not releasing the alleged smears about himself and Dale, not even on his own website.

Paul Staines has no business posing as a moral campaigner fighting a smear culture when he’s in the thick of it. As for the ‘public service’ you wish me to acknowledge, I’d be very careful if/when doing this, as it’s dangerous to give Staines the power that comes with the perceived role of moral campaigner.

Not that I expect you to address the central point raised in any given post.

Well his aim of pillorying the powerful is just a little more of a public service than your pillorying of him.

I am still laughing at your role as Lord Protector of Brown’s wiki reputation.

I don’t really care that much about Guido’s hypocrisy. It is the most common vice of humanity.

McBride shared them with one person

I keep reading this, and it doesn’t ring true. McBride’s opening line of the email was ‘Gents’. If he was writing them only to Draper, why the plural?

I am not sure if he is presenting himself as moral campaigner. Just pointing out the hypocrisy and dirty tricks going on in Downing Street. It would be quite weird to assume that any journalist who successfully did that was trying to be a “moral campaigner”. Quite the opposite, in fact. He doesn’t seem to be standing for office. Merely doing what any hack would be doing if the mainstream media weren’t quite so integrated into the government’s spin.

You don’t see people attacking the messenger in quite this way when it is an ordinary journalist that does this. Why when its a blogger?

cjcjc, we have discussed this point before; if you don’t care enough to even discuss the central issue, then why are you here?

I am still laughing at your role as Lord Protector of Brown’s wiki reputation.”

I am still laughing at your failure to read and understand what you are commenting on. I have not touched Gordon Brown’s Wikipedia entry. But I did take steps to protect Paul Staines from malicious edits recently.

TimJ: Even if your suspicions are justified and there were other actual/intended recipients, the point stands that these rumours/smears were not published by McBride/Draper, yes? McBride/Draper discussed publication/development of these rumours, while Staines released them for publication.

Nick: Paul Staines is pointing out the hypocrisy by being a hypocrite? He described what McBride proposed putting out as “obscene and over the line of what is allowable in politics”, but he cannot actually believe this if he happily steps way over that same line himself.

You do not have to be an elected official and/or paid for by the taxpayer to be a political player. Paul is in the game, and he’s a dirty fighter… oh, and a bit of a cheat, too.

Yes, but McBride wrote them, and intended them to be published as based in fact. Staines (or rather the press) published them while stating explicitly that they were unfounded and untrue. There’s a qualitative difference there.

There’s more to it than that, but to save time I’ll accept that a qualitative difference exists if you accept that s**t sticks, and Staines knows it.

I think that’s an interesting question in this case. Surely there’s an argument that by publishing these smears, and highlighting both their source and the fact that they were lies, Staines has actually made it less likely that political smear stories will stick? The next time a personal attack is run in the papers won’t everyone just think ‘they’re at it again’?

Who said everyone on LC signed that statement cjcjc? Being a bit disingenuous aren’t you?

And I find it amusing that none you could actually bring yourself to condemn Paul Staines for his smearing, instead trying to deflect the subject. What’s that called? Whataboutery isn’t it? And if someone did that with Damian mcbride you would scream with indignation about how we were making apologies.

So let’s go back to the main question shall we? It’s obvious Paul Staines is trying to smear someone. What do you say about that? Calling someone a ‘paedo’ is ok as long as the person doing it isn’t part of the Brown give eh?

It’s a tangent, but I’ll take the time to reject it entirely.

Not every smear is an obvious one, and it’s ridiculous to claim that readers/viewers will be able to even recognise a smear in progress.

In the middle of ‘smeargate’, Iain Dale claimed something that was totally untrue (based on the claim of a single source) and took his sweet time bringing his readers up to speed on the error he’d made on his website and seen into print. Iain may claim that he was not trying to smear someone with his claim (that he now claims was a misunderstanding of sorts), but the point stands that his published claim went unchallenged, and many people went on thinking the claim stood even after it was quietly withdrawn. The general audience hasn’t learned a thing.

(Incidentally, Iain Dale refuses to even discuss the possibility of him withdrawing false claims he has published about me on his website. Iain cannot back any of these claims with evidence, but he still refuses to even discuss their removal.)

But, to drag you back to the point TimJ, I’ll accept that a qualitative difference exists if you accept that s**t sticks, and Staines knows it…. and I will also ask you what you think Paul Staines was doing when airing those paedo ‘jokes’ about an MP.

#16

> Staines has actually made it less likely that political smear stories will stick

Well, he’s made it less likely that they’ll stick to Tories, while effectively ensuring *their* little online team retain carte blanche to carry on as usual. It’s very clever. But it isn’t “journalism” or a “public service”. It’s just another sordid episode in the bog-standard Westminster Village game.

What I don’t get is why there’s so much interest in it. Smear and counter-smear is what these people do, isn’t it? That’s why I can’t imagine anything more soul-destroying than reading Draper, Staines, Dale or most of what passes for Westminster “journalism”. So I don’t. It’s all so unimaginative.

It wasn’t *so* long ago that political blogs weren’t generally party-political blogs. And when the regular media didn’t get it, nor were interested in it. As soon as those 2 beasts arrived, the well was quickly poisoned. Ho hum.

I am just not sure Guido is a Tory blogger. Dale is, which is why I don’t read him.

“Nick: Paul Staines is pointing out the hypocrisy by being a hypocrite? He described what McBride proposed putting out as “obscene and over the line of what is allowable in politics”, but he cannot actually believe this if he happily steps way over that same line himself.

You do not have to be an elected official and/or paid for by the taxpayer to be a political player. Paul is in the game, and he’s a dirty fighter… oh, and a bit of a cheat, too.”

I am not sure Guido is really in politics, but anti-politics. He has no moral or party position to uphold. Perhaps we just see these things too differently.

I rather thought I was addressing the point – that sh1t often doesn’t stick if the source is discredited. Do people think that David Cameron had ‘an embarrassing disease’? I doubt it. The widespread coverage of these smears has had the effect of preventing any of them from gaining traction.

Given all the newspaper coverage on the history of Gordon Brown’s atack unit there is at least a chance that the next time whoever replaces McBride rings them up with a story that so-and-so is a drunk/useless/pushy the story will be that ‘the disquiet in Labour about smear tactics deepened yesterday when…’

And I’m not defending Paul Staines tout court. The gays=paedos thing was deeply unpleasant, all the more so for being an attitude that still lingers in the public consciousness. He was (presumably) trying to be funny, in the same way that Simon Hoggart once said that he wouldn’t trust Tony Blair near a girl’s playing field. It was still unpleasant.

But – to Donald S – it is important that Paul Staines isn’t a member of the Government, isn’t paid by the taxpayer, doesn’t have high-level briefings with David Cameron and doesn’t report directly to a shadow cabinet minister. If you don’t see the difference between an individual smearing for fun and profit, and a civil servant doing so at the behest (implied or explicit) of the Government/ruling party you really are wearing blinkers.

I am still laughing at your failure to read and understand what you are commenting on. I have not touched Gordon Brown’s Wikipedia entry. But I did take steps to protect Paul Staines from malicious edits recently.

Well, how else is one meant to read this, from your blog, if not that you were leaping to poor Gordon’s defence:

“Back in 2007, Guido spent months attempting to convince his blog’s many readers that Gordon Brown had been photographed on a rocking horse wearing a nappy, and to utilise the power of search engine optimisation and Google to spread this ridiculous tale across the entire internet. It even made it onto Wikipedia, and when I tried to remove it, some patsy came along and reverted my edit.”

You do not have to be an elected official and/or paid for by the taxpayer to be a political player.

Indeed not. But some people have real power – Brown, Balls, McBride – others are gadflies.

You attack the gadflies if you like.

It’s a tangent, but I’ll take the time to reject it entirely.

“Enitre rejections” generally speak for themselves.
If you have to advertise it in advance it is probably neither a rejection – though perhaps you meant to say refutation – nor entire.

“I am not sure Guido is really in politics, but anti-politics.”

Oh do come on, that’s just newspeak.

What he’s doing is politics, pure and simple – anyone who’s ‘anti politics’ would be off weaving baskets on a remote island or something, not hanging round with Westminster types.

“I rather thought I was addressing the point – that sh1t often doesn’t stick if the source is discredited.”

Which brings us back to Paul Staines having no business parading himself about the media as if he’s personally outraged by smears and stands firm against the practice in general.

Of course he doesn’t, but then in most of the interviews I’ve seen him give, he comes across as more gleeful that he has exposed McBride rather than sanctimonious about it. On his blog he’s quite explicit about it being personal revenge.

The other sewer which Guido has exposed is the corruption of the lobby journalists.

Matthew Taylor was quite humorous on this:

I have had a few ‘phone calls from Sunday journalists about the McBride affair. ‘Can you tell us more about his operation?’ they say. Which, when you think about it, is a bit like someone saying:

‘me and my mates have for years been having a very intimate relationship with someone you might vaguely know – what was it like?’.

Er…you could start by asking each other

Newspapers writing indignant exposes about the briefing operation of someone upon whom they relied for years for stories! You couldn’t make it up.

I could have a stab at listing the journalists who most relied on Damian. But then I recall the words of someone I used to know who ran a kind of McBride-lite operation; ‘Matthew’ he said ‘rule number one, never ever try to take on the media’

http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/politics/mcbride-how-was-it-for-you-darling/

cjcjc: How can you not recognise a blockquote, even when the link to the origin of a quote is directly above it, as it is in my post? There’s a link to the same post/origin in this LC post, and you still missed it.

You’ve just made a bloody fool of yourself. Twice. Is this why you hide behind a jumble of letters?

To repeat: I have not touched Gordon Brown’s Wikipedia entry. But I did take steps to protect Paul Staines from malicious edits recently. Anyway, you were saying something about ‘gadflies’…?

Look it’s a matter of taste.

You can either listen to the official agenda churned out by the MSM as they copy and paste Government (and opposition) themes and pronouncements or you can come on the blogosphere and listen to somebody occasionally writing something that may approximate to truth.

OK, you know that small nugget of truth will undoubtedly be surrounded by smears, lies and innuendo. But what’s the alternative?

It is amusing that yesterdays great declaration of a new age of blogging principles collapsed within 24 hours.

TimJ: So we’re agreed. Paul Staines has no business parading himself about the media as if he’s personally outraged by smears and stands firm against the practice in general. Which is what he has done on the BBC, as revealed in the featured audio.

cjcjc said:

“The other sewer which Guido has exposed is the corruption of the lobby journalists.”

That would be the same ‘Guido’ that once refused to run a story on the basis that a source was involved… and then secretly dished the dirt on that source.

Tim Ireland – you are my hero.
May your anti-Guido crusade live long and prosper.

You’ve just made a bloody fool of yourself. Twice. Is this why you hide behind a jumble of letters?

Thank goodness I don’t have my own blog then, else I might make an even greater fool of myself by failing correctly to italicise.
Or by running obsessive crusades against other bloggers.

While I appreciate the biblical morality of ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ I don’t see this as being an applicable code for journalism. I did say that I agree that Paul Staines is no great moral arbiter, but I’m afraid I just don’t see it as particularly relevant to his exposure of the McBride scandal.

When the story broke that Charles Kennedy was an alcoholic, did matter that (statistically certain) some of the journalists writing about it were too?

Tim J – indeed.

If Ireland’s argument is that only the pure in heart are entitled to expose the wrongdoing of the powerful, well, he’s even madder than he appears.

#19 Nick

> I am not sure Guido is really in politics, but anti-politics.

They’re all anti-politics, destructively so, otherwise they wouldn’t do what they do. And that’s why I don’t read them.

#20 TimJ

> it is important that Paul Staines isn’t a member of the Government, isn’t paid by the taxpayer etc. etc.

Not to me. Are you seriously saying that the *most important* bit of this whole episode is that someone took 5 mins. of their employer’s time to send this sort of stuff? It’s one big, leaking sewer, poisoning everyone that gets close, and all those that shit in it are to blame. I don’t care what colour rosette they’re wearing this week.

cjcjc: Blockquotes aren’t always/universally italicised, and they never are on my site. This allows me to present italics and bold text etc. as per the original where applicable/suitable. And you still made an arse of yourself, and we only have your word that you don’t have a website of your very own.

(Meanwhile, from behind your jumble of letters you attack my reputation like a coward. Nice little game you’ve got for yourself there.)

TimJ and cjcjc: In at least one key interview, Paul Staines presents himself as a man who regards smears to be unacceptable, when this clearly isn’t the case. To present that observation/challenge as if it were an impossible demand for someone to be whiter than white is dishonest to say the least.

Tim J: I don’t expect any blogger to be right all the time or to be a paragon of virtue; I do expect them to hold their hands up when they have been wrong or behaved badly. Staines has not apologised for the gays = peado smear podcast, but still has the gall to damn Draper/McBride over similar conduct. This is the crux of the issue and why Paul staines is a hypocrite.

“And you still made an arse of yourself, and we only have your word that you don’t have a website of your very own.”

Hehe, so you expect cj to prove the negative claim that he doesn’t have a website of his own and if he can’t, he is a sock puppet (even though he posts on here plenty and has done for years). Is this in some bloggers guidelines somewhere drawn up by a committee?

No, I don’t expect that. Nor do I have to prove that cjcjc has a website to fairly describe the cjcjc character as a sock-puppet. Using it, the person behind cjcjc attacks the reputations of others with no risk to his own.

There’s some risk to the character, of course, which is why the person behind cjcjc is doing a merry little dance to distract us from their blockquote howler.

Tim I – I have said nothing about your “reputation” other than to report my own impression: that you are more than a little obsessed with Staines and Dale.

That is something that even you would struggle to “reject entirely”.

Now Staines is certainly a hypocrite; I have yet to meet someone who isn’t.
On balance though – indeed by a large margin – he is (as Anthony Barnett says) a useful hypocrite.

Yes Paul Staines is a hypocrite. So are most of us to some extent. Does that have much of a bearing on the McBride story? Not really. The story is the story, not the messenger.

I have a cricket match coming up on May 5. I haven’t even gone to a proper net session before it, let alone been in strict fitness training. I’d still be entitled to complain (even to be appalled and sanctimonious) if it turned out that Andrew Strauss had behaved the same way. If I was the one that discovered this shocking state of affairs I’d be entitled to appear on TV saying how shocked and appalled I was, even if I was wheezing away and eating a pasty as I did so.

A “blockquote howler” – well go ahead and shoot me.
And you have corrected it.
Forgive me if I didn’t realise the seriousness of my offence.

I am now laughing at the person you quoted – and at you still for quoting him with approval – who sees himself as Lord Protector of Gordon’s wiki reputation.
He is far more worthy of our scorn – poor sap whoever he is – than Guido.

Tim J: Staines in his condemnation of McBride/Draper over smearing is lying to the non-blogging british public.

On that note Tim, all the best in the forthcoming cricket season.

What exactly is he lying about?

cjcjc: You have taken some extraodinary dance steps to dismiss my concerns while describing the action(s) I take about them as the work of an obsessive. Clearly you don’t know, care or understand what it is that I’m concerned about, so why not say that instead? Rhetorical question.

TimJ: Paul Staines is using this story to position himself as a moral cursader. Ditto Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries. You’re not worred about the power they gain by gaining people’s trust in this dishonest way and what they might do with it?

No – I don’t care – or very much.
Whatever Guido’s crimes might be, they are trivial – utterly trivial – relative to Brown,Balls,McBride,Campbell and so on.

You’re not worred about the power they gain by gaining people’s trust in this dishonest way and what they might do with it?

hahahaha

As opposed to the honest way in which the MSM and politicians behave.
Clearly far more important to attack a blogger of whom -still – very few people have even heard.
Yes, a target worthy of your forensic skills.

Tim – I think, if anything, this story showed definitively that Iain isn’t the great seer of English political blogging – he wasn’t in on it. Nadine Dorries is never going to accumulate power of any description, beyond the rather anodyne power bestowed on backbench ‘characters’. Did we need to worry about Dennis Skinner?

So it’s back to Paul Staines, who doesn’t even try to maintain any semblance of ‘moral crusade’ on his blog, nor in his spectator piece – he was bragging about having turned over McBride, sending him text messages from Conan the Barbarian. The thing is, that the implications of this story were disgusting, whoever had revealed them.

As to the future, I agree with whoever it was that predicted that he’s going to be as much of a nightmare to the Tories as he has been to Labour. People are arguing that he’s anti-politics, or nihilist or libertarian. I can’t speak as to his inner motivations, but he looks just like an old-fashioned 18th century pamphleteer. Where there’s filth and gossip he’ll report it gleefully. Where there isn’t, he’ll imply that there is, but that he can’t tell us about it.

Sorry, cjcjc, I’d want to know more about you before trusting in your apparent belief in my skills over my judgement.

PS – I play at a Downing Street level when I think I can make a difference. Ditto for a neighbourhood/media level. Even fewer people have heard of Glen Jenvey, for example. Was I wrong to ‘attack’ him? No. Should I instead be chasing the people he calls extremists and/or any genuine extremists? Well it sure sounds noble, but I can’t see it being a good use of my time.

TimJ: I’m not talking about what Staines is doing in or out of charaater on his site at the present time, I am talking about the false face he presented to the media during smeargate… i.e. I am talking about the audio featured in this post.

Iain DaleDuring the course of yesterday evening, I received more than 40 – yes, 40 – phonecalls on my mobile phone, as well as emails and a bombarding of this blog from a single person. Various threats were made in those phonecalls. I just received another one threatening to launch a war in the comments of this blog – and worse.

I don’t know you Tim, but Ian Dale alleges the above behaviour?

I have to say, having looked at the references to Dale and Staines on your blog, that obsessed would seem to be the appropriate word.

‘pagar’:

Iain Dale alleges a lot of things. Oddly, he refuses to discuss details when I am present and able to point out where he may not be telling the entire truth. I’m prepared to discuss it (only to a limited extent here, obv., as it’s off-topic) and have what I claim queried and challenged, but Iain is not. That is where the greatest difficulty lies, and you would know that if you were paying attention.

(Psst! If you do look into it, ask Iain about his withholding information about his actions that I needed for a police statement, as that’s a good a place to start as any, and it led to many calls and ‘threats’ that I would have to include his name and contact details in the statement if I couldn’t simply include what he claims happened when he called Mercer’s staff instead of Mercer as I requested .)

Smeargate is an issue right now, so it features in many recent posts on my site. Just as it does on the websites of Iain Dale and Paul Staines.

You’ll have me ‘obsessing’ about G20 violence and badge numbers next. No need for you to call me ‘obsessive’ over Glen Jenvey, though… he’s already done that for you. In fact, I get it a lot from people who would rather than I dropped something naughty they’v done that they’d rather not discuss.

I wonder, can you tell the difference in importance between G20 policing on the one hand, and Guido’s “naughtiness” / Glen Jenvey, whoever he may be, on the other?

cjcjc: The police and Glen Jenvey and Paul Staines have all claimed/published something untrue while claiming to be acting in the public interest. In this specific example, we have Paul Staines doing so *by* giving a false impression that he did this mainly out of concern for the public and/or politics:

“Obscene and over line with what’s allowable in politics” is what he described McBride’s planned smears as, when he knows he has said, shared and published worse himself.

As to importance, you carry on about what happened in Downing Street, but you completely fail to recognise the only aspect of this that warrants a fair comparison to Watergate: this reached Downing Street because Draper and McBride were considering the creation of their own version of what Staines does. And in the same breath you claim Staines lacks sufficient influence to warrant scrutiny/criticism.

(And, yes, Paul Staines *is* in the business of airing rumours, making claims that he knows not to be true and/or making claims that he knows he cannot back with evidence.)

I see.
The Downing Street machine and Guido Fawkes are equivalent.

No, you don’t see. The lies and tactics Paul Staines (that I have previously expressed concern about) have had an impact on Derek Draper (a man whom I have previously expressed concern about) to the extent that he wishes to copy Staines (an issue that I have previously expressed concern about). Draper then spreads this to Downing Street (a place of administration that I have repeatedly expressed concern about) .

So Guido invented lies, smears and spin. He was the “first” cause. The emergence and popularity of his site had little to do with the Government’s behaviour over the years before. Fascinating…

Why are so many people leap-frogging over one another to Staines’ defence?

Tim, I think you might need to refresh your memory with Tom Bower’s book about Brown. Look especially at those chapters regarding Charlie Whelan. The idea that Guido infected Draper, who then contaminated Downing Street is bizarre.

Draper spreads this to Downing Street?
Are you mad?
(Well we may be in process of establishing that…)

He was doing what he always has – his masters’ bidding.
Brown, Balls, Watson, McBride need no lessons in smearing. They are the masters.
Blogging was just one avenue which they had not yet gone down.

While totally accepting that Draper and others brought their own issues to the table:

Yes, smears have been around in politics forever. Since before Catherine the Great didn’t actually have it off with a horse. Staines claims to be doing something new when it is in fact very old, and even his (pfft!) ’2.0′ version is copied off someone else (Drudge). McBride/Draper did what they did because – and they even said this themselves – they were considering copying Staines and matching what they saw like for like.

They harvested (and I will accept in some places dicsussed the development of) an existing set of rumours doing the rounds.

(That these rumours have reached one journalist or another is now used as evidence of McBride/Draper being the original authors of many/all of these rumours, but moving on…)

These rumours exist because – as has been established – stuff like this goes on and always has. Just never ever ever ever in the Conservative party according to Nadine Dorries who describes them as ‘unknown’ in her world.

But they only got into the ‘smeargate’ email(s) and were only proposed for inclusion on an anonymous website because Draper wanted to copy Paul Staines.

How much bitterness lies in that “pfff!”.

Well we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Smeargate reveals, in its triviality, its meanness, its utter cynicism, the essence of new labour; which is precisely why It was the very straw which broke Alice Mahon’s back.

Bitter? No. Bitterly disappointed that it’s turned out this way? Yes.

Like most newspapers nowadays, Staines gives the impression that he is accountable under/via comments when he is not, but I can understand if you’re reduced to picking at any thread by this stage.

I love that you’re willing to agree to disagree when I’ve just used your own argument to show where you agree with me. Speaking of which:

“Blogging was just one avenue which they had not yet gone down.”

Until Draper tried to copy Staines.

This is all way off campus now, but I’m curious – Tim why are you so certain that this was about Draper ‘wanting to copy Staines’? McBride wrote the emails, after all, and Draper rather crawlingly replied to them.

Doesn’t it look more like McBride (officially or unofficially as you choose) wanted the anonymous blog and used Draper as the best combination of slavish loyalty and blogging knowledge (I know, but who else was there?)

Blogging, after all, is just a new technology way of doing something very old. McBride/Balls/Campbell/ and so on had mastered the arts of the abusive and inaccurate text message and email. Surely the abusive and inaccurate blog wasn’t such a stretch?

What a brilliant performance in whataboutery cjcjc. Youre doing a great job as staines’ lackey. Anyone who points out that he is being hypocritical should just stop saying it and take everything he says at face value. Because Brown is worse – so smearing is ok. As long as Paul staines is doing it.

Oh bollocks.

The whole “hypocrite” charge – which I have said is true – is itself a giant exercise in “whataboutery”.

I refer you to Anthony Barnett’s comment which reflects my view.

I would rather it was an innocent choirboy helping reveal the utter cynicism and ugliness of Brown and co., but I’ll take Guido.

It’s more than simple hypocrisy; there’s risk there.

Staines isn’t a poacher turned gamekeeper… he’s a poacher with a shiny new gamekeeper badge.

TimJ, it wouldn’t matter if it was McBride’s idea to copy Staines, the idea was to copy Straines.

So what?

Any other mildly naughty people you want to get rid of just in case some *far nastier* people might want to copy some aspect of what they do?

Thank goodness Sheriff Ireland is here to defend us from, erm, those who attack the powerful.

I’d still like someone to explain why a person who’s ‘anti-politics’ is involved in politics, rather than working in The Productive Sector, as they’re apt to call it (they’re also apt to trot out phrases like “Those that can, do, those that can’t…”)

(Goodness Sunny is right – I am coming across as Guido’s champion.)

Tim Ireland is right that he is of course involved in politics (libertarian in his case – that may count as “anti” I don’t know), but I believe he also claims (no doubt Tim Ireland has spent days looking into this globally important question too) that his site makes him a living via the adverts.

Heh. Right-wing bloggers have just appointed the town drunk sherriff, and cjcjc is making out like I’m wearing a tin badge for daring raise the issue. That, and publishing false claims about people in order to undermine them politically is “mildly naughty”… until one of THEM does it.

Fortunately Brown and co. will soon be toast.

I have no doubt that Guido will pillory the new boy-king after his coronation (we’ll see) – the eeevil “right-wing bloggers” might not like it quite so much then. Tough.

“I have no doubt…”

Why?

cjcjc: Paul has already announced that he’ll be retiring after the next election, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

Shame if so…though you’re wasting your time then aren’t you!

cjcjc: I would be if this were just about Paul Staines as he makes out (or just about Iain Dale as he makes out, or just about Derek Draper as he makes out).

Well then, I look forward to more exposes of these important people.

Good luck.

Again, I refer you to another ‘mildy naughty’ person; Glen Jenvey.

Glen’s doing the whole free market thing, too. He’s telling a tabloid audience what they want to hear, selling some stories to newspaper that are often false if not entirely fabricated, faking a few online identities along the way, exposing ‘evil doers’ by fair means and foul…. just like Paul Staines does in most respects.

But he’s a nobody, so I should just leave him to it… is that what you’re saying?

Cjcjc – you say you’ll take guido to bring down Brown. That’s because you just hate Brown. My worry is, and this may also be true for Tim, is that Brown is partly the product of a Westminster culture that is obsessed with itself. He undoubtedly fed it and McBride is a nasty piece of work, and the less said about Draper the better. But getting rid of Brown won’t give you a great new world because Guido is part of the problem – he thrives on smear and gossip and he is obsessed by Westminster. The more popular he gets, the more power you give a person who does the things you claim to hate.

It’s nice to be anti-establishment. But be careful what you wish for.

Do as you please.

Have you had any impact at all?

Sunny – that’s a subtle argument which I can appreciate.
But I am prepared to take the risk.

The alternative is the cosy “lobby” cabal which has proved so ineffective, on everything from Iraq to McBride.
Perhaps there is a middle ground; it would be nice to think so but I haven’t spotted it so far.
And I don’t see how Tim Ireland’s antics do anything to get us there.
I’m probably just being stupid.

As for Brown, he is toast anyway.
I just want his fall to be as humiliating as possible.

“Glen’s doing the whole free market thing, too. He’s telling a tabloid audience what they want to hear, selling some stories to newspaper that are often false if not entirely fabricated, faking a few online identities along the way, exposing ‘evil doers’ by fair means and foul…. just like Paul Staines does in most respects.

But he’s a nobody, so I should just leave him to it… is that what you’re saying?”

Actually, what you did with Glen was very good. And no matter how weird you sound on this thread, no one can take that success away from you. The difference is that Glen made a whole lot of stuff up, and you caught him out on it. Well done. Guido caught a bunch of No 10 smear operators out. Well done to him. Except in response you dredge up all the other stuff he has done and who he is to try and diminish that particular success. That is the whatabouttery.

It would be like me saying that your success with Glen is less so because you also have a strange and possessive demenour towards the blogosphere online. Which doesn’t make sense. No matter what you do generally, what you did with Glen was good. Can’t you say that about Guido too?s to try and diminish that particular success. That is the whatabouttery.

It would be like me saying that your success with Glen is less so because you also have a strange and possessive attitude towards the blogosphere. Which doesn’t make sense. No matter how you behave generally, what you did with Glen was good. Can’t you say that about Guido too?

sorry, that response got a bit mangled.

Good point nick – though I think my view is that both are driven by different intentions. I don’t think Tim is perpetuating the system he claims to be destroying. Guido on the other hand is trying to set himself up as re exact opposite of what his supporters think he is about.

Nick:

1. “in response you dredge up all the other stuff he has done and who he is”…? All the other stuff? As in a whole bunch of stuff that’s unrelated? Where did I do that?

2. Paul Staines makes stuff up and peddles falsehoods and uses multiple identities, too. It doesn’t matter if he was right about some of the things he claims this once; one still has to be wary of anything he might claim, right down to the way he words it. Witness Iain Dale going to the Mail on Sunday with a false claim of someone being CCed on the smeargate emails as a relevant example of where this might go wrong (which one can do while recognising that Dale has yet to confirm that Staines was his single source on that claim)

3. So your message to those who believe that Paul Staines is in the business of fighting smears and not creating/publishing them is… nothing, you don’t think it’s worth bringing them up to speed? Just checking.

4. And your message to anyone who might be concerned enough to mention it is that they might be a bit mental? Again, just checking.

5. Did you catch the part(s) where I had Glen Jenvey bang to rights and he called me an obsessive mental case? That happens to me a lot, and it’s not because I’m a mental case, and I know that because I have a ‘not mental’ stamp on my forehead to prove it.

“4. And your message to anyone who might be concerned enough to mention it is that they might be a bit mental? Again, just checking.”

No, you sound mental to me for entirely independent reasons.

Mere obsession, which is another apparent trait of yours, is probably an advantage in blogging. As the guy who does the Bad Science science argued at the recent Convention on Liberty. It means collectively, blogs can pick up a lot more details that would previously have gone unnoticed.

But besides your digging, wouldn’t it be nice just to have a quick breath to say something along the lines of what Guy said, that McBride had it coming and it was well played by Guido. I know everyone here thinks he is some sort of privateer for the Tory party, but I think he might be a genuine anarchist. A useful one because his skill is directed at people who have or are seeking power over us.

“Also funny to be called ‘obsessive’ by someone who is so (ahem) persistant in their sock-puppetry.”

You are calling me a sock puppet? I’ve been posting here for months you tit. Ask the moderators who will confirm my IP doesn’t come from the same location as Guido or Dale.

That comment was directed at cjcjc, ‘Richard’. Look at the timestamps and it should be obvious that I was typing as you were posting, even if you can’t be bothered to read what you’re commenting on. Calm down.

(So your position/claim is that your use of the name ‘Richard’ on LC is your only online presence, yes? And it’s wrong for me to suggest that you have other identities that you use in other social/political forums and that nothing links them together, not even a unique name? Keeping in mind that the name ‘Richard’ alone don’t mean much when there are so many Richards in the world.)

Nick, I’ll happily debate the point with you, but not when you’re being an arsehole about it and persistently waving the mental/obsessive tag around.

Well you started it, and one comment is hardly persistent.

I just said you sounded weird and that you had a “strange and possessive demenour towards the blogosphere online”. I’m sorry I took you up on the mental comment though. I try not to use the term with someone I am merely disagreeing with, even in jest.

“Well you started it, and one comment is hardly persistent.”

If you’re talking of talk of sock-puppetry, I think you’ll find that it was cjcjc who started it.

If you’re talking about chucking the mental tag about, I haven’t chucked it about for starters, and I’ll happily clarify my comment. I referred to cjcjc’s use of the word ‘obsessive’ to refer to my often persistent pursuit of Dale or Staines, when he is far more persistent here than I’ve ever been at either site. He is in no position to declare that my (lesser) persistence is obsession, and I can say that without implying anything about his mental state *plus*, regardless of all that… I think you’ll find that it was cjcjc who started it.

And you didn’t simply take me up on the mental comment; accidental implication or not, you took the opportunity to breeze right over simple to-the-point things like my asking where exactly I “dredge[d] up all the other stuff he has done and who he is”.

And now it looks like you’re accusing me of starting things I didn’t start.

This makes me less inclined to trust you or waste valuable time on you.

Well ok, I thought when you said

“Nick, I’ll happily debate the point with you, but not when you’re being an arsehole about it and persistently waving the mental/obsessive tag around.”

you were referring to me, not the other various commentators (I can assure we are not the same person).

When I used the word dredge, I was referring to your whattaboutery, which can be done by any commentator. No need for obsession to be intimated. But I guess intention isn’t everything in interpretation. Perhaps we are just speaking a slightly different language or reading the comments in a slightly different context.

“Tim Ireland” means nothing to anyone – even if it is your real name – by the way “Tim”.
If you were eg David Beckham, it would be different.

99.999% of people who come across you online only know you as your online identity, ie “that interesting/investigative/obsessive Bloggerheads bloke”, don’t they?
They have no idea who you are beyond your online activity; nor I would guess do they care.

I could tell you my real name, but it would mean nothing to you, or to anyone else.
(Plus I might be slightly worried about getting the Dale treatment!)
Though I can tell you there are hundreds of me in the London phone book.

I’m not even bothered about multiple identities – so what? – though I don’t go in for them myself.

“(Plus I might be slightly worried about getting the Dale treatment!)”

Niiiiiiice.

cjcjc, you attack the reputations of others while risking nothing (and I’m not talking about ‘the Dale treatment’). When I use my nickname ‘Manic’, it’s with a profile that links to my site. Where possible I will also/instead use the account name ‘bloggerheads’, which is reliably unique and identifies me by my site. My name is not only relatively unique, my site is the top search result for it in most if not all search engines… and even then I include a link or reference to my site where possible, including here. That site makes it totally clear who I am, what I’m about politically and what I do for a living.

Some people care enough about what I say to use that transparency to their advantage and spread false claims about me. Others will be slightly more subtle than falsely claiming that I’m a convicted paedophile and instead repeatedly attach tags like ‘obsessive’ to my name. Typically, they will be anonymous or using an alternative identity when they do so.

You either have an alternative identity or two or you spend all your time here as ‘cjcjc’ throwing negative noise about (but never standing for anything on your own platform) and calling others ‘obsessive’ on your limited understand of their own pursuit(s). You admit here you haven’t even read my website enough to see and recognise that reliable indentifying information is published on it on a regular basis.

“I’m not even bothered about multiple identities – so what?”

But I can see that even trying to discuss that with you is a waste of time.

And while you grudgingly accept the word ‘hypocrite’, you and others will not care/recognise that Paul Staines has been hiding behind a pseudonym for years while attacking others, *and* now that he’s using his name, he is lying to readers/viewers about his position on smears and how he conducts himself. Paul Staines does not regard what McBride/Draper suggested doing to be “obscene and what is unacceptable in politics” because he does worse on a regular basis himself.

He is not a man to be trusted clean up the smear culture, and/as he knowingly tells/publishes lies and spreads falsehoods on his website.

To paraphrase an earlier comment of mine, I come not to bury Paul Staines, but to knock that silly-looking white hat off his head.

“That comment was directed at cjcjc, ‘Richard’.”

OK, apologies.

“To paraphrase an earlier comment of mine, I come not to bury Paul Staines, but to knock that silly-looking white hat off his head.”

Well no one else saw him wearing it. If the hat’s on the basis of a couple of interviews with the MSM, then one visit to his website would have removed all illusion.

Nick @82: “A useful one because his [ed: Staines's] skill is directed at people who have or are seeking power over us.”

Paul Staines’s acts are often those of an anarchist or possibly a political nihilist. That is not a reason for assuming that he always acts against those in power. His political career in the 1980s was one where he was happy to work with authoritarians when it suited his argument. Staines validly noted human rights abuses by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua but remains strangely silent on the behaviour of the contras. During his time with David Hart’s Committee for a Free Britain he worked alongside ex spooks.

Staines did a good thing when exposing Damian McBride, but that does not make him a good thing overall.

Last month, Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling made an interesting point about how you evaluate the quality of a blog. The context was the Orwell prize for blogging when nominees were judged on the basis of ten posts: “Over a 12 month period any serious blogger will make over 200 posts. 10 is less than 5% of their output. The only people who think you can judge something on the basis of a small and biased sample are statistically illiterate idiots.”

Staines undoubtedly got a scoop with the McBride emails, but that has to be put in context against the blogs typical content of nastiness.