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May 13, 2007
Is Gordon Brown a spammer?
Anyone who knows me will know that I'm a paid-up member of the Labour Party, but not a fan of New Labour. Most will also know that while I have an intense dislike of Tony Blair, I would rather pull my teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers than support Gordon Brown. His coronation as Party Leader and Prime Minister will be a disaster for both Labour and the Country itself, his conduct and actions over the last 10 years showing just how ill-suited he is to any position of leadership.
Given the above, the last thing I would ever consider doing would be to sign up to any campaign led by, or on behalf of Brown. Which makes the receipt of the email below all the more perplexing.
How did he get my email address? I can only assume that his campaign is perhaps using the Labour Party's own address list, used for sending Party emails to members. I've sent an email to gordon@gordonbrownforbritain.com, asking just how they got hold of my email address and why they think they have the right to send me unsolicited email aka spam. I'll update this post as things progress.
Posted by Clive at 4:41 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
May 3, 2007
You'll Laugh, You'll Cry
Over at Comment is Free, you can witness the hypocritical outpouring from Iain Dale in support of World Press Freedom Day.
In fact Iain's post is breathtaking in its hypocrisy. Go to his home page and search for "Alan Johnston".
See, not a mention. Yet Iain is happy to boost his street cred by opening his post with a reference to Alan.
On a day when Alan Johnston is still held captive in Gaza, the British government is attempting to restrict freedom of information to journalists and when journalists are being persecuted in many countries around the world it may appear difficult to be positive about press freedom.
Throw in Iain's attitude to comment moderation, his recent blocking of deeplinking from this site and Bloggerheads and you have to wonder at the sheer gall of the man in writing such an article for CiF. But a quick trip to Iain's blog (note, following link will work until such time that Iain's vanity and ego cause him to block tinyurl) shows that the man has no shame. Which explains a lot of Iain's online conduct.
Posted by Clive at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Warning
Thanks to the utter childishness of Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, clicking on any link to his blog (5thnovember.blogspot.com or order-order.com) will take you to the NSFW page3.com. This is a result of Paul's inclusion of javascript into his site in order to block deep-linking.
Yes, I know the permalink is a fundamental aspect of blogging, but that just illustrates what sort of blogger Paul is.
If he ever matures sufficiently to function as an honest member of the community, then he may see the error of his ways and remove the script. Until then you'll just have to cut and paste any links into a seperate window/tab.
Posted by Clive at 11:29 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
What's the point
The professional politicians continue their revisionist approach to the web continues with a new website to be launched today. Newscounter.com appears at first glance to be a slick right-to-reply website, albeit an attempt to apply a commercial business model to an area that blogging already covers.
Newscounter is a new right to reply service for people and
organisations to respond to controversial press stories. This should
stimulate debate about public trust and the role of the media in society
The site allows you to:
* petition to call for a response to controversial press stories
* Read a response to a story
* petition on which side of the story you find more persuasive
Newscounter is a limited company, established by Matthew Cain
and Nigel Clarke, two PR professionals.
A quick glance at the Board Members and Staff makes for interesting reading:
Nigel Clarke, former aide to William Whitelaw.
Sir Stephen Sherbourne, former Political Secretary to Margaret Thatcher.
Matthew Taylor, Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to Tony Blair.
Matthew Cain, ex-IPPR and aide to a number of Labour ministers
Actually, I'll take back my original comment, they're not revisionist, but simply attempting to make a profit from an arena where Bloggers have traditionally challenged the established media. And given that most online media outlets now support comments, what's the point in Newscounter?
Clicking on the "become a customer" link reveals all.
Have you been misrepresented by the media?
Are you anticipating negative coverage?
Then newscounter can help.
Newscounter provides people like you the opportunity to
respond to media coverage in full and unedited to get
your side of the story across on a public forum.
Contact Newscounter to request details of our rates and charges. We also offer a limited free
service for those who can't afford to pay such as private individuals or small charities.
Basically, cross their palms with silver and they'll publish your rebuttal of any unpleasant news stories. Not an exercise in exposing the truth or informing the public, just another media outlet and no more (or less) trustworthy than the original source. In fact, given their republication of the original story, I wonder if charging for rebuttal time counts as a form of extortion?
Posted by Clive at 9:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack