Thursday, 21 June 2007
L'envoi
With the imminent departure of Tony Blair and the coronation of Gordon Brown, the fault lines in British political blogging will need to be redrawn. Just as a departing President may issue pardons, so this site is drawing inspiration from Blair's leaving office and issuing a pardon to Iain Dale.
To be honest, this micro-site has done about all that could have been expected of it. To prolong its active life would diminish its impact. Hopefully bloggers - Iain Dale included - have learned some positive lessons from this site. If not, well we all know what happens to those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Labels: housekeeping, iain dale
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Tuesday, 19 June 2007
This site will close shortly
We're waiting for an editor to check in.
:o)
Comments have been closed in the interim.
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Thursday, 7 June 2007
Gullible's Travails
You shouldn’t laugh.
Then again... No. You should.
I’ve been laughing like a drain for days at Iain Dale’s attempts to wriggle out of admitting that his ‘Brown plays politics with terrorism’ spin story was all a load of… well, unsubstantiated spin.
Let's look at Dale's original write-up to begin with, and I'll show you exactly where the spin is:
Gordon Brown's spin team of Damian McBride and Michael Ellams spent most of Saturday phoning round the Sunday lobby giving them 'exclusive' insights into Gordon Brown's views on fighting terrorism.Wow, what a staggering revelation, eh? Brown wants to get his face in the Sundays so what does he do? He only goes and gets his PR staff to ring the papers. What shocking behaviour! I'm completely aghast - how dare they ring the papers when they'd like them to run a story. The sheer nerve it all!
Confidentially (of course) my confidential 'sources' in the Tory Party (who must never ever be named as co-conspirators) have been telling me that Cameron never, ever, asks his own PR people to ring lobby journalists in order to place stories in the Sunday Papers...
...he just gets David 'Two Brains' Willetts (who's really the Mekon... Sshhh - not a word to anyone, its a secret) to telepathically implant stories directly into the brain of Patience Wheatcroft at the Telegraph. Oh Shit, I've started channelling Guido.
I believe there was even a document from which the journalists were able to craft their words. Indeed, so similar were the stories in the main broadsheets they had to have been given a document. Click on these stories if you don't believe me - Sunday Times, Observer, Independent, Telegraph. Now, nothing wrong with that until you know what the terms of this 'exclusive' story were.
A document, eh... The plot thickens...
What Iain's talking about is a press release.
That's the actual story here. Brown's senior PR staff rang a small number of journos at the main Sunday papers and then faxed/emailed them over what amounts to a press release - and there is indeed nothing wrong with that at all...
...so why go to all the trouble of waffling on about 'documents' from which the journos 'crafted' their words in order to make the whole mundane business sound ever so much more sinister and clandestine than it really is?
Because Dale's blatantly spinning the story himself for all he thinks he can get out of it by trying to convey the suggestion that these journalists are, themselves, being coerced into spinning stories for Brown.
But that's not all - now we get to the good bit...
Brown's spinners told these papers* that they would only get the story if they agreed not to carry any quotes from David Davis, Nick Clegg or any other opposition spokesman. Not only that, they weren't even allowed to tell the Tories or LibDems about the very existence of the story. Now, have a look a those links in the above para again. It's not difficult to spot that not a single one of the stories contains a quote from David Davis or Nick Clegg? Coincidence? No.
No, you're right Iain. Coincidence is not the operative word here... that word is 'Bullshit'.
Here's Patrick Hennessy of the Sunday Telegraph, in Dale's own comments:
You make a great fuss when you think newspapers get things wrong but you are quite happy to make rubbish claims yourself.
I wrote the Sun Tel terror story and I can categorically assure you I received no instructions or threats from the Brown team not to contact the Opposition.
If I had, I would have told them to p1ss off.
And then there's Iain Kirby of the News of the World:
And Nick Watts of the Observer:Iain - As Political Editor for the News of the World I also wrote up the Terror story and your version of events is completely wrong.
As Sunday journalists we do not follow a rolling agenda like the dailies and therefore keep policy speeches from both Conservative and Labour front benches to ourselves until deadline.
I notice you did not complain that Alan Johnson or Sarah Teather were not quoted in our story alongside Graham Brady's article on grammar schools.
Also, Michael Ellam has not taken up his post yet, so he was probably doing something far more enjoyable than ringing around the Sunday lobby.
Like Paddy Hennessy, I am more than capable of telling a special adviser to piss off
Your claims are not standing up to scrutiny Iain. I wrote the story in the Observer and would like to second the postings by my colleagues Patrick Hennessy and Ian Kirby. I received no instructions from the Brown camp not to contact the opposition.So that's two of the four journos who's articles are linked to by Dale - plus one he neglected to mention - all calling him out for talking bollocks. And Dale's excuse is:
Nick Watt, The Observer
I pointed out that I know for a fact that at least one newspaper did receive such a briefing and it was entirely reasonable to assume, given that all four broadsheets wrote almost identical stories, that all of them agreed not to carry quotes from either of the opposition parties.Ah.
So a 'fact' is actually an anecdote that someone told Iain - one that he couldn't be bothered to check out to see if it was really true...
Meanwhile, over at Guido's, 'Sunday Times Insider' has rather a different take on the nature of this 'fact':
So what motivated failed Tory MP and still ambitious Dale's ejaculation on the subject? Answer: The Sunday Times was embarrassed the story was, er, not quite the exclusive it appeared to be and has tried to muddy the waters by claiming they had it exclusively before it was "briefed" all around. How embarrassing for their lamebrain lobby hacks. Just the usual nonsense from their dunderhead political editor David "crackers" Cracknell who persuaded a gullible Dale to run such guff.In case anyone's at all interested, Dale's real beef in all this is that none of the papers who ran with the story could be arsed to ask his mate David Davis, for a quote - thereby preventing the Tories from spinning Brown's comments as an unwelcome intervention in a matter in which a couple of cosy little cross-party glee clubs had already come to some sort of unspecified consensus.
If one actually looks at Brown's comments and compared them with the 'trailer' for Reid's planned speech on proposals for yet more anti-terrorist legislation, most of which had already been extensively trailed in the press over the last few weeks, what is most obvious is that Brown was saying absolutely nothing that wasn't already in the public domain, having previously been trailed by either Reid or by the usual unnamed Home Office spokesman who crop up when politicians want to float an idea without the risk of taking flak if the public aren't keen.
Brown may have been 'playing politics' on Sunday, but only to a very limited extent in openly associating himself, as the incoming party leader and prime minister, with a raft of policy proposals he intends to support but which previously had been trailed exclusively by another minister - John Reid - who also happens to be leaving the government in about three weeks time...
...Dale's reaction (and his 'story') doesn't even make the grade as 'playground politics' - it more 'infant school politics' and Dale is just throwing a tantrum because the press gave Gordon first use of the sandbox without letting his mate, David Davis, play as well.
Dale's article, as it now stands, concludes with a typically self-serving and self-justifying acknowledgement of Hennessy's comments (although not those of Kirby or Watts - but then Dale does get the occasional payday from writing puff pieces for the Daily Telegraph), in which he still sticks to the line that its reasonable to infer things of which he has no direct knowledge on the basis of one entirely unverified and unsubstantiated comment from a journalist who, so it has been alleged elsewhere, may have fed Dale a pile of steaming bullshit in order to cover his own embarrassment at finding out that his big 'exclusive' wasn't quite so exclusive as he assumed it would be.
UPDATE * Patrick Hennessy of the Sunday Telegraph has vehemently denied in the Comments that he received any such briefing along the lines I suggest. He describes this entire piece as "rubbish". I pointed out that I know for a fact that at least one newspaper did receive such a briefing and it was entirely reasonable to assume, given that all four broadsheets wrote almost identical stories, that all of them agreed not to carry quotes from either of the opposition parties. Hennessy further says: "I didn't think the story needed a Tory or Lib Dem reaction". That is of course for him to decide, but I have to say that I find it astonishing that on an issue where Blair and Cameron, together with Red, Davis and Clegg were trying to build a cross party consensus (soemthing Hennessy must have known about), he didn't think it worth ringing Davis or Clegg to see what they thought about Brown crashing in on the issue. Of course, PA carried Davis's fairly strong comments from 7.30pm, well before the Sunday Telegraph's deadline.A better man would simply make the necessary corrections and offer up an apology for getting it wrong.
UPDATE.
It seems that Dale's capacity for shameless self-publicity and self-justification continues unabated on this one:
UPDATE: Michael Howard must read my blog. He just asked John Reid if it was appropriate for the Chancellor to give stories on terror legislation to Sunday papers with conditions that they did not carry quotes from Opposition politicians. Reid said he was at one with his very close friend the Chancellor and batted it away.Remember, three journalists have, thus far, denied that any such conditions were even mentioned let alone imposed and it's been alleged that Dale's (also alleged) source for the story span him a complete yarn on this to cover his own arse.
As one anonymous commenter at Dale's blog notes, to continue to peddle this story is tantamount to an allegation that the three journalists in question - all political editors with their respective newspapers - are lying.
UPDATE - I've put the Times angle to Dale and got this response:
Unity,Fair enough, although in the interests of strict accuracy it should be noted that the Times article carries two names on the byline - Cracknell and David Leppard.
An interesting theory, but I'm afraid that I haven't spoken to or had any other form of communication from David Cracknell for a couple of years. Sorry to blow that particular theory out of the water.
Having checked, it also appears than none of the main Sunday's who ran the story, including the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Express bothered to contact David Davis for a quote and, even more amusingly given Dale's subsequent whinging, Reuters, who only covered the story second hand, did go out and get a couple of quotes...
... from Shami Chakrabati and Lord Carlile.
UPDATE - AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR
And another journo denies Dale's story:
Dear Iain,
It is unlike you to get stories squew whiff but on this occasion I am afraid your report about a supposed
Brown terror spinning opposition is not right. You are correct to say that we wrote a story about Brown's policy on terror, which I felt was of interest to our readers as we have long been following this issue. However, to my knowledge, neither Damian McBride or Michael Ellam were not frantically calling the Sundays last Saturday (I didn't speak to either of them) but it is not right and insulting to suggest that we were instructed not to contact any opposition spokesmen. Obviously such instructions if they had been given would have been ignored. So sorry Iain, your story is not up to your usual standards.
Marie Woolf
Independent on Sunday
Labels: iain dale, newsnight moment, spin
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Wednesday, 23 May 2007
Its own reward
Congratulations to Iain and Dizzy Thingy for their nominations in Conservative Home's 'Best Tory Blog Run By A Tory Nominated By Tories Voted For By Tories And Awarded By Tories' Award. Well earned and well deserved.
Also, congratulations to them for their nominations in the Fistful of Euros' Third Annual Satin Pajama Awards 'celebrating the best of the European blogosphere'.
Oh. My mistake. As you were.
Anyway, let me tell you about the dominance of right-wing bloggers...
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Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Massacres can be fun!
More hilarious gossip from Iain:
The Member's Tea Room in the House of Commons hasn't done very good business today. It seems the unmistakeable tangy smell of death is in the air. Some are blaming a dead rodent. My mole, however, reckons that the culprit may be more human. He says it reminds him of Auschwitz and thinks that the Brown Death Squads may have prematurely started their cull of Blairites. Anyone seen Ruth Kelly this afternoon?
Maybe somebody killed her like a Jew.
Actually he did say Auschwitz. What he actually said:
The Member's Tea Room in the House of Commons hasn't done very good business today. It seems the unmistakeable tangy smell of death is in the air. Some are blaming a dead rodent. My mole, however, reckons that the culprit may be more human. He says it reminds him of the Katyn massacre and thinks that the Brown Death Squads may have prematurely started their cull of Blairites. Anyone seen Ruth Kelly this afternoon?
Maybe somebody killed her like a Pole.
Katyn was a massacre of Poles by the Red Army in 1940. Very few Jews were involved and so it's funnier. Do you see?
(Thanks and apologies to the anonymous commenter on that thread.)
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Cheap Shot #8947
Iain bans the potty mouths:
I want this to be a civilised site where people can read the comments without fearing what their eleven year old child might discover were they to have a quick peep too.
I think he's pitched it about right, eh readers? Those eleven year olds should feel right at home in Iain's comments. Even younger readers, in fact, should feel confident of being able to punch their weight.
Posted by Justin @ | Permalink | | Links to this post
A sadder economics
Iain's done it again. The urge took him and out came another fundamentally flawed post. Ignoring yet another "I am not your researcher" outburst, Dale decides to base his argument attacking the New Deal on unsubstantiated figures from a third party. After all, not only is he not your researcher, he doesn't even appear to be his researcher.
Over at the Ministry of Truth, Unity has taken Dale to task on the matter, pointing out that Frank Field required a 29 page report with which to make a flawed attack on the New Deal, making Dale's measly 43 words on the subject appear extremely inadequate.
Iain Dale, not your researcher, not his researcher; in fact not prone to doing much research at all.
Labels: economics, iain dale the expert, propaganda, research
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Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Double bubble
A two-edged victory for Iain today.
First, he takes at face value an unsubstantiated rumour from a political rival (and business associate) with a penchant for being screamingly inaccurate. Those rotters at the Home Office 'ban' civil servants from getting their daily fix of unsubstantiated gossip - they didn't go to all that tedious hassle of installing javascript to block linking.
Then, upon finding out that the unsubstantiated rumour he had passed on was cobblers, Iain got to gloat that the unsubstantiated rumour he had passed on was yet another cock-up from a political rival (and business associate) with a penchant for being screamingly inaccurate. Brilliant.
Labels: iain dale unsubstantiated
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Monday, 14 May 2007
Iain Dale is a very nice person
Well, first of all, we (finally) have a (partial) answer (of sorts) to this series of questions for Iain Dale:
Iain Dale's Dairy - Iain Dale: some questions about John Hirst
The answer is documented here, in the following post from John Hirst:
prisonlawinsideout - John Hirst 3 Iain Dale 0: This is the explanation offered by Iain Dale[;] "When you first started emailing 18DS I was genuinely interested in what you had to say on prisoners votes and went out of my way to give your views time on the channel. This resulted in me saying I would invite you onto the channel. I said that on air before I was aware of your past. I discussed the issue with colleagues and it was felt that as you hadn’t been upfront about this it would not be a good idea to invite you. I saw no point in entering into lengthy correspondence about this. At about the same time you started saying some fairly inflammatory things on your blog and on mine. This tended to confirm the view that we had made the right decision. In terms of being 'got at', I’m not sure what you mean. The only people I have discussed it with are within 18 Doughty Street. No one 'got at' me. We made a joint decision".
Today, we invite you into the mind of Iain Dale so you may better understand the truth behind this answer. The thinking appears to run as follows:
What this deeply poisonous post at Iain Dale's Dairy blew out of all proportion was that Iain received a number of private emails from his valued contributors urging him not to allow John Hirst onto 18DoughtyStreet. During the course of this innocent and heartfelt intervention, it suddenly became clear to Iain that a blogger going by the name jailhouselawyer at a blog named 'prisonersvoice' had a criminal past (but the matter was only discussed with the team at 18DS, so therefore those contributors played no part in the debate). How dare John Hirst keep this from Iain? And how dare he suggest that Iain had been 'got at'?! No doubt this conspiracy theorist is part of the Tim Ireland conspiracy.... and so on and so forth.
Strap in, folks... we go deeper into Iain's mind when we further investigate correspondence published by John Hirst here and here:
"You have had a detailed explanation. And I have no intention of continuing correspondence with you when you have publically [sic] called me a hypocrite and a liar". - Iain Dale
This may seem a bit of a stretch, but do reach for it, folks... yep, almost there... *ding*
Iain thinks he's already in the House of Commons!
This being the case, if you ever dare to call Iain Dale a liar or a hypocrite, he will feel quite within his rights to refuse to discuss the issue with you until (maybe) after you withdraw the accusation and apologise... to everybody.
But it gets so much better...
"I am not prepared to have 'diplomatic relations' with anyone who links to the Iain Dale's Dairy site, so I would ask you to remove it from your bloglinks" - Iain Dale
This bullying approach bears out a lot of what we've been saying about Iain Dale's selfish and cack-handed approach to networking and linky-love... and on the subject of bullying you will want to:
a) Note that nowhere does Iain Dale address the matter of John Hirst being bullied at his website.
b) Have a look this charming comment in response to John's flawed but earnest YouTube effort: "Get help. Or top yourself. Either or."
Nice.
PS - Be warned that if you decide to blog this item, it could result in your removal from Iain Dale's blogroll.
Labels: 18doughtystreet, iain dale and his sock-puppets, jailhouselawyer, john hirst
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Thursday, 3 May 2007
No punchline required
Anyway, get this. It's World Press Freedom Day today. Guess, for reasons known only to themselves, who the Guardian's Comment is Free team thought was the best person to pontificate on the freedom of information and exchange of ideas afforded by blogs and other online communities?
You'll never guess.
Who? Tim Ireland? Try again.
Tim Worstall? Nope.
Tom Steinberg? Sorry.
I'm going to have to tell you. The person the Guardian's Comment is Free team thought was best suited to pontificate on the freedom of information and exchange of ideas afforded by blogs and other online communities?
Iain Dale.
No, really.
Allow yourself a short, hollow laugh.
Posted by Justin @ | Permalink | | Links to this post
