Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Iain Dale censors his stat-porn (and more)
Iain Dale's Diary - April Figures Show Slight Dip
Heh. That headline is truer than Iain would care to admit.
My site (Bloggerheads) featured as a major referrer of traffic to Iain Dale's 'weblog' in January (22nd), February (5th) and March (6th) of this year, despite this traffic being made up of individual permalinks in occasional posts, as opposed to a prominent blogroll link that appears on every page. (Meantime, Iain saw fit to accuse me of using his site to drive traffic to mine... a useful deceit in that it helps him and others of his ilk to justify why they never once hyperlinked to any case I made against them, even on those rare occasions when they saw fit to respond under their own damn name.)
During April, focus on Iain Dale switched from Bloggerheads to Iain Dale's Dairy. Even if one doesn't take the referrals from archived posts and/or Guido 2.0 into account, Bloggerheads should appear somewhere in the Top 40 referrers on a downward trend, along with Iain Dale's Dairy as a new entry.
But neither site appears in the list of referrers published today. Why?
Does Iain Dale really have so little respect for his readers that he feels the need to 'protect' them from 'undesirable information'?
Hell, even if Iain had followed his past pattern of selectively grouping traffic under domains, he would have come out of the exercise with some credibility. (In the past, Iain has grouped traffic from Guido 2.0 with traffic from my main site at bloggerheads.com - this allowed him to include those referrals without actually mentioning a microsite that is heavily critical of him, his allies and his bullies. He could have used a similar approach today to list the traffic from Iain Dale's Dairy under 'TheUKToday'.)
But no... it would appear that Iain has decided that I am an un-person.
Still, at least I'm not the only one sipping saccharine/clove-flavoured gin in the Chestnut Tree cafe today...
Justin's website (Chicken Yoghurt) has been listed on Iain's incredibly-long blogroll for quite some time. In fact, if you pop back to May 2006, you can even see one of Iain's shining moments of expertise, where he classifies Justin as a Conservative.
The link to Chicken Yoghurt eventually found its way to the 'miscellaneous' category, but was mysteriously dropped from Iain's incredibly-long blogroll sometime in early April of this year. Then reinstated. Then dropped again. Then reinstated. Then - finally, one would think - dropped again the day Iain Dale's Dairy went live listing Justin as a contributor.
Also, Justin reports that he has made several attempts to comment on Iain's website since Iain Dale's Dairy went live.
The pattern of approval is as follows; when Iain has pre-vetting/moderation turned off, these comments see the light of day and are not deleted... but when Iain has pre-vetting/moderation turned on, Justin's comments go straight down the memory hole, and - given Iain's past history - it's a fair bet that this emerging pattern will continue.
Again, Iain appears to be 'protecting' his readers... not only from 'undesirable information', but any indication that he is censoring 'undesirable information'.
But his Orwellian antics don't stop there...
Iain Dale has been a major part of the ongoing Conservative attempt to rewrite blogging history (it is dominated by the right, and has always been dominated by the right dontchaknow) and he has also played host to those who would have you think that the desire to limit the anonymous bullying that interrupts and undermines the free flow of information/debate amounts to some form of censorship.
Caroline Hunt appeared on 18DoughtyStreet with Iain and later bragged that; I also got to rant at length about a certan [sic] blogspat that I don't like to talk about because I don't like to give airtime to that blogging fascist who wants us all to conform to what he considers a "real" political blog.
I asked for a copy of that broadcast, but was told that no copy existed.
There's that pesky memory hole again... but before you send this example to Alanis Morissette in the dim hope that she will one day understand irony, I have another example for you...
Below is a copy of the comment from Justin (submitted under the entry that is the primary subject of this post) that Iain decided to delete without giving his readers any indication that he had done so:
"A lie of omission is still a lie, Iain."
Interesting, no? Sure beats the hell out of ra-he-haaain on your wedding day.
Here's a little something to keep in mind when reading Iain Dale's
You are only seeing what he wants you to see,
The truth is what he declares it to be;
He will never admit failure of a major degree,
He's a joke as a blogger... but an ideal MP.
Labels: 18doughtystreet, fascists, propaganda
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