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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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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Tuesday, 24 April 2007
Iain Dale: some questions about John Hirst
I do not personally agree with all of the views expressed by John Hirst; some of them are as hard and as harsh as his life has been. But he does have the right to express those views. Here, Iain Dale would seem to agree (to a point):
"I remain of the view that if society judges your offence to be so serious that you should lose your liberty you should also lose your freedom to elect the government. In the new year I'm going to invite John Hirst and a range of guests onto 18 Doughty Street to discuss the issue at length." - Iain Dale (14 December 2006)
But John Hirst has not appeared on 18 Doughty Street since that invitation was made, and Iain Dale has not explained why... and, as Hirst points out here, Iain seems unusually tight-lipped about it.
I think I know the reason why... but first, some background:
As you probably already know, Iain Dale relies on a gang of (mostly anonymous) bullies to keep any 'debate' on his site free of material that undermines any specific case he makes or his integrity in general.
One of these anonymongrels goes by the name of 'Verity', who appears to be a ringleader of a gang of right-wing bullies and sock-puppeteers who will respond to any valid point John Hirst raises by shouting "Axe murderer!" at him. They will often follow him around from blog to blog to do this and scream "Axe-murdering stalker!" as they do so.
John Hirst was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility in 1980, and he himself picks up on the technical difference between manslaughter and murder here.... but it doesn't really matter if you somehow interpret his stated lack of remorse as an admission of murder (as some people seem to be doing) and it doesn't even matter if you think citizens abandon all rights to hold opinions and/or have them heard after they have taken a life, as neither position changes the logical fallacy at the heart of the ongoing smear campaign against Hirst:
If you actually thought it likely that someone would come after you with an axe, you would not goad them... and you would certainly not goad them specifically about the likelihood of their coming after you with an axe. Even doing so 'anonymously' makes no sense, as many past outings have proved.
To put it bluntly, the only thing that allows Verity and his gang of thugs to call John Hirst an axe-murderer is the fact that he is not an axe-murderer... and they know that.
On January 7 (2007), Iain Dale can be seen singling Verity out and promising that all such future attacks on the site would be deleted... but as you've probably already guessed, Iain didn't really mean it:
Jan 7, Jan 8, Jan 12... of course, all of these comments were made anonymously, and not under the name of 'Verity', which makes it OK.
But let's proceed to March... Mar 7, Mar 14, Mar 17, Mar 26... *ding*... Mar 29, and Verity returns to shout "Axe murderer!" using his usual handle.
(Psst! Nice moderation there, Iain. Way to promote 'politics for grown-ups'.)
Moving right along to what might at first appear to be a change of subject...
Here's Paul Staines helpfully promoting a press release from 18DoughtyStreet claiming that the semi-departure of Tim Montgomerie will allow for a less partisan approach to coverage... as if that were ever likely.
Even if you ignore the source of funding, Iain Dale's continuing role as primary host rules out any possibility of the 18DoughtyStreet being fairly described as non-partisan... not least because his conduct as host isn't that different from his conduct as a 'blogger'.
Iain will often undermine guests he does not agree with by interrupting them with demands for on-the-spot proof of this or that, when he himself regularly counters these same guests with flawed arguments or unsubstantiated claims. If he ever gets called on the latter or a debate simply isn't going his way, he will abuse his status as host and utter the magical phrase 'moving right along'... which, amusingly, also serves as the unspoken mission statement for 18DoughtyStreet.
But Iain is also subject to influences that further his own right-wing bias... and I'm not talking purely about the exchanges featured above.
Take a look at this exchange hosted by 'Croydonian' (dated December 20, 2007), where he, Verity, and a number of other bullies from the Dale/Staines stable are openly bragging about scuttling Hirst's planned appearance on 18DoughtyStreet.
Verity is loud and proud about it, but not all of these individuals are visibly active in the relevant thread over at Dale's blog, so it's safe to assume that some objections were raised anonymously and/or via email. Regardless, Iain Dale has not responded publicly to the objections raised (in the relevant thread or elsewhere); he has simply withdrawn the invitation and refused to be drawn on the reasons why.
So... here come the questions for Iain Dale:
1. Does the invitation for John Hirst to appear on 18DoughtyStreet stand?
2. If not, why was the invitation withdrawn?
3. Further, if the invitation was withdrawn, why was it withdrawn without explanation?
4. Do you really believe that John Hirst can be accurately and legally described as an 'axe murderer'?
5. If not, why do you continually allow publication of this description on your website?
6. Are you really afraid of your own bullies?
Note - Iain should be aware that his answer(s) to any or all of these questions may raise further questions about the claimed 'non-partisan' status of 18DoughtyStreet.
Labels: 18doughtystreet, jailhouselawyer, john hirst, verity
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