shuggy's blog
Is this the Matthew Taylor article you mentioned?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politi...atives-
blogging
If so it looks like the comment about the left being happier with a top-down approach was a quote from Iain Dale.
Ah, thank you - and you're quite right. Post amended accordingly.
You, or your sister, may be right in your description of political blogs. However, there is a valuable space for mavericks, like Guido, because the cosy cabal in the Westminster asylum, in which so-called political analysts (one thinks of 'Dame' Michael White and his ilk) eat, drink and screw together, is so incestuous that we, the public, only ever receive a skewered version of events by way of result. At least the likes of Guido flush the bounders out!
Hmmm....
There is one big difference though:
Guido gets nothing, not a penny, from the Conservative party or any other establishment source.
The Red Rag site was being discussed ON MY DIME. These were civil servants inside number 10. Their job and their loyalty is to Her Majesty's Government and hence us. NOT THE LABOUR PARTY.
If the labour party wishes to pay for this kind of activity out of its own funds, then that might just be OK but...
1) they can't claim it to be a grassroots effort
2) they can take their begging for state funding of political parties and shove it if that's what they want to spend it on.
To make a couple of wider points:
- Don't think for a moment that Guido will go all soft and cuddly when/if Cameron gets in next year. Guido is giving Labour it in the shorts because a) they deserve it and b) they are in power. If/when those apply to Cameron, I would be astonished if the same approach did not apply
- The parallels with the Tories are not exact. Damian Green was using leaks to talk himself up - he wasn't being plausibly deniable. Equally I doubt that the Tories are using Guido as their plausibly deniable smear route. In particular, I'm not aware (though I may be out of loop here) that the Tories are claiming that "they" have done this. Guido has done it and it benefits the Tories, but there is no suggestion that senior Tories planted this story with Guido. And, see above, even if they did, the taxpayer wouldn't have been paying for it.
- The Labour party doesn't need blogs anyway - it has a strangehold over the mindset of the BBC in particular. This is only notable because it's the one that got away, the one that slipped through the labour party's control of the MSM.
I seem to agree with you, as I - more or less - said here: http://
atangledrope.blogspot.com...playground.html
Good post, Shuggs. I reckon another aspect is that Guido's output - essentially, the same sorry Westminster insider bullshit he's allegedly so keen to see destroyed - appeals to the same vanity as Private Eye.
It's the idea that there's a secret, insider's world of scams going on, and only you and I, dear reader, are savvy to it... Stick with us, and we'll keep you clued in. It's not a million miles from loony sites like What Really Happened - it offers a seemingly coherent reality populated by noble heroes and dastardly villains, then flatters the ego of the reader by letting them feel they're privy to super-special secret information others aren't.
Of course, all it does is feed people one-eyed, risible wingnuttery and bile. Other examples abound - the Daily Mail on the macro scale, and LGF, Harry's Place and Lenin's Tombola on the micro.
No doubt there's a skill to it and they occasionally stumble across a revelation, but it's more by accident than design.
- The Labour party doesn't need blogs anyway - it has a strangehold over the mindset of the BBC in particular.
And I have the impression that every time I turn on the Today programme John Humphrys is tearing lumps out of some Labour minister. He spent about 15 minutes kicking Jacqui Smith over her dodgy expenses, when some of us would have quite liked her to be taken to task over her habit of banning people from entering the country because of their controversial views.
"It's the idea that there's a secret, insider's world of scams going on"
Well bless my soul, you mean the fact that all those inside scammers were secretly plotting to issue forth a stream of filth via their favourite media sewers was actually open news available to everyone from here to Caledonia and that Guido was wasting his and everyone's time telling us?
All I can say is the noos do be very slow in arrivin' 'ere in Dorset, so I for one be very grateful for Guido and my ego is doin' very nicely , thank you for askin'.
You are over-the-top and tribal here, Shuggy. If the wife of one of your political opponents wants to thrust herself into the limelight and misbehave, a la Greedie Boot, that's one thing. But to invent and circulate the rumour that an entirely private person, who happens to be the wife of your opponent, is mad is too low even for Labour.
KB Player,
Heard that interview and it was nothing - not even close - to the vituperation levelled at Tories on a daily basis.
More specifically, he utterly missed the point. He failed completely to deal with her defence that she did not break the rules: It is the rules that are scandalous and anyone with an ounce of common decency can see that from miles away.
It's not the bathplug, it's the entire bloody house.
Shuggy,
On the topic of missing the point: see here for an illustration of my point.
Essentially, it is not that "It's OK when we do it", it's that "we aren't doing it".
Conservative Central Office genuinely isn't going around setting up websites that claim to be independent/grassroots and then filling it with smear stories. Or using taxpayers cash to do so.
Unless you can show that it is, you don't have an equivalence.
By the way, if I was asked to provide an example of the type of conspiracy-crazed, gullible loon I'm talking about, David Duff would be it.
The man could see the face of the politically correct thought police in a tree stump, if he looked long enough.
Now, now, 'Ratty', if you're not prepared to 'speak' to me at your place then you shouldn't do so here, and anyway, its bad form to bring our little squabble to someone else's blog.
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