December 9th, 2009 § 2 comments § permalink
I still haven’t had a proper reply to my email to Selly Oaks Hospital regarding the BNP donating the funds from the sale of their ‘Bring Our Troops Home’ stickers. I sent my original letter on 4th December and have only had one reply. That reply was…
I have replied to you
I originally thought Ms Fiona Alexander, the hospitals Director of Communications, had replied and I had accidentally deleted deleted it or was sent but didn’t get to me for some reason. Now I think it was childish joke.
Thanks Fiona, for taking me oh, so seriously. That made you look sooo clever.
Moving on, because, I’m bigger than that, I’m not the snarky idiot, it appears a *real* journalist got a reply. No, really I don’t mind. Selly Oaks has refused the donation…
a spokesman for Selly Oak Hospital, which houses the army’s Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, said: “The British National Party is selling merchandise with the promise of donating the proceeds to the Selly Oak Hospital burns unit.
“Neither the University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust nor its official charity, UHB Charities, have been contacted by the BNP about this venture, and the Trust does not accept money from any political party,”
So. That’s a partial answer to the couple of questions in my email. That’ll do.
The BNP, typically, haven’t changed their article, or stuck up a new one, to let people know that the hospital won’t accept their donation, and are presumably still selling them under that guise (although I could be wrong).
The spin machine elsewhere has started to work. One of their top supporting blogs, Green Arrow, has a few words to say about it…
it seems strange that an hospital that is supposed to care for people would prefer them to suffer than accept money from a political party because they do not approve of its policies.
See what they did there? The hospital refused the donation not because the BNP are a political party but because the hospital doesn’t like it’s policies. The hospital though, doesn’t accept donations from any political party irrespective of policies.
I’m just surprised Selly Oaks hasn’t been called a communist organisation that’s part of the leftie conspiracy to replace the white man with in his own home.
December 8th, 2009 § 3 comments § permalink
Well, it’s only day two of the Copenhagen Climate Conference, and already it all seems to be going wrong, a leaked draft treaty that concentrates power in the hands of the rich nations! Could you make this up?
It seems that the world leaders are failing us in a big way, but this is hardly unsurprising. In the last blog, I highlighted the fact that there are too many vested interests that stand to lose large amounts of money, and this is borne out by the attempt to push through a deal that will mean the developing world has to bear the brunt of emission reductions. Of course, this is the only logical thing to do for western big business, as it is obvious that their profits simply cannot exist alongside business practices that treat the climate with respect. Capitalism and the natural environment are simply not compatible.
The question is, where do we go from here? Just yesterday, we heard the conference chairperson, in the opening speach, telling us that this is the last best chance to make an agreement on cutting emissions, yet a day later the only agreement on the table will merely protect the profits of a tiny minority. That the fate of mankind is left in the hands of those who apparently represent us is a farce… We don’t just need disobedience, as Naomi Klein has called for, we need something that will revolutionise the way that we run the world economy…
December 4th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
Two students, one a great friend of mine, from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands are cycling from the Hague to Copenhagen, raising awareness of the threat of climate change along the way. To make it more difficult, they are doing it on dutch granny bikes! They are relying on locals putting them up on the way, and are doing it on a shoe-string budget.
Follow them and send the messages of support!!
Their aim is to get to Copenhagen to for the demonstrations at the farce that is to be the latest Climate Change summit.
The UK send off demonstration is Saturday December 5th in London, meeting in Grovesnor Square at 12pm, to encircle Parliament later in the afternoon. We need to urge our governments to do more, but unfortunately it seems as though they are unable to fight the interests of the oil companies and big business.
This is unlikely to happen within the current economic system. The threat of reduced profits means that rich nations are unable to reach an agreement with the developing world on reducing emissions. Markets need to be protected, companies need to remain ‘competitive’, profits rates upheld, and the system needs to grow. And grow, and grow.
However, even the planet has limits – it cannot support limitless growth, but the system is unable to function without it, so we keep heading down the path of environmental destruction full speed ahead. We know how to stop it, but are we strong enough to put on the brakes?
December 4th, 2009 § 5 comments § permalink
I was going to post this once I got a reply, but I’m getting a bit impatient so I’m doing it now.
To: Fiona Alexander
From: Sim-O
Subject: BNP DonationGood morning Ms Alexander,
The British National Party have launched a ‘Bring Our Troops Home’ sticker, declaring all the proceeds will be donated to Selly Oaks Hospital burns unit.As you probably know, the BNP is a racist and divisive organisation that is “is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples” and is “committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration”.
‘Opposed to any form of racial integration’ sound strikingly similar to apartheid, doesn’t it?
‘Reversing the tide of non-white immigration’ is a term the BNP use for the deportation of people, British people to other countries. This would include, not just recent immigrants, but people born here, have had family in Britain for generations and which no other country has an obligation to take purely on the basis of the colour of the persons’ skin.
With this in mind, have the BNP informed you of their declared intention of donating money from the sale of these stickers to the Selly Oaks Hospital burns unit? If so, have they told you when that donation might happen?
What is your reaction? Do you have a statement?
Will the hospital be accepting the donation, which the BNP will no doubt use for political purposes?
Does the hospital have a policy regarding donations from political parties, as apposed to a campaigning local MP? If so, what is that policy?
Thank you for you time.
Sim-O
http://sim-o.me.uk
Update 09/12/09:
I got a reply.
November 30th, 2009 § 8 comments § permalink
Just a quicky about a couple of tweets from Nadine Dorries.
From the surrounding tweets, Nadine is arguing against the governments drugs policy, and how effective it is. I don’t know the exact argument but you don’t need to here as the statements made by Nadine are absolutely ridiculous and even I could do better.
http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6168531952
Lamb made the point that based on statistics, alcohol is more serious than drugs. I’ve never seen anyone selling booze at a school gate.
Can you guess the reason Nadine has never seen anyone selling booze at a school gate? Could it be something to do with shops and pubs? Kids aren’t stupid, why would they be risk getting into trouble by buying booze from a dodgy bloke outside school in full view of the authorities (teachers and other people that will report them) when they can just as easily get lashed on drink bought by themselves or their older looking mates from an off-licence?
http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6168961615
I’ve never heard of anyone stabbing or murdering someone or trafficking for a drink and our Prisons aren’t full of alcoholics.
The MP for Mid-Beds has never heard of drink dealers stabbing and murdering each other because the criminal element has been taken out of the system. The business of selling alcohol has been put into the hands of proper, licenced business men. The role of contraband booze has been left with the the small guy that does a booze cruise and sells to his mates or the big criminal gangs that make counterfiet vodka. The role of the nasty vicous bastards you get in the middle of the drugs trade is non-existant because you either need lots of equipment and time and an investment and the demand for hooky booze is negligible and so not enough money in it. Drugs are easy money.
Prisons also may not be bursting at the seams with alcoholics, but you can’t walk around a prison for very long with out bumping in someone with a problem…
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of (a) the number and (b) the proportion of prisoners diagnosed with alcohol problems in each prison in England and Wales, in each of the last 10 years. [265702]
Mr. Hanson: A number of studies have provided a picture of the alcohol-related problems experienced by those entering prisons:
Research(1) carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 1997 stated that 63 per cent. of sentenced males and 39 per cent. of sentenced females reported a hazardous drinking pattern in the year before coming into prison. This figure rises to 70 per cent. in the case of young adult offenders. The numbers who are physically dependent on alcohol, which can be defined as those who need alcohol detoxification (Tiers 3 and 4 of Models of Care for Alcohol Misusers (MoCAM)), are much lower at around 8 per cent. of females and 7 per cent. of males.
The Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction (SCPR) study(2), a large national longitudinal survey of newly sentenced adult prisoners, reported in 2008 that 36 per cent. of the sample could be classified as heavy drinkers. However, heavy drinking—defined as drinking more than twice the recommended sensible daily limits—is not directly comparable to the hazardous drinking category used in the ONS report.
http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6169016126
Off licences don’t control housing estates and publicans don’t run brothels, control child prostitutes and fund trafficking from booze.
Would drug dealers be able to control housing estates and fund people trafficking from drugs if drugs were legal like booze? I strongly doubt they would.
I also doubt that drugs fund people trafficking and prostitution to as greater extent that is usually portrayed.
Criminals are in drugs and prostitution for the money. That’s why there isn’t a black market for alcohol as there is for drugs. Think about it. Why would you break the law for lots of work, lots of hassle and no reward? Are criminals using prostitution as a loss-leader, like Tesco does with milk? Of course not.
The points above are supposed to be argueing in favour of stricter, harsher drug laws. They fail completely.
Mid-Beds, this is your MP. Please learn from your mistake at the next election.
Oh, and drugs are bad, mmkay?
Update:
Two more posts on the same set of Dorries tweets, the first from JDC325 who has more detail on the figures and stuff, and the second (via JDC325) from Mark Reckons which contains this nugget of comedy…
[Nadine tweets:] When I visited a womens prison, 100% of inmates were in for drugs related offences. 100%
As El_Cuevro tweeted, HM Prison Service says that 33% of female prisoners are in for drug offences. Nadine’s figure of 100% can only be because she must have visited a drug offenders institution.
November 26th, 2009 § 3 comments § permalink
No, Crimestoppers is still 0800 555 111. Someone thinks it has changed though.
I’m not quite sure what it is about this, but something doesn’t quite sit right with me.
Is it the way this cabbie chaps’ pal rang the Sun with his tip off about an absconded (can you escape from an open prison?) murderer rather than going straight to the police? Or is it the way the Sun seems to have weaselled itself into a position where it can claim credit for getting an escaped convict knicked?
There’s nothing wrong with someone ringing a paper with a story. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a bob or two out of it either, although it would be hard to argue that with a kiss-n-tell story. But who thinks of ringing a paper before the police?
A CABBIE told last night how he helped to capture fugitive killer Jane Andrews after she climbed into the back of his taxi.
Darren Auckland, 40, told police he picked up Fergie’s mud-caked former aide in the early hours yesterday near the Kent prison she fled.
He had been hired by her parents to drive them from the family’s Grimsby home, but refused to take them back once he recognised Andrews, 42.
Police seized her at a hotel after The Sun passed on a tip-off over her whereabouts from a friend of the cabbie.
From the wording of the Suns’ story, this cabbies’ pal rang the Sun first before the police…
Meanwhile a pal of the cabbie called The Sun to tell us Andrews had met up with her dad in Maidstone.
Our night news editor Brandon Malinsky passed on the tip to police.
Why would Malinsky pass on the info to the police if Buddy (that’s what I’m gonna call this pal) has already done so? Malinsky is not going to be able to add anything new to the hunt for Jane Andrews. Unless of course this is to ‘big up’ the Suns’ role in this story, to make them an active part of it, rather than just passively reporting it.
Note that Buddy has kept his name out of the paper.
The story then goes carries on with how Andrews was apprehended and then, again…
Just after midnight, the cabbie’s friend tipped off our man Malinsky that the Andrews family were on the move. Malinsky asked to be kept informed and passed the information to police
Surely Malinsky should’ve told Buddy to go to the police directly and then asked to be kept informed. In a situation like this time is of the essence and by going through a third party (Malinsky) could’ve been the difference between evasion and capture, especially if further information was needed by the police that Malinsky would not know, being sat in his office.
Kents’ Assistant Chief Constable was quite impressed…
Kent’s Assistant Chief Constable Andy Adams last night thanked The Sun “for their assistance and public spirit in alerting us to the information they received”.
Andy Adams is easier impressed than me.
What ever happened, once looked at a little clearer, this story doesn’t make the Sun or the cabbies’ pal look very good. Either Buddy has his priorities in er, a slightly different order to most people by calling a paper first with information that he should’ve gone straight to the police with or the Sun, not being entirely truthful, is trying to make itself look good by pretending to be a conduit for vital information to capture an escaped prisoner when Buddy did go to the police and just kept the paper up to date on events or both the cabbies’ friend is a numpty by not going to the police and the Sun are not as civic minded as Assistant Chief Constable Andy Adams reckons they are by being, and staying, an extra step in the flow of information.
There was nothing ‘civic minded’ about what the Sun did. It was all about the exclusive and to re-inforce the perception that the Sun is an altruistic organisation with only the good of the country at heart.
*the phone number in the title, if you hadn’t guessed, is the number for the Suns’ newsdesk
November 26th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
I’ve just been reminded about this.
Apparently it was sent to the United Nations 22nd October, about three weeks ago, with 3,500 signatures.
I don’t know if it’s too late now or not, but you might as well get your signature on it as well, if you haven’t already.
November 20th, 2009 § 4 comments § permalink
Right. Lets get straight in to it.
The Labour Government’s Equality Bill, announced yesterday in the Queen’s speech, will actively discriminate against all white people in business and put large companies under a legal obligation to employ Asians or blacks rather than whites.
Guess who said that? Nope. Not the Daily Mail. Close though. Those words are the start of a big steaming pile of lies from the BNP.
In terms of the Equality Act, companies will be “encouraged” to favour black and Asian candidates over white people when recruiting. In addition, where companies have a choice between equally qualified men and women, they are obliged to employ the woman.
I had a little look and, astoundingly, their wrong.
I had a quick squint for the bill and and found two. The Equality and Diversity BIll and the Equality Bill. I’m not sure if they’re two different things or one is a summary of the other so lets look at them both.
The Equality and Diversity Bill is pretty simple and straightforward in it’s purpose…
A Bill To Prohibit the use of affirmative and positive action in recruitment and appointment processes; to repeal the Sex Discrimination Act (Election Candidates) Act 2002; and for connected purposes.
And what is ‘positive or affirmative action’?…
For the purpose of this Act, “affirmative or positive action” means any action that is intended to give a benefit or encouragement to a particular group or groups of people, on the basis of the—
(a) age,
(b) sex,
(c) sexual orientation,
(d) race,
(e) nationality,
(f) disability,
(g) religion, or
(h) socio-economic status of members of that group.
Not really obliging anyone to do anything except judge people on their merits, does it? And what of the other bill (please bear with me, I’m not used to all this parliamentary language and stuff so as I said above, it could well be the same thing)?
In Part 2, Equality: key concepts, Chapter 1: protected characteristics are listed as…
The following characteristics are protected characteristics—
- age;
- disability;
- gender reassignment;
- marriage and civil partnership;
- pregnancy and maternity;
- race;
- religion or belief;
- sex;
- sexual orientation
Pretty much the same as the Equality and Diversity Bill. Here are some examples from it explaining what discrimination is…
Direct discrimination
(1) person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.
(2) If the protected characteristic is age, A does not discriminate against B if A can show A’s treatment of B to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
(3) 10If the protected characteristic is disability, A does not discriminate against B only because—
(a) A treats a third person who has a disability in a way which is permitted
by or under this Act,
(b) B does not have the disability, and
(c) 15A does not treat B in that way.
(4) If the protected characteristic is marriage and civil partnership, this section applies to a contravention of Part 5 (work) only if the treatment is because B is married or a civil partner.
(5) If the protected characteristic is race, less favourable treatment includes segregating B from others.
(6) If the protected characteristic is religion or belief, it does not matter whether the religion or belief is also A’s.
(7) If the protected characteristic is sex—
(a) less favourable treatment of a woman includes less favourable treatment of her because she is breast-feeding;
(b) in a case where B is a man, no account is to be taken of special treatment afforded to a woman in connection with pregnancy or childbirth.
(8) Subsection (7)(a) does not apply for the purposes of Part 5 (work).
(9) This section is subject to sections 16(6) and 17(7)
Here, the closest it gets to discrimination against men is 7, b, any special treatment of a woman due to pregnancy or childbirth in some way is to be ignored. Nowhere in either of these documents does it say that white men must be put to the back of the cue, ignored, not given the same rights as others.
The racists casually drop in…
To enforce compliance with that provision, the Equality Act will also order companies with more than 250 employees to have “gender pay audits.”
In effect this means that any company which does not actively discriminate against white males will be in contravention of the “gender pay audit” section of the act. In effect it means that any large company must discriminate against whites in order to comply with the law.
What the hell does that mean? A ‘gender pay audit’ doesn’t discriminate against males, white or otherwise. The idea is to shame companies into paying women the same as men. To stop discrimination against women. In reality, this will probably mean that companies will drop the pay of men rather than raise the wage of women, y’know, what with the mindset of the capitalist, but it’s still not discrimination. The second ‘in effect’ is just a complete non-sequitur. It doesn’t make sense.
The BNP article also says that Roman Catholic Bishops are warning that Christmas could be banned by the Equality Act. They make use of Andrew Summersgills, the General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, appearance in the racists favourite comic, the Daily Mail, where he states Christmas is already being banned, using the Oxford Winter Light Festival as an example. Five Chinese Crackers debunked this on 3rd November 2008. Where he shows that Winter Light Festival lasted for one night and covered lots of events including swithcing on the Christmas lights and various other stuff with Christmas in their names all going on. 5CC has done the same to the myth that Dundee has banned Christmas this year.
Now, the Bishops wouldn’t have a vested interest in seeing the Equality bill fail, would they? After all, Catholicism is such an exinclusive religion and doesn’t demonise whole sections of communities that don’t fit with their world view… what? Oh.
This is classic bullshit from the BNP, take something that is supposed to help bring equality to people, and because it is removing the white males advantage, not putting him at a disadvantage, they lie about it.
They lie about it because they have no arguments. They haven’t linked to anything, which is nothing unusual, the press don’t normally either, and they haven’t even quoted the offending parts of the bill to back up their case. They use the Daily Mail, with it’s agenda driven scare stories, removing themselves from the responsibility of fact checking because something has appeared in the mainstream media.
The BNP are supposed to be a political party, this article of theirs proves many things, among them i) they lie ii) they are racist ii) they are sexist. But we all new that anyway. There’s no couched language here just lies. Lies that’ll get repeated and passed around and you’ll eventually hear it from your non-racist mates, if you haven’t already.
November 18th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
Baroness Buscombe has expressed an interest in expanding the remit of the PCC to cover blogs as well…
“Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated,” Baroness Buscombe told me. “Is the reader of those blogs assuming that it’s news, and is [the blogosphere] the new newspapers? It’s a very interesting area and quite challenging.”
She said that after a review of the governance structures of the PCC, she would want the organisation to “consider” whether it should seek to extend its remit to the blogosphere, a process that would involve discussion with the press industry, the public and bloggers (who would presumably have to volunteer to come beneath the PCC’s umbrella)
Well, to quote a rather eloquent gentleman of a crimson hue…
Well, with all due respect, Baroness, you can fuck right off.
Because, basically the PCC is a useless pile of shit that seems to have the only function of staving off statutory regulation for the press industry.
Bollox to that. Which is why I’ve put my name to Unitys’ letter of a collective response to the Baroness at Liberal Conspiracy. Reproduced below…
Baroness Buscombe
Chair
Press Complaints Commission
Halton House
20/23 Holborn
London EC1N 2JDCc. Rt. Hon. Ben Bradshaw MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Cc. John Whittingdale MP, Culture, Media and Sport Committee17 November 2009
Dear Lady Buscombe
Re: Extension of PCC regulation to UK Blogs/Blogging
We write in regards to your apparent proposal that the PCC should consider extending its remit to the ‘blogosphere’ as reported by Ian Burrell of the Independent on 16 November 2009 (1).
While we are grateful for your interest in our activities we must regretfully decline your kind offer of future PCC regulation. Frankly, we do not feel that the further development of blogging as an interactive medium that facilitates the free exchange of ideas and opinions will benefit from regulation by a body representing an industry with, in the main, substantially lower ethical standards and practices than those already practiced by the vast majority of established British bloggers.
Although we would not wish you believe that this criticism relates to all your members – The Guardian, in particular, has adopted a number of practices, not least the appointment of a Readers’ Editor to deal with complaints, which we consider to be the current gold standard in ethical journalistic practice amongst national newspapers – It is nevertheless the case that the vast majority of national newspaper titles routinely fall well short of both those, and our own, standards and that our direct experience of dealing with the Press Complaints Commission shows the organisation to be, in the main, complicit in those failings.
To give but one recent example of bad practice, of the many that bloggers have documented in over the last few years, an article published by the Tabloid Watch blog in October, covered documented, in some considerable detail, the tortuous process that one of its readers had to go through in order to get the News of the World to retract a manifestly untrue and inflammatory statement by one of its regular columnists, Carole Malone. In this particular column, published in July 2009, Malone made use of an all-too-common and utterly racist myth that ‘immigrants’ (meaning asylum seekers) receive free cars on arriving in the UK (2), a myth that is most closely associated with the propaganda output of the British National Party.
All you have to do to get everything Britain has to offer is to turn up illegally with some sob story of how your own country is too dangerous or that you’re a lesbian who’ll be shot if you stay there and Hey Presto, it’s like you’ve won the lottery! And, in effect, they HAVE.
Free houses, free cars, free healthcare and free money. Hell, they don’t even have to work or speak the language. Even the suggestion they should is seen as racist in Brown’s Britain.
They can just live as they did before, only with a whole heap more money and zero responsibility to the country providing it. (3)
What we find most striking about the process documented by Tabloid Watch is the extent to which the PCC actively sought to facilitate the News of the World’s efforts to avoid undertaking practices that we, as bloggers, take for granted as being standard practice in our corner of the Internet; i.e. the prominent publication of an honest and open correction of a factual error on the original article in which the error, itself, was made. Instead, as we invariably find to be standard practice amongst, particularly, tabloid newspapers; the correction and cursory apology (4)– when it was grudgingly issued after what Tabloid Watch described as ‘two months of wrangling’ – appeared in a location other than that of Malone’s column in the newspaper’s print edition and on its website on a page utterly divorced the article to which it relates, which was removed its entirely, and in such a way that only someone searching specifically for the retraction would ever be likely to find it. (5)
To all intents and purposes, the retraction might as well not have been issued, for all that it would apparent to visitors to the News of World’s website that it had ever been made.
This is but one clear example of a practice that would be unacceptable amongst established bloggers and one of many that bloggers who specialise in monitoring the national press for accuracy have documented in recent years. For a blogger to engage in such practices, which include ‘stealth editing’ of articles, after publication, to avoid owning up to factual errors and removing and/or refusing to publish critical comments from readers, especially those that highlight and correct factual errors.
For an established blogger to adopt such practices would do incalculable damage to their public reputation; this being, after all, all that we have to trade on.
To the vast majority of national newspapers such conduct is no more than standard operating practice.
Consequently we would suggest that before your even consider turning your attention to our activities, you should direct your energies towards putting your own house in proper order. Should you succeed in raising the ethical standards and practices of the majority of the national press, particularly the tabloids, to our level then we may be inclined to reconsider our position. Until that happens, any attempt by the Press Complaints Commission to regulate the activities of bloggers will be strenuously resisted at every possible turn.
Regards,
Unity – Ministry of Truth (6) and Liberal Conspiracy (7)
References
1. Ian Burrell. PCC to regulate UK bloggers? Independent Minds. [Online] 16 November 2009. http://ianburrell.independentminds.livejournal.com/8357.html.
2. MacGuffin. How the PCC Doesn’t Work. Tabloid Watch. [Online] 25 October 2009. http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-pcc-doesnt-work.html.
3. Malone, Carole. I’ll Give You a Real Benefits Sob Story. News of The World. [Online] 26 July 2009. Article no longer available online. Key content quoted by Tabloid Watch: http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2009/07/carole-malone-and-bnp.html.
4. Press Complaints Commission. [Online] [Cited: 17 November 2009.] http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NjAzNQ==.
5. News of The World. Illegal immigrants & cars . [Online] [Cited: 25 October 2009.] http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/showbiz/564615/Illegal-immigrants-amp-cars.html.
Supporting Bloggers/Blogs
6. Ministry of Truth. [Online] http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk.
7. Liberal Conspiracy. [Online] http://www.liberalconspiracy.org.
If you haven’t already, put your name down in the comments there.
There’s always one, though isn’t there? Martin at Layscience.net sees this differently…
What the PCC needs is change. What the PCC needs is fresh blood to move in and shake things up. What better solution then to fill a syringe with new media magic and jab it straight into their cold, dying heart?
As long as British bloggers are not compelled by law to submit to regulations – and to my knowledge there is absolutely no serious suggestion that they ever would be – then the voluntary participation of leading bloggers in the PCC could in principle be an excellent idea.
While we’re on the subject of the PCC…
The PCC – the body currently speaking of the potential to ‘regulate’ blogs (more) – has at every stage refused to investigate or even publicly acknowledge the attempt by the Managing Editor of the The Sun to attack me instead of addressing the evidence I presented.
[That “me”, by the way, isn’t me, it’s] Tim at Bloggerheads who has posted the letter from Graham Dudman to the PCC about Glen Jenvey, Ummah.com and Bloggerheads.com.
It’s disgusting and all I can say is, Graham is a cunt. But then what do you expect from a Murdoch lackie.
Go and read it for yourself as it’s a bit pointless me going through it here.
