Bob Piper has been a Labour Councillor for the Abbey
Ward in Sandwell, West Midlands, for 10 years. He is a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa Football Club and a follower of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The views expressed here are mine in a personal capacity, not those of the Labour Party, Sandwell MBC, Aston Villa or Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Get it! Mine... just mine!
Paul de Laire Staines who blogs by the name of Guido was truly awful on Newsnight last night. Having been accused of talking complete tosh by Paxman (when he probably wasn't, actually) he then went on to make a complete arse of himself by appearing in silhouette and getting a real working over by Michael White. The problem Staines has is, it seems to me, that he would like his blog to be treated at least partially seriously, acting as a sort of anarchist weapon, independent of political party or media control, but the comments column is dominated by right-wing nutters spouting childish insults. I rarely ever visit Staines' site because of this, and when I looked through it last night it obviously hasn't changed. According to Manic the comments are heavily censored anyway and are supplemented by a small number of people using various pseudonyms to attack anyone who attempts to engage in a serious dialogue.
Anyway, the upshot of last night's little fiasco was that it was hardly likely to make anyone who didn't read blogs anyway decide it was worthwhile, although I'm sure out of sheer curiosity on the night it will have boosted Staines' hits and ego significantly.
Like you I don't go there often, but I did read many of the adverse comments on his blog before he deleted them. I enjoyed seeing a bully getting bullied. I don't think it did his ego any good at all, on the contrary I think it got rather dented. My only regret is that he was not confronted with his BNP link in Hull, and asked to justify himself on this issue. I suspect that he will now go through a phrase of post traumatic stress disorder, and of course get the cold shoulder treatment from any likely source in the future. For once I have no sympathy for this underdog.
actually, I think Ireland's marks are somewhat wide of the mark - there are lots of abusive right-wingers on Staines' site, but his idea that they are all sockpuppets is somewhat wishful thinking - there are more than 3 Tories in the world.
Harrumph - is this what we pay our regressive tax (aka licence fee) for? A few weeks ago Radio 4 profiled this buffoonish toff and now BBC1 has plonked him on the telly. It's political-blogers like him what give the art a bad name...
Bob, naturally I'm yet to find a single comments column dominated by left-wing nutters spouting childish insults!
Bob Piper said:
March 29, 2007 2:02 PM | permalink
snafu... I hope you haven't spent the four hours since you last wrote that searching. If there is such a blog, frankly, I wouldn't spend much time there either.
March 29, 2007 8:31 AM | permalink
Bob, do you know any blogs where the comments column are dominated by left-wing nutters spouting childish insults!?!