Derek Draper: blogged down
I have to say that this New Labour online propaganda offensive is a curious animal. It’s obvious that project leader Derek Draper (yes, that Derek Draper) hasn’t the first idea about blogs and online writing hence his breakfast meeting this morning with the ‘great’ and the ‘good’ of New Labour blogging.
And what a guest list it was. Alex ‘Gays=Paedos‘ Hilton. Charlie Whelan (Gordon Brown’s former news massager and now facing accusations of bullying in his new job with Unite). Luke (lobbyist for arms dealers) Akehurst. Tim Allan (Alastair Campbell’s deputy when Campbell was paid to lie to the country). And others who, frankly, should really know better if they want to keep their well-earned reputations for being decent and trustworthy people.
The thing is, what Draper doesn’t seem to realise is that many blogs – left, right and centre – have sprung up in almost direct response to the spin, lies and downright bollocks churned out by the New Labour machine in the last five or six years. An enormous number of bullshit detectors were installed quite a while back and have had an awful lot of testing. How he thinks any online effort set up by someone of his democracy-circumventing pedigree is going to garner even a veneer of trustworthiness beyond a hard core of credulous acolytes is for him to explain.
Maybe he’s going to rely on lazy on-deadline journalists with their fingers on the copy and paste keys to foster his new venture. It’s about the only example he could take from the big boys of right-wing blogging who’ve built their so-called reputations on the indolence and penny-pinching of the Fourth Estate looking for cheap copy. Online, however, Draper should expect heavy incoming fire.
Posted on December 19th, 2008 at 6:22pm under Blog, bloggers and blogging, Eye Catching Initiatives, New Labour
| Related posts... • A heartfelt plea to non-bloggers • Derek Draper’s projection • Labourlist and Schillings: a meeting of minds |
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• 19 Comments |
Vomiting is the only rational reaction…
…and after that, we load for bear.
[...] Chick Yog watches Derek Draper get bogged blogged [...]
Presumably there’s only seventeen people who count in blogging and Draper was intimate with all of them?
Nice to see Sunny on the list, ensuring that Liberal Conspiracy doesn’t fall into the trap of being denounced for being full of Labour hacks.
It was a bit boring to be honest… I’d heard the BSD people the day before at a Compass event anyway.
Nevertheless I went and asked whether Blue State Digital had to convince the Obama campaign to give up any power so it could let the grassroots self-organise and push the campaign they wanted. the Labour party, I said, was devoid of internal democracy and I couldn’t imagine them following that path that the campaign took in giving its membership a platform so it would be open to criticism.
Draper said maybe I should join the party and help them. I said thanks but no thanks – not in is current state. Afterwards I talked to some other LCers who had also come to hear the BSD people.
I don’t think Draper gets the fact that just building a technology infrastructure won’t win the election. the party will have to engage with people first and get some involved.
And anyone who denounces of being full of Labour hacks clearly doesn’t read LC enough.
Oh dear, I’m not even making much sense today.
“and get some involved.” = and get them involved with its ideas and campaigns.
“And anyone who denounces of being full” = anyone who denounces LC of being full….
I was also invited along for some reason even though I’m not a Labour member, supporter, campaigner or blogger. But contrary to what has been written by Staines and the Mail it wasn’t really about blogging at all. It was a talk by Obama’s online campaign team about how they used e-mail lists, social networking, and campaign websites to recruit and motivate their supporters. Blogging barely got a mention.
All this stuff about it being Draper’s astroturfing crew is just spin. As is the invite list. Many of the people invited (Akehurst and Hilton included) weren’t even there. I was and went along out of curiosity. If the Tories invited me to a similar event I’d probably go along as well. I’m not sure why that makes me any less trustworthy or decent though.
Sunny and Adam – who sent the invitations? Was a New Labour gig?
Justin – It looks like a pure DD initiative. I was sent the invitation, and I circulated it internally within the LC list, remember?
It looks like a pure DD initiative.
Come one Sunny, that’s spin. Like it being ‘a pure DD initiative’ makes it any better. He’s building an online propaganda unit for New Labour. Surely you must be aware of his disgusting history? He’s tainted to say the least. I wouldn’t break bread with that fucker for any money. And look at the cock-eyed way he went about it arranging that meeting – what an amateur.
(I’ve just seen the email now. I had seen the title but I ignored the content because Friday 19th was no good for me. I wish I has looked at it now – I’d have been tempted to leak it myself.)
All Draper has done so far is present the right-wing tabloid ‘bloggers’ with an easy target. For months, they’ve been blaming every anonymous comment suggesting that they might be wrong about this or that on DD and his phantom minions. The way he bungles about only feeds their spin. FFS, he emails Alex Hilton and Jag Singh and expects Staines not to get wind of it?
The reason for the ‘league of lefty sock puppets’ narrative is obvious though; most right-wing blogs are rotten with sock-puppetry and have been for years. But for all their noise, they’ve not caught one single puppeteer yet, have they? But they seem to have their eyes constantly on their traffic stats…
Meanwhile, a senior communications guy for the Tories Grant Shapps MP has been caught red-handed when pretending to be a disheartened Liberal Democrat while (oops) still logged into his own YouTube account. I’m yet to blog the details, but Paul Staines was also recently caught red-handed (trying to explain his actions re: Baby P while pretending to be someone else, which takes a special kind of courage).
(I could go on. In fact, I plan to soon. Once again, I invite any right-wingers present to speak up and bring me any proven examples of left wing sock puppetry that I may not be aware of. I’d hate to leave anybody out.)
[...] second thing I didn’t get to do was go to the Labour Bloggers gathering this morning. When I returned to British political blogs after work, Christmasshopping and spending [...]
What Tim said. Just because you don’t trust Draper’s spin about this, doesn’t mean you should trust Staines’ spin either. I thought I would go and see for myself what it was all about. Turns out it was a lot of mostly Labour campaigners talking about how best they could campaign for Labour online. Who would have thought?
I got the impression that Draper didn’t really understand it all and had a vague idea that the internet could be useful.
People in the audience were more interested in talking about how people could be rallied around issues such as the living wage etc. There was also a lot of talk about how New Labour had ben top-down or ‘Stalinist’ and that the Obama campaign showed that parties needed to be ‘bottom up’ in using it’s supporters and meeting their concerns.
What wasn’t mentioned was that the last real mass ‘bottom up’ issue was the Iraq war and the Labour government completely ignored it. They lost our trust on this and other issues and it’s going to take a lot more than a few nifty websites to turn that around for them. I don’t think the Labour party will fully realise that until they’re out of power (if at all) but I was pleased to hear that at least some of their supporters are beginning to realise what needs to be done.
Just because you don’t trust Draper’s spin about this, doesn’t mean you should trust Staines’ spin either
Well I don’t and wouldn’t as I hope is obvious. And I don’t need to – as it happens I had a copy of that invite list myself all along. The trouble is other people will believe Staines’ spin. In the unlikely even that my name had appeared on that list I’d have been screaming from the rooftops that I am not one of Derek fucking Draper’s go-to guys for his blogging offensive. I can think of little that would ruin my small online reputation more.
You and Sunny have very fine reputations in British blogging and I think it would be terrible if those reputations were damaged unwittingly or not by association with scum like Draper. If I haven’t made it clear enough I regard him as beyond the pale.
What he and his cohort got up to back in the 90s should have finished him for good in politics and yet here he is. He clearly thought you and Sunny worth inviting to his breakfast. I doubt he did it out of the goodness of his heart. Reflected glory springs to mind. A stamp of respectability.
Anyway, I realise I’m getting into ‘will-you-condemn-athon’ territory. The meeting itself sounds encouraging and less stuffed with dragooned useful idiots than I’d feared.
[...] Yoghurt gets upset about it here. Kerron Cross has a bash about it here. Dodgy talks about it here, and various other people have [...]
He’s building an online propaganda unit for New Labour. Surely you must be aware of his disgusting history?
Oh I’m perfectly aware… but as Adam said – I wanted to see what the Blue State digital people had to say – people didn’t come to rub shoulders with Draper.
I’ll write about this tonight… I don;t think he’s very clued up about it either…
people didn’t come to rub shoulders with Draper
Maybe not but has it not occurred to you that that’s how it might look? Or that Draper might be tempted use your and others’ attendance to give his venture a veneer of respectability?
Or that Draper might be tempted use your and others’ attendance to give his venture a veneer of respectability?
Sure, but I haven’t signed on a dotted line anywhere. It was a closed event by invite only, anyway, so he couldn’t have used it more widely to gain credibility among bloggers.
All I’m saying is, I wanted to learn what the party was up to and what the BSD people were saying. Let the likes of Guido snipe from the sidelines – I don’t give a toss about him. But I’m definitely not being drafted into any project by them.