Part of the real reason for him banning me, along with the false homophobia accusation, was because unlike most on his blog, I did not agree with everything he wrote and highlighted the contradictions and inconsistencies (he also has a history of this I see) in his writing.

I also did not like his persistent hatred and criticism of one player, Luis Boa Morte and blind love for another, Mark Noble…who he absolutely adores. Boa Morte now gets booed by some of his own fans; I can only guess that these yobs are the same zombies who follow what Dale says on his site and then go out onto the stands in a certain frame of mind. I hate to think that he has this much influence but unfortunately he does because some people do not have the ability to think for themselves.

The guy knows nothing about football…probably hasn’t played it in his life yet has a blog just so he can seem cool and feel good about himself when his chums agree with him in their comments.

In one correspondence with him, he reluctantly (ahem) pointed out to me how popular his blog was. My answer to that is that The Sun Newspaper is the number one circulating in the UK. It means nothing Iain apart from the number of people you attract who have a certain cognitive ability.

The only reason why people would not notice that Iain Dale is up himself is because he’s gone so far that he’s come out the other end.

Of course, the signal/noise is terrible, but…

So yeah, I used to read Dale’s comment threads when he started (he even emailed me once thanking me for my constructive comment and asking me to link to him), but back then there were only 20ish politics blogs worth reading. Scarily, I was one of them.

Now there are many many more politics blogs, and there are Tory bloggers that aren’t diary column/press release central.

It is a wonder that someone thinks that his words are worth broadcasting to the world when he doesn’t even know the difference between a death camp and a prisoner-of-war camp

Um, which prisoners of war were kept in Auschwitz?
The phrase Dale was appropriating was “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which was the most graphic example of the Nazi party’s Ironic and cruel humour, since it was writ in ironwork over the gates of Auschwitz.
That post of his could have been a moderately amusing pointing out of the vacuities of graphic design(ers) and the amount of money wasted on it, given that they didn’t notice that the way the arrows covered the blue square made it look like a blue swastika, but instead his usage of that line and the way he wrote it made it into a rather crass post.

And you referred to a single unspecified link in a post with some 20 links in it, nobody else knew what you were banging on about, and (I mentioned coincidence), you were banging on about something Iain himself was bitching about privately at the time. Iain, who likes to share private emails with his mates when he thinks no-one is looking, and is bitching because I’m referring to a pathetic excuse that he insists remain secret for no good reason that I can see.

Still, willing to apologise personally to Iain (if not the puppet on some git’s hand); all he has to do is drop by and say ‘hello’.

(PS – There’s a thread system here. Why not use it? Is everything you say so fresh and precious?)

Well, I say this quite a lot in these comments boxes, but one of the reasons I dislike Alix Mortimer’s stuff so much is that she’s a propagandist. Not a paid one, but a propagandist nonetheless.

This is why – amongst a fair quantity of other bullshit – she’s prepared to claim that she’s living in a state of unadulterated terror because of the Labour government, something people would recognise as bullshit if it came from an idiot rightist talking of ZanuLabour, but for some reason can’t when it’s a LibDem. (They really aren’t better than the others, I’m afraid.)

Screaming exaggerations in a party cause – is this something that should win the Orwell Prize?

Also on the question of her writing style, there’s this from Orwell’s great essay:

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out

Does anybody think this is Alix Mortimer? Have a look yourself. But you may need to scroll down a long way before you’ve finished checking.

Oh, dear. I was indeed talking about an unspecified post, but since the context made it quite clear that I was referring to the author of this blog, and since it was a post linked to in the post to which I was replying, it is rather amusing that you immediately jump to the conclusion it can only have been about you. Having read some of what you have written in the past it really doesn’t surprise me.

Sock-puppet? I’ve used this identity on the internet for 15 years now. I don’t see any way of logging in, so any identity I pick could hide me equally well. The name I choose is therefore irrelevant.

Justin

Eh? What are you on? Why do you assume that just because Iain Dale likes your blog I would? I read his blog, and respect his views. I don’t take my opinions from him. He likes Cliff Richard for Christ’s sake.

I didn’t even read your blog at the time your links were written. Who knows, it might have been worth reading then, and just have gone rapidly downhill.

Whether Iain was bothered by you breaking his confidentiality is irrelevant to my point. You claimed to keep it, and wrote a smug piece as if you’d got one over on Iain. In fact you were just being underhand and dishonest. I don’t think the dishonesty was harmful itself, as Iain had no right to demand you keep the contents to yourself. What it did was show your character and demonstrate your lack of understanding of rather a simple concept.

Apologies for that and apologies also for over-estimating your real-time scrapping skills, your virtual ones though are bloody ace.

Peace out.