MPs will vote in a secret ballot today on a series of committee positions. During this process, they will decide between the following Conservative MPs for Chair of the Health Select Committee; Sir Paul Beresford, Mr Peter Bone, Mr Stephen Dorrell... and Mrs Nadine Dorries

Nadine Dorries... as Chair... of the Health Select Committee.

If that sentence doesn't send a chill down your spine, it should; it'd be bad news for breathers everywhere if it actually came to be.

There are many reasons why this MP is unsuited as Chair of any committee outside of a church fete, but I know you're busy, so I've settled on one. Also, rather than dig up any 'ancient history' (such as her conduct while sitting on the Parliamentary Science and Tech Select Committee in 2007), I'm going to take a look at the immediate past.

From 7 October 2009 to 11 May 2010, Nadine Dorries was a member of the Commons Science and Technology Committee (and it is at this point that I would like to depart from the narrative just long enough to dedicate the rest of this post to PDF files everywhere*):

House of Commons : Science and Technology Committee : Formal Minutes : Session 2009-10 [.PDF]

Looking at the introduction to the above minutes, there is a name right under Dorries' on the membership list that immediately catches my eye:

Mrs Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)
Dr Evan Harris (Liberal Democrat, Oxford West & Abingdon)

Moving on to the minutes themselves, you may note a subtle pattern in the notes on attendance:

The committee met on Wednesday 18 November 2009. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting..

The committee met again on Wednesday 25 November 2009. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting..

The committee met again on Monday 30 November 2009. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 2 December 2009. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Ian Cawsey, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 9 December 2009. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Mr Ian Cawsey, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 6 January 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Brian Iddon, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 13 January 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 20 January 2010 . Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Doug Naysmith, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 27 January 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Ian Cawsey, Dr Doug Naysmith, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 3 February 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Dr Doug Naysmith, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Monday 8 February 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Doug Naysmith, Mr Ian Cawsey, Ian Stewart, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 10 February 2010 . Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Doug Naysmith, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 24 February 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Dr Doug Naysmith, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Monday 1 March 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Doug Naysmith, Ian Stewart, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 3 March 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Dr Doug Naysmith, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 10 March 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Dr Doug Naysmith, Mr Ian Cawsey, Dr Brian Iddon, and Graham Stringer.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 17 March 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Monday 22 March 2010 . Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Dr Doug Naysmith, Ian Stewart, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting.

The committee met again on Wednesday 24 March 2010. Members present were Mr Phil Willis (in the Chair), Mr Tim Boswell, Dr Brian Iddon, Graham Stringer, and Dr Evan Harris.

Nadine Dorries did not attend this meeting

During these meetings, the committee discussed a wide range of topics including drug misuse, Swine Flu, homeopathy, and bioengineering. One might expect some or all of these topics to be of passing interest to someone with "a natural leaning to towards all health related issues" (sic) (source) but Dorries did not attend a single meeting of this committee for its entire session (and there is no record of her resigning in the minutes that I can see).

So if Dorries seriously considers herself worthy and capable of holding the position of Chair on the Health Select Commitee, what reason can she give to explain her dismal attendance record in the far less demanding role of 'member' in this previous committee?

Well, here's a clue for you; the jubilant election-night tweet by Nadine Dorries celebrating the defeat of fellow committee member Dr Evan Harris in Oxford West and Abingdon:

@Nadine4mp: Do my eyes and ears deceive me? Has Dr Death really lost his seat ? (screengrab)

(There was an outcry that followed. This tweet upset a great many people and struck even some fellow Tories as unjustified and undignified. Dorries then closed her Twitter feed claiming she only wanted to use it for the election. A week after that, Stephen Timms was stabbed and Dorries went on to use a magic time machine to claim this was the reason why she had closed her Twitter account and her blog, but that's a whole other story.)

The nickname 'Dr Death' has been used against Dr Evan Harris by a small number of opponents, and their typical justification for it is best summarised in this Daily Mail headline from October 2007:

Daily Mail - Meet Dr Death, the Lib Dem MP Evan Harris who backs embryo experiments, euthanasia and freer abortion

There is also compelling evidence to suggest that Nadine Dorries herself may have been the person who initially fed this nickname to the media as an attack device (before later describing it as a nickname used by "most MPs and journalists").

Collectively, this evidence is at risk of giving some people the impression that Dorries allowed a difference of opinion on some aspects of biological science to become deeply personal... possibly to the extent that she felt unable to function as a member of a committee - despite her commitment to Parliament and the people - purely because Dr Evan Harris was present at the relevant meetings (as he was at every meeting bar one).

Then again, it may be that Nadine Dorries was simply busy doing something else more important at the time... for every single meeting of the entire 09/10 session of this committee (e.g. On 24 February 2010, she did not have time to attend the Commons Science and Technology Committee meeting, but she did have time to speak at a conference about her 'blog'. Before this, she was unable to attend the 9 December 2009 meeting because she was busy all that week filming a reality TV show (in which she sought to gain advantage by hiding cash in her bra and - it is alleged - drugs in her washbag).

Either way, she's not looking like the best candidate for Chair of the Health Select Committee. Not by a long shot.

In fact, if you take a look at the wider evidence (some of which is referenced in this post) you may come to the conclusion that I reached a while ago; she's unfit to hold office as an MP, and only retains the support of the Conservative party because of their reliance on the Christian right and associated fringe elements (i.e. the type of people who portray/describe pro-choice opponents as baby murderers).

But it will be enough today that you understand/appreciate the evidence and share it with your MP before they vote in the relevant ballot.

You might want to hurry, BTW. Commitee voting starts at 10am today.

Thanks for your time. Cheers all.

-

[*Private joke. Never mind.]

[Don't get me started on how Nadine Dorries conducts herself at meetings.]

[Psst! While I've got your attention; Patrick Mercer is a disgrace, too.]

-

EPILOGUE (11 June) - (a) Stephen Dorrell was elected chair of the health committee. Not Dorries. Phew. (b) While I expected Nadine Dorries to do better in a secret ballot than she did in her recent whatever-that-was against the Speaker, these numbers (PDF/source) are far higher than I expected, and just a little bit scary. There are up to 143 MPs in this Parliament who either don't know that Dorries is a delusional liar... or don't care.

Posted by Manic on June 9, 2010, 9:01 AM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Nadine Dorries has decided to stand for Chair of the Health Select Committee.

No, really.

And she is now distributing begging letters to other MPs seeking votes/support.

I say letters, because I hear of a variation of this letter published by Tom Watson sent to female MPs that includes a repeated pitch about the need to get a woman in this position, and I suspect that newer MPs will receive yet another version (not unlike this letter [more]) that helpfully guides n00bs through the tricky process of making up their own minds.

Now, there's a lot that's wrong about the case that Dorries makes for herself, but if I start picking at every thread in this latest web of lies, deceits and delusions we could be here all day. Instead, allow me to point out the single, bold lie at the very beginning of her letter:

"I have never held any front bench ambition" - Nadine Dorries (source)

Not only do I know this to be a lie, but I can prove it... because Dorries was singing an altogether different tune in this interview (from happier times) in the Telegraph:

"If we were in government and David didn't give me a front bench position, I would barricade myself inside his office until he did." - Nadine Dorries (source)

Nadine Dorries is a liar. Fact.

-

UPDATE - Chris Paul does the honours with a fleet-footed fisking

Posted by Manic on June 7, 2010, 2:58 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

There are two types of tray liners that dominate the market; one goes in fast food trays and the other lines kitty-litter boxes. That crunchy nugget alone should tell you all you need to know, but today we're going to dig all the way to the bottom for a special treat.

Below is a scan of the latest tray liner for Burger King. Upon closer inspection, your mind may initially refuse to accept what you're seeing, but it's exactly what it looks like:

Yes, the cow is angry because you are eating chicken. It is jealous. The cow wants you to eat it instead.

And unlike the pig that wants to be eaten, the cow's not even bothering to be polite about it.

Again, I should warn you that your mind may betray you at this point as it stubbornly clings to reason... but the cow's wish that you eat it - and its willingness to stalk you to the bottom of every food tray - is part of a weird, sexual relationship that you're a willing partner to (according to Burger King).

To remove any doubt about their intentions, here's the 30 second TVC they released as part of this same Tendercrisp campaign:

Now, don't get me wrong here; I do eat cow now and again and I do enjoy it. I've even dabbled in a little animal husbandry to the extent of having my entire forearm inside a cow's bottom at one stage, but at no stage did I utter the words "Oh, you love it!" or go on to imagine a cow gaining pleasure from any beef-related mastication at the dinner table.

Putting aside what any given cow may or may not be capable of feeling about any assertion that they gain sexual pleasure and form deep emotional attachments as a result of being minced, grilled and munched; eating the high amounts of sugar, fat and salt in a typical burger triggers a fleeting pleasure response in your brain, and Burger King are clearly trying to associate that with sexual pleasure in order to sell more chicken or beef burgers (a win/win situation from their POV).

I don't plan on having a cow about it; quite the opposite, actually.

I don't spend money on companies that knowingly exploit the witless or insult my intelligence, and any money I spend on fast food in the next 3 months will not be spent on Burger King.

(They can count themselves lucky that it stops there; we all know what Tyler Durden would do.)

-

[In other news, look out for one of life's biggest lies in response to this; the cry of 'humourless lefty' aimed at anyone who dares object to a joke that sells or reinforces a damaging lie... like equating homosexuality with paedophilia, for example, or singing about aid to Gaza as if it's more than ample and used to arm children with missiles.]

Posted by Manic on June 7, 2010, 10:31 AM in Consume! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Excuse me, folks. I know you many of you are waiting for an update on the Nadine Dorries situation, but I want to be absolutely sure of the circumstances in which she made these false allegations before going any further, and this (open) letter is long overdue.

I will continue to update you on Twitter as and when. Cheers all.

To: Ian Hislop
CC: Adam Macqueen, Louis Barfe
From: Tim Ireland
Subject: Your baffling refusal to regret or retract a childish outburst

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Ian,

After yesterday's discussion it's clear that you are completely averse to a retraction of comments made under the umbrella of your organisation, despite your knowing how they have been used against me in the past and how they are being used against me to this day.

Still, knowing and understanding are two different things (which may be what G.I. Joe was banging on about in between explosions) so here's what doesn't fit into a two-minute conversation:

The first aspect you struggle to understand is that I am not being overly precious about my reputation, but instead merely trying to protect my family. I expose liars and get lied about often as a result, but people attacking me online are now armed with my home address thanks to a man called Dominic Wightman. This has resulted in the publication of my home address alongside claims that I'm a stalker of women who sends death threats to MPs. The same people also recruit unwitting newcomers, arming them with these false allegations and my home address (an act which has so far successfully slipped through the cracks between potential criminal and civil action).

Glen Jenvey claims to have been duped in a similar manner in the event that kicked off this major disruption in my life; he was armed (he claims by Wightman) with my home address and the false allegation that I was a convicted paedophile. The result; today, over a year after they were first posted, there are still some 50+ repeats of this dangerous smear live on websites hosted by Google, who refuse to remove them (and often take months to remove private data such as my home address when they claim to have a 48-hour response time).

The second aspect you struggle to understand is that the people most instrumental in these attacks are using Macqueen's childish outburst and your ongoing silence to part-justify their allegations/actions.

Iain Dale actually tried to take political advantage of my being smeared as a paedophile while simulataneously libelling Tom Watson as a smear merchant. He went on to similarly exploit a man on the brink of suicide and the repeated publication of my home address. He did this primarily by lying about the context, the circumstances and the specifics of attempts to contact him about these matters, falsely giving the impression that he had made a valid complaint of harassment (which quickly evolved into an outright claim of 'stalking') and it was your man Adam Macqueen who popped up at the crucial moment on the website of another Private Eye writer, Louis Barfe, likening my correspondence with your magazine to the rantings of a "nutter on a bus".

Macqueen then went on to lie about the context, the circumstances and the specifics of what he did/said, and I could prove that to you if you'd care to give the evidence some consideration, but I am fearful of how you or your staff would portray any attempt to contact you privately in the circumstances.

Adam Macqueen and Louis Barfe may know Iain Dale from way back when, but people change and nothing changes them faster than politics. Even some of Dale's most ardent supporters have been forced to admit an even greater change in his behaviour since the Tories finally negotiated their way into government.

Recently, a young man submitted to Dale's site a polite comment correcting him on one or two claims he made about the expanding protest in Parliament Square. Dale reacted by publicising the man's home address and reporting him to his employer for shirking... over nothing more than a difference of opinion! He then went on to write and publish a series of comments alleging, theorising and contending all manner of sins without a scrap of evidence to back any of it.

Link:
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/05/shouldnt-you-be-at-work-mike.html

Iain Dale is such a two-faced cockweasel that people don't often see this side of him, but I saw it as early as 2006, when he knowingly allowed another 'lefty' to be smeared as a paedophile (yes, he has done this twice now), most likely because taking a public stand against it would have harmed his friend and political ally Anne Milton. At the time, political blogging was still in its infancy, but Dale had one of the most influential Tory blogs around and one or more of the people involved in the smear appear to have been regular comment contributors during and after this period.

The latter is hard to prove definitively because Iain Dale is second only to Paul Staines when it comes to running a political blog like an open sewer and allows his supporters to pose as several different people when it suits him, but what can be said for sure is that Dale went on to repeat anonymous comments submitted to his site claiming I had stalked Anne Milton as if this were a statement of fact.

Iain Dale went on to repeat this smear and variations of it, privately with other MPs, and at public events attended by MPs.

These repeated smears have also been used to good effect by his allies.

In fact, Nadine Dorries, a particularly close ally of Iain Dale's, has followed the same dirty playbook. The only real differences arise from the lessons I have learned from Dale's assault (don't give them anything they can distort, and record, record, record).

Despite the urgency of some matters, I have only emailed Nadine Dorries 10 times in the space of two years, and each and every one of these emails related to her falsely accusing me of being mentally unstable and/or a stalker. She went on to misrepresent these emails anyway, portraying these attempts to address the smear of stalking as evidence of stalking (!) mainly by giving a false account of the emails' contents and their frequency.

(Your man Macqueen pulled much the same stunt. He smeared me as a nutter, and portrayed my attempt to confront him - and you - about that as proof of what he claimed.)

Hearing of these and other lies Dorries was spreading in private and in public, during the recent election I went along to a public hustings event in Flitwick to film proceedings. Dorries reacted by declaring me to be a stalker in front of the entire gathering (twice) before storming out... and neatly avoiding having to answer her constituents on camera as a result.

When smearing me as a stalker, she described hundreds of abusive emails that were never sent and spoke of police investigations that never took place. Since this extraordinary outburst, she has even gone on to publicly liken her position to that of Stephen Timms, as if I am likely to stab the woman! This is no better than (and similar to) her 'brink of suicide' hysteria during the expenses scandal, but it carries the added bonus of casting me as a man with a violent, criminal character.

Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjOr9vYg9dQ
http://adamcroft.net/2010/05/nadine-dorries-tim-ireland-and-flitwick-what-really-happened/
http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2010/05/to-nadine-dorries.asp

I have no criminal record. I haven't harassed anyone in the legal sense, and I certainly haven't ever stalked anyone. I'm also of sound mind; it's the situation that's crazy, and you knowingly continue to be a part of it.

For that reason, I cannot trust you or your magazine on any claim where you are the only source. Given Macqueen's extraordinary distortions over this (that you stand by), I can't even trust the context in which you present claims where you are not the only source.

This is why, after ten years of buying, reading, trusting, endorsing and publicising your magazine, I don't read Private Eye any more, and even advise others against trusting you or anything your staff/magazine put forward.

(Have I Got News For You, I turn off because I can't stand seeing your smug, slap-headed face eating up the applause like a prize felcher, but I won't pretend it's unrelated.)

If your writers are going to distort the truth and tell outright lies and you are going to stand by them, it undermines everything you attempt to achieve with your magazine and everything you claim to stand for.

If you were a man of probity and honour, your refusal to be answerable to the PCC would be a grand gesture indeed, but without the vital ingredient of integrity, you're just another publisher who seeks to avoid accountability... who does so under a banner of holding others to account!

And do you know what? This is exactly my beef with Iain Dale, and it always has been. This is the tabloid mentality I campaigned against long before Dale arrived to declare himself the king of bloggers (in polls he conducted himself), and it is something I will continue to fight for as long as I am able.

I honestly thought I would be fighting that fight with Private Eye at my back, not stabbing it. The way things are shaping up, the newly sober David Yelland appears more principled than you. David Yelland!

I am shocked and saddened because I genuinely thought you were better than this.... or at least smart enough not to be taken in by the likes of Iain Dale and his dirtbag mates.

Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com

PS - Regardless of the ill will I feel towards you, I know you have suffered broadly similar attacks in your lifetime (e.g. the closest parallel; Piers Morgan repeatedly smearing you and interfering with your personal life while playing the victim) and I sincerely hope that one day you come to better appreciate the enormity of an accusation of child rape without having to endure the smear yourself. I can also guarantee you that, unlike some 'leading' bloggers, if I am ever to confront you over this again, I will do so openly, honestly, and under my own name.

For those who are wondering, I ran into Ian Hislop in Westminster yesterday. He agreed with me about how unacceptable this situation was... right up until the point where I pointed out how his staff were involved and how much good a simple retraction would do. His response; "Conversation over. Not going to happen."

Ian Hislop also stated quite clearly that he would not be covering any of Nadine Dorries' extraordinary outbursts in his magazine.

-

UPDATE (28 May) - A greatly appreciated response from Louis Barfe. Incorrect/misinformed in places, but at least someone's communicating.

That's the most insidious thing about this 'stalker' smear; the people accusing me do not have to come out and have their allegations tested... because they claim to have been advised not to talk to stalkers. Iain Dale lied, Adam Macqueen lied and Nadine Dorries lied, but any attempt to address those lies is then presented as further evidence of stalking. Witness, for example, Dorries portraying somewhere between 2 and 10 polite emails into hundreds of vile and abusive messages. They are serial liars hiding behind a shared, self-reinforcing lie.

(Yes, I have tried backing off. It only made the people attacking me bolder. They are scum who put me and my family at risk, and their reasons for wanting to silence a left-leaning blogger are pretty easy to guess at.)

Posted by Manic on May 27, 2010, 11:13 AM in Old Media | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

"I have lived with the worry that people would think there was no smoke without fire. It was vitally important for me to clear my name." - Nadine Dorries

Hi folks. What follows is an open letter to Nadine Dorries in response to her latest public outburst, which made the pages of her local newspaper yesterday. What you glimpsed on Twitter and/or in Bedfordshire on Sunday yesterday is barely the half of it; wait until you see what she tried to pull in her full statement. I was literally speechless myself.

Dear Nadine,

As you should be aware, this is my first email to you since 30 March, 2010.

I am reluctant to contact you by email at all given how you have portrayed/described my ten emails to you over the past two years (especially when each and every one of these emails was written in response to your repeated outbursts about me), but you give me little choice.

Today I write to you to demand that you immediately cease broadcasting any further suggestion or assertion that I have a violent, criminal character.

You have presented no evidence to justify it, the claim is extraordinarily damaging, and further (as has been repeatedly explained to you and your associates) it is a claim that puts me and my family at considerable risk because of special circumstances that you appear determined to exploit.

On Friday afternoon (21 April) I was contacted by Bedfordshire on Sunday. In a process you likened to "a form of torture" during the recent expenses scandal, they sought my response to a statement you had issued about the closure of your Twitter account and (I was surprised to hear) your 'blog'. To their credit, they declined to include the reference to Stephen Timms in the resulting article, which I include in this open letter as clear evidence of your intentions in this matter:

"Tim Ireland lives in Guildford.

"He is not a Mid Bedfordshire resident and therefore I am not answerable or accountable to him in any way whatsoever.

"I have been in consultation regarding his behaviour with the Westminster division of the Metropolitan Police, and the House of Commons police, for more than a year.

"Their advice was to close down my blog and Twitter account and thereby remove the 'oxygen' upon which he fed.

"As an election was imminent, I ignored this advice.

"Following the Stephen Timms incident last week I have decided that I should pay attention to the police advice and have therefore closed down both Twitter and my blog for the time being."

On the 1st sentence, I can only stress that until recently you were convinced that I was from Croydon (and that your fellow Conservative Anne Milton was the MP for Croydon). Some people might take this error as a warning that they should look closer at the evidence they are relying on, but not you apparently.

On the 2nd sentence, I must ask; if you really feel this way, why do you continue to praise and endorse the work of Iain Dale, Paul Staines, Harry Cole, Phil Hendren and other Tory bloggers who repeatedly blog about MPs from outside their constituency? (There's a wider point about my rights and our democracy that you're missing, but given your narrow outlook, this question is your best path to it. Good luck.)

The 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th sentences are highly defamatory, not least because the innuendo is one of my having a violent, criminal character. You cannot possibly hope to justify this; I have no criminal record for violent crime or any other kind of crime (though I may have strayed over the speed limit when going past a speed camera once). In fact, outside of the activism that occasionally puts us at odds, I've not had even a hint of trouble with police; certainly nothing that could support the idea that I am capable of criminal acts and/or violence toward others.

Yet in the above release (as in your outburst at Flitwick hustings) you present as a statement of fact (NOT an expression of opinion) that I have repeatedly engaged in criminal acts and represent such a danger to you that my actions have prompted a police investigation and hampered your capacity to communicate with your constituents to the extent that a range of extraordinary security measures are now required to ensure your safety! Your wish to include specific reference to the stabbing of Stephen Timms makes your intentions absolutely clear in this respect.

This is an allegation so serious, the sting of it would not be removed by a right of reply, and it is an allegation you continue to make in public and in private, despite a total lack of evidence and some very clear dangers to me (i.e. beyond the damage one might normally expect from defamation such as this).

What follows are two emails I sent to your local Conservative association that you were CCed on (i.e. two of only three emails I have sent you this year). I repeat them now to reinforce their plea, and to show the public the "barrage" of messages you have been passing off as "vile" and "abusive":

-

From: Tim Ireland
*Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 2:19 PM
To: admin@midbedsconservatives.com
Cc: dorriesn@parliament.uk

Dear Andy,

I write to you today about the conduct of Nadine Dorries.

It is no secret that I am highly critical of Dorries' and have repeatedly blogged about her, but:

1. She cannot classify this as harassment while supporting a campaign like #KerryOut (and/or continuing to endorse those behind it)

2. Dorries has published accusations about my mental state and my involvement in what she claims are attempts to prevent her free access to Twitter, but she cannot back any of this with evidence because none of it is true.

3. I've certainly gone out of my way to make Dorries more accountable (in much the same way that her friends pursue other MPs, often with far less justification), but nothing I have done warrants the repeated publication of my home address online, threats of violence, and other measures designed to intimidate me (if not put me at actual risk of harm).

While Dominic Wightman is the main ringleader, a man named Charlie Flowers is behind most of the attacks I have described in #3. He claimed in front of witnesses to have engaged in these online attacks on behalf of Nadine Dorries, and also claims to have emailed her and other pro-Tory bloggers (including Iain Dale and Paul Staines) to advise them of his actions/intentions.

- If Charlie Flowers is telling the truth about these emails:

Nadine Dorries chose not to alert me after receiving those emails. Why is that? Nadine Dorries has since published a vague claim about forwarding some unspecified emails to police, but she won't provide me with any data that allows me to confirm her story and/or connect her report with my ongoing efforts to end this harassment. Why would she refuse to do this?

- If Charlie Flowers is lying about these emails;

Why would Nadine Dorries refuse the opportunity to immediately discredit him and perhaps even disown the campaign of harassment while she's at it? Certainly it's convenient for Nadine and many of her friends if I am so hampered by this harassment that I am unable to press her for answers about the £50 in her bra and the alleged drugs in her wash bag on Tower Block of Commons (just to give you two examples) but perhaps she - or you - can put forward some other likely reason.

- Regardless of the truth about the emails:

Nadine Dorries is well aware of what has been going on these past months and the harassment I have suffered after exposing the lies of two 'amateur terror experts' formerly associated with fellow Conservative MP Patrick Mercer. It cannot have escaped her attention that Mercer himself is using false accusations of stalking to avoid any questions about the matter.

Dorries may also be under the impression that I am mentally ill, or she may only be using the accusations/implications she has published about this for further cover/gain. Either way, the claims of mental instability put forward mostly by Dorries and her friends (Iain Dale, Phil Hendren and Harry Cole) rest on their dual assertion that (a) they have no case to answer, and (b) I hold to a grand, nonsensical conspiracy theory. Well, they do have a case to answer, not least because the conspiracy I described to them earlier was recently confirmed as genuine in front of witnesses; Dominic Wightman, Charlie Flowers and their associates have been repeating what these bloggers defend as 'opinion' and passing it off as fact. (Whether or not their continued/collective silence on the matter and their refusal to withdraw damaging/dangerous lies about me when they know how they are being used amounts to a wider conspiracy has yet to be established, but certainly can't be ruled out.)

Dorries is also aware that accusations/'opinions' published by her and close friend/ally Iain Dale form the bulk of the evidence behind the claims by Charlie Flowers and his associates (the 'Cheerleaders') that I am a stalker of women.

To put this into context, to avoid a repeat of earlier web account closures, Flowers and the 'Cheerleaders' are now recruiting other people to do their dirty work for them. When briefing new recruits, they tell them I am a stalker of women, and provide them with my home address. I fear for what may happen in those circumstances, especially in light of what happened after Glen Jenvey was convinced (by Dominic Wightman) that I was a convicted paedophile**.

Nadine Dorries could clear the matter up and significantly reduce the relevant dangers with a simple public statement, but she chooses not to.

I'm assuming she does not regard me to be an actual stalker, as she has yet to lodge any formal complaint about me, she hasn't even threatened civil action, and mostly she is very careful about not identifying anyone when she publishes claims/implications about stalking.

Even if she does regard me to be a stalker, I would contend that relying on a vigilante response is an inappropriate way for an MP to behave.

I would further add that, in the course of investigating the many lies and deceptions of this MP, I have encountered and uncovered quite a lot of personal data. I have no interest in publishing or exploiting this data in any way, and I even take care to avoid reporting/publishing details that might lead people to this same data. (The most recent example of this being a report on [xx name snipped xx], whose personal details are entirely unprotected and all-too-accessible.) I have no interest in 'harassing' this MP, and if I did, there would be far easier ways to go about it other than publishing my criticism of her under my own name on a UK-hosted website. By contrast, the Tories who so often attack me on behalf of Nadine Dorries (Iain Dale, Phil Hendren, Harry Cole etc.) do so on US-based websites (making any potential civil action prohibitively expensive) or through a variety of false identities. At least one of Dorries known associates (Phil Hendren) has also sought to intimidate me through the publication of personal data in a related dispute. If you or anyone else seeks a 'tit for tat' justification for what Wightman, Flowers and the 'Cheerleaders' have been up to, you won't find one in my corner.

In fact, twice now I have found myself in possession of data that would help Nadine Dorries track anonymous attacks against her, and twice I have offered that data to Dorries unconditionally, and in good faith. Both times I was ignored while Dorries allowed me to cop the blame for some aspect of these anonymous attacks. In the latter instance, she specifically accused me of being behind the attack, and maintained that accusation, even after I published the relevant evidence. This goes beyond poor manners. There's no other word for it but 'malice', and I suspect that malice is what is keeping Nadine Dorries from acting responsibly in this instance.

Assuming the personal animosity Nadine Dorries and her supporters feel towards me hasn't spilled over into the local Association, I'd like to ask that you take what action you can to resolve this matter. (I could pursue Dorries directly through a number of channels, but I fear any such attempt will be portrayed as 'further' harassment and used as an excuse to avoid the entire issue.)

The first matter I'd like to clear up is the claim by Nadine Dorries to have forwarded emails (we can only assume from Flowers and co.) to police somewhere in London. I'd like to know what she forwarded, when she did this, and which branch/officer she forwarded this data to as a matter of urgency.

I would appreciate a response by email today, please.

Tim Ireland

PS - It also bears mentioning that Nadine Dorries implied that the late Frank Branston was somehow stalking her. She refused to withdraw this politically-motivated smear, even after the poor chap passed away.

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From: Tim Ireland
*Date: Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:50 AM
To: admin@midbedsconservatives.com, dorriesn@parliament.uk

Andy,

To repeat: The first matter I'd like to clear up is the claim by Nadine Dorries to have forwarded emails (we can only assume from Flowers and co.) to police somewhere in London. I'd like to know what she forwarded, when she did this, and which branch/officer she forwarded this data to as a matter of urgency.

It has been over a month now, and you've not even afforded me the courtesy of a reply. I fear your sense of urgency is lacking.

Meanwhile, the people orchestrating this campaign of harassment continue to benefit from Nadine Dorries' silence and continue to put me and my family at risk with anonymous claims of stalking published alongside my home address. Regardless of what Dorries thinks of me personally, she cannot excuse giving tacit approval to vigilantes like Charlie Flowers. Further, if she is telling the truth about her report, she is withholding information that would help me draw together an effective case against the people attacking me in this way. [xx snip detail xx]

There is no legal obstacle I'm aware of that would prevent Nadine Dorries from informing me of the name of the officer (or at least the department/station) she reported this matter to. Unless he was lying about having reported it, obviously, in which case her best bet (and yours) would be to refuse to answer any questions about it and yell 'stalker' at me if I dare press the matter.

Please advise me today of your intentions regarding this matter.

Tim Ireland

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I have not yet heard back from the Mid Bedfordshire Conservative Association, and similarly you have shared nothing useful with me, when you seem to be witholding evidence that might establish (and thereby halt/minimise) the harassment targeting me, and even appear at times to be taking active measures to exacerbate this ongoing problem (while claiming all the while that it is you who are the true victim of harassment)

If you'll pardon the vernacular; just what in the bloody hell are you playing at?

You are quite aware of the danger you expose me to when you cry 'stalker', and rather than address/minimise the danger you appear to be going out of your way to maximise it (by the very act of accusing me of being a danger to you).

That you would defame me, especially in this way, is a disgrace. You have no credible case to put to the police (who would have contacted me long before now if matters were anywhere near as serious as you make out), and instead you seek to air wholly unsubtantiated statements about my being guilty of stalking you... and capable of worse!

Regardless of what you believe, there can be no excuse for your repeated airings of these statements when you know how certain vigilante elements are reacting to them.

In closing, I will repeat my demand that you cease any further suggestion or assertion that I have a violent, criminal character immediately.

If you cannot understand the relevant moral and legal imperatives - that apply regardless of which constituency I live in - then please have someone explain them to you (and by that, I mean someone other than Donal Blaney).

Also, if you seriously claim to have received hundreds of abusive emails sent by me or in my name, then please honour my FOI/DPA request and share this and other relevant data with me. I would happily help you to trace/identify the source of these hundreds of emails, regardless of potential outcome (all I know for sure is that they are not coming from me).

Please acknowledge receipt of this email immediately, and reply soonest.

Tim Ireland

PS - I just saw you turn your back on the Speaker. Class act. You're a credit to democracy.

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[*Note how more than a month passes between these urgent requests. I was very concerned about how Dorries might misrepresent multiple attempts to contact her. Surprise, surprise, she went ahead and misrepresented these few emails as a "barrage" anyway.]

[**The claim that Dominic Wightman convinced Glen Jenvey I was a convicted paedophile has been published previous to this, but I now have further evidence to support that assertion, which is why it is stronger in this (now public) letter. I repeat this and all other relevant/tangential assertions here, in public, with confidence. Dominic Wightman has published an account where he described giving drunken residents in my village a tour of my street to see the front door of "the biggest nutter, stalker on the web", and he makes similar dubious claims to Dorries about 'advice' he has received from police. The 'Cheerleaders' also claim to have enjoyed positive exchanges with police, extending at one stage to the quite false assertion that I have "37 retraint orders" (sic) against me. For the record; I have no restraint orders against me. Acting mostly as a bankrupt and/or beyond the reach of affordable civil action, Wightman has published a series of false claims about me, some of which he is merely confused about, but most of which he knows to be outright lies. His willingness to knowingly lie should be balanced with his claim to have contacted Iain Dale and his claim to have received positive communication from a large number of unnamed Tory bloggers about this matter, but the overlap in tactics and the similarity of claims/inventions from the two camps cannot be denied; the two camps are clearly communicating to some degree, even if they are only responding to what the other says or does in public.]

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UPDATE (28 May) - Chris Paul shows that Nadine Dorries deleted her Twitter account ONE WEEK BEFORE the Stephen Timms incident (and her 'blog' not long after that). She can't even blame mild hysteria for referencing it, then. I struggle to see what options are left other than malice, delusion or time travel.

Posted by Manic on May 24, 2010, 3:54 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

My main issue with our new Minister for the Internets is the scant regard he has for the general web community. At times, it's almost as if our ways are completely alien to him, and stuff that seems obvious or second nature to us completely escapes him. That, or he's one of those two-face bastards who really don't give a tuppeny stuff.

[Psst! I suspect the latter given the way he's repeatedly turned a blind eye to local Tory web activists smearing an opponent as a paedophile (and me as a computer criminal). You need to be a special brand of bastard to stand by and allow that kind of stuff to go on in your neighbourhood when it suits you.]

Recently, I revealed that Jeremy Hunt doesn't maintain an archive on his 'blog'; he just throws old entries away, comments and all, never to appear again. He doesn't even understand (or care) how impolite this is to the people who trust him with those comments.

And now the election is over and he's got what he wanted from his Twitter audience, Jeremy Hunt has just deleted almost every tweet he made during the election. Tellingly, he has had time to make dozens of manual deletions, but has not even bothered to update his profile, which still reads as follows:

Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for South West Surrey and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

Here's a screen capture of the only tweets left on his Twitter account today:

And here, for the record, are twenty of the tweets that Jeremy Hunt tried to erase from history.

Note how it begins with a pledge to his constituents; the link to this has been erased, and the pledge itself is also due for deletion soon (along with everything else that turns up on his 'blog'). Does Jeremy Hunt not know or care what message this sends about his commitment to that pledge or any other?

- My pledge to South West Surrey: http://www.jeremyhunt.org/blog.aspx 12:41 PM May 3rd via web

- Good canvassing in Haslemere yesterday, visiting Frensham, Wrecclesham, Godalming & North Farnham today
9:06 AM May 1st via Twikini

- Nick Clegg contradicted LD policy on benefits, Steve Webb says JSA should be unconditional #leadersdebate
9:47 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Oh so Nick does support anmesty now....#leadersdebate
9:27 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- U turn on anmesty by Clegg after u turn on euro - what next? #leadersdebate
9:25 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Ahem Brown visited manufacturer today where worker told him company was flourishing DESPITE him #leadersdebate
9:15 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Clegg shameless u turn distancing himself from euro which he championed last year #leadersdebate
9:06 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- So Nick Clegg has never accepted donations from fund managers then? Mmmmm#leadersdebate
9:02 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Best explanation from DC ever on why Conservatives will rein in bankers #leadersdebate
8:59 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Who are the vice chancellors of parties Nick?#leadersdebate
8:46 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Keep grinning Gordon wins us millions of votes #leadersdebate
8:44 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Just arriving in Chippenham to help our brilliant candidate Wilfred EJ & greeted by a downpour. Need a Wiltshire cuppa
12:30 PM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Just been canvassing in Portsmouth with our candidate Flick Drummond & didn't meet a single LibDem voter
11:05 AM Apr 29th via Twikini

- Wilkinson_David: Off to BBC London Election Special in Stratford with @jowellt @jeremy_hunt @thomasbrake @georgegalloway Hope I can get a question in
4:48 PM Apr 27th via web
Retweeted by Jeremy_Hunt

- #leadersdebate Gordon Brown just made biggest gaffe of campaign but denying responsibility for Labour leaflets
9:02 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini

- Don't think Miriam will be inviting DC for tea and cake #leadersdebate
8:54 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini

- @leadersdebate best exposition ever from DC of Big Society
8:50 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini

- @leadersdebate Clegg 'u can't keep a lid on sin' does he want to be next pope?
8:39 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini

- @leadersdebate Nick Clegg script: there's always an easy answer even when there isn't e.g nuclear
8:33 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini

- @leadersdebate Brown hasn't flown because he shut the flipping airspace
8:27 PM Apr 22nd via Twikini

[Twitter users may note that Hunt begins the Leaders' Debate a little bit confused about the difference between a username and a hashtag. I've left these dead links in place, as they're instructive. You may also note that there are no replies. Yes, this sample is typical. To Hunt, Twitter was very much a one-way channel.]

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UPDATE (1pm) - Jeremy Hunt has responded by (finally) updating his profile... and deleting the three remaining tweets on his account!

I think by this stage it's pretty safe to guess what the underlying message is from the new Minister for the Internets:

UPDATE (8pm) - Almost forgot to update with a link to today's Telegraph article, including a response from Mr Hunt's office:

Telegraph - Jeremy Hunt deletes all tweets critical of Nick Clegg and Liberal Democrats: Many of Mr Hunt's tweets criticising the Lib Dems are potentially embarrassing given the Lib-Con coalition, but a spokeswoman for the minister denied there was any attempt to airbrush the past. All of the South West Surrey MP's campaign tweets have now been deleted because his ministerial role represents "a new chapter and we are starting afresh", she said. The spokeswoman added: "They were pre-government and we are now tweeting post-government. He is going to carry on tweeting, and his updates will appear on the DCMS website." She confirmed that Mr Hunt updated his Twitter account personally, and would continue to do so. He has more than 3,000 followers.

Jeremy Hunt later attempted to reassure us in person with this tweet, in which he appears to imply that some concerns may not be genuine:

Problem is, no-one's really buying it, and that he thinks this to be the issue shows once again that Hunt hasn't even begun to get it.

[Psst! Jeremy! It is not just about what you do/don't have to hide. It is about the way you pretend that things were never said. It is about the way you refuse to stand by what you publish and simply erase it instead. If those tweets were of no consequence, then why not leave them be? If you regretted them and didn't wish to stand by them, why not issue a retraction and/or an apology to Nick Clegg (and others)? Oh, and perhaps have the courtesy to explain to us voters why your position has changed on any/all of it. Don't pretend the latter concept is insignificant or alien to you; during the election and long before that, throughout your political career, you've challenged others to stand by or account for their past statements, and you damn well know it.]

Posted by Manic on May 20, 2010, 9:47 AM in The Political Weblog Movement | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

As the Telegraph also make clear a week too late, Nadine Dorries was already under investigation over expenses before this post-election bombshell which the Sunday Times appear to have been sitting on for at least a fortnight; not for any £10,000 payments (and more!) paid to her close friend Lynn Elson for 'consultation' and pamphlets that look like this, but for expenses claims she made on the 'second' home that many people suspect to be her main home:

Mrs Dorries, who last week retained her Mid Bedfordshire seat, is already being investigated over claims for a "second home" where she is alleged to spend most of her time. (Telegraph)

Dorries claims her modest cottage in the Cotswolds, 55 miles from her constituency, is her main home. This means she can claim a second-home allowance for her constituency home. (Times)

A Conservative MP who claimed £60,000 in "second home" allowances tells the House of Commons that her "main home" is a tiny rented cottage in the Cotswolds, miles away from Parliament and her constituency. (Telegraph)

Last month I received numerous reports that Dorries was telling a series of lies and half-truths at her 'unscripted' events and local hustings. A typical half-truth, obviously designed to mislead people about the above, was that she had not taken out a mortgage at any stage (and therefore cannot have 'flipped' homes as most people understood/used the term). But Dorries did clearly at one stage tell her constituents that her main home was in Mid Bedfordshire while assuring the Commons Fees Office (and later the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) that her main home was "somewhere else" in the Cotswolds.

This alone could have cost Dorries her job, so you'd think she'd be careful not to make this same 'error' again, yes?

Erm, no. Here she is declaring an address in Mid Bedfordshire to be her main home on her nomination papers (which is also how her address would appear on the ballot paper on polling day):

(Extract from) Mid Beds Statement of Nominations (.PDF)

So once again Nadine Dorries has been caught telling press and Parliamentary authorities one thing while telling her constituents another. No wonder she took such extraordinary measures to avoid a situation where she might be recorded on camera when faced with a question about expenses; she wanted to avoid telling the truth, but she couldn't afford to be caught on camera telling a lie.

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NOTE - All candidates used to have to provide their home address for display on the ballot paper. The rules were changed recently to allow candidates more privacy while still declaring where they lived. Nadine's usual hysterical outburst about her right/need to keep her first/second/whatever home address a secret won't do her any good here:

Home address form - Your home address form must state your home address in full. If you do not want your address to be made public and to appear on the ballot paper, you must state the constituency in which your home address is situated. (Electoral Commission guidance for nominees; August 2009)

Posted by Manic on May 10, 2010, 9:49 AM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Last night Nadine Dorries smeared me as a stalker in a room full of people, and went on to repeat that smear online via her Twitter feed (giving me no choice but to publish the following evidence and confront the smear lest it explode beyond hope of retraction today). She made specific allegations about my stalking her, Anne Milton and Patrick Mercer, none of which she can support with any evidence, because none of it happened as she described.

I'm quite angry that the Chair not only allowed me to be branded a stalker (and a liar when she damn well knew better). I'm also peeved that it was her self-promoting elaborations* about my role there that led to the later misunderstanding with the audience, but the main issue is the outright lies by Nadine Dorries.

(*Some of this I did not hear, as I was wearing headphones at the time.)

Nadine Dorries smears me as a stalker at Flitwick hustings

It is, I would hope you agree, a little more serious than being described as 'bigoted' in a microphone snafu.

Disturbingly, this smear matches the smear made by people who have published my home address online and claimed at one stage to be acting on behalf of Nadine Dorries. Dorries claimed to have forwarded the relevant email(s) to police, but I suspect that this too was a lie.

Yes, I am seeking legal advice, but Dorries can address this now with an immediate and comprehensive apology on her site (and Twitter profile) today if she wishes.

Updates throughout the day on Twitter, the hashtag is #flitwick.

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UPDATE (8pm) - Adam Croft - Nadine Dorries, Tim Ireland and #flitwick: What really happened

Please take the time to read it in full. I hope it settles the broadcast issue at least so far as establishing there was no attempt to deceive on my part (not that this would excuse Dorries' false accusations in any way). I am so grateful that I not only have video evidence, but witnesses who aren't aligned with (or related to) Nadine Dorries; in my experience, some of these people can be rather... selective about what they reveal.

My thanks to Adam and everybody else who spoke up today.

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UPDATE (11:20pm) - I don't mean to gush, but I'm quite overwhelmed by this post from Keith Badham.

Keith Badham - An Open Letter to Nadine Dorries

Rates a genuine 'wow'. Way to go, guy.

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UPDATE (6 May) - Several aspects well noted by Richard Bartholomew, who tried and failed to have Nadine Dorries act responsibly. This might very explain one of the police complaints she's talking about. If so, she's got a bloody cheek:

Richard Bartholomew - Nadine Dorries' "Stalker" Smear used by Cyberbully as Justification for Harassment of Tim Ireland

If she's seriously been portraying the actions of Charlie Flowers as evidence of my stalking her, I am not looking forward to having to explain that to people; Charlie Flowers claims to be attacking me because I'm stalking her. Even thinking it into a sentence gives me a headache.

Posted by Manic on May 5, 2010, 10:26 AM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

Thank you to everybody who responded to my request for 'head on a stick' footage.

Here's what I did with it.

David Cameron Met a Black Man (soundtrack: 'Common People')

Of course, this is an Art, and subsequently I am forbidden by law to explain any of it outside of a wine and cheese party, but I will provide some production background for the 'DVD extras' crowd.

Cheers all.

-

I know there are already campaign videos with this song in it (even one with this cover by Ben Folds, Joe Jackson and William Shatner from the album Has Been), but I stuck with my original* choice of soundtrack as there wasn't anything fresh on the field that conveyed the emotional intensity of the original. I'm hoping that now there is.

(*When I say 'original', I should mention that this project started off with me wanting to mask up and freak you out with 'Just Dropped In' by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition.)

-

Below is a picture of the device that made most of the footage uniquely freaky; the camerambulator (or, if you prefer, 'wobblecam').

The document box attached to the special extended shaft (steady!) contains the hands-free mask used for most action shots, which allowed me to drop in and out of disguise very quickly (making things like the supermarket shot possible). The teeny tiny camera no bigger than my thumb that captures up to 40 minutes of 640x480 .AVI and dances so delightfully on the end of the 8mm sq. pine upright is a Micro Digital Video Camera from Maplins; car's convex 'blindspot' mirror served as a proxy viewfinder.

Most of the special effects in the video (aside from the speed, direction, a basic zoom and two minor incidental effects) are organic special effects that are a direct result of the camera's software attempting to interpret anything from vibrations from ridged/rough surfaces to a range of wobble types (that were easily prompted and controlled, especially when the unit was strapped to my waist... it's all in the hips, baby).

The 'walkabout' footage was shot in London with the help of Soho Politico using a Samsung VP-MX10 with monopod.

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Posted by Manic on May 3, 2010, 3:11 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

It's comforting to know that every white van man who enjoys a quiet moment with Page 3 today will be sufficiently alert to the dangers of a hung parliament and proportional representation.

The Sun exploiting young women and treating people like morons shock.

(In other news, they're also worried about young women in porn. Positively outraged, in fact.)

If you haven't done so yet, pop the tag #disobeymurdoch into Twitter. The alternative is submitting to this bullshit and eating out of the trough like everybody else:

Page 3 :: Girls + Words from Tim Ireland on Vimeo.

Related links:
"At the Sun, we deliberately ignored the Lib Dems," admits David Yelland, their former editor
"It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street," says Tom Newton Dunn, present political editor of the Sun

Posted by Manic on April 27, 2010, 8:53 AM in Page 3 - Words of Wisdom | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Almost four years ago now, myself and some Guildford-based Liberal Democrats were smeared via a series of anonymous weblogs and anonymous comments on established weblogs (see latest post).

Many of these smears were a direct response to my weblog about Anne Milton (1, 2), who was then the MP for Guildford and is now campaigning to retain the seat. During this period, I found evidence that two Conservative activists attached to Anne Milton (Dennis Paul and Mike Chambers) were involved in these smears against me, as well as the worst of the smears against some local Lib Dems (specifically, the accusation that one of their opponents was paedophile).

No meaningful action was taken. Certainly nothing was done that led to the removal of the smears. But I am now advised that an 'investigation' of sorts did take place, and it is here that we cut to the account of my source, whose name will be revealed shortly...

MC: "Two years ago, there was an 'investigation' I suppose you can call it that. I remember it and all the candidates were asked if they were aware of any involvement..."

Perhaps there was more to this investigation than just asking people if they were involved, but no-one from the Guildford Association showed any active interest in my testimony or any of the evidence I had to hand.

I pointed out to my source that I wasn't asked for any further details during this 'investigation' (or told of any result after). When I emailed details, those emails were ignored. When I followed up with a phone call, I was instructed to "put it in writing", and the most likely reason for this was explained as follows:

MC: "I know it's not nice to be, feel ignored, stonewalled, whatever you call it, and I'm just guessing that, in the case of Anne Milton, she'd formed a view, influenced no doubt by your approach to her and then later supported or influenced by [Dennis Paul's] concerns about hacking and stuff and, I have to say your view, within the Conservative Association, you were, like you said an 'angry man', that was hacking computers, sending viruses..."

Tim: "Was that a widespread view?"

MC: "Well, 'widespread view', I mean...."

Tim: "Well, you said that was the view within the Conservative Association."

MC: "Yeah, Association strictly speaking is all of the members..."

Tim: "Yes.."

MC: "... what I'm talking about really is the centre core; the Chairman [Jonathon Lord], and the senior officers, and of course our MP [Anne Milton]."

If this claim is true, then Dennis Paul was successfully denying involvement in a smear campaign against me and others... by engaging in a further smear campaign against me; one specifically accusing me of criminal acts and intentions.

My source went on to claim that Jonathon Lord (then Chairman of the Guildford Conservative Association, now Parliamentary Candidate for Woking), Anne Milton (then Guildford MP, currently Parliamentary Candidate for Guildford) and others had subsequently adopted the position I was a criminal hacker capable of targeting anyone who received/opened/answered emails from me, or even just visited my website.

(To put his 'guessing' into context, my source was guessing that this was the reason why I was having difficulty communicating with these people, but he was in no doubt about the specifics of the claims made by Dennis Paul and who they had influenced.)

This fresh account tallies with material published by Dennis Paul at the time:

"If you contribute by blogging genuinely on some sites, you may provide the host with your IP address when you blog which enables unscrupulous hackers to attack your computer. That is why they are so obsessed with the IP identity of those who blog. You may limit this risk by moving from a static IP address to a Dynamic IP address, but you are still vulnerable while you remain online without protection." - Published under his own name by Dennis Paul (16 Aug, 2006)

"A number of liberal supporters in Guildford are graduates with computing expertese. They can hack through website visitors pc with ease - all they need is your IP address to target your computer. These 'blogsites' are a venus fly trap to them. At a national level, Police intellegence use the same expertese to monitor and catch muslim extremists. You only have to visit their site and they can target you. The best thing is to avoid their sites altogether, and avoid clicking on links that could take you to their sites." - Published as an anonymous comment by Dennis Paul (22 Aug, 2006)

I agree. If you click on links to these sites, who knows where it could take you. Next thing you know, you could be on some paedo site with the Police knocking on your door accusing you of visiting innapropriate websites." - Published as an anonymous comment by Dennis Paul (22 Aug, 2006)

We also have this, which is either (a) the work of Dennis Paul or a core member of the Guildford Conservative Association, or (b) a pretty good indication that the alleged smear spread further than Dennis Paul and the core of the Guildford Conservative Association. This 'talk' edit from Wikipedia attempts to justify repeated attempts to remove links to my site from Anne Milton's Wikipedia entry:

"I removed a section that contained inaccurate information, and links to a libellous web site. This is not vandalism at all. The person's web site whos link I removed is a vandal and a hacker and was arrested for hacking last year, so should not be promoted in any way on this site, which is the home of factual information not lies and self promotion." - Published by an unknown contributor to Wikipedia (01 Dec, 2006)

For the record, I have NEVER hacked anybody or fed any viruses or Trojans to anybody, and I certainly haven't been arrested for these or any other offences.

But I do appear to have been cut off from democracy at a local level by a smear (while another innocent man appears to have endured an even worse smear for far longer than was necessary), purely because the 'expert' testimony of Dennis Paul was accepted by local Conservatives. Oh, and David Cameron.

David Cameron's office was presented with all published evidence, but the local Association's view held and the Conservatives decided to back Dennis Paul as a candidate. I got an email with this in it on the same day Dennis was having his picture taken with the man himself:

"We have looked into the concerns you raise regarding Guildford Conservatives and are satisfied that these matters are being carefully investigated at the local level." - David Beal, Correspondence Secretary, David Cameron's Office (01 Feb, 2007)

I am hoping they will admit the allegations and immediately disown the lies of Dennis Paul. Unless they wish to deny what's been alleged here, of course, in which case they will need to immediately disown the lies of Mike Chambers... because he's my source.

(Psst! That sound you hear is a dozen local coffees being spat out at once.)

Either way, Anne Milton can no longer ignore the hole she dug for herself when she trusted either or both of these clowns as campaigners and went on to endorse them as candidates.

More to follow.

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[For the record, Mike Chambers denies involvement in the 2006 paedo-smears, and puts forward the view that they were a part of a 'dirty tricks' set-up by the Lib Dems, who smeared themselves and/or one of their own for political gain. He has no evidence to back this up, only his personal certainty that the Lib Dems are the real nasty party, and the only people capable of such deeds.]

Posted by Manic on April 26, 2010, 11:50 AM in Anne Milton | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

#freefilm is a project designed to prompt discussion of the Digital Economy Act 2010 [#deact] and politics in general

Members of the public are invited to join the project by editing their own campaign videos using the following as kit pieces (should you not have the time/resources to make your own material):

Music: This moneyed mix comes to us from (and is available via) Alastair Cameron:
Download the music here

The choice of music is quite deliberate, and could be defended any number of ways as fair use, if the system didn't favour the moneyed studios to such an absurd degree. But that's kind of the point.

Video: You can access all sorts of public domain footage at the Prelinger archives. My video features footage from Yesterday's Over Your Shoulder (1940) and Master Hands: Part I (1936), and I'm really liking the look of Despotism (1946) for a possible follow-up.

All of this video footage is in the public domain, but you interpret fair use on the music at your own risk. I advise against trying it with YouTube, who fold faster than Superman on laundry day... but if you wish to assert your rights there, I can't stop you. Rupert Murdoch could squash you like a bug with no grounds for doing so, but again we stray toward the point.

So that's it, really. Use the materials and play with the formula as you please.

I've made the following film to kick things off. It tells the story of little grey men who just don't get the web, but tinker on regardless with expert guidance from the good people in the showbusiness. I hope you like it.

The Minister for the Internets :: a #freefilm about #deact from Tim Ireland on Vimeo.

Posted by Manic on April 23, 2010, 6:17 PM in Video | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

After a well-documented series of hilarious own-goals, the Conservatives appear to have gone to a lot of trouble to make their latest poster 'unshoppable'.... so I knocked this 'blank' up in a spare two minutes I had. Have fun.

Related bloggage:

Lib Dem Voice - Tories' new poster revealed, their failed strategy exposed

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UPDATE (21 April) - Here's a new one, in an effort to keep abreast of breaking.... I'll stop there.

Posted by Manic on April 20, 2010, 10:58 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

If you're not a political geek or a regular reader of Bloggerheads, then you may want to go straight to the money shot (Nadine Dorries: Wonder Woman!). Otherwise...

Conservative Change Channel: EXCLUSIVE! ELECTION! EDITION!

Posted by Manic on April 20, 2010, 4:21 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Anne Milton, Conservative candidate for the marginal seat of Guildford, has decided that now a general election looms, there is no room for negative campaigning:

Some people might see a clever smear against her opponents when they read the above, but I'm going to take Anne Milton at her word (just for a moment) and instead ask ;"What's changed?"

Back in 2005/2006, Anne Milton was repeatedly turning a blind eye to the disgraceful antics of two of her most vocal supporters; Dennis Paul and Mike Chambers:

- Anne Milton avoided any meaningful comment on Dennis Paul's pandering to racism in a scaremongering immigration/housing leaflet released in aid of her 2005 campaign.

- Both Mike Chambers and Dennis Paul were connected to an anonymous 'revenge' attack that responded to my criticism of Anne Milton by implying I was a homosexual (to them; a sick perversion), claiming I was a bad father, suggesting that I had falsified evidence against Milton, and attempting to blackmail/bully me into silence through my clients and place of work. Later, these attacks evolved into repeated anonymous claims that I had stalked Anne Milton. Anne Milton now claims privately that she said/did nothing to encourage this, but the fact is that she allowed it to carry on for years without correction, clarification or any kind of apology, even long after both Chambers and Paul were given their marching orders.

- I still have to hand the evidence that proves Mike Chambers and Dennis Paul created/promoted a weblog claiming a political opponent was a paedophile. The matter was reported to CCHQ, but referred back to Anne Milton and the local association for action. None was taken. In fact, Anne Milton and the Conservatives went on to endorse both Mike Chambers and Dennis Paul in the 2007 council elections. The Guildford Conservative Association still hold the position that they took no action at the time because the victim chose not to complain and (hilariously) that I had only complained via email and "not in writing". Despite my proving Mike Chambers to be the primary author/promoter of the smear, he wasn't even compelled by his fellow Conservatives to remove the single-purpose website hosting it.

I just called the Guildford Conservative Association for comment on the latter especially. They demurred, but I can report that Anne Milton's staff do think that she deserves credit because (one hopes) she wasn't directly involved in any of the actual typing.

I suspect it is here that we finally edge closer to the truth of Anne Milton's recent statement...

"I am making a commitment from the outset not to resort to personal attacks on my opponents."

... because she doesn't need to resort to personal attacks if she sits back and lets her underlings do her dirty work for her, just as she has done repeatedly in the past.

That said, it is possible that I've misjudged Anne Milton; perhaps she really has changed and her recent commitment to positive campaigning is sincere.

If this is the case, she will have no problem (finally) publicly disowning Dennis Paul and Mike Chambers, and every smear they published. Perhaps she might even find the time to apologise for not acting earlier to stop the smears published on her behalf.

But I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for any of that if I were you.

Posted by Manic on April 13, 2010, 6:16 PM in Anne Milton | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

(Psst! I hope to raise these matters and others in The Dorries edition of The People's Pamphlet. Come join us.)

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It's election time, and disappointingly, David Cameron has shot out of the gates seeking to rally his right-wing Christian base with a promise to lower the abortion limit to 20 or 22 weeks.

The Conservatives had their chance to make their scientific and political case on this in 2008 and they blew it.

They not only blew the vote, they exploded a dirty great hole in the side of their shiny new facade, as the following examples will show...

David Cameron allowed Nadine Dorries to run with the ball on her 2008 'Alive & Kicking' campaign, and that MP used as her 'evidence' several dubious claims about events she claimed to witness as a nurse, including this one repeated today by Christian Concern for our Nation (1, 2):

At the time of the 2008 vote, former nurse Nadine Dorries, now MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, told fellow MPs how she had held a foetus that gasped for breath and took seven minutes to die after a botched abortion. Ms Dorries said: 'What I thought we were committing that day was murder.' (source)

Nadine Dorries has a long track record of relying on apocryphal evidence to elicit an emotional response in her favour (see suicide/expenses for her most famous example to date), so I have reason to doubt this event ever really happened as described to begin with. Further, my lead example not only shows Nadine Dorries using apocryphal evidence during the abortion debate, but reveals an alarming level of ignorance about maternal medicine and basic human biology that should cast doubt on the specifics of any medical procedure Dorries claims to have witnessed:

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Hand of Hope

In this post on her pretend-blog during the abortion debate (and on the main campaign website) Nadine Dorries presented this image of a foetus 'reaching' out of the womb as evidence that life begins earlier than science says it does. When it was put to her that the attending surgeon's version of events completely contradicted those of her witness (the photographer who describes the event as "God's message to the world") Dorries, in a further post laughingly titled 'Hand of Truth', none-too-subtly implied that the doctor changed his story because feared violent pro-choice lobbyists (!), showed complete ignorance of how pregnancy works and what a placenta does, and claimed that the "jiggered edges" of what she described as a "tear in the uterus" most likely resulted from a "hand unexpectedly thrust out"... by a 21 week old foetus.

I've heard some MPs talk bullshit in my time, but the idea that a 21-week-old foetus could punch its way out of the womb (with or without a starting incision) reached new heights for me.

Full post: Bloggerheads - People of Mid Bedfordshire; your MP, Nadine Dorries, is a muppet

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Misleading Claims/Statistics

MPs really don't like being called on this, but Nadine Dorries clearly misled the House when she made this claim:

"The public do not say that they want the limit to come down from 24 weeks; the public - including three quarters of women - say that they want 20 weeks. They specify what they want." - Nadine Dorries (source)

"Three quarters of women" did no such thing. Nadine Dorries either completely misunderstood the data or (more likely in my experience) deliberately misrepresented it in order to give the false impression that she enjoyed a popular mandate. As the raw poll data showed, it wasn't 75% of women specifying 20 weeks, but 15%, and then only because it was fed to them as an option. After literally inviting scrutiny of her assertions in the House, Dorries has never returned to this point.

Full post: Bloggerheads - Nadine Dorries: unbelievable

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Laws Drafted by Fundamentalists

Recently Dorries insisted that religion should be kept out of Parliament... but only because she feared it might lead to sharia law:

While the votes may come from secular Tories, the ringleaders of any abortion-tightening attempt will be Christians. In 2008, when parliament was debating embryology, Nadine Dorries, a high-profile backbench Tory MP, led the charge against abortion - and says she is informed by her Christianity (though "if you mention God in an argument in the UK, you lose," she says). One leading anti-abortion activist noted that behind the scenes the Christian Medical Fellowship and the Lawyers Christian Fellowship were "absolutely indispensable. They did most of the heavy lifting on research. But we could never acknowledge their role. Never. People would never take us seriously again." (Dorries says another reason she avoids talking about faith in parliament is out of fear it will set a precedent by which Muslim MPs could express - and impose - theirs. "There is no place for sharia law in Britain and as politicians we have to be aware and vigilant to ensure that we don't ease or facilitate its acceptance," she says.) (source)

Obvious bias/bigotry aside, how does Nadine Dorries explain/justify her attempts to introduce into law legislation worded by Christianfundamentalists? Does she now think she was wrong* to do so, or does she think it's OK when it's 'our' fundamentalists?

(*Going by the FT article, I suspect she thinks it's fine and dandy to inject some Christian fundamentalism into law, just so long as everybody keeps their head down and nobody finds out about it.)

Full post: Bloggerheads - Nadine Dorries and Andrea Williams

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David Cameron did not express any doubt or disquiet about the above or any of the case that Nadine Dorries put forward during or after the abortion debate. If anything, he praised her efforts. Repeatedly.

David Cameron either thinks us to be weak-minded fools, or he is one himself.

How might we discover which is closer to the truth?

Well, next time David Cameron brings the abortion issue up, ask him what percentage of women specify a preference for 20 weeks.... or if he really thinks a human foetus can punch its way out of the womb.

Oh, and you may also want to ask if he thinks it's right to attempt to introduce legislation worded by fundamentalists, because that's exactly what happened the last time the Conservatives sought to change the laws governing abortion.

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(Psst! I hope to raise these matters and others in The Dorries edition of The People's Pamphlet. Come join us.)

Posted by Manic on April 9, 2010, 3:26 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

No, we don't plan to take 4 weeks away from work/families to hound Nadine Dorries, park a van outside her house and basically stalk her on the campaign trail. That would be just a little bit OTT.

The joke is this is all too close to the fantasy that Nadine Dorries and others hold to.

The punchline is that while all the van/stalking crap is fake... The People's Pamphlet is real.

The relevant wiki is brought to us by the capable and clever Dave Cross (cheers, Dave):

Fellow Traveller's Wiki: Home of the People's Pamphlet

Anyone claiming this to be a personal attack of bile and vitriol is going to look a little bit foolish (not to mention dishonest), as it's designed from the ground up to be as relevant and issue-driven as possible. The whole exercise revolves around deciding on the best issues to put forward, and the fairest (yet most effective) way to present them.

Transparency? The whole thing will be built/negotiated in public, which normally would give the subject plenty of time to prepare for any of the questions raised... but the difference with Dorries over many other MPs is that there are now far too many pertinent questions that she has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid, and by now she cannot afford to answer any of them with any honesty.

So, unlike the baseless, childish and pathetic #kerryout attacks (1, 2), this will be an issue-driven campaign that will be more transparent than anything that's come before it.

We will be strongly encouraging people to contribute under their own name, and if you're attached to any party-political campaign/team, you won't be able to take part.

Also, the project has its own safety-valve; without sufficient support and consensus, nothing gets printed/delivered.

Each contributor will be asked to make a minor initial donation at the point of registration (to keep the site ticking over and keep timewasters away) but we intend to organise the primary/major donations via the wiki, too; with contributors pledging what they can (if they are in agreement with the direction of the letter/pamphlet) toward a goal of (yet to be fully determined/finalised) printing/delivery costs.

If you don't like where the letter/pamphlet is going, you pull out. Simples. If you agree with where it's going, we expect to meet you at the lock-off point; where you put your money where your mouth is and sign your name to the letter/pamphlet.

Further, like any wiki, this has the potential for expansion, and while there are very few MPs who are quite so mendacious and reckless with the truth as Nadine Dorries, we are open to the idea of expanding the project to cover other candidates, for as long as we can do so credibly, sensibly and safely.

But first we're going to start discussing and forming a letter/pamphlet that we intend to deliver to every household in the constituency of Mid Bedfordshire, and we invite you to join us.

And no, this time we're not kidding.

Posted by Manic on April 1, 2010, 12:01 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Right, that's it; I am thoroughly fed up with the notion that Nadine Dorries can lie and cheat her way through a term and expect to keep her all-too-safe seat. The good people of Mid Bedfordshire need to be warned about the party-political (and often all-too-personal) games that Nadine Dorries plays using the power they afford her.

So, along with Dave Cross and Sim-O, I have successfully negotiated 4 weeks off work & family duties, and together we intend to campaign against Nadine Dorries.

Running as an independent is a mug's game, and we're not going to pretend for a minute that any of us are prepared to represent the people of Mid Bedfordshire as their Member for Parliament. Hell, we're not even going to endorse any of the other candidates. What we seek to do is inform the good people of Mid Beds of the full consequences of voting for Nadine Dorries (if they suspect they'll have a mind to).

We already have a rocking campervan at our disposal, and while we're not allowed to paint it (boo!), we've come up with a way to safely attach ruddy great posters to the sides and rear of the vehicle, and we already have permission from three local property owners, one of whom promises (with a laugh) that we will indeed be able to see Nadine's house* from our van.

(*Obviously we are referring to her spacious 12-bedroom constituency 'second' home, not her single-bedroom 'main' home.)

If it's as close as he says it is, we've got a great internets connection and everything we need to install a mobile webcam; you'll be able to watch Nadine's front door live (and maybe even see who's been parking in her driveway) and maybe even sometimes come with us on our Disco Rounds. Oh, didn't I mention we'll also have her rigged for sound? We'll have a classic weatherproof public address speaker on that roof-rack within a couple of days, thanks to eBay. To request a song to be played on our Disco Rounds, use the hashtags #dumpdorries, #gonads, #discorounds and #trackrequest, then your song, then the artist.

Sim-O will be along shortly with a post about the NadMobile and its fittings, so hang tight for the specs!

MINI-UPDATE - As promised, here's Sim-O with the details about The NadMobile.

But even that's not all; the REALLY good news for you is that while we're on the ground in Mid Bedfordshire we will be spending a LOT of time delivering pamphlets, but we don't intend to deliver our message alone.

We also have a nearby base with a print lab that's already taking shape; it will feature at least 4 laser printers (two with capacity for A3 sheets, and all built like tanks) and we have a BIG pile of toner and recycled paper to hand. While we've our own plans to use this stuff to take issue with Nadine Dorries about a whole bunch of stuff that's been weighing on our minds, we have also pledged to deliver one extra pamphlet on behalf of all those who know Nadine Dorries best.

This is what we have dubbed The People's Pamphlet.

Dave Cross will be along shortly to give more details about that and more.

MINI-UPDATE - As promised, here's Dave with the details about The People's Pamphlet.

The short version is that soon a wiki will go live that will allow people to contribute, develop and perfect the ideas/images/text that will go into a kick-ass pamphlet, which we will then happily print and distribute on your behalf throughout the constituency of Mid Bedfordshire (asking for nothing more but a minor donation toward costs).

What do YOU think the people of Mid Bedfordshire deserve to know about? The full story of Dorries' expenses fits, fiddles and flip flops, perhaps. Foetuses that can punch their way out of a womb, maybe. There's room for maybe half a dozen issues maximum and it will be up to you to create and compose the overall message, which we will then complete, print and deliver.

What say you, Britain? Will you help us in our quest to save the land of Mid Narnia from the forces of darkness?

[Psst! The tag to use in Twitter is #dumpdorries. The link to share is http://bit.ly/DumpDorries ]

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UPDATE (12:01) - APRIL FOOL!

No, we don't plan to take 4 weeks away from work/families to hound Nadine Dorries, park a van outside her house and basically stalk her on the campaign trail. That would be just a little bit OTT.

The joke is this is all too close to the fantasy Nadine Dorries and others hold to.

The punchline is that while all the van/stalking crap is fake... The People's Pamphlet is real.

Nadine Dorries: The People's Pamphlet

See you on the flipside of a plain sheet of A4 paper. Cheers all.

Posted by Manic on April 1, 2010, 8:51 AM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

What Lua Cooper did to JimmySparkle was totally unacceptable. It was also very human.

Though Lua Cooper is formally employed by an auto industry trade/lobbying group, she also works (or perhaps worked) as a significant figure in the campaign team for the Conservative Party. She even starred in this video showing people how to become an active off-site member of the campaign team for the Conservatives. Her boyfriend, Sam Coates, had just recently been appointed 'co-ordinater' of Tory online campaigning and until very recently she was up there in the lights, rubbing elbows with important Conservatives and sitting in the front row while David Cameron spoke inspiring words about 'change'.

On Monday, both her boyfriend and a cause she believed in were under assault, and many people around her (including Sam) were speaking of the dark forces of Labour at work. Events also unfolded very quickly, and I think things should at least be considered from her point of view and in the context of the moment:

- I sincerely doubt she used a false name, and 'Lua' was probably just misheard as 'Laura'. There appears to be very little point in changing her name so little to disguise it, especially when she was claiming to operate on behalf of CCHQ at the time.

- Any claim or implication Lua made in the heat of the moment that she was acting on behalf of CCHQ is completely understandable, and IMO easily fixed with an apology to both parties. Lua simply overstepped her bounds while overestimating her authority/importance, as campaign volunteers sometimes do.

- Any false claim that JimmySparkle had been involved in redirections to porn/shock sites can be attributable to the confusion of the moment and/or Lua's judgment being influenced by those Conservatives around her, many of whom still cling to the delusion that his actions (and most everyone else's) were part of a Labour conspiracy. Again, this can probably be addressed with a simple apology.

- The bullying of JimmySparkle by going through his employer and using spurious legal threats as leverage is a little harder to explain/apologise away, but sadly we're robbed of the context of Lua Cooper's testimony, I suspect for much the same reason we're forced to go without any kind of apology from her;

A [Conservative] Party spokesman said:

"This person is not a member of staff and her actions were not authorised by the Party. She is a friend of a party worker and felt strongly about the way this website had been hijacked and took it upon herself to make comments on the issue. She did this without our knowledge and we do not condone her actions."

There are several misleading elements to this statement, but there's no question about CCHQ making visible attempts to distance themselves from Lua Cooper.

On Monday afternoon, the Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/etc. pages for Lua Cooper (i.e. the web pages showing just how close she was to key Conservatives and editors of certain 'unbiased' magazines funded by Lord Ashcroft) were all quietly disappeared. I doubt this was an entirely voluntary act of self-censorship. I further suspect that Lua Cooper was issued with strict instructions to keep her mouth shut.

CCHQ may be retaining her as an informal campaign contributor or some such nonsense and using that as leverage, but it's pretty bloody obvious that her loyalty to the Party and her boyfriend (who is still employed by the Party) are the big levers here; even if the threat of severance went unspoken, it is there.

So while I sincerely hope and trust that Lua Cooper is a good person who wants to apologise, I doubt very much if she feels free/able to.

(Sure, the possibility remains that Lua Cooper is such a highly focused Conservative that she refuses to accept reality and therefore cannot discern right from wrong, but until I see evidence of that I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she would make amends immediately if the potential personal consequences weren't so great.)

Sam Coates, on the other hand, does not get off quite so easily as far as I'm concerned:

Even if we put the cock-up of the #cashgordon campaign to one side and accept without question the notion that Lua Cooper acted without his knowledge/approval, Sam Coates was confronted publicly with the name 'Laura Cooper' after the fact, pretended not to recognise it, and - acting like a child in a playground - even had the temerity to throw the question back in JimmySparkle's face, as if any deceit were his, and not the other way around:

JimmySparkle: Apparently the woman who phoned was a Laura Cooper, no idea if she was genuine. Claimed I hacked their site. Fail fail fail #cashgordon

Niall Paterson (SKY News): Cheers @chrismou. So @samuelcoates, anyone called Laura Cooper at CCHQ?

SamuelCoates: @niallpaterson @chrismou nope! Anything like that would have come through our team as it's our thing - and I can guarantee that it hasn't.

Niall Paterson (SKY News): @samuelcoates Just checking - there's absolutely nothing in @jimmysparkle's comments?

SamuelCoates: @niallpaterson no - why would we do that?!

JimmySparkle: so do you know Laura Cooper?

SamuelCoates: @jimmysparkle no, do you?

It was not only a deceit, it was a pathetic and stupid deceit... from the head of Tory online campaigning who then went into 24-hour tweet-silence (in the middle of one online campaign and at the start of another) and still refuses to discuss the matter, despite there being dozens of valid calls for an apology from a variety of interested players/observers.

That's one hell of an embarrassment for a man who's supposed to be leading the charge in online engagement, but still Sam forges on like the Black Knight of comedy legend... which brings us to the heart of the matter today:

Sam Coates may have been largely blameless (if a little clueless) right up until the point the name 'Laura Cooper' was mentioned, but it's primarily his conduct from that moment on that's the issue here. To remain silent and deny error is to deny reality, and if Sam manages to hold out any longer, his delusion/collusion in favour of his beloved Conservatives will be on par with that of the Iraqi Information Minister, and I really can't see that working for him or any other propagandist* with a job to do.

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(*For example; not only will he be unable to praise the success of any campaign with any credibility from this point on, but crucial denials will be mocked, and he's going to look like a damn fool the next time he demands an apology from someone. All of this puts to one side the difficulty of Coates looking like a bit of a powerless cad by favouring the Party's concerns ahead of his partner's.)

[Psst! Sam & Lua, you can count yourselves lucky; if the boot were on the other foot, you know damn well that Lua would've been labelled a bullying bunny-boiler within minutes of her outburst and rabid, mostly anonymous Tory bloggers would be relentlessly reinforcing this notion for days if not weeks afterwards, purely for political gain.]

Posted by Manic on March 25, 2010, 2:00 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A few days ago, a Conservative campaign site titled 'Cash Gordon' emerged. It was a continuation of their tellingly empty, negative and dishonest response to their difficulties with Lord Ashcroft (recent example of this titanic struggle with the truth here), and it was found to be even less impressive when it turned out to be a not-inexpensive but hastily carved 'cookie cutter' job done by designers in the US who mostly stick to issues/views the Conservatives are somewhat divided on and would rather not mention this side of an election.

Sam Coates (more), acting in his role as co-ordinater of Tory online campaigning, was busy countering this with some spin, while at the same time hailing any negative publicity as a win for his campaign; it mattered not that his campaign was being criticised and ridiculed, so long as his magical, mind-altering hashtag '#cashgordon' was reaching eyeballs.

Coates continued to maintain this position beyond the point most of us would consider credible... or wise:

I can't possibly improve on the remaining documentation by Meg Pickard, and I shan't try.

Sam Coates found out very quickly that you can't run an open channel on a faulty premise, but continued to miss the point by claiming victory while simultaneously blaming dark forces for any failures that were in fact further victories. Meanwhile, his site was being toyed with via the open door he was bragging about just minutes earlier; soon after it was discovered that images could be posted to the site in this way, text Coates was vacuuming into his site was suddenly successfully issuing JavaScript-based instructions to redirect people to another site... then another, then another, as more and more people discovered the game of banging Sam's open door about.

It wasn't long before someone cried 'hacker'... and one of the people who did that was Lua Cooper.

Lua Cooper looked up the details of one of the people who had published one of these redirects (this one, to their own site) and called their employer, claiming to be acting on behalf of CCHQ, while falsely accusing this person of being associated with some of the redirects to more colourful locations (i.e. 'shock sites' which she described as "porn sites") and threatening legal action.

You should read the following Twitter-based exchange knowing that Lua Cooper is Sam Coates' girlfriend... it's far more illuminating that way:

JimmySparkle: conservative party phoned my workplace claiming they may sue me for supposedly hacking their website... tweeting != hacking. lol #cashgordon

SamuelCoates: @jimmysparkle er, no we didn't... #cashgordon

SamuelCoates: One of the guys behind the #CashGordon hacks (@jimmysparkle) is now falsely claiming that we've rang him about it. More evidence of malice?

Niall Paterson (SKY News): @jimmysparkle Any chance you could clear this up? Who called, when, what did they say? Cheers.

Chris Mou: @niallpaterson Girl called claiming to be from Tory party. Threatened to sue for "hacking" and redirecting to "horrific" pictures. (lie)

Chris Mou: Boss told her to call back tomorrow if she wanted to speak to him. Assume if it *was* real they won't be calling back now.

Chris Mou: Incidently, she said her name was "Laura Cooper".

JimmySparkle: Apparently the woman who phoned was a Laura Cooper, no idea if she was genuine. Claimed I hacked their site. Fail fail fail #cashgordon

Niall Paterson (SKY News): Cheers @chrismou. So @samuelcoates, anyone called Laura Cooper at CCHQ?

SamuelCoates: @niallpaterson @chrismou nope! Anything like that would have come through our team as it's our thing - and I can guarantee that it hasn't.

Niall Paterson (SKY News): @samuelcoates Just checking - there's absolutely nothing in @jimmysparkle's comments?

SamuelCoates: @niallpaterson no - why would we do that?!

JimmySparkle: so do you know Laura Cooper?

SamuelCoates: @jimmysparkle no, do you?

Note - it is at this stage that JimmySparkle is tipped off by an anonymous 'single purpose' account, and the jig is up.

yeppyfd: @jimmysparkle It may be conicidence but Sam Coates has a gf called LUA Cooper..... or it may not

JimmySparkle: wow @SamuelCoates did you get your girl friend to call up threatening legal action? #cashgordon

JimmySparkle: #cashgordon @SamuelCoates where did Lua Cooper's twitter account go? http://bit.ly/bZG2j2

We'll get to Lua Cooper's hurriedly-removed Twitter account in a moment. First, this follow-up tweetage from Niall Paterson and the CCHQ Press release that followed:

Niall Paterson (SKY News): But even in the cab home, i'm working - Tories confirm tonight that Lua Cooper DID contact @jimmysparkle but is not a member of staff

Niall Paterson (SKY News): Ms Cooper is a "friend" of party worker, her actions were neither authorised nor condoned by CCHQ. She "felt strongly" abt hijacking of site

A [Conservative] Party spokesman said:

"This person is not a member of staff and her actions were not authorised by the Party. She is a friend of a party worker and felt strongly about the way this website had been hijacked and took it upon herself to make comments on the issue. She did this without our knowledge and we do not condone her actions."

She did a little more than make comments on the issue; she attempted to bully someone through their employer with false accusations and baseless legal threats.

CCHQ also fails to claim anything about the call coming from outside their offices, but I guess we'll find out more about that if/when the relevant call logs become available

In the meantime, feel free to browse for remnants of the Twitter/Facebook/etc. accounts for Lua Cooper that were cleaned out so suddenly late yesterday afternoon; this cache dating back to 5 March reveals that Lua Cooper is indeed very close to Samuel Coates, and worthy of (and excited about) front-row seats to David Cameron speeches.

As has been pointed out by Unity, she also appears in a CCHQ instruction/recruitment video. (That it's for telephone canvassing is not only funny, but one good reason to suspect that when Lua Cooper made that call, she did so from a HQ-provided phone.)

There are also old tweets from Lua Cooper where she messages The Conservatives' 'Communities Editor' Craig Elder about his concerns he may have packed too lightly for an away day; "if you need anything I can bring some of sam's thing for you and drop it to cchq?"

In short, Lua Cooper appears to be very close not only to Samuel Coates, but to the campaign and the cause and many key people at CCHQ.

For CCHQ to pretend otherwise is to be expected. For Sam Coates to pretend that he doesn't even know her or recognise her name is an insult to our intelligence, and he can't pretend to have done it out of gallantry given the way he's cowering under his desk today while his better half is left with her arse hanging out.

Many people are owed an apology here. Will none of these Conservatives step forward and take responsibility for their actions?

Perhaps Lua can start the ball rolling with a simple explanation/apology for her targeting a man through his employer in this extremely dishonest and unfair manner... assuming she's her own person and not under any pressure from Sam/CCHQ to keep her mouth shut.

Posted by Manic on March 23, 2010, 1:56 PM in Tories! Tories! Tories! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)