1. Nevertheless, the Times article implies such a connection even if you neither saw or intended it to.

One of the key reasons I rip on Dale while stressing the extent to which you equivocated on several points is to emphasise that in terms of what you posted I saw a blogger ‘following his nose’ to conclusion that interested them rather than a propagandist (Dale) applying a liberal dose of spin to a nothing story.

Although its your article I’ve fisked here, its actually Dale’s spinning of it that’s turning up on other blogs - your article is being presented as supporting Dale’s incorrect interpretation of events rather than you own, far more equivocal, assertions.

Unfortunately to take apart Dale’s slant necessitates picking hole in the source material, rather than ripping Dale head on.

2. When did ICANN actually start enforcing its own rules? Never.

Moreover, who’s to say definitively that Silverfish don’t have a legitimate interest here - there’s nothing in ICANN’s rules to preclude pre-emptive registrations by companies intending to tender for contracts they know or believe to be in the pipeline.

As things stand, the one thing your research probably has done is put Silverfish out of the running for such a contract, if it was to be put out for offers, simply because contracting them in after this has hit the public domain would be spun as confirmation of the innuendos in the Times article, even if those are completely baseless.

3. What I’m reading ‘in’ to your piece is only what is implied by its composition. That may be rather more than you intended, but its there none the less.

You start by quoting a Times article that alludes to irregularities in the Brown campaign’s dealings with the Electoral Commission in which the existence, or otherwise, of a campaign website is presented as a matter that may indicate whether the story has substance or not.

You then go on to try and demonstrate that a website may exist and may even have been in development since last October - even if you did not intend these two things to be explicitly connected by the reader the connection is still there and very much apparent in terms of the juxtaposition of the content from the Times with you own.

4. I’ve not suggested at all that you’re part of a grand conspiracy, in fact at a number of points I’ve gone to great pains to stress that the post appears to me to be nothing more than the work of a blogger ‘following his nose’.

What I’ve tried to point out here is that your post is that of a blogger who’s been spun by the Times article and not of someone using a blog to spin a story - that Dale’s department.

Whether you were consciously aware of it or not, the Times fed you a line about that there may be some significance in the existence of Brown campaign. That piqued your interest, in part because of your technical background but also because it keys into your political views and opinions, so you naturally pick the ball an run with it until you unearth some information that seems to support your conception of the story - which is what you then posted.

That’s very different from the MO of Dale and Staines, who spend much of their time (all in Staines case) planting the carefully spun seeds of stories in the hope/expectation that other bloggers will run with them - which they frequently do.

That’s how blog spin works in reality - not on the basis of a mass of bloggers engaged in a grand conspiracy but on some fairly simple pieces of misdirection and manipulation by a couple of carefully placed ‘agent provocateurs’ of a kind that takes advantage of the natural inclination of most people to write about things that fit in with their personal views.

5. Again the connection between Silverfish and a hypothetical Brown campaign website is in the article by implication, even if its not made explicit and not really what you thought you were say - its another function of the manner in which the information in your post is arranged and juxtaposed.

As far as your involvement is concerned the contention I’ve put forward is simply that you were fed a dodgy lead by the Times article and followed it only so far as it took to unearth information that appear to fit a preconceived notion derived from your own political views. This was then spun by Dale into the suggestion that what you’d found constituted proof that a campaign website exists, validating the Times story.

The only direct criticism levelled at you, is simply that had you dug a little further, which you’re certainly capable of, you’d have come to a very different conclusion - that you didn’t do the digging is merely a function of your not being sufficiently motivated to go the extra mile on this one.

Were our positions reversed, I suspect things would have been very different in that, then, you would have done much the same additional research that I did, because your motivation would have been rather different.

Hate to piss on your long winded fire mate, but you’ve basically accused me of over-stretching things by failing to read what I said and instead interpetting what you wanted me to have said. Go back and read it again, note the circumspect language, like “probably” and “someone”.

Iain’s decision to run with the Electoral Commission link was his, I merely used it because I read the quote re there being no website and thought.. well that’s not strictly true necessarily.

You need to try harder at your fisking. I give it about 6 out of 10

1: I never said that Electoral Commission rules had been broken or that such domain registration constituted it. Put simply the word “website” was a starting point for me. Little more.

2: You missed my post the following day stating, very clearly, that Silverfish were breaching ICANN rules by purchasing domains which they had no right or legitimate interest in.

3: You’re reading way to much into my post which simply stated a few points. That a company called Silverfish registered domains. That Silverfish had worked for the Treasury. That the domains probably would get used by Brown should he need them.

4: What you forget is that my blog is my website of my opinion. I am not a journalist. As for being part of a grand cospiracy, leave it out. I just happen to think that the politcs that you and others beleive is utterly wrong.