If you’ve booked a holiday in Turkey and had any thoughts of nipping out to a local cyber-cafe to catch up with your favourite blogs while you’re out there, then forget it. If the blog you’re after is hosted at wordpress.com then all you’ll see is this:

“Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance.”

‘This site’, in this case is wordpress.com in its entirety, over one million blogs according to their own figures and all of the currently inaccessible to anyone in Turkey, native or visitor, courtesy of arch-creationist Adnan Oktar.

Oktar, who appears to operate as a one-man Islamic Discovery Institute under the pen-name Harun Yaha, has apparent taken umbrage at criticism of his antics posted on around a dozen blogs hosted by wordpress, which he claims contain defamatory comments, and at the failure of Wordpress to shut down these blogs in response to his allegations, on the basis of which he appears to obtained a court order blocking access to the whole wordpress.com domain. In an email to Wordpress ‘explaining’ his actions, which appears to be from his lawyer, he even goes so far as to demand that:

WE DEMAND YOU TO REMOVE AND PROHIBIT ANY BLOGS IN YOUR SITE THAT CONTAIN MY CLIENT’S NAME ADNAN OKTAR OR HIS PEN NAME HARUN YAHYA OR VARIOUS COMBINATION OF THESE 4 NAMES.

Not only is this completely unworkable but it smacks not so much of tackling [allegedly] defamatory remarks as trying to suppress all criticism of his activities, however well-founded that criticism might be.

What this appears to show, and which was previously not known to be the case, is that the Turkish authorities may be in possession of much the same kind of centralised capacity to block access to and/or censor internet access to it citizens as is already known to exist and operate in China and in any number of Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia.

This, as should be obvious, is hardly in keeping with Turkey’s aspirations of full EU membership not to mention a flagrant violation of the provisions for freedom of expression contained within article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights:

Article 10 – Freedom of expression

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Ali Eterraz, over at Comment Is Free, has provided a first-class overview of Oktar and his publishing career, which encompasses:

…topics including refutations of atheism and Darwinism, romanticism as a weapon of Satan, anti-evolution pseudo-science, affirmation of miracles, and attacks on Freemasonry, Zionists, Buddhists, and terrorism (Darwin’s fault). In 1996, Harun Yahya published a book called Holocaust Lies (also called Holocaust Deception), which claimed that “what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the German.” Oddly, a few years later, he pinned anti-semitism on “neo-paganism” and “Darwinism” while putting himself forward as a denouncer of anti-semitism. Additionally, Yahya denies writing Holocaust Lies, but that is hard to believe.

Quite.

First things first. It is most remiss of me not to have acknowledged James Higham’s laudatory remarks in the latest of his regular Saturday blogfocus commentaries:

One year this blog has been going and how many blogs have we seen falling by the wayside in that time, coming back with a flourish and then fading away again? What’s it take to keep at it, to be consistent and never give way to the blues? These eight bloggers could tell you…

7. Unity is the scourge of the right but one thing undeniable is that he does his homework:

Scourge of the right? Who? Me..?

Still, this does provide a good excuse for correcting another omission by adding James’ blog, ‘Nourishing Obscurity‘, to the blogroll.

Meanwhile the venerable Britblog review keeps on rolling, all the way to issue #131, hosted by Matt Wardman, who poses something of a challenge to regular readers:

And one to prime you for next week - a very important story that has received very little coverage. The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that it will regulate the online versions of printed publications (i.e., newspaper websites). This has implications for bloggers - as it effectively splits the online commentary marketplace into regulated and unregulated sections. That raises a lot of questions, which I hope will get picked up this week. The full story - which all bloggers should study - is in the Independent.

The story may well raise some interesting questions, the Indy’s coverage doesn’t. In fact it amounts to little more than the usual journalistic sneering about the rapidly burgeoning medium of ‘citizen journalism’, even though the ‘citizen’ element of the story is largely a superficial one as the complaint at the centre of the story related to the inappropriate use of a bit of amateur video by the MSM, specifically the Hamilton Advertiser, Scottish Sun and Scottish Daily Mirror:

Old-style Fleet Street watchdog the Press Complaints Commission(PCC) has bared its teeth in the brave new world of citizen journalism. Every major news event from the London bombings in 2005 to the recent Mississippi bridge disaster has been recorded by amateurs using mobile phone video cameras, with newspapers and magazines standing in line to upload the best and bloodiest footage on to their websites.

By upholding a complaint against the Hamilton Advertiser, the PCC has made its first ruling on audio-visual content and sparked an industry-wide debate on the best way to police the largely untamed frontiers of the internet.

A 16-year-old pupil at John Ogilvie High School in Hamilton, near Glasgow, used her mobile phone to take a video of her fellow pupils misbehaving in class. The Hamilton Advertiser, a local paper, not only ran the story in print but also uploaded the video on to its website.

Two other papers, The Scottish Sun and the Scottish Daily Mirror, also used images from the video to illustrate stories concerning lax school discipline.

The president of the school’s parents’ and teachers’ association, Laura Gaddis, lodged a complaint against all three publications on the grounds the newspapers had not obtained permission to use the images.

But the PCC only upheld the complaint against the Hamilton Advertiser. It judged that the other two publications had made sufficient efforts to hide the identities of the pupils shown in the video.

Despite taking the plunge into the digital arena there remains something rather quaint and out of touch reality about the PCC’s own view of its actions:

A PCC spokesman told The Independent on Sunday that it is already facing criticism on this front. But he added that the PCC believes that, far from diminishing the effectiveness of print brands online, it gives them a distinct advantage.

“The PCC offers newspapers and magazines what is effectively a quality Kitemark. It assures readers that the material they are viewing can be checked for accuracy as well as for unwarranted intrusion.

“Most of the complaints we investigate relate to accuracy. Many publications run our logo online to differentiate themselves from unregulated news services,” said the spokesman.

I beg your pardon?

The MSM may have its ‘kitemark’, its voluntary regulatory code and its complaints procedures but - and its very big ‘but’ as far as I’m concerned - if one thing has become plainly apparent in the two and a half years or so that I’ve been blogging its that when it comes to comparing the ethical standards of the MSM with those of the vast majority of established Brit-bloggers, then its us bloggers who are routinely winning the ‘argument’ hands down.

Where does one begin to catalogue the ethical shortcomings of the MSM?

Copyright theft is, fortunately for certain media organisations, outside the purview of the PCC, but from the Daily Mail’s two-page ‘lift’ of material from the blog of PC Coppperfield: -

With 46% of the vote, Peter Wright, as Editor, takes the rap for the most outrageous and blatant piece of plagiarism of the year. Across two pages he cut ‘n pasted the writings of “PC Copperfield” of the Policeman’s blog. In the blogging Copper’s own words, “The Mail on Sunday never even asked… bastards“.

…to the plundering of Beau Bo D’or and other members of B3TA by the likes of Emap and IPC, the MSM has shown a flagrant disregard for the basic intellectual property rights of bloggers when it suits them, which means pretty much any time they’re short of a bit of content and too lazy/time-pressured to come up with something of their own.
Accuracy and misrepresentation most certainly do fall within the remit of the PCC and yet where was their much vaunted code of practice when Owen Barder was subjected to an outrageous and wholly unwarranted hatchet job by Simon ‘lying scumbag‘ Walters of the Daily Mail?

Nowhere.

And then there was The Sun’s tawdry tale of Muslim vandals picking on ‘Our Boys’ in Windsor…

MUSLIM yobs who wrecked a house to stop four brave soldiers moving in after returning from Afghanistan sparked outrage last night.

The house in a village near riot-torn Windsor had BRICKS thrown through windows and was DAUBED with messages of hate.

Four young Household Cavalry officers who had planned to rent it were also the target of phone THREATS.

They were yesterday forced to look elsewhere to live — after top brass warned them against inflaming racial violence near the Queen’s Windsor Castle home.

All complete rubbish, of course, as The Sun eventually admitted… some three months later:-

Following our report ‘Hounded out’ about a soldier’s home in Datchet, Berks, being vandalised by Muslims, we have been asked to point out no threatening calls were logged at Combermere Barracks from Muslims and police have been unable to establish if any faith or religious group was responsible for the incident.

…on a completely different (and unconnected) page to the original story, which still appears on The Sun’s website in an entirely uncorrected form and without any reference to the later retraction of the ‘Muslim yobs’ allegation.

Until it was overtaken by ‘feral youth’ stories, this silly season’s hot moral panic looked set to be ‘reefer madness’ following the publication of a meta-analysis in the Lancet that was woefully misrepresented, from the outset, in the broadsheets…

Smoking cannabis increases the risk of schizophrenia by at least 40% according to research which indicates that there are at least 800 people suffering serious psychosis in the UK after smoking the drug.

Increases the risk of schizophrenia by 40% from what?

What is the risk of developing schizophrenia if you don’t smoke cannabis, and does that risk apply evenly across the whole population or is contingent on other causal or contributory factors that modify the level of base risk according to individual circumstances? Is this 40% figure a measure of the increase in annual risk or lifetime risk?

Without any of that additional information, the assertion that smoking cannabis increases the risk of developing schizophrenia by 40% is entirely meaningless, even if the quoted figure is true. You simply cannot make an informed evaluation of personal risk from such a statement unless you can assess the percentage increase in risk against a known baseline figure.

Still the Guardian article was a paragon of journalistic virtue by comparison to the line taken by both The Sun and The Daily Mail, who both pronounced that smoking just one spliff raised the risk of mental illness by 40% - the research published in the Lancet said nothing of the sort, nor could such a conclusion be reasonably arrived at on the basis of the analytical techniques used in its compilation (even if these had been correctly reported, which they weren’t), not that the little matter of accuracy was going to be permitted to intrude on a good scare story, so good, in fact, that the tabloid fiction of ‘one spliff = 40% increased risk of mental illness’ has since been repeated as fact in the broadsheets.

It’s worth noting what the PCC’s code of conduct states on the subject of accuracy:

Accuracy

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, mis-leading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published.

iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

One wonders, sometimes, whether parts of the press are even capable of distinguishing clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

Cast around most of the established bloggers - check the sidebar for links to some of (in my opinion) the best - and you’ll find example after example of occasions when the MSM have been pulled up short for making basic errors of fact or misrepresenting stories to suit their preferred political agenda and yet when challenged by their own regulator over their ethical shortcomings they persist with the fiction of their own superiority over bloggers:-

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, agrees that newspapers and magazines should do all they can to maintain the quality of their brand on the internet.

“Publications just cannot operate on the basis that the internet offers open access to any kind of material with no control. This may be true of certain parts of the internet but not for newspapers and magazines,” said Mr Satchwell, who edited the Cambridge Evening News for 15 years.

He said that the internet age is entering a new era which will favour the websites of more traditional publications.

“The internet has been flooded with a huge amount of material of varying quality. But things are beginning to settle down as people come to realise the value of information that comes from a reliable source. The newspapers’ big online advantage is their brand,” said Mr Satchwell.

He added that, although the Society of Editors is generally opposed to the over-policing of internet content, the PCC’s Code of Practice performs a valuable function.

“I believe that the code is setting a benchmark that can only enhance the brands of newspapers and magazines online. The biggest issue online is creating credibility. You cannot develop a significant audience online until you establish credibility. Organisations signed up to the PCC do have credibility since the information they publish is open to scrutiny,” Mr Satchwell said.

Well yes. Quite. Credibility and reputation do matter - in fact as a blogger that (and posting material that some find interesting) is all that I’ve got to sustain interest in the things I write - my budget simply doesn’t run to TV adverts, online bingo and CD give-aways, in fact it doesn’t even run to covering me for publishing bullshit and hiding behind a lawyer in order to cover my arse. Like other bloggers I stand or fall on my reputation, and my reputation alone.

To suggest, as the PCC does, that the choice facing consumers is between a regulated (and credible) MSM and unregulated (and much less credible) bloggers is to put forward a false dichotomy that suits only their own interest. As bloggers we may not have a written code of practice, or a regulatory body to enforce one, but blogging is far from being ‘unregulated’. The combination of the immediacy and interactivity of the medium - get something factually wrong and it’ll generally be pointed out in comments in a matter of minutes - and the overriding importance of reputation and personal credibility ensures that blogging operates within a framework of self-regulation in which the expected ethical standards of behaviour are often considerably higher than those in use by much of the MSM.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in regards to handling of interaction with readers.

Like many bloggers I make of point of not censoring comments posted to this blog, beyond the routine removal of spam, no matter how bizarre or abusive they might get from time to time. Moreover I would never dream of removing or censoring a comment simply because it demonstrated that I’d made a mistake or posted something that was factually inaccurate - depending on whether the matter at hand is one of a difference of opinion or a verifiable fact, I’ll either defend my position, acknowledge the point of dispute or, if necessary, make an appropriate correction. I’m under no express obligation to do any of those things. I do them because, in the first instance, I consider them to constitute fair and honest dealing with the people who read my work and, secondly, because such an approach, I feel, serves to enhance and sustain my personal reputation as a blogger and I’ve found, from experience, that even amongst bloggers who might vehemently disagree with some of my views, that little bit of honesty applied to my dealings with readers is sufficient to ensure that I enjoy a fairly good reputation and a measure of respect, much as there are any of bloggers of whom I take a reciprocal view.

Now consider, by way of contrast, The Sun’s actions in regards the ‘Muslim vandals’ story I cited earlier.

The information that debunked their claim of Muslim involvement in the vandalism of the property in question was published in a local newspaper within a week of the appearance of the original story, this being the primary source I used to debunk the Sun’s overheated claims.

On the same day as I posted my article on this story, I also e-mailed Julie Moult, the reporter whose byline and e-mail address appeared on the story, pointing out the factual errors in The Sun’s coverage and requesting that it should be corrected to reflect this new information - I got no reply.

The Sun finally took action only after a complaint to the PCC by a Mr Imran Ahmed of Huddersfield:-

Publication: The Sun

Complaint:
Mr Imran Ahmed of Huddersfield complained that an article in the newspaper was inaccurate when it claimed that Muslim yobs had wrecked a house intended for soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

Resolution:

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published the following correction setting out the true position:

BARRACK ATTACK
Following our report ‘ Hounded out’ about a soldiers’ home in Datchet, Berks, being vandalised by Muslims, we have been asked to point out no threatening calls were logged at Combermere Barracks from Muslims and police have been unable to establish if any faith or religious group was responsible for the incident. We are happy to make this clear.

It’s interest to note that the PCC considers the complaint ‘resolved’ even though the article that spawned this complaint still appears on The Sun’s website without any amendments having been made to reflect the paper’s retraction of the allegations of Muslim involvement and without anything appearing on that page to indicate that a retraction had been made - that’s the power of regulation for you.

A blogger who tried to pull the same kind of stunt to cover their arse on such a mistake would be roundly slaughtered by their peers (other bloggers) for failing to deal honestly with their error - and yet we’re the one’s supposedly lacking credibility.

Similarly, in the case of the Mail’s hatchet job on Owen Barder, the article that appeared (and still appears) online included the facility to post comments, which several bloggers did, all pointing out that the article was factually inaccurate and seriously misrepresented the content of Owen’s blog (now closed), not least in attributing comments posted by readers to Owen himself. As can be seen, if you follow the link, none of these comments made it through the Mail’s moderation system - in fact at one point shortly after the story started the spread amongst bloggers, the Mail removed the comments facility from the article entirely, only to reinstate it later when it was pointed out (by bloggers) that this, itself, amounted to blatant dishonesty.

This is by no means an isolated occurrence - there are several recorded examples where critical comments from bloggers, especially comments that directly challenge the accuracy of stories published by the MSM, have disappeared into the moderation system never to see the light of day, and this in an industry whose code of practice states:-

2. Opportunity to reply

A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably called for.

For bloggers, a ‘fair opportunity to reply’ means an open-access comments system and the publication of comments (at least) under the original article and without censorship or alteration. In much of the MSM, a fair opportunity to reply means that you can file a complaint with the PCC, wait a minimum of two to three months for the complaint to be investigated and then, perhaps, get a three-to-four line retraction printed well out of the way at the bottom of page sixteen under a couple of uninteresting stories pulled from the file marked ‘Filler - for use on slow news days’.

I could go on to catalogue several other obvious shortcomings one finds within the MSM pretty much as a matter of routine - Heather Yaxley, whose own commentary on this issue is cited by Matt in the Britblog review, correctly notes the propensity of the MSM for uncritical parroting of material supplied by press agents:-

In the case of newspapers, there is a lot to be questioned in respect of the accuracy of many of their more sensationalist stories - which have often been “crafted” by press agents, such as Max Clifford (famously “Freddie Starr ate my hamster“).

This kind of ‘cut and paste’ journalism is by no means confined only to ‘celebrity’ stories in the tabloids - take the Indy’s recent coverage of a new ‘miracle’ hay fever cure, which I extensively fisked here. Looking back over the original article published by the Indy it seems perfectly apparent to me that the entirely piece amounts to nothing more than a near verbatim repetition of the content of a press release put out by the pharmaceutical company responsible for this new drug. As such, the question here is not just one of accuracy but of the blurring of the lines between news reporting and advertising - for several days after posting this article I was getting search engine hits on my blog all of which posed the same question, ‘where can I get ….’, which to me suggests that at the very least one could reasonably consider the article in question an ‘advertorial’ even if it wasn’t marked as such by the Indy.

Such practices, which seem increasingly common in health journalism, appear to fall largely (and maybe entirely) outside the brief of the PCC - I would assume that any concerns about the blurring of the lines between advertising and news reporting could be referred to the Advertising Standards Authority, although its unclear if (and how) the ASA might approach such an issue if it were raised.

For all the both the Press Complaints Commission and the Society of Editors would have us believe that the presence of voluntary regulation marks out a genuine dividing line between bloggers and the MSM and, moreover, enhances the credibility of professional journalism, in practice it seems that not only are the self-regulatory practices of bloggers vastly superior to anything that the newspaper industry’s existing regulatory code has to offer but that, at its best, blogging is substantially more effective in calling the MSM to account when it standards and practices fall short of those set out in the code of practice. What the mainstream media’s voluntary code of practice and reliance on regulation lacks is the simplicity and immediacy of response that blogging offers, not to mention the visibility of response. Even with such facilities well within the grasp of most news websites - it requires only a comments system and a little basic honesty on the part of comment moderators, after all - the MSM routinely falls short of the standards of ethical behaviour found as a matter of near routine amongst established bloggers (and, it must be said, amongst those new entrants to blogging who take the time and trouble to acquaint themselves with the prevailing social mores of the medium).

When bloggers are routinely exposing factual inaccuracies and misreporting in the MSM’s news output within hours -and sometimes within minutes - of articles being published, to lay claim to credibility on the strength of a three month plus turnaround on even a basic complaint is little short of a joke, even if one excludes from consideration the manifest failings of system that routinely permits demonstrably inaccurate articles to go uncorrected provided that the offending newspaper published are carefully buried retraction somewhere on its website, even if that somewhere is in no way linked to related to the location of the original article.

Far from talking up its code of practice, the PCC should be actively talking to bloggers about its intentions in moving on to the electronic frontier and, in particular, about how its regulatory practices need to change to meet the requirements and demands of the medium.

If nothing else, the PCC needs to ensure that when it comes the publication of retractions and corrections, and in permitting a right to reply, both are carried out by means of appending such content to the original article rather than, as at present, permitting news websites to bury such content as far away from the article that spawned the complaint as possible. That, in terms of online publishing, is the minimum acceptable standard that should be accepted.

In addition, the PCC needs to take a view on the question of transparency, both in terms of operating comment systems and the making of stealth edits to cover up errors. On the former, the code of practice should include scope for complaints where, as happened in the case of the Daily Mail and Owen Barder, the newspaper deliberately concealed comments that directly challenged the factual accuracy of the article in question, while on the latter it should be made clear that the use of stealth edits is in no way a means of avoiding the requirement to publish a retraction should an article have been published, originally, containing errors of fact or misrepresentations.

Instead of drawing a line in the sand between the ‘regulated’ MSM and ‘unregulated’ (but actually self-regulated) blogosphere, the PCC would do rather better by engaging in dialogue with bloggers so as to better understand the demands it faces in seeking to extend its regulatory framework onto the internet - after all, in this, its us bloggers who’re the experts.

*Footnote - the title of this article comes from Ambrose Bierce’s definition of ‘Reporter’ in The Devil’s Dictionary: Reporter (n) - A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

Radio Five Live’s ‘Pods and Blogs‘ show has been kind enough to pick up on and feature the ongoing blog campaign in support of those Iraqi employees who’ve worked for, and are still working for, UK forces and who now find themselves under threat from local militias and death squads.

The show, a podcast version of which is hosted here, includes an interview with Dan Hardie, who kicked off the campaign - no more needs to be said, just listen and understand…

 

 Pods and Blogs - Iraqi Workers [12:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (28)

And in case you haven’t figured it out by now, Tim Ireland’s sorted out this video to explain it to you… in Post-It notes.

Time to get back in the saddle with another episode of the Dale ‘n Dizzy show:

Labour caught out on the internet again?

Remember the last time Labour MPs had to apologise for making dodgy videos? No? Well I bet Tom Watson and Sion Simon so. Well, Dizzy has a good little story HERE about 15 Labour MPs in highly marginal seats filming videos in the Houses of Parliament. He speculates that they are for use in an election campaign - I suspect that they have been filmed as a contingency for an October election. However, I find it highly debateable as to whether the Serjeant at Arms would have given permission for such videos to be filmed on the Parliamentary Estate. Perhaps a question or two should be asked…

And…

Labour PPB for marginal elections footage leaks on to the Internet?

Whatever is going here? Take a look. We have two pages of videos titles “[Constituency Name’s] Labour MP talking about Gordon Brown”. Each video is professionally done, they only appear on Google and not on Labour websites or the Labour YouTube channel. They were all posted on the same date (27th July), they were all appear to have been uploaded anonymously.

They’re all filmed within the buildings of Parliament (did they get permission from the Serjeant at Arms?), they’re all talking about how brilliant the Government and Gordon is and how it will be good for their constituency, and, last but by no means least, they’re all MPs in marginal or hyper-marginal constituency with the exception of Preston (however that has had boundary changes).

Anyone want to place a bet that this footage is going to appear in Party Political broadcasts in the run up to the next General Election, possibly nationally but definitely locally?

Watch them all here.

Nice spot Dizzy, but you really should do a little more research before you start speculating. Not only has Curious Hamster taken care of the query about filming in the House of Commons (which Iain’s acknowledged - sort of):

Since the Grant Shapps “1234 incident”, I’ve noticed that Iain Dale has written a few posts on the subject of Labour and the interwebs. Today, taking the lead from Dizzy, he suggests that the Labour Party has been up to no good filming interviews in parliament without permission from the Serjeant at Arms and loading them up onto Google video.

In this case, you can almost hear the straws crackling under his grasp. 15 Labour MPs have filmed interviews in the same spot in Westminster Hall. Given that the filming of interviews is specifically allowed without need for permission in one part of Westminster Hall and given that one of the MPs filmed was the one who gave the answer linked above, I think it’s safe to assume that permission wasn’t require in this instance.

But a quick whizz around the websites of several of the MPs who’ve appeared in these video shows that they all appear to have something else in common…

…they all have a new-ish official Labour Party MP websites, which include a pod/videocast section, using the same Tangent Labs system that serves as the backend to Labour’s main party website, the main difference being that the MP sites are actually hosted by Tangent Labs, where Labour has its main site hosted on a server at Rackspace.

So Dizzy’s possible ‘leaked’ PPB footage turns out to be no more than a job lot of short videos filmed for MPs websites and without checking the numbers, one suspects that given the general theme of these videos - how things are different now Brown’s in charge - the significance of these MPs being, in the main, from marginal constituencies, is no more than the faint suspicion that Blair’s unpopularity following the Iraq War might just have had a fair bit to do with how and why they seat is quite so marginal, hence the need to big up the fact that there’s a new guy in charge.

It’s a nice spot by Dizzy but, as usual, the real story turns out to be considerably more mundane than his speculations.

UPDATE - Dizzy’s posted a response that’s worth answering…

1: I never said they hadn’t got permission nor did I speculate that they didn’t. I simply said “did they?”

This being the question answered by Curious Hamster.

2: I don’t have to do anymore research because it’s just my personal website where I express my personal opinions. The idea that I can’t write my opinions and ask a question online unless I jump through lots of hoops available to political saddos who work in Westminster earning peanuts is.. well it’s bollocks.

Funnily enough, I always find that doing a modicum of background research makes the difference between telling a story for what it actually is - Dizzy could easily have played to the gallery with a ‘look at this bunch of grovelling shites’ story, which is about as much as his discovery actually merits - as opposed to having your speculations shot down in flames on the back of five minutes of fact checking and being made to look a bit of a tinfoil-hatted dickhead…

But that’s just my take on things…

3: I have looked around the MPs websites, not many of them have them.

Okay, so here’s the list of the ones that do have them online…

Jim Knight MP - here

Paul Clark MP - here

Paddy Tipping - links to the video on Google Vids from this page

Andrew Smith MP - on his biography page

Claire Ward MP - another linker rather than embedder

Mark Todd MP - here

Stephen Ladyman MP - yet another linker…

Sarah McCarthy-Fry MP - here

Ruth Kelly MP - links from here

There are a few other assorted videos housed on the same account - here’s one of David Milliband talking about climate change as it appears on the website of Celia Barlow MP, while Anne Snelgrove has a couple of interviews with Hilary Benn and John Hutton on her site.

4: I am doing some different reseach though and there may be, as Ed Balls would say, “more to come”

Ooh, I can hardly wait…

Watching Guido trying to salvage a few meagre shreds of reputation as the blogosphere premier ‘Sleazefinder General’ is, I must admit, rather entertaining.

Do You Believe there is No Connection Between Cash and Honours?

Tony Blair created 292 peers. Millions were raised from the recipients of those honours…

Does anyone - or should I say anyone expressing an honest and unbiased opinion - really believe that a full audit of Tory Party finances and donations covering the Thatcher/Major government, which created 341 peers between them, would not show much the same kind of correlation?

And what about the £6 million in loans that the Tories paid off to ensure that the identities of their backers remained out of the public domain?

Ah, can you hear that folks? That’s the sound of silence…

Still, I guess all this does save Guido the time and trouble of trying to finish off writing ‘The Trial of  Lord Levy’ - unless Levy decides to sue him for libel and defamation, of course…

Anyone up for starting work on the Trial of Paul Staines Guido Fawkes?

Even more amusing, however, is the sight of the blogosphere’s premier Guido wannabe, Praguetory, appearing to admit to having withheld information from the Police in regards to criminal offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925:

it’s very hard to believe that the 6,300 documents prepared by the police over the course of about a year and passed to the CPS 3 (!) months ago were insufficient for a case to come to court. Not only is the evidence of wrongdoing clear, but I have been told by a number of sources close to specific lenders that they admit that they were trying to buy a lordship.

First things first - about this claim that ‘the evidence of wrongdoing is clear’, Praguetory…

Are you claiming to have seen the evidence submitted by the police to the CPS for consideration, or are you simply trying to pass off an extremely unqualified personal opinion as a matter of fact?

And in either case, in what sense do you consider yourself qualified to judge the strength of the evidence presented to the CPS by the Metropolitan Police. Are you a solicitor or barrister? Do you have a degree in law?

No of course you aren’t and you don’t, you’re just a loudmouth Tory blogger with a bloated sense of your own self-importance and a desperate craving for attention.

Moving on swiftly to Praguetory’s other claim…

I have been told by a number of sources close to specific lenders that they admit that they were trying to buy a lordship.

Well if that’s true, why have you not forwarded that information to the Metropolitan Police? Do you not realise that not only is the sale of honours a criminal offence under section 1 of the 1925 Act but also the solicitation of honours, which is covered by section 2…

(2) If any person gives, or agrees or proposes to give, or offers to any person any gift, money or valuable consideration as an inducement or reward for procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure the grant of a dignity or title of honour to any person, or otherwise in connection with such a grant, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.

Notwithstanding your patently transparent political motives, Praguetory, if you are aware of any individuals who may have offered loans or donations to any political party in the hope of obtaining a peerage or other honour for themselves of for third party then you are surely under a moral and ethical obligation to disclose their identity and/or the identity of your claimed sources together with any other relevant information appertaining to these alleged ‘admissions’ to the Metropolitan Police for further investigation.

After all, the solicitation of honours carries the same penalty as their sale - up to two years imprisonment on indictment or three months on summary conviction - as specified by the third and final section of the Act:

(3) Any person guilty of a misdemeanour under this Act shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine not exceeding five hundred pounds, or to both such imprisonment and such fine, or on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds, or to both such imprisonment and such fine, and where the person convicted (whether on indictment or summarily) received any such gift, money, or consideration as aforesaid which is capable of forfeiture, he shall in addition to any other punishment be liable to forfeit the same to His Majesty.

There is, of course, another possible (and many would argue likely) explanation for Praguetory’s remarks, which is simply that he’s bullshitting and that these ’sources close to specific lenders’ are no more than figments of his ego and his desperation to be seen as a big wheel in the discreditable, and increasingly discredited, histrionic wing of the Tory blogosphere.

(Despite surface appearances to the contrary, which stem primarily from the relentless media whoring and playing to the troll gallery of the likes of Guido and Iain Dale, there are actually some very good Tory bloggers out there, of whom I can happily recommend Mr Eugenides, Bel and Matt Wardman as being well worth a read if, like me, you prefer your political opponents to be honest, authentic and intelligent.)

Based on his comments, of which I’ve naturally taken a screenshot (see below) it seems to me that Praguetory has painted himself into a corner in which he has left himself only three options.

1) He can demonstrate the veracity of his claim to have been told by ’sources close to specific lenders’ of these alleged attempts to solicit honours in breach of section 2 of the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925, by forwarding the information he purports to have to the Metropolitan Police, thereby initiating further inquiries.

2) He can publish the identities of the specific lenders named by his claimed sources, secure in the knowledge that his ’sword of truth’ will prevail when he gets whacked with the inevitable libel action that would result from such a course of action, or

3) He can respond to the above challenge with his usual mix of bullshit and bluster and then waffle on about the importance of protecting sources and put up whatever other excuses for inaction he can think of - thereby reinforcing the impression that many will already have of him, that of his being a congenital bullshitter who will say pretty much anything in his unbounded desperation to climb the slippery pole of the Tory blogosphere to the lip of the gutter currently occupied by Guido.

Or he could just libel Bob Piper again in the hope that that might deflect attention away from the embarrassment of his made a complete cunt of himself, yet again.

Iain’s rather sceptical about Gordon’s comments to Pink News:

Gordon Brown’s Record on Gay Rights

Gordon Brown has got a nerve. In the Daily Mail today he is putting himself up as some sort of gay rights activist and supporter. But if you actually look at his voting record on gay rights issues he has carefully absented himself on each occasion the issue has been debated. More than a coincidence, I would say. Matt Wardman has helpfully provided a list of the fourteen votes Brown has missed, such is his total commitment to an equality agenda.

One could hardly doubt Iain’s own personal commitment to gay rights, of course, but nevertheless before throwing stones in Gordon’s direction he might have done well to take a look at his own party’s track record on the same set of parliamentary divisions:

Votes listed in pink (naturally) are those in which a vote for the bill/amendment would be considered pro gay rights, blue is against and the one uncoloured row is difficult to categorise one way or another as the clause in question related to provisions to allow siblings (amongst others) to register a civil partnership and gain the same legal rights as gay couples in respect of inheritances, etc - a clause that would have had the effect of inadvertently permitting incestuous relationships to be registered as civil partnerships had it been accepted - provided the couple in question kept schtum about their private activities and didn’t make them too obvious (a wedding dress and a reception would have been perhaps best avoided).

I have also added the recent vote on the Sexual Orientation regulations, on which Brown did vote (in favour) to bring things up to date.

As is clear from the table above, not once has more than a quarter of the parliamentary Tory Party turned out to vote in favour of legislation extending or enhancing gay rights over the last 10 years.

Turning now to the voting records of a number of senior Conservatives, and using the same list of Commons votes we get these results:

Obviously there were no votes for either Cameron or Osborne prior to 2001, when they entered parliament, and with Osborne having the slightly better record of the two on the back of having voted against a clause, tabled by Edward Leigh of the Cornerstone group, that attempted to reinstate the ’section 28′ restrictions on the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ by local authorities in full, a vote that Cameron missed - and to give Osborne his due, that makes him the only one of the two to record a vote supportive of gay rights during Iain Duncan Smith’s tenure as Tory Party leader.

In essence, therefore, its impossible to be certain whether the marked shift in voting behaviour by Cameron, in particular, is a reflection of his seeing adoption rights for gay couples and civil partnerships as two very different questions of principle or whether his voting record is tinged with political expediency linked to changes in party leadership and overall ethos.

As for the other two senior Tories listed, Hague has a consistent record of voting against gay rights, or absenting himself from votes on such issues, but for the one positive vote on Civil Partnerships, while David Davis, the man for whom Iain Dale acted as campaign manager during the most recent Tory Leadership election, mixes and matches no votes and absences on legislation supporting gay rights but can always be replied upon to show his face and wander into the aye lobby whenever there’s a vote against gay rights before the house.

One might suggest that that makes Dale and Davis a rather odd pair of bedfellows, were it not apparent that Davis would almost certainly vote against that as well on the evidence of past record.

There is, of course, much more to politics than just a single issue, still when it comes to matters as personal as one’s own sexual orientation it does seem a little incongruous to find Dale supporting a candidate for the leadership of his party - a man whom Dale would presumably have wished to become Prime Minister - with a such a poor voting record on issues that are obvious very close to his heart.

So far as making an issue of Brown’s voting record, if one actually looks at his entire record since 1997, then its clear that the real pattern that emerges is one of a senior Minister who turns out to vote in the House of Commons more or less only on legislation emanating from his own department (HM Treasury) or on those occasions where the high profile or contentious nature of a particular piece of legislation (especially amongst Labour ranks) demands a show of support from the highest levels of the party.

Over the last ten year, Brown’s overall voting record in the Commons has amounted to 16.7% of votes attended (1997-2001), 11.1% (2001-2005) and 18.6% since the 2005 general election. By way of comparison within Labour ranks, Tony Blair’s record for those periods was 8.6%, 7.5% and 9.4% of votes attended.

To add a little further perspective, David Cameron’s attendance/voting record has fallen, since becoming leader, from 66.9% to 27.4% - opposition ministers tend to have to put a bit more time into the House, anyway, in the absence of a large majority to do the job of delivering results on their behalf - while in the case of William Hague, he managed a 33.4% attendance while Tory leader from 1997-2001, which increased to 51% after he stood down, having been defeated in the 2001 general election, even with all his outside media and publishing interests to keep him occupied.

This rather limits the interpretation one can put on Brown’s voting record on gay rights, given that the size of Labour’s majority in the House of Common over the last ten yet together with the widespread and largely unequivocal support for gay rights found almost uniformly across the Parliamentary Labour Party has ensured that, in the Commons, the outcome of votes affecting gay rights have never once been in doubt. Labour’s largest ‘rebellion’ on gay rights was over the question of support for the amendment to the Adoption and Children Bill allowing unmarried heterosexual couple to adopt, but excluding homosexual couples (10 March 2003), at a time where Labour’s overall majority stood at 166 and its majority over the Tory Party at a whopping 279.

35 Labour MPs voted for that amendment, which was still defeated by 128 votes.

The problem with attacking an MP on the back of their voting record on a specific issue, given the excellent work of They Work For You and The Public Whip, in making data on parliamentary debates and vote readily accessible, is simply that one needs to be sure that you own party’s record stacks up and that you’re not in a glasshouse before you start lobbing boulders around.

UPDATE -

Iain’s left the following comment, which perhaps illustrates a bit of misunderstanding on his part stemming from his choice of source material.

The charge laid by Iain, is that Brown is somehow setting himself up as a gay rights activist and supporter, which is the impression one might well get from the Daily Mail, which opens its report as follows:

Gordon Brown has challenged David Cameron as a champion of gay rights.

The Prime Minister pledged that a new equality ’superwatchdog’ would crack down on discrimination.

Two obvious points of note here.

First, this report is from the Daily Mail and, therefore, like most of its other output, needs to be viewed with a bullshit filter firmly in place.

Second, the Daily Mail knows its core readership pretty well and knows that ‘Gay Rights Champion’ is hardly the kind of epithet that will translate to votes in the ballot box from its readers, many whom will see a contest between Brown and Cameron for that title as a fight over the front and back seat on a way ride to hell and damnation.

So, when dealing with the Mail, its always advisable to go back to the original source, which is this Q&A with readers of Pink News:

How can members of the LGBT community be assured of your commitment to Equality when, apart from the recent ‘Goods & Services’ regulations, you have been notably absent from every other ‘Gay Equality’ Bill the Government has introduced since 1997? John Irvine

John, let me be clear: I am proud of this Government’s record on gay rights. I was brought up always to treat people equally, and that is core to what I believe.

I would like to think that my whole political life has been a fight for equality and a fairer society.

The Britain I believe in is one of fairness and opportunity for all - for me that means no one should ever feel unable to fulfil their potential whatever their race, religion or sexuality.

This Government has, as you kindly accept, improved the position of gays and lesbians in this country by removing unfair barriers and tackling discrimination.

I think this Government has made a huge amount of progress: for example, we’ve equalised the age of consent, repealed Section 28, and made it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation.

I can promise this Government will continue to do all it can to make Britain a fairer and more tolerant place.

So that’s a general statement of his belief in equality and fairness plus laudatory remarks about the government’s track record on gay rights over the last ten years, a record that does stack up and stands as probably the clearest and least equivocated progressive agenda followed by Labour over that time.

Nothing controversial or hypocritical there.

David Cameron and Tony Blair have spoken about their support for civil partnerships - why have you said nothing? What is your view? Paul Hillindon

I am very pleased, Paul, to have this opportunity to put on record my support for civil partnerships.

When I was at the Treasury we ensured equality for gay couples in the tax system, particularly inheritance tax, as part of the civil partnership legislation.

The fact is, when you are Chancellor, you tend to concentrate more on talking about the economy so there are quite a few areas of policy on which I have not said much.

Now I am in my new job, this will change - and I’m looking forward to it.

So the answer is “sorry, been a bit busy with other things but we [the Treasury] did make a policy contribution so far as the tax rights that go with civil partnerships are concerned”.

Nothing much hypocritical in that, merely a request that he be judged on his future actions as PM.

What will you be doing to help persecuted LGBT community worldwide from persecution and violence from right wing governments? What about EU countries that are hostile to gay rights? Ross Hunter

This Government has taken a lead in ending discrimination against gay and lesbian people in Britain, but as you say, Ross, the fight to counter discrimination is not restricted to the UK.

The reports we hear are deeply concerning: around the world gay and lesbian people are outlawed, persecuted and killed for advocating their rights.

We have announced an international strategy to promote rights overseas, which includes Britain’s commitment to the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality.

We are and will continue to work with foreign partners and domestic organisations to protect the human rights of gay and lesbian people throughout the world.

Much the same answer as previously - supporting gay rights is just one part of an overall approach to equality that’s running through policy, in this case a fairly standard bit of internationalist foreign policy stuff.

New Labour has pushed through much needed reforms to tackle homophobia in all areas of society, but evidently more needs to be done. What proposals do you plan to introduce to further combat this? Val

I agree with you, Val, that there is more to do, and as I’ve said I can promise this Government will continue to do all it can to make Britain a fairer and more tolerant place.

One of the areas where more needs to be done, and is being done, is to tackle homophobic bullying in schools - to ensure that children are provided with a safe educational environment free from all forms of bullying - and, where it occurs, discrimination in the workplace.

We also need to ensure the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights not only ensures that anti-discrimination laws are enforced but also, importantly, plays its full part in changing attitudes.

Again the stance is that the government is committed to equality across the board, and that includes equality for the gay community.

I wouldn’t say he’s ‘championed’ gay rights at all, just afforded them the same status, in terms of Labour policy on equality, that go for other minority groups.

All six candidates for Labour Deputy Leader agreed to a new offence of incitement to homophobic hatred - do you agree with them? Alan Stone

Alan, I believe that there is no place in twenty-first century Britain for homophobia, racism and any other form of discrimination which can destroy lives, poison communities and weaken the fabric of our national life.

There is a range of legislation already in place to protect individuals from harm, including criminal harassment, verbal abuse and incitement to violence.

In addition, we have ensured that courts impose tougher sentences for offences motivated or aggravated by the victim’s sexual orientation, unless the court gives a good reason not to.

But while safeguarding the right of individuals to live free from discrimination and abuse, we also have to respect this country’s long tradition of free speech, which this Government enshrined in the Human Rights Act.

There has to be a clear dividing line between robust debate and incitement to hate crime.

This is one of the reasons why we have brought the Serious Crime Bill before Parliament, including proposals to amend incitement law to make it easier to prove reckless encouragement of criminality.

Although the law is important, we should not neglect other ways of tackling unacceptable prejudice and extremism.

For example, we know that up to 90% of homophobic crime goes unreported because victims are too frightened and believe their story will not be believed or taken seriously.

In response, one of our key priorities is to increase reporting. When people do report, we must ensure it is taken seriously, that the incident is investigated and brought to justice.

We have set up Community Safety Units specifically to deal with hate crimes promptly and sensitively, with a Home Office hate crime strategy to improve confidence in the police while funding third-party groups to encourage reporting and help people who may feel uncomfortable about reporting directly to the authorities.

And again, the answer is ‘look, we have this set of policies in place and they apply to you as much as they do anyone else”.

This is hardly earth shattering material…

Lots of gay people who are too young to remember the last Tory government think that David Cameron is more gay-friendly than you. Does that worry you? Jen Ainslett

Well, Jen, I can assure you it isn’t true.

I think we have to remind young people of the fact that gay and lesbian people did not have equal rights in 1997 and that the changes that have since taken place did not come about by accident but because of the actions of the Labour Government.

That’s not to suggest that our party is the only one which contains politicians pressing for a fairer and more tolerant society.

But it is our party which has delivered the changes that were needed.

When I talk of building a progressive consensus, this is really what I mean: I can’t now see anyone in a mainstream political party trying to reverse the progress we have made. That’s a good thing.

And that’s your lot.

Brown states that Cameron isn’t more ‘gay-friendly’ than he is - although he doesn’t claim that Cameron is any less gay-friendly than he is either - after which is back to bigging up Labour policy over the last 10 years with the added bonus of adding, in a slightly round about way - that Cameron’s supportive attitude towards the gay community since becoming Tory leader is just proof that Labour have won the argument.

The whole thing amounts to Brown stating a generic belief in equality and then pointing out all the progress that’s been made on gay right under the Labour government over the past ten years. That hardly amounts to setting himself up as champion of gay rights or even a knock at Cameron, particularly, and it certainly fall some considerable way short of a platform to which you could reasonably pin a charge of hypocrisy.

Personally, it looks like Iain’s rather off the mark in some his comments, having been led astray by his taking the Mail’s rather melodramatic reporting at face value - unless, of course, he’d care to argue otherwise on the basis of the content of the Pink News Q&A.

Another - sort of - update from Tom and one that poses yet more questions, and few answers…

Cam came in secret

July 17th, 2007 by Tom

Why do you think that David Cameron would make his fifth visit to Ealing in secret today?

What do people think?

Is the Lib Dem candidate about to jump ship to the Tories?

Has Tony Lit suddenly got cold feet?

Has Grant Shapps been fired as Lit’s campaign manager?

I guess we’ll have to see what emerges next…

This just in…

Shocked of Ealing

July 17th, 2007 by Tom

I’ve just received a phone call, that if true, will mark the most remarkable culmination to one of the most incredible by-elections I have ever worked in.

With everything else that’s been going on down there, one wonders quite what shocks might be left…

More as soon as Tom comes through with whether the information received checks out and what it actually is…

You’ll have to excuse me for a moment - must just slap PragueTwatTory down:

Political Donors Have Rights Too

From the Labour webpage relating to donations.

“If I donate more than £1,000 to a Labour Party unit (e.g. Constituency
Labour Party) or more than £5,000 to the Labour Party nationally in the course of a calendar year, I understand that my name and the amount of the donation
will be reported to the Electoral Commission for publication on their public
register of donations to the Labour Party. The information you have provided will not be shared with any organisation or individual outside the Labour Party without your consent, nor transferred outside of the United Kingdom.”

Infrequently Asked Question - If, for example a limited company donated £4,800 to the Labour Party nationally, would it be reasonable for stakeholders in that company to expect a Labour MP to publish a copy of the relevant cheque complete with details of the transaction complete with a sample signature for fraudsters to copy on to his personal website (thus making the private details of the transaction known to the entire world) ? And what would the company’s legal rights be should this occur?

Model Answer - Of course this is a clear breach of confidence and contravenes the Labour Party’s own privacy policy - measures are in place to secure the privacy of privileged information regarding your donation. If you have any questions about this policy or need further reassurance

• send an email to: info@new.labour.org.uk or
• telephone our call centre on 08705 900200 or
• Melanie Onn Labour’s data protection officer can be contacted at the following address: Melanie Onn Labour Party 39 Victoria StreetLondon SW1H 0HA

Should the hypothetical situation occur, you should immediately consult a good lawyer about your legal rights and possible recourse. For your background reading, please browse through the Electoral Commission website, the Political Parties, Election and Referendum Act 2000 (warning it’s quite long and complicated) and of course the Data Protection Act. Whilst it is theoretically possible for this information to be mishandled, it is unlikely that an MP would behave in such a foolhardy fashion, especially one that has voted for MPs to be exempt from the Freedom of Infomation act. Such a person is in fact unfit to serve as an MP.
As usual, Praguetory is talking bollocks:

1. The web page disclaimer PT quotes applies specifically to donations made via the Labour Party’s website - it doesn’t apply to the purchasing of £4800 worth of tickets for a Labour Party fund-raising event.

2. Feel free to read through PPERA if you like, you’ll find nothing whatsoever about protecting the privacy/confidentiality of donors, only rules governing when political parties have to make mandatory disclosures of donations. Parties are actually free to make voluntary disclosures if and when they like.

3. Ah yes, the old Data Protection Act macguffin.

Without going into the full ins and outs of data protection - which can be pretty complicated - DPA only covers personal information and then only within certain limitations.

So say, for example, I go an trace not only PTs full name (which I already know) but also his home address, sourcing my information from a public register, such as the electoral register, then I would be perfectly free to publish that information because its already in the public domain.

As it transpires, because we’re dealing with a company cheque here, the only personal information disclosed by its publication is the signature on it, which the Telegraph has identified as being that of Avtar Lit, who happens to be the company’s chairman - and that information happens to be in the public domain already in a variety of places from Companies House registers to the Radio Authority ruling regarding the radio station’s breach of broadcasting/electoral law back in 2001.

So no breach of Data Protection here, either…

Still, as is well know to bloggers, when Praguetory gets on a roll and becomes determined to make a complete arse of himself, he rarely stints at going the extra mile to finish the job…

The Riskiest Blog Entry I Have Ever Seen An MP Post

Now, you know he’s talking bollocks from the title alone, which amounts to a pathetic attempt to blow smoke to cover his own party’s embarrassment over Lit’s attendance at a LabourParty fundraiser.

I’m no lawyer,

No shit Sherlock… D’oh!

but were you to decide to post something like this, you might like to think about the following potential actions that could be brought;

But you’ve just said you’re not a lawyer, so our expectations have already been set - you’re talking bollocks.

By Sunrise Radio Ltd for breach of confidentiality both in respect of the existence and value of the transaction and in respect of private bank details. If it could be shown that they suffered a loss as a result of Tom Watson breaking the law, they may be entitled to compensation.

What possible loss might Sunrise Radio suffer for having paid for its MD to go to a Labour Party fund-raiser? And who says Tom Watson has broken any laws here, Mr ‘I’m no lawyer’? - only you and you haven’t got the first fucking clue what you’re talking about…

By AIB Bank, who as payee bank are generally liable for losses arising out of fraudulent cheque payments. If it could be shown that losses arose due to the actions of the Labour Party, the Labour Party may become liable.

Fraudulent cheque payments? What the fuck are you talking about, PragueTwat.

What’s been posted is a black and white scan of a cheque on which all the numeric information relating to AIB that could, hypothetically be used by a forger, has been deliberately obscured using photoshop. to use that image as the basis for defrauding AIB you’d need to be more than a master forger, you’d need to be psychic as well.

Ok, so there’s Avtar Lit’s signature on there, but if that’s an issue then many leading politicians have more to fear, given the extent to which scanned signatures of leading politicians appear in policy documents, manifestos, reports leaflets and even e-mails, as a mark of their personal endorsement of the contents.

PTs problem here is that he’s desperately trying to spread a bit of FUD and no one’s buying, because he’s crap at it.

By the Information Commissioner and therefore the police for breach of Data Protection Laws. Here’s how Sunrise Radio Ltd could record a complaint.

By the Labour Party for breaking its privacy policy relating to donors.

Something for the Electoral Commission to look into. PPERA (2000) covers legal requirements relating to political donations.

Covered all this earlier on - all a complete load of bollocks…

Sunrise Radio Ltd exists as a separate legal identity and a £4,800 donation does not need shareholder approval. Anyone actually saying Tony Lit donated to Labour has probably committed a libel. I believe the Lit family is financially solvent.

Anyone actually saying that Lit had donated to Labour last night would have made such a statement in good faith and in the reasonable belief that he had, based on the photograph of Lit at the Labour fund-raiser with Tony Blair (oooh, bit like Cluedo, that…) and on the knowledge that Lit was, at the time, the Managing Director of the company making the donation, from which one would all-too-reasonable presume he would have been aware both of the cheque and of where its being paid to.

UPDATE:

PTs now running around posting idiotic ‘warnings’ like this (from Pickled Politics - see comment 2) 

May I introduce you to the concept of a company having a separate legal identity? From a legal point of view, you may wish to amend the wording of your post. A friendly warning.

Of course, what PTs ignoring is the little matter of corporate responsibility (and liability) under which directors share equal responsibility/liability for the actions of any company of which they are a director, and as Tony Lit was still managing director of Sunrise Radio at the time the cheque was issued, legally-speaking its as much his responsibility as that of any of the company’s directors, including his father who actually signed the cheque.

And let’s also not forget the little matter of the £4,000 that Lit’s table at the event currently owes the Labour Party, in lieu of the two tickets to a Hillary Clinton fund-raising event in the US that Sunrise successfully bid for during an auction at the event…

…or is PT going to try and claim that Tony nipped out to the toilet while the auction was on and didn’t know anything about that either.

Let’s face it, as a wannabe spin doctor Praguetory is a quack and unfit to be considered a halfwit.

And with that, time for me do my Sunday morning DJ bit, and this next song goes from Praguetory to David ‘Davey-Dave’ Cameron and the Bullingdon boys…

Oh, and remember PT, whining only makes it worse…

Events in Ealing Southall have now taken an even more bizarre turn, with Iain Dale’s account of the on-off-on-off again alleged defection of Cllr Zahida Abbas Noori…

Earlier today I reported that a sixth Labour councillor in Ealing Southall had defected to the Conservatives. I had had this information under a 10am embargo since late last night, when I was sent a statement which Cllr Zahida Abbas Noori has agreed with her five colleagues who defected yesterday.

It seems that this morning she was persuaded not to defect after all, presumably by Tom Watson, Labour’s beleagured by election campaign manager.

Quite what’s going behind the scenes down there is anyone’s guess, but Dale’s comments do seem to have settled one outstanding matter once and for all…

Let’s establish the facts, shall we?

1. Last night Cllr Noori did indeed agree with her five councillor colleagues that she would be joining them.
2. A statement was agreed with her, which I have, but I won’t post unless she’d like me to.
3. The announcement was embargoed until 10am this morning.
4. Since I heard nothing to the contrary overnight I posted the story this morning.
5. Tom Watson then presumably persuaded Cllr Noori of the error of her ways.

Now, with regard to an apology, what is it exactly I’m to apologise for? Acting on information given to me in good faith and which was correct at the time of publication? It was even formatted on a Conservative Party press release, just like the one the previous day when the group of five defections was announced.

So Dale admits to acting as one of Tory Central Office’s primary mouthpieces on the internet. Glad we’ve cleared that one up…