Where is my thinking hat?

There is a whole lot of white noise emanating from the rightwing blogosphere at the moment. Something or someone seems to have rattled their collective cage.

Mind you, rather than buckling down and ensuring their lazy attacks have substance, they actually think they’re on the right track: that unsubstantiated attacks - based on poorly researched non-stories - are in fact the right way to go. Guido Fawkes (AKA: Paul DeLaire Staines) certainly thinks so: -

I would have done him over harder.

He is paid from the public purse and is a public servant. If he wants to express political opinions he should change his career.

Didn’t he also get caught posting a sycophantic “Miliband is Brilliant”* comment on the Miliblog. I rest my case.

Simon Walters is right.

He’s a tough guy, our Guido. Very tough.

Simon Walters, you will remember, is a ten-a-penny hack at the Daily Mail, whose laboured attempt to draw a tempest of shit around former Downing Street aide Owen Barder, only served to attract several languid Tory bloggers with nothing better to do. A quick bit research uncovered that the story was in fact manufactured bollocks.

This is the mentality of the right. Led by a slippery shape shifting Blairite clone, they have nothing of consequence to bring to the table, so they go sniffing after any mainstream media scraps that might tickle their rabid readership.

What Iain and Paul do not seem to understand, is that by publishing uncorroborated nonsense, they actually do the rest of the blogosphere a disservice, by fueling the MSM’s claims that we’re nothing more than a bunch of irresponsible parasites. Mind you, they probably do understand this. The point is: do they care?

As we can see over on our sister site, research is inconsequential if it threatens to distort the intended narrative.

Caught in the act

There's an old adage that says when you're in a hole, stop digging. This little snippet of wisdom has obviously eluded Paul Staines as he hacks away, revising this less than stellar post about Gordon Brown's campaign site.

Unity has done an excellent job of catching the duplicitous tax-dodger in the act of unmarked revisionism, assisted by Staines' javascripting fanboy, Dizzy.

First Staines spins a non-story into an example of fraud by the Brown camp, but gets some of the details wrong.

Then Dizzy steps up to the plate and, in a related post, points out Staines error.

Staines then revises his original post so as to give the impression that he had all the details correct in the first place.

It just so ironic that in spite of Dizzy being so full of himself as a l33t haxor and Staines' own pompous self-aggrandizement as the UK's leading Matt Drudge wannabe, neither of them is capable of putting together a coherent and consistent story of any consequence, instead taking a New Labour-esque approach to spinning and distortion. Compounding the irony is the fact that Staines' post would have carried more credibility if he had simply tagged the update, but his rampant desire to appear infallible precluded any such action.

Censorship and hypocrisy (in spades)

In light of Tessa Jowell's misguided call for bloggers to adopt a Code of Conduct, self-proclaimed Libertarian hero Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines), has posted yet more hypocritical dribble for his rabid readership to agree with. You can just imagine them, no doubt in their bedrooms, agreeing like those shabby nodding dogs that you get free with a certain car insurer.

Of course the dear readers here at Guido 2.0 know better. We know that Guido is a hypocritical charlatan who – behind the mask - is terrified of 'the truth' and will use the full force of the law to suppress it. Won't you, Paul?

Johnny-Come-Latelies like Paul Staines and Precious Iain Dale don't care very much for what makes the blogosphere work, no, all they care about is what they can get out of it. Iain Dale promises us, "Just for the record, I never portray myself as an expert on blogging," yet he has the temerity to edit a Guide to Political Blogging! I mean, Iain, do you think we're that fucking stupid?

Likewise Paul Staines has the sheer cheek to write, "freedom of speech means you will find people saying disagreeable things in disagreeable ways," and yet Paul Staines has repeatedly done his best to hinder the work of those who are saying disagreeable things in disagreeable ways about him by preventing deep-linking to his site.

FYI - a credible commentary of Jowell's clanger can be found here.

How very original

Paul Staines' election-day entry contains a 'parody' of a Backing Blair poster, and it's not the first time he's ripped off my material in order to whore his website.



Perhaps one day Dale and Staines will develop some imagination (or at the very least some halfway-decent image manipulation skills). Until then, they'll have to continue ripping off other people's work.

(Or, in other words, perhaps "they would enjoy more success if they tried something less derivative and more novel".)

Nothing to see here... move along...

As you may have noticed, at this weblog, we have a habit of linking to evidence when we make a claim.

But Paul Staines would rather you didn't have easy access to that evidence...

Bloggerheads - This is a first... 'bloggers' objecting to deeplinks

Just imagine how 'Guido' would react if Downing Street pulled this stunt on him...