This entry was posted on
Friday, September 8th, 2006 at
8:21 pm and is filed
under Tony ‘King Blair.

Whoops… I missed one! Let’s begin with two links for beginners…

Bloggerheads – David Taylor is a busy man (and a new media genius)
Bloggerheads – Keeping The Faith: more on David Taylor

… and the now-customary email exchange:

Tim Ireland: David, It would appear that you’ve been up to a great many dirty tricks online. During these activities, you appear to have been extremely personal, very hostile, and largely anonymous. Don’t you think it’s a bit rich accusing me of hostility for making you slightly less anonymous?

David Taylor: I have not been behind dirty tricks campaigns on the internet! If you have examples, I would like to see them.

Fair enough. He did ask, after all….

After Clare Short resigned from Blair’s cabinet (in her 2003 two-step), David Taylor purchased the domain name shortchange.org.uk and – showing that he hasn’t learned a heck of a lot in the past few years – used a framed-redirect on that domain to pages hosted at http://shortchange.smallplanet.co.uk/

You can see an archive of one of the relevant pages here.

If you poke around, you’ll notice that David continually (and ever-so-tactfully) used the word ‘confused’ instead of ‘unbalanced’ (an ongoing brief against Short that came from many Blair supporters).

On your travels, you may also notice that his name did not appear on the website and – in another familiar twist – he insisted that “SHORTCHANGE is not affiliated to any political organisation.”

But…

As you can see from this Birmingham discussion board witnesses at the time watched him being unpleasantly outed on Midlands Today (15th April 2004):

There has been an online campaign to oust Clair.
Tonights Midlands Today exposed the 18 year old fat wanker behind it and confronted the lard arsed shit in his Welsh home. Typical Young Tory (in fact New Labour, but whats the difference).
I thought we should wreck his site.
http://shortchange.smallplanet.co.uk/
But like the cowardly little turd he is he has taken the site down now he has been exposed.
Well done Mids Today!

(Oi! Now *that*, ladies and gentlemen, is personal and hostile.)

You can see the ‘removed’ version of the site archived here and you can also see David Taylor bringing a new version online here in 2005 (after the fuss had died down, natch).

11 days after the exposé by Midlands Today, this article appeared:

icNorthWales – The boy who took on Clare Short: A North Wales teenager has been revealed as the mastermind behind a controversial website set up to undermine Labour rebel Clare Short. But David Taylor from Llanfihangel, near Ruthin, stressed he never meant to cause any harm or offence to the former Minister, and said that it all started off as a bit of a joke… An intriguing list of people were blamed for setting up the site, from political opponents to an inside dirty tricks campaign… But it turned out to be the work of 18-year-old David, a New Labour supporter who was furious at Miss Short’s actions. David, who is studying politics, business and economics at Yale College in Wrexham, said the protest started off as a joke, a bit of political satire. It was not planned to achieve anything and he said that he certainly did not set out to cause any offence.

Again, we’ve hit familiar territory; denials that are plausible if viewed from a great distance, and those irresistible puppy-dog eyes.

But look at this page and tell me if you think it classifies as ‘satire’…

Read the petition and tell me that it “was not planned to achieve anything”…

It should also be pointed out that – although David Taylor claimed that the site “attracted almost 60,000 visits in four weeks and was inundated with e-mail messages from voters” – the petition attracted a grand total of 159 signatures.

Again, we’re in very familiar territory:

The Register – Galaxy of saboteurs trashes ‘Save the Blair’ petition: As of Friday morning the revived keepingthefaith.org.uk listed a scant 80 named signatories, but claimed to have more than 4,000 supporters, and, weirdly, that “we have a lot of data entry left to do.”

Pfft!

(I can laugh, because I know what it feels like to be the worst player on a losing team.)

So, what are we left with?

Well, even if the Clare Short attack site was just an independent audition-piece, this gifted youngster has since been employed and deployed by New Labour on a formal/regular basis… and not a lot has changed in his style, behaviour or delivery. Oh, *and* David hasn’t been entirely forthcoming with the truth.

All of that makes me very suspicious of any claim that the Keeping The Faith website is an independent venture.

OK, folks… that’s the halftime whistle. Dave has failed to win me over with earnest pleas of innocence, and he has also discovered that it is *never* a good idea to suggest to me that I’m ‘wasting my time’ looking into this or that.

Right now I’m thinking of having a much closer look at his alleged role in the Walter Wolfgang affair. Hell, if it’s true, the boy would pass into LEGEND!

I wonder if good ol’ Walter would be willing and able to ID him?

(Psst! Normally, this is the part where the wounded party seeks to soothe that hot feeling on the back of their neck by deciding to have a go at me. Or, David could amaze us all by coming clean on his wicked past and swearing to always tread the path of light in future…. erm, but he’d have to come clean on his wicked past before I’d believe him.)