This entry was posted on
Monday, February 5th, 2007 at
4:55 pm and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

Do you remember Paul ‘Guido’ Staines equating his dumbfounding level of comment censorship with my deletion of duplicate comments?

Some cheek, huh?

You ain’t seen nothing yet…

This morning (on Guido 2.0) I blogged about Ellee Seymour and what appeared to be blind devotion to dishonest bloggers like Paul Staines and Iain Dale and/or a deliberate attempt to reinforce their mud-washed version of reality.

The trackback ping generated by that post did not generate the usual link on Ellee’s weblog, but the guts of that post started life as a draft of a comment on her site anyway… so I simply left a short message under this post with a link back to my post by way of response (see screengrab to your right).

Ellee Seymour promptly deleted that comment.

That’s the same Ellee Seymour who once said ; “I do always try and respond to comments, that’s the fun of blogging.”

That’s the same Ellee Seymour who has studied ethics as part of her PR diploma.

And yes, that’s the same Ellee Seymour who has appeared on 18ToryStreet more than once to discuss issues such as ‘fake blogs’, ‘ethics’ and ‘trust’.

On her most recent appearance (right at the end) she actually used my challenge of ‘Guido’ as a prime example of how blogs are self-regulating, because (and this was the thrust of her argument) ‘any blogger could be challenged’… but she appears to be blissfully unaware of the dirty tricks ‘Guido’ uses to make himself immune to such challenges, which just happen to be very similar to the dirty tricks Iain Dale relies on to dodge and bury challenges on his website. (The only key difference between the two is in the use of deletion as a censorship tool. Staines burns, Dale buries.)

Oh, and do I really need to mention that Ellee has not only played a role in these dirty tricks in her latest post, but also bypassed the mechanism of ‘self-regulation’ by deleting my response to it under comments on her website?

Further, Ellee Seymour has recently voiced opinions on her weblog on the importance of declaring an interest when publishing a view on one thing or another; “As Robert Scoble says, if you disclosed it, you have ethics; if you didn’t, you don’t, it’s as simple as that.”

But it’s *not* as simple as that for Ellee… she obviously thinks that exceptions can be made:

As was reported here, Iain Dale published an ‘investigative’ report on one think-thank that operates as a charity (and may or may not have undue political leanings toward the Labour Party) when he is a trustee for another think-thank that operates as a charity (and may or may not have undue political leanings toward the Conservative Party).

Iain Dale did not declare an interest, and when questioned on the matter he pulled out every trick in the book to avoid the issue. When he finally delivered an answer on the matter, Iain Dale said that he thought his relationship Policy Exchange was ‘irrelevant’.

At the same time, ‘Guido’ was busy deleting any mention of the words ‘Policy Exchange’ in the comments on his website.

How did Ellee Seymour react to this?

By praising their “relentless pursuit of the Smith Institute” and grouping those who raised pertinent questions with “New Labour trolls”.

And how did Ellee Seymour react when I called her on this?

She deleted my comment.

Why?

– It can’t be because of the inclusion of a link (‘Guido’ often uses this as an excuse for deletion) because there are plenty of other links in this same thread.

– It can’t be because she classified it as personal abuse, as she allowed this comment abusing me (also from the same thread) to stand without question or qualification.

– And it I’m pretty sure that it can’t be because of a ban on my leaving comments… as this would be just a tad pre-emptive (I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve left a comment on her website).

Tell you what… I’m feeling generous… let’s allow for the possibility that the deletion was a glitch or an accident.

I won’t stop me from calling her a hypocrite, because there is a still the small matter of her rather unique views on who should and should not declare an interest when they publish information… and she deserves to be challenged on that.

(It’s called self-regulation, Ellee… I believe you support this notion, yes?)