This entry was posted on
Monday, March 17th, 2008 at
10:53 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

1. Watch Iain Dale cry ‘stalker’.

2. Hey, do you remember during the recent MessageSpace affair when ‘Dizzy’ (Phil Hendren) sent these emails suggesting he might call me at home on my ex-directory number?

3. Well, he’s gone one better;

Last week, Dizzy published my ex-directory phone number on his website in a clear attempt to intimidate me.

Yes, you read that last bit right; Dizzy objected to a point I raised so much that he published one half of my home phone number under comments on his website and told me to “fuck off”. When I attempted a reply, he deleted it and published the other half of my ex-directory number (and told me to “fuck off” again).

Dizzy also called me four times on that number that same afternoon (from a withheld number, natch).

To be fair to Dizzy (who himself has a bad habit of grouping/presenting data in a way that could easily be misinterpreted) I will present that in context, rather than imply that all four calls involved or amounted to harassment:

–

Call #1:

Dizzy called in a highly agitated state, and was quite literally screaming down the phone at me. This is not an exaggeration. He was screaming, he was yelling, he was not a man in control. He seemed quite annoyed that I would blog about what he had blogged because “it’s only text on a web page”. My pointing out that what I had blogged was also ‘only’ text on a web page did not go down at all well. He told me that I picked a very bad day to tangle with him, because he was in “the foulest of moods and having a really shit day at work”. I was also informed that I was wasting my time with “mad conspiracy theories” and that I should “get a grip”.

Call #2:

Dizzy thought it important to call again (in a somewhat calmer state) to say that he had not received my number from Iain Dale.

Call #3:

Dizzy called later that afternoon with the following:

“OK, write your post. Claim your moral victory. Whatever. Comments are deleted. Having a bad day. [details of claims of a personal crisis censored] And whatever. Bye.”

Call #4:

Dizzy called for the fourth and final time to say that other earlier references to my phone number on his website (that I had not seen until that day) could not be removed until later that evening.

–

There are only two bloggers hostile to me that have been provided with my home phone number; Iain Dale (background) and Ellee Seymour (background).

Ellee isn’t saying a damn thing.

Iain denies providing ‘Dizzy’ or anyone else with my number (yes, this is what I was talking about when I said that Iain needed me to trust him) but – regardless of who revealed what to Dizzy – I think Iain’s got a damn nerve implying in his email response that I might be guilty of harassment and then following that up with this ‘stalker’ post…. don’t you?

Epilogue: Dizzy announced on Saturday that he was taking a bit of a holiday.