This entry was posted on
Friday, May 8th, 2009 at
9:35 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.

What was I saying in my earlier post about MessageSpace and private data?

Yesterday morning I twittered about an email from MessageSpace. Well, a copy of that same message has arrived by post to my home as a letter.

Apart from moments like their founder/adviser/whatever getting pissed up at lunch and throwing bad lawyers at me, I haven’t had any business dealings with MessageSpace… and on that occasion you may recall Donal Blaney making a lot of noise about having to trace my address (at my expense) if I wouldn’t provide it.

MessageSpace have no legitimate reason as a business to have my ex-directory details on file. I shouldn’t even be on any marketing database of theirs.

I’d ask where these details came from and what Jag thinks he’s playing at, but, as the contents make clear, one more reply from me and I’m for the Big House:

For the Attention of Mr Tim Ireland

Dear Tim

You have called our office dozens and dozens of times in the last two days. You sometimes call me on my mobile phone, my direct voicemail, the main switchboard and even my direct line repeatedly.

You have no business relationship with us. You are not a client of ours. We do not want to speak to you. This has been made clear to you on numerous occasions.

Your behaviour is disrupting our business, upsetting our staff and is basically harassment. This is a written request that you please do not call or email our offices or staff.

If you persist further in this harassment we will seek a legal remedy. All further correspondence from us will be through our legal representatives.

Many thanks,

jag.
EOS Online Media Limited.

See, this is where Jag and I don’t see eye-to-eye on tactics; when I was being genuinely harassed recently, instead of contacting the police what I should have done was make sexual advances at my attacker.

(rolls eyes)

I sent this reply immediately, so maybe Jag’s already called the rozzers on me. Or perhaps a few toughs will happen by and ask me what I’m wearing. It’s all very comforting:

Jag,

Your use of numbers is misleading*, and you yourself admitted to playing the childish game of dodging my calls and ignoring my emails. You even laughed it off, if you recall.

You did this after your adviser/publisher/bottle-washer Paul Staines published false claims about me while refusing a right of reply or any correspondence.

You did this after another of the key bloggers in your network did exactly the same thing.

You intervened in the first instance, but had difficulty in the second and decided that the best course of action was to ignore me and hope that I would go away.

Strangely enough, I didn’t take multiple false claims of criminal activity and mental illness lightly so soon after being falsely accused of being a paedophile.

I appreciated it even less when the behaviour appeared to spread though your network via Harry Cole, and that you saw fit to ignore my emails and then my calls about that, preferring instead to spin the matter as being about those same calls and emails, as if I had no good reason to be concerned about what was going on with your network of blogs.

That’s a game played by Dale and Staines and you know it’s bull.

And don’t you dare make out that the staff member who attempted to humiliate me today** feels upset or harassed, as he was clearly taking the mick and felt throughout and afterwards that he had the upper hand

But, if you wish, we need never speak again.

We’ll just take it as read that your network is openly hostile toward me and I will take whatever steps I deem necessary to deal with that situation for as long as that hostility continues.

Alternatively, you could talk some sense into your bloggers and act like a damn professional.

(In Staine’s case, I regard the current situation to be acceptable. But Dale needs to do away with the two ‘parish’ posts and post a correction as discussed, and Cole needs to withdraw his ‘shady’ comment that groups me with Draper. Additionally, now all of this has happened, you need to make it clear to your publishers that they are not helping by piling on top of me, as you and I have unfinished business for as long these attacks continue.)

Tim Ireland

[*The only way it could be described as going over a single plural of a dozen is if he includes calls to the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics, but then he would have to explain why they appear to be operating so closely with his organisation that a call to one amounts to a call to the other in his eyes. In his haste/anger, he also appears to have counted calls to his direct line twice; “You sometimes call me on… my direct voicemail… and even my direct line” FFS, his direct line redirects directly to his direct voicemail. Duh.]

[**Tuesday.]

If there were any legal purpose/function to a letter (as opposed to an email), then surely it would have arrived by registered/recorded post. But to be honest with you, I doubt there’s any purpose to this letter other than to intimidate me.

Put it in context, picture yourself in Jag’s position and further imagine that you’re filing a harassment complaint, and trying to explain to the police why you thought it a good idea at the time to respond to ‘harassment’ with “hilarious” sexual propositions and superfluous letters to an ex-directory address.

I imagine the only reason Jag didn’t also fax this was because the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics were busy sending photocopies of their arses to someone they wanted off their backs.

Regardless, rather than risk any message to the MessageSpace office that might be interpreted spun as an invasion of their personal privacy or some such nonsense, I believe I’ll just blog the next message:

Dear Jag,

Want me off your back? Don’t make, aid or enable claims about me that cannot be backed with evidence, and then refuse to even correspond with me.

Then talk to your network members and warn them, nicely, that it doesn’t make you look good when members of your network are attacking me or anyone else in this way, and inform them, nicely, that you won’t tolerate such unprofessional behaviour on your network.

I’m not a bloody fool and it’s clear that – while the arrangement might be all legal-like – Staines plays a role there that’s far more central than the paperwork makes out. In fact, it’s likely that he has it set up that way just to avoid confrontations like this.

Yet here we are, nonetheless.

As long as Staines and his mates persist with this habit of making malicious claims about me that they cannot back with evidence, then my fight is with MessageSpace.

(Yes, this even includes the newly-inducted LabourList, and this even applies if I have to endure a repeat of last time, when Tough Guys For MessageSpace came out of the woodwork to have a go at me because Paul Staines couldn’t even back his legal threats with evidence.)

This will always be the case and it will never change, and it is the price you pay when you decided to run your business like a club for bully-boys.

The two options open to you are to throw everything you have at me in order to royally f**k me over, or take a step back and realise that what you are defending is a repeated pattern across your network of bloggers making multiple false claims about me that are malicious in nature and unsupported by evidence… and that these bloggers are often the same people that you yourself acknowledge are part of Paul Staines’ political network that he runs and maintains out of your office (while wearing an electronic condom):

Paul spends at least about 8 hours a day on Guido, chasing up leads, coordinating with Tim from ConHome, Iain, and a few LibDems as well. He usually brings his own laptop in, and he’s on his Irish mobile, so there aren’t any MessageSpace resources specifically used by Guido. The firm doesn’t have a closed-network policy and anyone is allowed to do whatever they feel like doing (a bit Google-esque, but we’re a few billion $ off the mark…), as long as they contribute to the firm they’re allowed to do as they please. – Jag Singh

Dizzy/Phil and Iain and Tim Montgomerie and Theo Spark and Guido share lots of information, since they actually do coordinate stories that are anti-Labour, etc. They do talk about you, but it’s the usual “that loon is sending me e-mails in the middle of the night again” banter… – Jag Singh

(Incidentally, your last email to me was sent in the middle of the night. Does that make you a loon? I’m also curious to know how you know about this correspondence of Paul’s, why it’s any of your business when you claim it’s none of your business, and just what kind of business you think you’re running there, when Paul Staines is carefully distanced from the shop-front but at the same time you’re reading his emails and boasting admin-level access to his order-order.com website.)

The only shred of anything that might pass for substance that these jokers have to throw at me is how upset or persistent I might become when responding to those attacks when they occur; this typically involves claims of mental illness that are just as calculated, malicious, damaging and insidious as false claims of a sexual deviancy, if not more so.

And now you’re at it.

I’m not in your face for shits and giggles, Jag… I’m genuinely sick to death of being attacked in this way, and we had already established that you agree with me in principle, and that you are in a position to do something about it.

But Iain was more stubborn than you imagined, so now you’re making out that my being persistent about you being consistent is the reason why you weren’t doing anything in the first place.

I’d congratulate you on the invention of a novel form of time-travel, but the sad fact is that you’re not willing to do anything because Iain told you to piss off, and you didn’t have the guts, professionalism and/or economic clout required to simply chuck him off your network or even suspend him until he played ball.

Well, too bad. I’m a stubborn bugger, too… and on top of that, I’m in the right here.

Unless, of course, you can prove that I’m a mentally unstable criminal currently in the pay of Downing Street and/or the Labour Party.

Can you do this?

If not, just admit it and then sort it out; right now you’re holding up the works and wasting my valuable time.

Tim Ireland