This entry was posted on
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at
7:25 pm and is filed
under Old Media, The Political Weblog Movement, Tories! Tories! Tories!.

Hi folks. Pardon the housekeeping, but a certain dark corner needs a sweep and some daylight. On with the open letter:

Dear Mr Rubinstein,

I completely reject any notion that I have harassed or stalked your client in any legal sense that you can hope to establish, or that I intend to do anything that is not my legal and moral right.

Regarding language, you are wasting your breath on this tired old chestnut. It has taken months of harassment and threats of violence at the hands of people using your client’s false accusations against me to bring me to the point where I use swear words to describe him. I would add to this that I take offence at some of the language your client uses (and the tone you took with me over my nationality).

Your client made accusations of stalking and harassment quite publicly and very dishonestly. Those public accusations are the primary reason I seek to make contact with him, as he refuses to stand by them on his site, but at the same time he will not withdraw them or issue any kind of correction, even though he knows they are being used against me in a wholly inappropriate manner. (This, I regard to be quite deliberate, especially in light of how he knowingly used a very similar tactic to libel the MP Tom Watson.)

Further, your client went on to spread these accusations privately, by his own admission.

At the time of the Tory Party Conference, my (ex-directory) home address was being widely published alongside your client’s false accusations of stalking. I will assume you are not implying that my decision to contact him at this particular time was politically motivated, as this is beneath you (if not your client).

Contrary to what you claim, your client appears to have at the very least received communications from Dominic Wightman (in the form of comments) and, I suspect from his previous carefully-phrased denials, Glen Jenvey also.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt regarding what you report about your staff and assume that they have trouble telling the difference between aggression and frustration. I asked yesterday that you simply confirm receipt of my email, and your staff were insisting that this involve a phone call with you. I have no desire to be subjected to further patronising/xenophobic comments from you, and nor do I wish to open myself to accusations that I am somehow needlessly burdening your client with billable activities.

Getting away from the alleged discomfort of your staff and back to online ‘toughs’ repeatedly publishing my home address alongside your client’s obviously false and quite strategic accusations of stalking:

I will continue to pursue this regardless of my limited time and resources until your client moves either way. I have little choice, and I will not tolerate him leaving an untested accusation out there, especially when he is aware that it is being used in this way.

Knowing what is happening and how it is disrupting my personal and professional life, your client is, in effect, using thugs in place of the courts. If he weren’t, surely he would withdraw the accusation that he made publicly or test it in court. (Or, at a stretch, engage in a further ‘trial by new media’ that doesn’t involve him engaging in lies of omission and/or hiding behind anonymous comments on his own website.)

You have asked me to stop calling/emailing your client. I have repeatedly asked your client to stand by his claims or withdraw them.

As for your repeated insistence that I use legal muscle to deal with this, your client has, by his past behaviour, left me in little doubt that he would only use this to imply that I am somehow guilty and/or a hypocrite and enemy of free speech:
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/05/telegraph-takes-down-nadines-blog.html
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/04/draper-watson-call-in-lawyers-to-put.html

In short, your client is a liar, and he has been lying since the beginning of this sorry affair, when he agreed to call Patrick Mercer, then didn’t, then lied about that, then lied to his readers about his being ‘stalked’ to mask his own shameful conduct after he put politics (or some personal beef) ahead of principle.

I was being falsely accused of *paedophilia*, Mr Rubinstein. I do not take such accusations lightly, and I know exactly what is going on when your client, a self-proclaimed community leader, can’t be bothered to make a single phone call to address that, and then almost immediately afterwards pulls out all the stops to play-act as a warrior against smears, refusing my calls and emails while knowingly libelling a political enemy and blogging rival as a smear-merchant.

That he would then (through you) go on to describe my concerns about being smeared as a convicted sex criminal as a “pre-occupation with accusations… of paedophilia” is the icing on the cake.

I contend that Iain Dale’s accusation of stalking is nothing more than a political weapon. He uses it without shame, knowing that it led to attacks and threats directed at me from the very first day he first made it, and eventually escalated to a point that he (only privately) recognises is beyond the pale.

In light of this, I make no apologies for any attempt to contact him, or for calling him a ‘bastard’, because he’s certainly been acting like one.

Cheers

Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com

PS – You object to me contacting you, while insisting that I am free to publish what I please (within the law) on my website. So I have replied with this open letter on my website, and not burdened you with any emails or calls about it, lest I unwittingly distress you or your staff. Hope that’s OK.

Right, now that’s out of the way, I have some ART to attend to. Back soon.