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The good people at the Telegraph have just reported the following:

Telegraph – MPs’ expenses: Nadine Dorries paid £35,000 to close friend in PR: Between September 2008 and June 2009, Mrs Dorries claimed £34,059.75 for the services of the company Marketing Management (Midlands) Ltd. Miss Dorries claimed under her office allowance, her staffing expenditure and her communications allowance to pay the public relations company. The first fund is used by MPs to pay for the running costs of their constituency and Commons bases; the second to pay the wages of permanent and temporary workers; and the third to run websites or produce adverts and leaflets. The invoices show it was paid for “PR, research and media services”. Companies House documents disclose that one of the two directors of Marketing Management is Lynn Elson, who lives near the Cotswolds town of Moreton-in-Marsh. In the past year, Mrs Dorries has written on her personal blog and her Twitter page about visiting the town and a nearby country pub. Her website is illustrated with a selection of six photographs, some showing her as a young girl and as an MP speaking in the House of Commons. Two of the pictures show the Tory MP with Mrs Elson: one in a group shot with two other women holding glasses of wine, and one with Mrs Dorries and her daughters dressed in evening wear.

Just to reinforce that last point, here is a specific entry on Nadine’s ‘blog’ that includes a mention and photo of Lynn.

Now, don’t be thrown off by the fact that this next item is also on the Telegraph site; that in itself is of no significance and this whole post should probably be filed under ‘added colour’ anyway… I just wanted to show you this response from Lynn Elson to a review of the restaurant in the ‘Horse & Groom’. This pub is referenced on Dorries’ blog as her ‘local’, and the two friends obviously enjoy the odd party/drink together, so I want to make it clear that I’m not implying that this is what Lynn classifies as ‘PR*’, rather I merely wish to invite those who have experienced or witnessed a Dorries ‘rebuttal’ to gaze in wonder at this intervention by her friend Elson and count the many boxes it ticks.

(NOTE – You may spot a subtle indication of her own personal politics as you evaluate Elson’s style of engagement.)

Dear Sir

I would like to respond to Mark Palmer’s review of the Horse and Groom, Bourton on the Hill, Gloucestershire, which happens to be my ‘local’. Firstly, they do not wrap the cutlery in napkins, but lay knives and forks on top of the napkin at the table – this is a pub not a restaurant. I reply to Palmer’s comments about the Horse and Groom straining to be ‘a little bit of everything but not quite managing to be anything in particular’; in actuality it manages to be a very good ‘local’ pub which serves excellent food, wine and beer and is very popular amongst discerning diners who live locally. Mark Palmer’s haughty tone showed him to be a pompous, pretentious Londoner, and frankly we don’t want his type spoiling the agreeable ambience of our lovely Cotswold pubs. The staff is always welcoming and friendly; no they didn’t all train at Butler School, but they are charming and chatty which is perfect for a relaxed lunch or informal dinner. Perhaps Mark Palmer should stick to eating in fancy London restaurants if it’s silver service and forelock tugging he’s after. In eco-friendly times, what’s wrong with having the menu on the blackboard therefore saving a few trees? – It’s a common practice throughout a lot of Cotswolds pubs. What did he expect – a gold leaf menu? I say again – this is a pub! His mocking comments on ‘the wall poem about village life by John Betjeman, a print of a gentleman cricketer and notices on the back of the door that you might find inside the porch of a lively parish church that runs Alpha courses on Monday nights’ is because the pub is at the heart of village life and not a theme park for self-important Londoners. As for his condescending comments about ‘a group of thirtysomethings having a black-tie celebration’ which he felt inappropriate just shows how anal he really is. How dare he sit and judge a group of people who for their own personal reasons have chosen to add a bit of fun to an outing – we are easy going enough in the countryside to break the rules of the conceited liberal elite who dictate to the affected likes of Mark Palmer what he should wear and when. He has obviously reviewed McDonald’s at some point as he made a comparison to their chips – who would have thought he’d lower himself to enter such an establishment? He was clearly dining in matching caustic company, as his companion Joanna added her own sneering comment about the red cabbage – what is she a red cabbage connoisseur? It’s a shame her life is not more interesting. Mark Palmer would do better sticking to ostentatious London restaurants, filling his face with showy food and deferential silvers service waiters at his beck and call. That way, he will satisfy his appetite for his high opinion of himself as a food aficionado and keep our lovely local Cotswold pub free of anal Londoners.

Yours faithfully

Lynn Elson

Bloody glorious, isn’t it? I challenge anyone to spot the difference between this and your typical full-frontal outburst from Dorries. It even manages to blame Teh Left in correspondence about a restaurant review.

[*If I were to speculate on the possibility that this was part of a formal PR exercise, I would further speculate that the party of black tie diners may have been part of a pathetic attempt to fill/class the joint up a bit for the expected visit from the restaurant reviewer… and that Lynn may have had good cause to take the reviewer’s comment about this group personally after going to all that effort to show off for the townies.]

See also/earlier: Liberal Conspiracy – Nadine Dorries – Latest expenses raise more questions

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UPDATE for readers in 2011 and beyond; some related links about all the lovely money Nadine has paid to her friend Lynn…

Nadine Dorries and Marketing Management Midlands Ltd
Nadine Dorries: Go Compare

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Gina Khan is a 40-something woman who speaks out against radical Muslims, with a focus on the rights of women born into Muslim society. As the Times reports, the price she has paid for this is intimidation at the hands of cowards:

Already Khan has had bricks through her car window for speaking out locally about domestic violence and sexual abuse, issues that are taboo in the Muslim community. (source)

I find it odd, then, that Gina Khan is also a listed ‘officer’ of the Facebook group, ‘Cheerleadered!’; i.e. the group of people who have been repeatedly publishing my ex-directory home address online citing reasons that vary from baseless claims of alliances with extremists to false accusations of my stalking women. In a recent post I mentioned how they were recruiting people to do their dirty work for them with such false – and dangerous – accusations (more):

There are some people who may be able to claim distance from these attacks with some credibility, but Gina is not one of them;

1. She is no mere Facebook ‘friend’ or ‘member’, but a listed ‘officer’ at the main site for this gang of mostly-anonymous thugs. Her name appears in a very short list alongside that of the new recruit mentioned above, plus Farah Damji, who was recently sentenced to 15 months for fraud and forgery in “a scheme dripping with dishonesty at every conceivable corner” (and I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that the Cheerleaders have been using all-too-familiar bullying tactics in her defence).

2. Gina Khan was CCed on an email threatening me with violence for daring to ask her (and others) about their relationship with the Cheerleaders.

3. At the time, we were assured by one of the ringleaders that Gina herself would ‘tear me a new one’ for daring to attempt contact. No such orifice-creating intervention took place, but Gina Khan did nothing to distance herself from the group, the original threats and attacks, or the further* threats and attacks made on her behalf.

4. Gina Khan is not only connected to the ‘Cheerleaders’, she is connected to conman Dominic Wightman, and appears to have introduced one to the other. Before he was outed as a conman and exploding with proxy hostility, Dominic Wightman had this to say about Gina Khan and head Cheerleader Charlie Flowers (the man who challenged me to a fist fight in Gina’s name and went on to issue further* threats of data misuse on her behalf):

“I met [Charlie Flowers] the month before [Feb 2008] after I had been put in touch by him online with Gina Khan” – Dominic Wightman (more)

There are further connections, such as Gina Khan taking part in two-part interview on Wightman’s Westminster Journal site, but this one clearly associates her with both Wightman and Flowers; she brought them together!

There can be little question about her awareness of what the ‘Cheerleaders’ are up to; at the very least she seems quite unconcerned about anonymous threats/attacks made on her behalf and how that might impact on her credibility as a moderate human rights and social cohesion campaigner.

Perhaps she’d care to break cover just long enough to deny involvement… or justify her actions to date.

If this post remains live, without relevant update or correction, then Gina Khan is still refusing to comment on the issue and is instead quietly siding with Dominic Wightman, Charlie Flowers, and the Cheerleaders. Any private denial is likely to based on a lie that cannot bear scrutiny, and does nothing to discourage the very acts Gina Khan claims to take a stand against.

(Over to Gina for what is expected to be an extended silence interrupted only by further threats from her thug mates.)

[*According to their more recent threats, my publication of their email addresses has led to these people being unduly/unjustly spammed, so they are going to pretend to be me (!) and share my home address (!) with Nigerian 419 scammers and the like until/unless I remove the following list of people/addresses CCed on these threats of violence; The Fighting Cocks UK (fightingcocks@live.co.uk), fiercebusinessrecords@yahoo.co.uk, danwilde@rocketmail.com, ginakhanmail@googlemail.com, Jonny Yeah (jonny_yeah@koobaradio.co.uk), princesscalamity@googlemail.com, charliewadia@hotmail.com, Plan B Booking (adi@planb-booking.com), Matthew Edwards (misterrivers@hotmail.com). Most of these addresses were visible to search engines – and therefore to spambots – long before I published them. Me, I suspect these threats have more to do with someone in this list regretting their involvement… at least to the extent of not wanting other people to know about it. So far, no-one on the list has been willing or able to publicly distance themselves from the dangerous, childish and malicious antics of the ‘Cheerleaders’.]

[** 23 Feb 2010 – Workable email address removed following a request to my provider made on behalf of Matthew Edwards.]
[*** 16 Mar 2010 – Followed by a copycat complaint on behalf of everybody else.]
[**** 04 May 2010 – Then I decided to move to a provider that couldn’t be bullied quite as easily and later reinstated the data when they turned up mouthing off again. They’re going to publish my home address then moan about publication of email addresses (associated with a threat of violence, no less)? Fuck ’em.]

This exchange is typical of Iain Dale; he sees the word ‘fake’ and/or ‘opportunist’, and screams ‘insult’, but he’ll throw the most awful accusations about himself and later defend it as ‘banter’ or ‘opinion’. One of his favourites is an accusation of ‘obsession’ or ‘stalking’ that he throws about like candy:

[BTW, recently Iain Dale attended a public event posing as an expert. As the Twitter feed behind him displayed messages pointing out that the man speaking as an expert wasn’t actually an expert, he relied on the accusation of stalking (again) to explain it away.]

Iain Dale also likes to make quite specific accusations based on some pretty one-sided accounts:

[Iain recently claimed that he had deleted all content like this from his website in an effort to be ‘left alone’. He was lying, of course, and I’m going to keep pressing him on those and other lies for as long as he continues to broadcast them. That’s what Iain Dale calls a ‘threat’ by the way.]

Now, Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries are very close friends, they both love to throw the word ‘stalker’ around, and it should be pretty clear by now to all but the most doe-eyed chump that Iain will side with Nadine over pretty much anything (even if that support is limited to a refusal to discuss it or allow any mention of it on his site). Iain Dale has even accused me of being critical of Nadine Dorries just to get at him (as if anyone needs an excuse to be critical of Nadine Dorries).

In Anne Milton’s case, Iain’s position is slightly different, but even less credible; Iain Dale has mostly (if not entirely) relied on the input of some anonymous comment contributors on his site who have been repeating allegations originally made by two activists working under Anne Milton (Mike Chambers and Dennis Paul), both of whom were caught (by me) smearing other people anonymously (once by claiming that their target was a paedophile). Iain Dale was perfectly happy to see that matter brushed under the carpet then, and uses an accusation of stalking to explain his inaction at the time now (he repeatedly implies I imagined the event, or made it up). Even if (BIG if) these anonymous comments on Iain’s site aren’t made by the same people, he is willingly relying on the same accusations made by these people to avoid the same bloody issue.

Meanwhile, as he continues to insist that making a website about Anne Milton and/or his friend Nadine Dorries amounts to ‘stalking’, Iain Dale heartily backs the efforts of Tory Bear (aka Harry Cole) when he creates a site targeting Kerry McCarthy, based on little more than some generic anti-Labour/expenses bitching and an objection to being blocked on Twitter.

Does Iain Dale honestly wish to contend that I campaigned against Nadine Dorries or Anne Milton based on less?

There is some inconsistency here that undermines this man’s opinion of what does and does not qualify as stalking; the line appears to be especially elastic when personal politics are involved.

But Iain Dale is also a talking head on television, and while he may not be appearing in the Daily Mail again in a hurry, he also appears in print and controls his own little magazine that is junk-mailed to thousands of MPs, councillors, etc. every month… so he needs to be a little bit more careful about the words he chucks around, especially when they end up getting used like this:

To make it perfectly clear what you are looking at, this is one of the ringleaders in a gang of anonymous sock-puppeting thugs (they call themselves the ‘Cheerleaders’), recruiting/indoctrinating a newcomer with an outright lie and in doing so encouraging them to engage in some form of online attack against their target.

Mostly, these online attacks involve the repeated broadcast of any sensitive data they can get their hands on, and what these people are primarily armed with is my ex-directory home address (provided, it would appear, by Dominic Wightman).

Previously, the worst attack of this kind on me was the publication of my unlisted phone number by the blogger Phil Hendren. It doesn’t happen often, because most bloggers frown on this kind of bullying… but time and again, Iain Dale and his Tory mates have shown that they will tolerate the hell out of it when it suits them, and forbid any discussion of the matter from their websites while allowing their previous opinions accusations to stand.

The Cheerleaders (latest/background) normally target people they regard to be extremists, so I don’t think I ‘m wrong to suspect that this comment refers to me, given that it repeats the (current) core accusation they use to justify threats of violence that followed their repeated misuse of my personal data.

Their accusations that I am a ‘stalker of women’ came (I suspect) privately and (I can prove) publicly from claims made by conman Dominic Wightman (aka Dominic Whiteman, aka Richard Walker) who was also caught (by me) smearing other people anonymously.

The claims made by Dominic Wightman and these ‘Cheerleaders’ are outright lies formed in part from repurposed material from the websites of Iain Dale and his fellow Tory blogger and close friend Phil Hendren (of ‘Dizzy Thinks’). Both of these gentlemen refuse to remove or even discuss material that they host on their respective websites that (a) involve quite specific and false claims about me that (b) they know not to be true.

They refuse to discuss any of this (citing specific accusations of ‘stalking’, no less) beyond defending their published accusations as mere opinion, knowing it is being repeated elsewhere, unchallenged, as fact.

Take a look at this again:

This person being recruited by ‘Shooter’ clearly thinks that they’re working on the side of angels. They’re liable to get up to pretty much anything if ‘Shooter’ manages to convince them that innocent women’s lives are at stake.

It’s at this point I wish to remind you that Glen Jenvey believed that I was a convicted paedophile when he repeatedly published the accusations that Google still refuse to remove. His claim that Dominic Wightman fed him this lie (along with my home address) grows in resonance by the day, and I’m concerned about what might happen when people are recruited like this by the ‘Cheerleaders’ (for reasons I shouldn’t have to explain).

I don’t think Iain Dale or Phil Hendren can justify what ‘Shooter’ is passing around, but I can prove that the ‘Cheerleaders’ and/through Dominic Wightman rest their stalker accusations on false/unsupported claims published by these two ‘leading’ bloggers.

Why they persist in broadcasting these claims I’ll leave up to you.

(Be warned that if you attempt any public discussion of this yourself, you risk attack by Iain Dale and his little gang of thugs and hangers on, or Dominic Wightman and his little gang of thugs and hangers on.)

[NOTE – UK-based web hosts are particularly easy to bully thanks to certain peculiarities in local libel laws, and people acting for (or on behalf of) Redwire Design have been taking advantage of that, by bullying my priovider rather than admitting their role in… well, more bullying. If Nick Catt or Alex Malloy or anyone else at Redwire Design want to deny the involvement of their staff/facilities in online harassment (including publication/promotion of my home address), then they can initiate actual civil proceedings or shut up. My account is honest and truthful, backed by evidence none of them dare challenge, and it stands. Relocated article reinstated 4 May 2010.]

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Kooba Radio bills itself as an “independent, non-profit, Internet-based radio station focused on alternative rock, playing unsigned bands from around the world” and was founded by Jon Chappell (Jonny Yeah), Alex Malloy (The Boy Malloy) and Angela Collins (She Who Must Not Be Named).

Kooba Radio is also a joke, and just a wee bit corrupt in places.

As most of you are aware, most of last year was marred by an ongoing campaign of harassment resulting from my encounter with the ‘amateur terror expert’ Dominic Wightman (a former associate of Glen Jenvey and Patrick Mercer). That campaign of harassment escalated to the repeated publication of my home address by a group calling themselves the ‘Cheerleaders’. These people claim to be anti-fascist, but they had no qualms about broadcasting my address to BNP members alongside mentions of my involvement in anti-BNP campaigns such as Billy Brit. The ‘Cheerleaders’ have made a number of unsubstantiated claims in a belated attempt to justify their actions, but what’s most likely is that they initially did this because Wightman told them to do it, and they painted themselves into a corner* from there.

Kooba Radio first came to my attention a couple of days before the email address of one of the founders (Jon Chappell, aka ‘Jonny Yeah’) turned up in the CC list of a group email from the ‘Cheerleaders’ threatening me with violence.

I wrote about that threat and included the relevant email addresses in the report. Months passed, then, over the New Year holiday period, when most people in the entertainment industry were busy with gigs (or at least sleeping it off), someone on that list wasted away their days and nights (again) making good on an earlier threat to share my personal data with Nigerian scammers if I refused to remove that list of names and email addresses.

When doing so, they posed as me, pretended that I was manager of a small local bank branch, and provided them with my main email address and (ex-directory) home address. Nice, huh?

I was recently assured in a further email from someone with a third-person fetish that “they’re going to keep coming until you remove the email addresses from your blog”.

This suggested to me that someone on that list didn’t want to be visibly associated with what the ‘Cheerleaders’ had been up to, so I contacted everyone on that list, and offered them the chance to disassociate themselves from the online attacks and threats of violence. If they wanted to be removed from this post, all they had to do was account for their conduct to date (i.e. why not object before now?), and distance themselves from this ongoing campaign of harassment.

Only ‘Jonny Yeah’ took me up on the offer and asked for his name/address to be removed. Initially, he pretended not to know anything about the campaign of harassment. When this pretence was fatally undermined by the evidence, ‘Jonny’ suddenly lost interest in the attempt to have his name/address removed, but how he did it will be of most interest to any fans of Kooba Radio:

First, while claiming to know nothing about any of it, ‘Jonny Yeah’ implied that his inclusion on the list was the result of some random activity by fans who lifted his email address from his website. Because he’s a superstar DJ, don’t you know.

His claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

‘Jonny Yeah’ responded by attempting to explain away his demonstrable association with the Cheerleaders (and connections with leader Charlie Flowers) by saying that their ‘very good’ band (The Fighting Cocks) had featured on his show, and that was the limit of his involvement. Because he’s a superstar DJ, don’t you know.

His revised claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

‘Jonny Yeah’ then went on to claim that he hadn’t been aware of any of this despite being CCed on the original threat and emailed specifically about it because Kooba Radio have strong spam filters to avoid all the ‘crap’ that results from his efforts to “enable young (and not so young) musicians to submit [material] to us”. He then urged me to tune into his show that evening. Because he’s a superstar DJ, don’t you know.

This revised claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

I also made it absolutely clear to him at this stage that I could prove his association with a YouTube account created mainly to publish my home address and gave him one last opportunity to deny it… or perhaps explain himself.

‘Jonny Yeah’ responded by asking me what I thought of his show that evening.

(!)

At no stage did he express any interest in or disapproval of the repeated use of my personal data to intimidate me… most recently, on his behalf.

It wasn’t until I made it clear that I intended to publish something about it that he made good with a vague denial of direct involvement, before quickly moving on to assure me that he wouldn’t ever be mentioning me on his show, as if that’s what I wanted.

Because he’s a superstar DJ, don’t you know.

Sadly for ‘Jonny’, this claim of star-status is also contradicted by the evidence:

1. The IP address used when sending almost all of his emails corresponds with IP data connected to many/most of the edits to this Wikipedia page about his radio ‘station’. Said page is a shameless (and lengthy) construct of laughable self-promotion, the highlight of which is an account of ‘Broadband Aid’, a “new arrangement of Band Aid, the famous Christmas Single”, in which the author goes on to specify (and link directly to) everybody who sang a line in this bold venture. There’s no way it’s going to survive in its current state once I’ve mentioned it here, so here’s a screen capture for the ages.

2. Encouraged by ‘Jonny Yeah’, I did visit their site and explore their glorious world of online radio stardom. For starters, according to Alexa, my main website (bloggerheads.com) attracts a larger audience than theirs (koobaradio.co.uk)… by a factor of around 10-1 by the looks of things. Alexa is really only reliable as a thumbnail sketch, but the Twitter stats support this; I presently have 1,542 followers, while Kooba Radio have 175 (and ‘Jonny Yeah’ has 95). The YouTube stats also support this; with Bloggerheads currently standing at 10,210 channel views and KoobaTV at 1,702. Their most popular video got 402 views. My least popular video got 843. I say all of this while recognising the modesty of my own efforts… it just amused me to be dismissed as a delusional fanboy by a guppy who thinks he’s a shark. The only thing that gives this tosser any power/edge over me is his willingness to participate in the kind of anonymous harassment that almost every web user recognises as being beyond the pale. It also needs to be noted that the audience of this radio ‘station’ listens via these channels; it is not a case of them having a smaller web audience than their actual audience, because the web audience is their audience. There’s more in #4, but if ‘Jonny Yeah’ is worried about going mainstream, he shouldn’t let those concerns keep him up nights; the nearest he’s likely to get to compromising his anti-establishment principles is accepting the ’employee of the month’ award at Burger King.

On the subject of YouTube, I wasn’t able to mention this before now because Google only got around to suspending the relevant account yesterday, but someone at Kooba Radio used their YouTube channel to link to and promote another YouTube account created mainly (if not only) to publish and promote my ex-directory home address as part of an ongoing campaign of harassment. I’d make a bigger deal of my not knowing exactly who at Kooba Radio did this if it weren’t for the fact that the account JonnyYeah1 was also visibly associated with that same online attack. At the very least, it can be said with some certainty that when ‘Jonny Yeah’ claimed to be completely unaware of the campaign of harassment yesterday, he was lying. This, sadly, undermines the vague denials he made about direct involvement before signing off.

3. It also needs to be noted that ‘Jonny Yeah’ is a lot closer to some of the bands he promotes than he lets on. This is what the professionals in the show business call a ‘conflict if interest’… not that I would dare to imply that Jon Chappell (aka Jonny Yeah) is in any way professional.

4. Attention, unsigned bands (and bands signed with small labels): not only is Kooba Radio co-founder and ‘headline’ DJ Jon Chappell a pathetic lying scoundrel who knowingly participates in anonymous web bullying, but he’s most likely going to end up being a complete waste of your time even if he decides to help you rather than, say, put the safety of your family at risk for shits and giggles. I could help you to reach a much bigger audience without even trying, and even if the deal goes hopelessly sour, there’s no way I’m going to be as much of a twat about it as this guy.

(Not that I’ve any interest in being a superstar DJ at this stage of my life… or a twat. I’m just saying is all.)

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[*At any stage, the ‘Cheerleaders’ can render themselves an irrelevance by rolling over on Dominic Wightman. I’ve said so privately will happily declare it publicly. I have no interest in vendettas, as my treatment of Jenvey after his confession should make clear; there are some who may beg to differ on that point, but like ‘Jonny Yeah’ they’ve been telling outright lies about the extent of their involvement in this affair. I’m not out to ‘get at’ any of the ‘Cheerleaders’, but if I have to, I will go through them in order to clearly establish the role played by Wightman. At least one of the ‘Cheerleaders’ should be warned that recent impersonations could lead to the closure of their email account regardless of what I have to say about it, and a window of opportunity is likely to close with it; they will not be able to present me with solid evidence of Wightman’s role if the receiving account has been deactivated. The ‘Cheerleaders’ have made a number of vague claims about being deceived by Dominic Wightman, and if they want to prove it, then now is the time, and there is nothing holding them back if the evidence is there. After all, they can’t possibly claim that they refuse to reveal relevant evidence on the grounds of a person’s right to privacy.]