Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Iain Dale

UK Bloggers have gone pretty crazy about the Guardian's decision to invite Iain Dale to write an article about press freedom. The basic problems here are that although Iain Dale may run one of the most read blogs in the UK, he is a liar, deletes comments from people he doesnt like, uses anonymous sock-puppets to back up his arguments, and even set up a script so if you tried to go to his page from bloggerheads.com you were re-directed elsewhere (originall to the Sun's Page 3 site). This sound like press freedom to you? He talks the talk but does he "walk the walk" etc?



I'd advise you to firstly read the comments on his Comment Is Free article, then read these posts, and pretty much the whole of bloggerheads.com.



Probably the best part is that his response to criticism is always "haha, it's really sad how you spend all your time devoted to stalking me you loner".



Tim Ireland replies: "I always enjoy it when someone who’s up to no good suggests that it’s a waste of time keeping an eye on them."



Indeed, Indeed!



(Iain Dale smells)



UPDATE: Just read this post on Tampon Teabag which is followed by an entire thread of comments insulting Guido Fawkes. L0lz.



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4 comments:

Iain Dale said...

You wrote: "he is a liar, deletes comments from people he doesnt like, uses anonymous sock-puppets to back up his arguments, and even set up a script so if you tried to go to his page from bloggerheads.com you were re-directed elsewhere (originall to the Sun's Page 3 site)"

Just for the record I do not delete comments from anyone unless they use the C word or are anonymous and insulting. I have never used sock puppets, anonymous or not. The script you refer to has never gone to page 3 - it goes to the front page of my blog.

It is you who needs to get your facts straight, not me. Who's the liar now?

anarki said...

That isn't exactly the criteria you use for deleting comments though. Is Tim Ireland lying when he says this? http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2007/03/iain_dale_has_s.asp.

On the subject of re-directs, I think I got mixed up with guido fawkes who used to direct it to page 3 (now it seems to change all the time). so sorry about that. Still though why have a script sending all visitors to the front page? I've been trying to read about the "confrontation" or whatever between you and Tim Ireland, but it's pretty impossible to get your side of the story because whenever I follow a link to a specific post of yours, all I get is the front page...

Dave Cole said...

And there is the question of that script. Why is this

if (document.referrer.indexOf('bloggerheads.com') > -1)
window.location = 'http://iaindale.blogspot.com/';
else if (document.referrer.indexOf('theuktoday.co.uk') > -1)
window.location = 'http://iaindale.blogspot.com/';

there?

Tim said...

I wouldn't expect an answer if I were you, lads.

Oh and Iain Dale does delete comments he doesn't like... but he's very sneaky in the way that he goes about this. He also has his 'blog' stacked with tame bullies who work ever so hard to discourage such comments in the first place. Past entries on my blog and at Iain Dale's Dairy make it clear that the rules Iain makes up as he goes along do not apply to him or these bullies.

He does, however, get a small amount of credit for being the only party in this redirect nonsense who did not redirect web users to Page3.com