Labour blogger Paul Burgin (of all people) alerts me to the existence of Jeffrey Archer's new blog. I am not part of the bash Archer brigade. He's made his mistakes and taken his punishment and now should be left to get on with his life. His greatest contribution to literature is his Prison Diary, which has just been released as a huge volume (three books in one). If you ever want to know how our prison system doesn't work, read it. It's frightening.
33 comments:
So, does he write as much of this blog as he does of his novels?
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Hey , I am probably the only poster here who has actually been to prison .
Iain when you get caught let me know and I will give you a few survival tips (they involve a pp9 battery and a sock)
Just been onto the blog. Thoroughly boring and not updated regularly enough
Jeffrey Archer should just leave us alone! We've already paid our debt to society by hearing about him and his bloody awful books and bloody Krug and shepherds pie and bloody wife and money and libel suits and lies lies lies ad nauseam for what seemed a life sentence. We only barely had a bit of peace while he was in chokey - though even there he managed to get into the news, how pushy is that! I was just re-thinking my values and vowing health and happiness was all I needed, and that I'd make a pilgrimage to Lourdes if I managed to not ever ever hear about the bastard ever again, and now b***** me sideways he's kicked off once more. He should just leave us to move on and re-build our lives. It's like turning round and discovering that Dirty Den has come to life yet again. And no, I'm not looking forward to reading about how he tunnelled out of prison leading a convoy of 100 excapees after building a wooden horse out of toothpicks and then forging the Queen's signature on a writ of pardon. And then got a VC for winning the Iraq War. Single-handed.
Jeffrey, if you're reading this: no, it was NOT a eulogy.
IS IT ALL WRTITEN IN CAPTIALS AND MISPEELT? in which case it's perfectly authentic.
I wonder what he thought of the shepherd's pie.
phone cam foolery should advise cameron on prison policies! there is an urgent need for greater reform but also a real need for prisons to be effective.
Iain is correct. Archer has paid the price as Aitkin did and they both should be allowed to get on with it. In both cases although each was extremely stupid I believe their incaceration was more of a political decision than anything else. Look at the mortgage application by Mandleson and you tell me if he had been a 'joe blogs'(or a conservative MP) they would not have been charged!
We all should have realised then that this administration has an evil core and I cannot see them going quietly.
So you'r not an Archer 'knocker' how surprising! If he was a Labour/Libdem politican, bet you would be. How about Cameron and his 'I won't talk to Channel 4 news cos' they ask me embarrassing questions, about my drug use' story Iain, got an opinion on that? love to hear it!
Er, no. Jeffery Archer will never have "paid his debt," because pretty much every single thing he has ever done has been bent (read In for a Penny). As for the suggestion that his (finally) being sent to prison for breaking the law was "political"... I practically spat my coffee over the monitor.
It might be Archer's blog but Adrian Mole is ghost writing it.
I read Prison Diary when flying back to the UK from bangalore (via Sri Lanka), it wasn't bad. Not read any of his fiction though.
Strapworld, Archer committed perjury and, believe it or not, it has and will continue to be, a serious criminal offence which involves a spell in prison, politics doesn't come into it and in any case he has numerous enemies within the Conservative Party as well.
A highly censored and bizarrely bowdlerised blog.
Cranmer contributed an utterly innocuous post yesterday, on Lord Archer's contribution to 'The Sound of Music'. His Grace welcomed the peer to the world of blogging, and genuinely wished him well. There was nothing negative or in any way offensive.
There have been two updates on the contributions since, and Cranmer's post has been excluded from both.
Cranmer never expected to be invited for shepherd's pie, but this is clearly a blog for an elite posting group of privileged fans. His Grace shall not bother again with this lost soul.
The essential Archer text is 'Stranger than Fiction' by Michael Crick.
Crick delivers the goods on Jeffrey Archer by taking him seriously, something which I admit it is very difficult to do.
Essential reading for anyone still interested in this tired subject.
brynley: Is that the one with the Archer quote "I hate this book" on the cover?
Is it me, or do his prison diaries read like the script of Porridge? All good fun I suppose.
i am sure archer's new book does show how prison doesn't work. like he got out. that is frightening
Burgin-yes he does have enemies-ditto Blair and Dave-with both far outstripping JA in Labour and Con!!!
Interesting that the money he raised for so many charities is never counted-he's paid his price-take ID's advice!!!
Archer's blog is terrible. No surprise. It seems to exist only to puff his products. No surprise again.
If this was Guido's blog I'd say that Archer was an utter wanker, but as it's Iain's I'll just settle for dishonest and self-obsessed.
paul burgin...and what did Mandleson do when completing his application form...fraud it was alleged! Now should not that have gone to court?
Please read Iain's intro and my second para..."they paid the price."etc..and now should be allowed to get on with their lives.
Archer's life and writings may not be to the liking of some who have posted here..BUT he has proved to be a best seller time and again.
As for a ghost writer. Did Shakespeare write his poetry?
Come on Mr Burgin who, within the Conservative Party, has not got enemies? It is a divided party, more so since the notting hill set organised their coupe!
But I suppose you would not have been happy unless Archer had received a life sentence without parole!
Archer was born a lying shit and will die one. For heaven's sake he has a genetic flaw and is incorrigble. He is political ebola and should be avoided. Paid his dues. Bullshit!
I haven't yet seen the blog all though by his usual standards it is probably a self publicising excercise. So in fact it would be rather like me advertising my blog www.tonbridgeblog.com or my web site www.mrbooks.co.uk for my bookshop at 2 Bank Street Tonbridge, Kent where I sell a range of titles from 50p paperbacks to very expensive books like Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations. Or indeed me using my own blog to promote the West Kent Book Fair and Literary Festival at Tonbridge School on Sunday October 29th in Old Big School Hall; or the prize poetry competition which you can enter by contacting me direct, and for which results are to be announced at the fair. All of which of course I would never use my own blog for, unlike that fiend Archer!
A few years ago someone on the R4 News Quiz suggested Jeffrey Archer should be denied the oxygen of publicity, and Linda Smith retorted she'd much rather deny him the oxygen of oxygen.
Spoke for all of us really.
We don't hear so much of the fragrant Mary nowadays, do we?
Maybe she's withered and gone to seed, her sweetness wasted on the desert air.
Strapworld said:
Archer's life and writings may not be to the liking of some who have posted here..BUT he has proved to be a best seller time and again.
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So did the Devil. Always had the best tunes, and look where it got him.
This book is a true record of my time in prison as a guest of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen ( a goodmate of mine)- God Bless Her.
I so certify,
Paddington Tom
Oi! Strappy 11,.46
Are you tellin me dat if Geoff was on your manor and some gink was smellin gals bike saddles e woodn't be on your list of 'Usual suspects?
Runner beans forever!
But try signing up to Archer;'s blog? It's easier to get into jail, perhaps he's a tad scared of reading the comments.
Pulsar
The amount of enemies a person has does not necessarily reflect on what they have done. Tony Blair is not a convicted perjurer and liar
Strapworld
I don't care if Archer is talented enough to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, I am more concerned about what he has done to help damage people's faith in politics and the fact that he gives evaise answers when he is asked if he is sorry (from what I have read), plus the fact that in one of his Prison Dairy entries there appears to be an unpleasant threat (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Archer#Perjury) Imagine being Angela Peppiat and reading that in the book!
I don't hate Archer, I feel sorry for him, because he seems to live a fantasists life and has not appeared to face up to that. When he apologises publicly for all the bullying and the destroying of people's lives, such as Monica Coglan, then I would be happy to review my judgement. Mandleson btw is not a convicted criminal. He may be many things but he isn't that, and incidentally he has never been lionised by constituency associations within his Party
wmbyrd - And so say all of us. If he was just a bit of a fibster, well he'd be no worse than a lot of pols - but he is also a bully.
Indeed I'm surprised he hasn't ended up in some EU Gravy Train job like Handy Mandy.
Tonbridgeblog - Shouldn't that be an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ? Let me know where you are and you can have my second-hand copy of Joe Stiglitz 'Globalisation and its discontents' gratis - an eye opener if ever there was one.
I find it hard to condemn Lord Archer, so what if he fibbed a little?
It was against a ruddy newspaper - they lie every single day of the week, smacked of sauce for the goose to me.
Sending him to prison was a wholesale waste of public money, society wasn't any safer with him behind bars.
And his prison diaries simply reinforced my view that prison doesn't work.
So it's alright to succesfully sue a newspaper simply on the basis of having a bad reputation, never mind that it may well have been accurate on the case in point! What snobbery!
Plus he didn't just fib a little, he bullied and creeped as well, something some people seem to conveniently forget
Whether prison works or not isn't the point. Question: Archer was caught out being a liar in court, wasting taxpayers money and hurting people's lives as a result and not appearing to be sorry, was it right to punish him?
If the answer is no, then I really question what kind of society we live in!
Paul
If the UK newspaper industry didn't print so many lies and be prepared to defend those lies in court on a weekly basis I might just - just mind you - have a bigger sense of anger over it.
All we have here is one fibber beating another fibber at their own game.
Keeping Archer in prison cost the public a small fortune with no real benefit.
Well, it lets us look down on him. I mean, if you had his money, wouldn't you have at least hired a prettier hooker?
Oops, sorry. Thought I was on Guido's blog for a second. But then, if I were, certainly by now I'd have made a reference to shivs.
As things stand, I shall do nothing of the kind.
Just to update you, and be fair to His Lordship...
His Grace's contribution to Lord Archer's blog appeared this morning (7 Aug), a full 5 days after contributing it.
His Grace did follow his original message with a complaint that the former had not appeared, and told His Lordship that he wouldn't be bothering with his soul again. Since a 5-day delay is hardly conducive to fluent dialogue, he upholds his previous decision not to contribute further. Life is too short to bother with Lord Archer, even when one is already dead.
+Cranmer
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