1. Jack of Kent asks why Guido wasn't injuncted.2. Devil's Kitchen has had a makeover.
3. PoliticalBetting suggests Ed Ball may lose his seat.
4. Taking Liberties on the pros and cons of political intelligence.
5. Craig Murray names the blogger he suspects has a bi-polar disorder.
6. FT Westminster Blog on a speedy return for Damian McBride.
7. Lobby Dog is suffering from balls ache. He should have had done what I did to Gio...
8. Douglas Carswell suggests Labour should try open primaries.
9. Peter Black reports on the Welsh LibDem conference.
10. Politics Cymru is unimpressed by the new Welsh LibDem leader.
11. Rene Levanchy says UNITE HAS funded LabourList despite denying it.
12. Guido has more on Red Rag.
8 comments:
Have Unite denied funding Labour List? Aren't the thoughtful and thoughtless wings of the blogging experience being conflated here?
Yes, Chris. Their press officer Pauline Jones denied it to the Standard and to ITV News earlier this week.
Care to comment further?
"Guido has more on Red Rag."
Not really.
I don’t agree with Jack of Kent’s take on why Guido was not injuncted. It seems to me that the High Court could have imputed a gain to Guido, even if he gave away the E. Mails free of charge. The greatly increased traffic on his blog would raise advertising revenue and thus supply the gain.
I suspect that No 10 were far more alarmed by the prospect of a lengthy process of disclosure keeping the story boiling for weeks (disclosure is the process whereby each side has to disclose to the other relevant documents including E. Mails). I would guess they thought the whole thing would go away very quickly.
Apropos of the Hislop comments on Newsnight Review and the amazing hatchet job on Guido in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, I am very angry that newspapers, such as the D.T., who have preached the primacy of the market for years, cannot even brook a challenge such as the one presented by Guido and have to resort to extreme measures to swat him.
He was treated to a full attack as if he were the late Cap'n Bob Maxwell, complete with reportage of a full attack by a High Court judge. Used, presumably, because the report of the judges words carry absolute privilige, as do reports of convictions.
The most unforgivable thing was reference to the FCS. That spectre should be long buried not disinterred by hacks on a so-called Conservative paper. The Cameroons must be absolutely livid. I knew one of them very well and he was instrumental in marginalising FCS elements at Uni.
The decision in Staines v Walsh is a publicly available document. Anyone can read it for themselves and decide if Mr. Justice Laddie's assessment of Guido's truthfulness is fair or unfair. Guido could even post it himself.
Jim. over at the FT blog, is a bit, well, naive, I think.
He wrote:
Despite the universal revulsion over McBride’s proposed smears - bear in mind that both he and Derek Draper decided not to go ahead with them...What is Jim's evidence for this? I think -had Guido not exposed them, that the site would have gone live and the smears enacted.
It's like a bank robber being found "going equipped for crime" as the police used to put it, then saying: "Oh, it's all right, officer! I had been thinking of robbing a bank, perhaps that one with the door jemmied open, but I decided not to do it, and I am just wandering around with this safe cracking gear for a bit of a lark."
Found Toby Young Defending Dolly Draper. I found it quite amusing Myself.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3543331/leave-derek-alone.thtml#comments
"I think -had Guido not exposed them, that the site would have gone live and the smears enacted."
Well of course absolute proof is impossible, but the timeline suggests Guido decided to publish the smears once he realised Draper wasn't going to. There's really no other reason for sitting on them as long as he did.
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