Benjamin Gray reports that the only friends Gordon Brown seems to have are Tories. Labour blogger Luke Akehurst thought he was being helpful by setting up a group on FACEBOOK called WE DON'T WANT A LEADERSHIP ELECTION. He hadn't reckoned on the fact that it would be instantly supported by Tories. Indeed, so horrified is Luke that he has now closed the group and you have to be invited to join it ... which kind of defeats the object of setting it up in the first place. This interwebby thing is difficult to control, isn't it?
Ian - any chance of your running a list of "Brownies" a la Spectator covering GB comments during conference.
ReplyDeleteErrr... Mr Akehurst's email address is ...@hackney.gov.uk.
ReplyDeleteIs this an acceptable use of his publicly-funded email account? Presumably he ignores all the facebook emails that arrive during work time?
And as a public servant, why is he using a .gov address for political campaigning purposes?
Hmmm...
Thanks for the reposting but you linked to Luke's blog under my name, rather than benjamin-gray.com
ReplyDeleteAre you aware that they have now shut the group to new members? It's invite only now - obviously their scared!!!
ReplyDeletewhile it's a good point that you can't control the web and everyone should remember that openness and transparency makes trying to "fix" things impossible - and so it should - I felt a little sad to read this story.
ReplyDeleteBecause although your comment is about the collective responsibility of the web, it ignores the personal responsibility to allow individuals from one side to talk and involve each other free from interference.
The only reaction to things like this happening is each side will get worse and worse at ruining each others on-line activities.
We shouldn't accept it in real life (and I apply that to members of one party turning up to photocalls of the other party with banners etc. to ruin the images)
why should we accept it on the web?