Saturday, November 05, 2005

So farewell then ...

So farewell then, to comments on Nick's blog. It appears to me that the comments are gone as a result of this little fiasco (also discussed in our own comments here). The situation at present is that Nick currently denies everything. I am not "tech savvy" enough to know whether this denial is credible; all I'll say for the minute is that it appears from Nick's site that shortly before comments closed down, somebody was spamming them with links to the original "Baruch Spinoza" story, which does not strike me as a particularly grown-up thing to do. I have a certain amount of sympathy here with Nick, as it is indeed one of the annoying things about having a blog that you have to maintain and provide a facility for people to disagree with you and question your integrity. I have often found that this problem can be ameliorated by not calling everyone who disagrees with you a crpyto-fascist and a cunt.

In related news, a new New Statesman column is up. Nick considers the issue of whether we should outsource torture. He concludes probably not, but hey what if there was a ticking timebomb? No wonder the Staggers loses money.

Update Saturday forecast thread! (I've just realised there is no particular reason to have the forecast thread on a Friday as Aaro no longer appears in the Guardian Weekend). I actually think that this blog fiasco will be referred to in Nick's column as it gives him a topical peg upon which to hang a load of recycled material from the Statesman column. Aaro will be appearing at Socialism 2005 next weekend, so maybe something about that? Or perhaps Galloway.

11 Comments:

Blogger Matthew said...

Comments work fine for me on his site.

11/05/2005 06:17:00 PM  
Blogger The Rioja Kid said...

are you sure? Is this a bruschetta-specific ban? The top post about torture appears to me saying "no comments" on the front page and "comments are closed" when I click on the link.

11/05/2005 06:30:00 PM  
Blogger The Rioja Kid said...

specifically:

"This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2005 at 10:58 am and is filed under All, New Statesman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site"

11/05/2005 06:32:00 PM  
Blogger levi9909 said...

I don't go round hassling (or spamming ) people for no reason. I wrote to him for an explanation and he ignored me so I posted the link to my complaint againt him on three of his posts so he's know for sure what I was accusing him of. He should have deleted them but it seems he panicked.

I think you're too kind to him.

11/05/2005 07:27:00 PM  
Blogger Simon said...

The thing is, apart from the anti-semitism article, the comments weren't even that busy - thirteen for last week's Observer column is hardly Harry's Place-style intensity. It's rather reminiscent of Pollard switching off his comments when he only used to get five or six a time - more an attention-seeking "I'm such a popular and successful journalist, I simply can't deal with all this attention" declaration than a genuine problem that needed resolving.

11/05/2005 10:41:00 PM  
Blogger Simon said...

Oh, and forecast: perhaps something about the French riots which he will describe in warblogger fashion as either 'Islamist' or 'a bit like the Palestinian intifada, if you ignore all the details'. Either way, the message will be "blah blah Muslims, etc, I had a bloke in the back of my cab once, how long can it be before the Paris Metro gets bombed again and I can write my Iraq column, etc"

11/05/2005 10:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Simon, most bloggers, like the authors of this site, are anonymous.

When people know who is blogging it's a lot easier to libel them or people that they know..etc. Journalists do have to be very careful about what they allow in their comments.

11/06/2005 01:06:00 AM  
Blogger Matthew said...

No, i can't access them now, so you could be right.

His latest Ob post is terrible, btw. It's that Decent view that all that is wrong in the world is such because the BBC and theGuardian have said so, rather ignoring the rather more important factors.

11/06/2005 03:17:00 AM  
Blogger The Rioja Kid said...

"when I go outside Central London I meet lots of people who think New Labour have done a great job". As they say in Islington, fucking do me one.

11/06/2005 04:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

> "when I go outside Central London I meet lots of people who think New Labour have done a great job".

Where does he go? Outer London?

11/06/2005 08:07:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I believe "outside Central London" refers to Washington, D.C. New Labour has fans there.

11/07/2005 10:22:00 AM  

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