Monday, April 16, 2007

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves: Political Censorship


This morning I spent about half an hour or so over at Iain Dale's posting some comments, each mentioning my post about Nadine Dorries MP's nasty attack on Gypsies and travellers.

After reading a couple of them Iain kindly sent me a rather cryptic and headmasterly email suggesting in impenetrable jargon they were not fully on topic and that I should not send another like that. Three strikes and you're out it said.

By the time I had got back from Iain's, read that and asked for clarification, he had already laid waste to my beautifully crafted comments, including one about gay footballers - similar to THIS. Though without the useful wildlife trivia section which is a LOL exclusive.

Completely on topic. I have challenged Iain to replace it and see if anyone else thinks it was NOT on topic with some valid and useful points.

My reading of this is that Iain simply does not like his support for a bigoted rant to be questioned. Certainly, if he didn't realise his email hadn't found me "in time" he should have done.

I'm very disappointed, particularly as he is moaning today about how illiberal the Lib Dems are.

Never mind the Lib Dems! What about Iain Dale's Diary?

3 comments:

jailhouselawyer said...

I think Iain Dale's policy of deleting comments stinks. I posted on topic, no offensive language, merely mentioned that there was now a new blog called Iain Dale's Dairy and he deleted the comment.

Machiavelli's Understudy said...

What about Iain Dale's Diary?

It doesn't set policy, so how does your comparative work?

The Lib Dems are every bit as suffocating as Labour.

Chris Paul said...

Iain Dale's diary is excellent in many ways. But he doesn't like sharp criticism and will find an excuse to delete too often. In my case three of the deleted posts - while related to his posts - joshed about astroturfing - and he deleted the third and fourth, well all of them, as political censorship IMO.