Friday, December 14, 2007

Standard Smearage: Dale Swallows Gilligan Cock Whole


Iain Dale is very excitable today. Nothing yet on Policy Exchange, although he was a Trustee during the first half of Dean Godson's crusade of the faulty invoices. But pretty busy.

Leaving aside various schadenfreude on Europe we have an unquestioning regurgitation of Andrew Gilligan's half cock and bull accusations in the Standard which can be read in full here.

Although Iain swallows the story whole and repeats the salient points without question there are firm and detailed rebuttals. Including a call for Gilligan to be sacked here and here and a press release on last week's vendettas here.

Meanwhile the Standard say this:

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But then go and spoil it all by publishing the following smear comment against afro caribbean people in general and Lee Jasper and Trevor Philips in particular:

Very good to see this investigation is taking place. All too often when fraud on councils, dodgy charities, so called policy units, takes place and involves afro carribs, they run off shouting racists, and racial harassment. It is disgusting that they hide behind and use the colour of their skin to exploit the taxpayer. Jasper I can assure you, like Trevor Philips, is a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Livingston has for too long been the lacky of the race peddlers. Please keep up this much-needed task of hounding these criminals.
- Mark Armstrong, London

I've suggested they remove it but I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog has this, with Gilligan himself following the thread rather obsessively.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Chris Paul said...

Nothing to say? Go and don't say it somewhere else anonymous 18:17.

Tony said...

Many people will have more faith in the judgment of the Standard's Editor and their legal team considering Gilligan's role in the Today "dodgy dossier" story. The Standard is certain to have triple checked everything.

You do not like it when Ken squirms do you? Will you apologise if Gilligan's accusations hold up?

Chris Paul said...

What do you want me to apologise for Tony? All I've done is pointed out the other side of the argument. And pointed out a racist comment on the ever-so-fair Standard's website.

OK, so there's a bit of banter there too. But are we supposed to apologise for that?

I don't know why you say the Standard is certain to have triple checked everything though. They regularly purvey unfair and silly stories.

But to be fair - according to them - they have put the questions to Ken and Co. And Ken and Co have not replied. So that's their excuse for not carrying the rebuttals alongside the story.

But what is Iain Dale's?

Anonymous said...

I have tried to post a couple of times on the Standard's site in response to this story. Oddly enough, they only seem to publish statements supporting the article. The original published article implied many things, and in particular created the impression that Lee Jasper had secured a lucrative contract for his mate's company. However when you read the full email transcripts (not published in the newspaper, but later available on the website) it is clear that Lee Jasper had serious concerns about the contract going to this company in the first place.

I have no faith in the Standard's Editor, but then I don't want BoJo to be Mayor...