THE SLOG

I am reposting this piece that was on John's Blog (The Slog) earlier this year.

John has given up blogging. So many of us wrote to him, begging him to continue, but I can understand his frustration, we all can.

I still think he was persecuted for getting involved with my case. He put me through hoops before he would touch my case, he did not believe me at first, he thought I was making it all up, sadly, I was not. I am like poison to all causes, because of what was, AND STILL IS going on in Stafford. They have covered up the Staffordshire Pindown scandal and put the whole thing inside a cast iron coffin, sealed it with lead and massive chains wound round. They are as cagy about Stafford as they are about Dunblaine, Witherwack, Kinora, Haut de la Garenne, Hollie Greig........

They are determined as hell to hide the truth.

I hope John changes his mind, or finds another way of expressing what we all know is the truth.


Monday, 12 July 2010THE GUARDIAN: Free the Slog One.


The Slog continues to wonder why it's a crime to disagree with The Guardian.


So anyway, there I was commenting away, happily back on the Guardian's comment threads under a new (if thinly disguised) identity. And I thought, that's funny....not a single hit on the site as a result.

And then I saw the familiar appearance of bright red letters above my comment form announcing 'this comment will be held for moderation'. I assume they censor sorry moderate all comments anyway, but the words popped up to remind me: 'We're on your case, Naziboy'.

So I checked the nine comments made over the last three working days. All gone. Every last one - as if they'd never existed.

It started earlier this year, when a hopelessly misinformed article in the Grauniad about the Stafford Hospital case appeared toeing the Party line about mad people attacking an 'innocent' social and medical administration. My comment thread was clinically critical of the piece, but not insulting and used no obscenities. It was taken down after twenty minutes.

Before that spat, there had been the denunciation of a piece I wrote in Comment is Free, and subsequent denial of all access to that soon followed. Then two weeks ago my comment 'privileges' were removed entirely. Numerous subsequent emails tried to establish why, all of which offered really rather pathetic obfuscations and uninformation. It was Kafka's The Trial come to life.

I've rattled quite a few cages about this over the last ten days. Nobody seems to be particularly interested. The apathy stems partly from widespread acceptance that 'this is what the Guardian does' these days (horribly depressing) and a sort of born-after-1970 thing one comes across more and more now 'yeh well, don't go on about it, right? Snot that big a problem' (intensely irritating).

I emailed the profoundly unlovely Peter Hain about it, but he wasn't interested either. I'm sure being a privileged Rhodesian white boy, he doesn't get it: his assumption has always been that the Left is always right, and the Right is always wrong. Were I a goose-stepping loony with 0.007% electoral support, he'd have written a piece in The Independent about it by now; but as I'm a political radical who wants to see a fine old mass circulation newspaper relearn the principles of free speech, I'm clearly a danger to society and should be reported to Special Branch.

I'm as big an egotist as the next man, but this saga isn't about me - any more than the Staffordshire scandals were about brave people like Barbara Richards and the Single Mother Who Cannot be Named for Legal Reasons. It's about a perverted form of self-styled progressive fascism that's just a gnat's away from burning books.
Posted by John Ward at 18:30 Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz
Labels: fascism of the Left., Guardian censors Slog again, Peter Hain
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6 comments:
SadButMadLad said...
Join the rest of the "blogosphere" whose opinions are generally that CiF is a waste of space. Just about all articles in CiF are lambasted and criticised for being loony lefty.

A classic series of comments on CiF are highlighted by Tim Worstall. Go to http://timworstall.com/2010/07/12/cif-of-the-day/ and have a laugh

12 July 2010 22:02
Anonymous said...
we should start a movement whereby we post your comments for you John. Create an incessantly moving target and see how long it takes them to close down thier site entirly. Might be fun!

12 July 2010 22:27
Sir Henry Morgan said...
No John - it's not a crime to disagree with the G ... it's a crime to disagree with the G and be right.

... got more accurate after that.

But I've told you all that before.

12 July 2010 22:47
Sir Henry Morgan said...
Demonstrably right.

12 July 2010 22:48
Anonymous said...
I got banned too. Comment is free unless you put a foot wrong and reject the Guardian's hideously self-righteous censorship in which case you are banned from commenting ever again! I suppose I won't be able to comment again until I get a new computer. They just use the IP address to identify you. Ian C

20 July 2010 23:12
Leonardo said...
Did not you know that the left is as intolerant as extreme