Wednesday 19 September 2007

Very Open Secrets

This morning's inbox was packed with emails from, shall we say, old friends who are now something in or around the media or the Lib Dems, telling me that I was very bad for making insider information public. Specifically, fo telling common people that Ming had supported the Iraq War in principle but been slapped down by Charles Kennedy.

Something similar happened earlier in the week, when media and Labour types emailed me in some numbers to say that I shouldn't have let the Great Unwashed in on the Miranda/Emily Blair business.

Well, I replied then that it had been in the Spectator two weeks running, so it couldn't be all that secret anymore. And I reply now that Andrew Neil said it on television months ago, so it can't have been all that secret for quite a while, if ever.

8 comments:

  1. They told you that you shouldn't have said it? But that would be a waste of their time. I simply don't believe you.

    A suggestion: publish the text of these emails, with the names of their authors, and any other identifying details, removed. After all, if you're telling the truth about them trying to shut you up then it's a really good story.

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  2. "A waste of their time"? The staffs of political parties don't have very much else to do these days. Those working for the Lib Dems certainly don't.

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  3. OK. So publish them, anonymised as suggested.

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  4. That would still just be rude. It would feel wrong. These are people I know, and they consciously chose to email me rather than to place anonoymous comments here. No, I just couldn't do it. I must be becoming squeamish in my old age!

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  5. David - I don't believe you. Publish them, and prove us wrong. You can always email people and apologise to them for breaking correspondence afterwards.

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  6. And I can imagine their emails back. This isn't worth putting even one friendship in jeapordy. Or even one source of future material, if I can say that. After all, this post tells you what they actually said; you don't need the precise form of words. No, I have made up my mind on this one. End of discussion.

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  7. I'm amazed you're friends with people who use the words "common people" or "Great Unwashed". Seriously, that sounds like it ought to be a friendship-breaker to me. Why on earth would you be friends with such loathsome individuals?

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  8. Well, H G Wells was despised within the Fabian Society because he talked common, and Trotsky hated Stalin for being a peasant. As for New Labour, well,...

    Of course, the people in question don't actually use these forms of words. They don't need to.

    And, of course, they are, like their parents, State-educated and either directly State-employed or effectively so by means of the enormous public subsidies without which the political parties and their hangers on would simply cease to exist.

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