As a half-Scot, I am no longer linking to Iain Dale, who describes the mere suggestion of Scottishness as "a pathetic smear". I encourage all other bloggers to do likewise, and I encourage everyone to email the likes of the Telegraph and Comment is Free in the same vein whenever they publish him. Feel free to copy such emails to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.
David Cameron lives on the Isle of Jura. And his name is Cameron. Is that "a pathetic smear"? Or is it just a fact?
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The following anonymous coment appears on Dale's blog:
ReplyDelete"Oh dear, Westminster's licensed blogger doesn't like David Lindsay one little bit, does he? "An emerging pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social-democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots"? Equally critical of "Stalinists, Trotskyists, neo-Fascists, neo-Nazis, neoconservatives and Islamists"? Open about the neocons' Trotskyist roots and their Islamist and Nazi connections? Headed by "the statist, syndicalist, nationalist and theoconservative voice of the provinces"? Honest about Cameron's Scottishness and ne plus ultra upper-classness, about the impossibilty of a Cameron victory, and about the huge number of dedicated non-voters just waiting to be reached? We can't have that! If we do, then that "voice" will be PM while the octagenarian Dale is still trying to get elected at all. And then where will we be?
Check my ISP and you'll see that it is in Washington. Not the one just outside Sunderland. We could do with "a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social-democratic, morally and socially conservative patriots" over here. So could a lot of places. In fact, so could everywhere. So lots of people's eyes are on David Lindsay and the British People's Alliance. But it was only by Googling for him that we ever came across this blog."
Gosh!
ReplyDeleteWhen did Dale say that?! In what context?
ReplyDeleteBovvered. Presumably you won't be commenting on my site either. Most of my readers will be very grateful not to listen to your terminally boring views.
ReplyDeleteI applauded at my desk when I read this. Dale should have been brought down a peg or two a long time ago. Who died and made him King of the Blogosphere anyway?
ReplyDeleteIt really annoys me the newspaper and broadcast coverage that he receives. He's just a failed parliamentary candidate with blog and a toy television station that brings to mind Tony Hancock's radio hamming.
Yet he's on Radio Four, he's on proper television, he's in the Telegraph, he's in the Guardian, he's all over the place.
He even presumes to compile lists of the top blogs in various categories and the most influential people on left and right. Who the hell does he think he is?
I think you really, really made him angry when you pointed out how Cameron's fox would be shot if Parliament just rejected the EU Treaty without needing a referendum.
And how Cameron was only calling for a referendum because he knew he wouldn't get one and it avoided the question of whether he was actually for or against the Treaty itself.
"Michael Heseltine's mini-me". Priceless.
He's not denying it, Anonymous. I pointed out that although Cameron had a house in his constituency, he probbaly wouldn't bother with it if he weren't the MP there (nothing unusual about that, of course), his two real homes being in London and on the Isle of Jura - classic posh Scot, of course. Dale went ballistic.
ReplyDeleteHis TV station has always put me in mind of Wayne's World. Party on, Dale.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the spelling of his Christian name suggest a Scottish background? But then, you couldn't have a more Scottish name than Kelvin Mackenzie.
I'm too young to remember Wayne's World. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
ReplyDeleteIt really makes me angry, the way he's been allowed to set himself up as the voice of British blogging. Whenever the Political and Media Classes want a blogger, they send for him, a member of the Political and Media Classes.
ReplyDeleteYou write elsewhere about the State-sponsored homogenisation of parties and the State-sponsored homogenisation of the press. Dale embodies the State-sponsored homogenisation of the blogosphere, only in Britain that I can tell, overwhelmingly because of Dale. It's good to see someone standing up to him at last.
You're right, of course. Dale has become the one-man blogging Establishment in this country, disagreement with whom is a sort of deviancy. Well, says who?
ReplyDeleteHe's so far removed from blogging as the rest of us understand it that he thinks of himself as a Fleet Street editor or a top BBC executive: "You'll never work again in this town!"
But we never did, Iain. You are the one who lives off advertising revenue from your blog. And hasn't my blog appeared on your lists of those which pass on the most readers to yours?
Dale hates Rugger but he's got caught up in a scam passing off an old Jonny Wilknison print (2003) as current.
ReplyDeleteThey're selling them at £150 inc VAT.
Iain is clearly either Scottish or an affectation.
Can you get more Scottish than Kelvin MacKenzie? asked someone.
Well yes, Kelvin Calder MacKenzie would be one way to do it.
I'm not as ferociously anti-Dale as you, Chris. But I received an email last night from someone who didn't want to comment here directly, saying that Dale's blog has now had said little in it for so long that it was worth removing from my blogroll for that reason alone, and that he was turning into Guido Fawkes. A shame, because he really did used to be good.
ReplyDeleteI've had to reject several rather intemperate comments in the same vein, and there also seems to be a consensus that Dale is Britain's licensed blogger the way some countries have or used to have licensed satirists.
As a comment which really did have to be rejected for "other reasons" put it, one of the key things about bloggers is that we can expose when the mainstream media are just printing or running politicians' PR material, for fear of being denied future access. But Dale can't do that, because he's in exactly the same position himself.
Yet (or, rather, so) whenever those media want a blogger, they send for him. As I say, it's a shame, because he used to be good.
Calder? I thought that MY name had a Scottish ring to it! As, of course, it has. But I have never lived there. Unlike David Cameron (I have cousins called Cameron, and they are Scottish), with his house on the Isle of Jura. Just don't go mentioning that on right-wing blogs. They don't like it. Not one little bit.
Why not, exactly?