Friday 2 December 2011

Is Oliver Kamm A Gobshite?

I have just sent the following reply to not exactly my first ever email from Oliver Kamm:

I have not read this email, because I no longer read anything from you, putting you in some very colourful company indeed.

At least unless you and yours rise to the challenge set out here, then you are what is technically known as a gobshite.

Expect this be blogged, of course.

6 comments:

  1. What has Oliver Kamm ever done to you? I'll re-phrase that, what do you know instead of suspect Oliver Kamm has ever done to you?

    Your past feuds have been with people who really did wrong you, sometimes very publicly. Some might say that you have punished them disproportionately and not known when to stop, but the original offences have been real. Kamm's wronging of Neil Clark was also real.

    But its total lack of success gives the lie to your idea that Kamm controls neocon London, which in turn controls media London generally. You seem to have very little concept that he is a human being. Kicking him is your way of kicking your own lack of success.

    But what lack of success? You were never paid to blog for the Telegraph and you probably have as many readers here as you did there. A major book from a major publisher is eagerly anticipated for next year. I repeat, you cannot prove that your removal from the Telegraph had anything to do with Kamm and you yourself say that like any self-respecting grown up at Durham you would never dream of reading Palatinate.

    Again, what difference did that make? You were still a tutor afterwards and you were bumped up to SCR President. No one who matters reads that rag, including you. Even if they did, you cannot prove that Kamm had anything to do with it. You assume that anything like that is his handiwork, the way someone at Durham used to blame you for everything that befell him and maybe still does. Do you want to end up like him? Let it go.

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  2. He is the one who keeps emailing me. I have only ever emailed him in reply.

    At least unless he and his rise to the challenge set out in the link here, then he is what is technically known as a gobshite.

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  3. Arrogant, pompous, inclined to overdress, refuses to hide how clever he is, mourns the passing of the Old Labour Right and would like to bring it back, holds exactly your views on the Spanish Civil War: apart from the God thing, where exactly do you and Kamm diverge? You even look a bit alike. Lay off him.

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  4. At least unless he and his rise to the challenge set out in the link here, then he is what is technically known as a gobshite.

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  5. You link from this site to two extremely damaging pieces about him that could not be published in England and Wales. That is laying it on a bit thick, don't you think? Answer the earlier question, what can you prove that he has ever done to you?

    If it were not for you and Neil Clark going on about him, who would remember him any more? But neither of you has any real cause for complaint, his campaign against Clark bombed and there is no evidence that he has ever waged a campaign against you.

    Plenty of people cannot say that about you. A man in his thirties who should have been an MP this time or next will be what you call "a tea boy" until he retires, because of you. There is a cloud of suspicion over his whole family, because of you. At least two men who should have been bishops in the C of E have been exiled for life, one to an academic backwater and the other to a parochial backwater, because of you. Over-eager student journalists have been physically scared out of their wits and put on some computerised watch list somewhere for the rest of their lives, because of you.

    Damian Thompson's relations with the important traditionalist Catholic cause of defending Middle Eastern Christians have been poisoned, because of you. He can do nothing because you are prepared to reveal his private life in detail if he ever came after you, destroying his position in the traditionalist world. You have made no small contribution to the general decline of Telegraph Blogs since it dared to remove from what was only ever an unpaid position.

    I am not saying that these people did not deserve it. I would never say that any of them did not deserve something. But you do not only give as good as you get. You give a hell of a lot more than you get. In Kamm's case, you give whether or not you ever got. A meek martyr, you are not.

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  6. At least unless he and his rise to the challenge set out in the link here, then he is what is technically known as a gobshite.

    ReplyDelete