Sunday 25 July 2010

Who, Me?

Two extraordinary comments last night. First this one, submitted anonymously:

People dredging up the Martin Miller fantasy should be bloody careful. That made it into print once. On the day that Mr. Lindsay was undergoing one of his bouts of major surgery the people who wrote and published it were visited by both the police and the social services on two unrelated but extremely serious charges. Mr. Lindsay has some very powerful friends and they obviously act to protect him with [I assume that this means "without"] him having to ask them or being in any position to do so. Those were just kids by the way. Imagine what they would do to grownups. Don't go there. Mr. Lindsay is off limits.

Leading to this, by one "RON":

I am glad that someone is finally saying these things, Anon.

We seasoned Lindsay watchers have marvelled for years at the strangely stunted careers of people lined up for great things until they fell out with him and were shunted into obscure sidelines for years on end. For that to happen once or a few times would be understandable, but it is a real recurring theme across a quite wide range of fields. [Does it not occur to "RON" that that says something, not directly about me, but rather about the sort of people who "fall out with" me?] I hope the editor of the Northern Cross enjoys being nothing more than the editor of the Northern Cross until he retires. [What's wrong with that?]

There have been the positions handed to him on a plate at unnaturally early ages, less likely to happen now that he is getting on a bit but very remarkable in his youth. Two school governorships while still a student, that sort of thing. Distinguished people have been moved without explanation to make room for him and least one proper, day job career has never recovered. Collateral damage?

Then there is how rich and powerful institutions and organisations always make peace with him in the end. it is never the other way round, he never needs to make the move. They always do in the end, too. Somehow they feel compelled to. This will not apply to the Telegraph because both sides give every impression that relations are still more than cordial. [Whoever said otherwise?] As so often with David Lindsay, it is all very complicated but all entirely in his favour.

The student newspaper that crossed him is now being taken over by his protégés although he will deny all knowledge of a plot. He is probably telling the truth when he says that he does not read it but that is not the question. He has a long and ridiculous history of incredulously denying that he cultivates protégés but who else do you know who kept a court of them at all of 20?

You are right about how protective his friends are and how "uncompromising" some of the most protective are. One of my favourite David Lindsay stories (I did not hear this from him) concerns someone now in the House of Lords who once said to him "You don't only dress like the Mafia, do you?" [All right, that one really happened. I am naming no names. You would be very surprised...] That was when he was still at school! Within about four years he was a governor of that school [an institution wholly unconnected to this anecdote]. Plus another one.

I have always been immensely and intensely proud of my enemies...

39 comments:

  1. So when are you going to be PM?

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  2. There was that one who would have been a bishop by now but is still a curate or whatever at nearly 50, not even your church. But your finest scalp has to be Oliver Kamm, trapped behind the paywall and read by no-one anymore. He wants other work but he can't get it.

    Only you could unleash the dogs of war from an operating table. All that just to teach a couple of impertinent kiddies a lesson. There's only one David Lindsay.

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  3. Would have happened anyway, I'm sure.

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  4. From electoral fraud to editorial fraud26 July 2010 at 00:42

    Sidelines don't come much more obscure than blogging for the Times now that the paywall is up. Kamm has been shunted up there and will be kept there till he drops.

    When that happens, will anyone notice? People will notice when David Lindsay drops. Which will be more lavish, the Lanchester funeral or the university memorial service?

    As my name shows, I am not surprised that the boys who stupidly crossed you are as dodgy as hell and attract the attention of the real world authorities. We already knew the first bit about one of them. How long before he winds up behind bars?

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  5. Too long.

    Then again, why the hell should we pay to feed and house him?

    As I said, I have always been immensely and intensely proud of my enemies.

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  6. You never did like a traitor.

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  7. Shinwell's Ghost26 July 2010 at 01:31

    The right-wing Labour machine in the North East, brutally brilliant and brilliantly brutal. Like you. Stupid pampered schoolboys must never have experienced anything like it in their lives. The folk memory of not crossing you should live on for ever in their outfit.

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  8. Less of the "right-wing", please.

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  9. David, this is a good friend who shall remain anonymous for the purposes of this comment.

    I worry for you, David. Is everything okay?

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  10. He is the same as ever all right, or worse if anything. Hard to believe I know but he seems to be managing it. Even he would once have held back from the thing described at the start of this post. But he is still dishing out beatings, no matter how ill he is and now no matter how young or weak his targets are. And people still think that he is a saint, a genius, the life and soul of the institution, you know how he has been casting himself for ever. Blaspheming David Lindsay is regarded as proof of evil on its own. Prominent people who have done it in the past now go out of their way to be his friends. We are not holding our breath for any investigation into where his money comes from, where it goes or how someone somewhere punishes his critics.

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  11. Yes you. The Pope was supposed to come to Durham but this diocese's newspaper was screamed down electronically to the entire anti-abortion activist world for failing to get behind your parliamentary campaign and the university's student newspaper was placed under investigation for two things one of which he cannot possibly be seen to have the slightest connection with. So now he is not coming. THE FUCKING POPE!!!

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  12. Please do not swear on my blog.

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  13. The next MP for Durham North West? Who, Me? Oh.

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  14. The seat is about to be abolished. They all are. Right when the electoral system changes...

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  15. Wrong House for him. He belongs up the corridor. Would raise the whole tone since they got rid of the hereditaries.

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  16. I am about to try and talk a couple of other people into going for that.

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  17. Are you people serious?

    All of this ridiculous innuendo does no your credibility no good.

    Precisely what powers are you attributing to Mr Lindsay?

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  18. Making the Pope feel obliged not to visit either a diocese or a university where the newspaper had criticised David Lindsay, or in the diocese's case merely failed to back him. Is that powerful enough for you?

    Forcing the Labour Party to break its own rules by giving a women only short list seat to a Catholic even though Catholics are not allowed on women only short lists under Labour Party rules. How about that?

    But he does the high and the low alike. A couple of students were stupid and naive enough to print some rubbish fed them by Kamm and instead of letting it go David opened the gates of hell onto them. The univesity ignored the whole thing because it ignores everything in that paper. But Mr Lindsay will have your respect or he will make you pay, even if you are nothing more than a school boy who does not even know better than to ignore Oliver Kamm.

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  19. Mr Lindsay destroyed Kamm's career after Kamm tried and failed to destroy Neil Clark's. Nel Clark is published everywhere while Kamm is reviled by other journalists because of his criminal harassment and legal threats.

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  20. Neil is certainly published quite a bit, whereas Kamm is trapped behind the Murdoch paywall and actually published a farewell post just before it went up, even though I am told that he is still blogging away behind it. Oh, well, he has the deepest sympathy of those of us in - see my PayPal button - the profitable media.

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  21. What legal threats are these that Kamm made?

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  22. Well, because it's the first I've heard of these legal threats and if it's not true then you would surely want to correct it.

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  23. Who cares? Oliver who? Why would he want to expose even further the difference between his circumstances and, among other people's, Neil's?

    Anyway, surely to goodness this thread is not still going on?

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  24. Well, I'm asking you, did Oliver Kamm make legal threats agianst Neil Clark. I thought it was the other way round and it makes a difference.

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  25. I don't care either way. Ask whoever posted the comment. Subsequent events have judged them both poetically. Neil is widely published and widely read. Kamm is stuck behind a paywall.

    Don't you have anything better to do than to worry about Oliver Kamm? I know of a publication for which you could have written until recently. But not any more.

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  26. I din't ask whether you cared, I asked whether Kamm had made legal threats against Clark, because I've never heard that. Don't you know the answer?

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  27. No, nor do I care, nor does any other sane or normally socialised person. Do you really have nothing better to do? Oliver Kamm? He's dead, isn't he?

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  28. OK, you've published something that isn't true but you thought sounded nice. Just checking about your standards.

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  29. I refer you to the two links on the blogroll with Kamm's name in them. No wonder that he has been drummed out while Neil and others continue to flourish.

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  30. I read the two Kamm links at least once a week.

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  31. I have just taken my own advice and had another look at them. Bliss.

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  32. Kamm came in for an interview at The Guardian last week. He was laughed out of the building for his brass neck after he harassed the Guardian columnist Neil Clark and had to pay thousands in damages.

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  33. Don't be silly. About what would anyone interview Kamm? Who would conduct such an interview? Now, can we please stop talking about him?

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  34. Wot no more about Kamm's criminal harassment of a journalist who gave his book a bad review?

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  35. No, no more about Kamm's criminal harassment of a journalist who gave his book a bad review. Their contrasting fortunes say it all.

    I am closing this thread.

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