Hypocrite of the Week - Tom Harris

My "Hypocrite of the Week" award goes to Labour MP Tom Harris whose latest blog post carries some advice to would-political bloggers. I especially enjoyed his piece of wisdom at number five:

5. Allow commenters to have their say. By all means moderate the abusive ones, but blogging isn’t one-way – a dialogue with readers is the life blood of a good blog. But conduct that dialogue on your own terms.

Notice the caveat? "But conduct that dialogue on your own terms" - meaning, bin anything you disagree with, especially if it shows you up to be a tit, and not quite as bright as you like to think you are. See my post HERE

Of the loony tribal left, Tom's blog is easily the best, but even Tom has plenty of "no go" areas. Among them is any negative mention of fellow MPs or Peers, particularly if they are Mohammad Sarwar and his not so savoury family, or Michael Martin, the ridiculed and tribal former Speaker.

Tom dear, it aint free speech unless people can disagree with you. Being nice about Labour is not free speech and it is not free speech when whole swathes of dialogue are missed out because they don't fit your world view. That is not the meaning of "Allow commenters to have their say".

Pity. I thought you had something there. 

3 comments:

Jim Baxter said...

Pity indeed. But it turns out that we should have known all along. Old Holborn knew all along and I thought he was just a git. He is a git but it turns out he's not just a git.

With very few exceptions they go native. Who are the exceptions? - can't think of any and I know of most of em since 1945. They all agree witnin a very short time that the public are mad, impossible to deal with, and so grow closer to each other, supporting each other in their determination to ignore the public.

Solution? I have none. Honesty mught be a start.

John said...

@Jim & WW

I parted company with Tom's blog long ago, and engaged you both frequently from his wordpress.com days till the end pretty much (you have no reason to remember though! :P )

It became clear to me then that dissenting views, rather than abuse was starting to be tolerated less and less.

Not only that, but the nature of his blog changed from "reasoned opinion" to outright disingenious new labour spin.

Defending the indefensible though logical fallacies and failing to approve reasoned criticism became the norm.

It's a shame, but I think he's shown pretty well that he's a new labour man through and through.

-John

Wrinkled Weasel said...

OH can be exasperating but does indeed turn out to be right more than is humanly decent. OH takes no prisoners. Perhaps Guido is still the same.

John, it is difficult to remember someone called "John" but please don't take offense at that. Your analysis is spot on, there has been a distinct descent into tribalism, but worse than that, the disingenuous kind that is picky about the truth.