London Look-a-likes

The Tory Troll has a competition: who can come up with the best London politics look-a-likes using Google's new Similar Images function.

Here's my submission:

David Mitchell/Mark Corrigan



Kit Malthouse
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Help Tim Ireland, update

On Sunday I had a post asking people to help Tim Ireland fight a smear campaign.

Unfortunately, it has got a lot worse: he's now receiving threats of violence from complete strangers.

As far as he can make out it stems from a group called "the Cheerleaders" who claim to be an anti-fundamentalist Muslim group. They've been infesting the comments on Barth's Notes since the start of the year, who also seems to be getting hassle, albeit of a lot weaker sort, but refuse to come out into the open.

These people are nothing more than cowards and, if anything, their actions are those of extremists.

PS. My article on Sunday received two (!) comments. One was sympathetic, from some one linking to something called the Couchtripper forum, one was a link to a very childish anti-Tim attack site. Tweet

Project Censored 2010

It's that time of year when Project Censored publish their list of the stories which the US media have decided to ignore for whatever reason.

As usual, it's interesting but US-slanted and of course quite a few are related the the global economic collapse and its aftermath.

[For the ones in 2006, 2007 and 2008, click the years. I don't appear to have the one published last year - presumably it was released when I was in the US and so missed it - but it is on their site.]

UPDATE: I did cover the 2009 version after all. Tweet

FoIA: Local Councils and the Daily Mail

A few weeks ago, the Daily Mail had a ludicrous article about the amount of time that staff in Portsmouth City Council spend on Facebook. It was ludicrous because the amount of time it allegded was the equivalent of 19 hours per day. In reality it was 11 seconds per day and
this Liberal Conspiracy article goes into more detail about it.

Anyway, Sim-O left a comment referring to an FoIA request he did to various local councils where he lived and I thought I'd do the same thing for a few in London.

I've done a FoIA request to:

• LB Tower Hamlets
• LB Merton
• LB Wandsworth
• LB Newham
• The City of London

I'll let you know if I hear anything... Tweet

Help Tim Ireland

Earlier this year the Sun had a story which claimed that Alan Sugar was on a hit-list of high-profile British Jews that had been uncovered by some guy on a Muslim message-board.

Tim Bloggerheads did some research into it, discovered it was a complete load of rubbish which eventually led to the Sun retracting the article and the guy who gave them the information converted to Islam.

All very well you'd've thought. However, Tim has had to put up with a lot of shit as a result of his investigations, including having a smear campaign against him which amongst other things included him being labelled a paedophile had having his work ripped off by Private Eye. He's also had his ex-directory phone number and address leaked to various people.

To cut a long story short, Tim is asking people to write to their MPs - just a polite letter - to get their opinions on the actions of the Tory MP Patrick Mercer.

I'm lucky to say that my MP is George Galloway who I know will be a great help...

Anyway, I'm going to write to Gorgeous George and see what happens. You should write to yours too.

UPDATE: Here's what I've written using the WriteToThem.com website

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

George Galloway MP
Bethnal Green and Bow

Saturday 26 September 2009
[D-Notice,
The D-Notice Mansion,
D-notice-ville
D-Notice-shire]

Dear Mr. Galloway,

I'm sure that you are aware of the on-going saga regarding a story that was in the Sun earlier this year about an alleged hit-list of high-profile British Jews.

One of the people named was Alan Sugar. However, it has subsequently been shown that the article was completely false which has led to the Sun apologising for the article.

I'm mentioning this because I would be very grateful if you could help out a friend of mine.

It was my friend, a Mr. Tim Ireland, who investigated the story in his own free time and discovered that it was inaccurate. Unfortunately, Tim has had to put up with a lot of hassle as a result of it, including being smeared as a child molester and having his ex-directory phone number and address published on the internet.

The reason I am writing is that unfortunately, quite a lot of the problems that Mr Ireland has faced are due to the actions of a fellow MP: Patrick Mercer (Conservative) and his staff. I would be very grateful if you would be able to speak to Mr Mercer about his actions (a summary of which Tim has given at http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/09/suburban_jihad.asp and http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/09/patrick_mercer_boom.asp)

Yours sincerely,

[D-Notice]

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The Sun Lies: Mother Nature in Tears

A new short post over on the Sun Lies.

This is another one about the Sun's apparent insistence that random patterns mean something. Tweet