Comments on: The Tories, the Mail and the homophobes

By: PCC rules on Mail homophobia: snippy is fine « Paperhouse

PCC rules on Mail homophobia: snippy is fine « Paperhouse — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:09:09 +0000

[...] Tomasevski by Sarah At the beginning of October, Iain Dale suddenly noticed that The Mail was not very nice about gay people and put in a complaint to the PCC. Or at least, he noticed that The Mail was not [...]

By: Dave Weeden

Dave Weeden — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:02:23 +0000

I was all for solidarity with Iain on this, but that post on Kaminsky (of whom, as you may gather from Aaro Watch, I’m very suspicious) is weird. “…the Nazis and Soviets who together started WW2…” I really think that honour falls to the Nazis alone. “how many Polish Jews cooperated with the Communists after WW2 to effect massacres of patriotic Poles – any apologies for that likely?” But asking for an apology for this seems to weaken the case that it was simply “one group of Poles against other group of Poles” and that such groups aren’t co-ordinated or have spokespersons to make such apologies. Not that many Polish Jews survived and the word ‘patriotic’ smells of an appeal to the emotions. Anyway, all such massacres were committed by the Communists, and should be apologised for by the Communist Party. I don’t think separating the Jews as a sub-group adds anything. (I just tried Googling for an apology by the Polish CP. I couldn’t find one. Everyone wants apologised to; no one wants to apologise.)
Iain Dale seems very confident that “Kaminski is neither a homophobe nor an anti-semite”. Time, no doubt, will tell. I only hope that if Dale ever meets Kaminsky, he blogs the encounter.

By: Tim Ireland

Tim Ireland — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:13:24 +0000

Iain Dale was personally aware of a series of homophobic smears against a Liberal Democrat in Guildford. Two Conservative activists (Dennis Paul and Mike Chambers, then closely associated with the Conservative MP Anne Milton) were anonymously publishing and promoting false claims that their political opponent was a paedophile, and at one stage used the man’s status as a homosexual as ‘proof’ of this.

Iain was provided with evidence (that he still claims not to have looked at) and warned that the perpetrators were definitely sock-puppeting on Paul Staines’ site and most likely his as well. Both Dale and Staines were in a unique position to slap these f**kers down, but they chose to remain silent.

When later confronted about this, Iain built on anonymous claims made on his site (probably by these same people) that I had ‘stalked’ Anne Milton and implied that I had made up the homophobic attack (or perhaps even imagined it) as part of that.

Homophobic attacks are wrong. Standing by and allowing them when it suits you politically is downright evil.