The Guardian Is Still Gagged - But The Blogs Won

[TheBigotBasher]

Carter Ruck has stood down. The Guardian will be able to report on questions in Parliament laid by Paul Farrelly, largely because blogs broke the super injunction.

The Guardian is however still under an injunction.

The Guardian is still forbidden by the terms of the existing injunction, granted by a vacation duty judge, Mr Justice Maddison,
to give further information about the Minton report, or its contents.

It is a good thing Wikileaks exists.

Otherwise, the words Trafigura, Minton Report and Carter Ruck could never be mentioned in a sentence.

And sod the Guardian crediting Twitter. Give credit where it is due, if it had not been for bloggers, in particular the Libertarian blogger Guido Fawkes breaking the injunction, (ironically defending Parliament), there would have been nothing to tweet about.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Meh - Fawkes didn't do anything special

plenty of blogs found it (once it was on the parliamentary site, it wasn't hard to link to it), and the numbers on Twiiter may well have made a difference.

Fawkes is such a wanker that for many people it doesn't matter what he says - if it's on his site, then it's dubious and not worth looking at.

[T_i_B]

2. Yep, Paul Staines is just one of many on this story

I'd give more credit to the likes of Chicken Yoghurt in getting this story heard. Twitter made the thing go viral in a big way so that also needs lots of credit.

I'll have to see if I can find the Guardian article about Staines cavorting with the far right in 1986 while at Hull University to post on here

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2007/01/guido_fawkes.asp

http://www.chickyog.net/2007/02/14/the-last-laugh/

[TheBigotBasher]

3. Hmm

http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=r&b=ffffff&r=2y&u=order-order.com&u=chickyog.net&

For a private individual, the history of Paul Staines is not exactly hidden in cloaks of secrecy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Except, of course, Staines has tried to hide it

In general terms, he was trying to get the Federation of Conservative Students and the BNP to work together to disrupt left wing activities, such as "disrupting the leftist meetings by posing as leftists and then causing trouble". Currently, Craig Murray, who has a bit of a better record of advocating freedom of speech than Staines does, has it up on his blog: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/neocons_pretend.html

Staines threatened legal action against bloggers who reproduced what The Guardian had written in 1986.

Which is quite ironic for someone posting about injunctions that forbid the revealing of information. And shows what a scrote Staines is.

[TheBigotBasher]

5. Also linked from that blog

http://www.thestirrer.co.uk/Images/DavidRoseretraction.pdf

Not for me to defend or attack him on here, especially as this is about much bigger fish than Paul Staines.

The blog story lacks credibility in that Staines was never a member of the FCS, he was a member of the Young SDP, he did however "muck rake" on behalf of some FCS members to promote Libertarian factions of the FCS to help them win against "Authoritarians" or "Wets".

The internal battles of the Lib Dem Youth wing are at the moment every bit as nasty as the old FCS. Very similar factions (although no "Wets").

Student politics. All relatively meaningless until some news hack decides to exaggerate the importance of it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. In his own words:

By the time I was an undergraduate in the mid-eighties, having
joined the Federation of Conservative Students, and somehow
affecting to wear fake bow-ties and cheap suits (whilst endlessly
debating the merits of Anarcho-Capitalism versus Minimal
Statism), I had at last found a small number of like minded
souls. Marc Henri Glendenning the then national chairman of
FCS spoke a language I could understand - Thatcher on drugs.
Still it was right-wing anti-Communist, anti-Wet and mainly
reactionary. Battling in Student Unions to rename the “Mandela
Bar” the “Bruce Forsyth Bar”, arguing with CND feminists and
generally opposing the left wing campus establishment whilst in
the real world the Conservatives won elections by landslides and
the war of ideas. Only on campus were we a radical minority
and intentionally antagonistic, in fact so obnoxious that the
Conservative Party decided to close down its youth wings.
That antagonistic, sod you attitude continued after I failed to get
a degree (I was thrown out for being a right-wing pain in the
butt who was more interested in student politics than essays)
when I went to work in the various right-wing pressure groups
and think tanks that proliferated in the late eighties. The
deliberately provocative attitude still maintained – I never wore
a “Hang Mandela” badge but I hung out with people who did.
Why? What did we gain from doing so? Did we make ourselves
more popular by calling for the death of a man who was fighting
injustice by the only means available to him? Did this “shift the
parameters of debate” in our direction?
Did the over the top aggressiveness of the ultra-sound cadres
put people off the broader ideas and positive agenda of Libertarianism
Clearly it galvanised our enemies against us in much the
same way that the crude jingoism of many Little Englanders puts
people off supporting a more liberal European ideal.
I am the first to admit that in the past when challenged on issues
I have been provocative – “What will Libertarianism do for the
homeless?” “Nothing”. Not a way to win friends and influence
people. I think its time for a more effective, kinder, gentler kind
of Libertarianism. Principled, but pragmatic. Selling out – no,
but better salesmanship certainly. A lot of us who came to
Libertarianism via FCS and student unions as well as battling in
the Conservative Party factions, have a take-no-prisoners
attitude that does not play out well to wider audiences. We are
unsympathetic and uncompromising, we are “Sound” but little
heard. What profiteth an idealogue if his ideology is ignored? Or
even if it is just rendered unpalatable.

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/freelife/fl037.pdf