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Fawk Off - A Tale Of A Fool And His Lawyer

Posted February 4th, 2008 by Tom

Better cover this one - Tim 'Bloggerheads' Ireland has been having another go at Paul Staines.  Fair enough, free speech and that, and you can't say the target's undeserving (oddly enough I've met both of them, so I've been able to come to my own conclusions first-hand).  Naturally when you annoy the monied soi-disant 'libertarian' right, lawyers were reached for, so it's time to rally round.  Evidently Sunday is blog day for many of us, as the linkage is beginning to flow nicely:

In this case, the identity of the lawyer is much more interesting than the tiresome 'who linked to what where and when' facts of the case, taking us as it does into the murky world of anti-Communist extreme right-wing 80s student politics and the murky figures behind it, just trying to keep the world safe from Communism.  Funny how some of them seem to be trying to keep the world safe from peace and democracy, by becoming the US neoconservatives.

Luckily, the public spirited blog 'Bartholomew's Notes On Religion' has tried to make sense of it all so I don't have to.  Read it before someone richer than you stops you, and make your own mind up.  As Tim says:

After all, if some jumped-up blogger with a lawyer for a mate came after you, I'd be in your corner and slugging it out without hesitation.

Fair enough.  By the way, as one who grew up in the area where Staines' mentor David Hart operated, I remember him as the nearest thing I've seen to the embodiment of pure evil.  Not a bad assessment for a spotty teenager in the late 80s, in retrospect.  I wish I could remember quite why, I think it was an interview with him on Look East.