Thin-Skinned Tweeters
I don't know Sarah Baxter, but I had to laugh when I read her column in The Sunday Times about being 'blocked' on Twitter.
Now I've never visited Skawkbox although I do seem to have upset a few luminaries on Twitter, not for being rude or offensive - just for disagreeing with a few over sized egos including:
- George (if he was chocolate he'd eat himself) Galloway
- John McDonnell (Jeremy Corbyn's thuggish shadow chancellor)
- Owen Jones (one time Corbyn critic turned cheerleader)
- Stuart Campbell (chief Wingnut Over Scotland)
One thing these gentlemen all have in common if you ask me, is that while they love to dish it out they are all very thin-skinned and hyper-sensitive to criticism.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/me-banned-the-far-left-really-is-terrified-of-losing-wnbvpfr2r
Me? Banned? The far left really is terrified of losing
By Sarah Baxter - The Sunday Times
The bullies know their grip on Labour hides a weakness and are lashing out
Allow me a moment of quiet pride. I am delighted to announce that I have been blocked on Twitter by the Corbynista fanzine, Skwawkbox. This makes me officially a banned person who is obviously regarded as far too subversive, corrupting and dangerous to be permitted to view the alt-left media’s ravings about Labour’s dear leader and his comrades. It is all the more delicious because Skwawkbox proclaims loudly on its Twitter site: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”
How marvellously Orwellian for Skwawkbox to block me on the grounds that I’m a proper journalist who has been rude about its output instead of fluffing it up like a PR pro. Or it would be if the above quote genuinely was from George Orwell, as Skwawkbox’s journalists seem to believe. Some say it is fake news and the expression originated with a right-wing press baron such as Lord Northcliffe or William Randolph Hearst. But never mind all that. My point is that Corbynistas talk the talk about inclusivity, diversity, access, transparency and openness but always end up in their default position — obsessed by secrecy, factionalism, betrayal and bans.
So it was that Jon Lansman, founder of the “grassroots” group Momentum, was elected last week to Labour’s national executive committee by a “Lan-slide” (his words) with two female colleagues and instantly launched a purge. True to form, Ann Black, head of the disputes panel that oversees awkward disciplinary matters such as the inquiry into anti-semitism, was dumped in favour of Christine Shawcroft. Her credentials with Momentum were burnished by her support for Lutfur Rahman, the corrupt ex-mayor of Tower Hamlets. An ideal candidate, then.
The far left of the party has only to get a whiff of victory in its nostrils to roll out the tumbrels. As this newspaper reveals today, Momentum has been bullying Haringey councillors in north London in scandalous fashion and there are hitlists of enemy MPs. Lansman, a Cambridge economics graduate, has been preparing for this moment since the 1980s when he was commissar for the Tony Benn-inspired Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, which argued for the mandatory reselection (or rather deselection) of MPs.
Back then Lansman drew on a mass movement spawned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and anger about unemployment to swell the ranks of the Labour left. Today he has brought together veterans of the Stop the War marches with disaffected millennials, ruthlessly turbocharged by the recruiting power of social media.
Last week Momentum announced that it had reached 35,000 members (more than Ukip and just shy of the Greens) and has set its sights on overtaking the Conservative Party on 70,000. It claims, moreover, to have 200,000 active supporters. That gives the movement real muscle inside Corbyn’s Labour, which it is now flexing against internal enemies.
It is not only the leftist guru Paul Mason who wants “deselections hanging over every Labour MP”. In a new book by leading Momentum supporters, For the Many, Ken Loach, a fountain of compassion in his films, foams: “Labour will not be able to implement [its] manifesto without the whole-hearted commitment of its MPs, councillors and the party machine. All those elements must change.” The harassment of Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow, and the Haringey council coup are merely the opening salvos in a war of attrition in which the aim is not only to decapitate a few individuals but to intimidate other MPs and councillors into submission.
Meanwhile, the blessed Corbyn, who has taken to referring to himself in the third person as the messiah-like “JC”, told The Guardian last week Labour “will look at democracy within the party and look at the process of selections. We should all be accountable all the time.”
@sarahbaxterST
'WIngnuts' Over Scotland (30/04/16)
I see that 'Wingnuts' Over Scotland's been in the news again with both The Herald and Daily Record reporting on the oafish antics of the angry wee Wingnut-in-chief, the not very reverend Stuart Campbell.
The Herald
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14456179.Anger_as_pro_independence_blogger_blames_Liverpool_fans_for_Hillsborough_disaster/?ref=ar
Anger as pro-independence blogger blames Liverpool fans for Hillsborough disaster
By Brian McLaughlin - The Herald
A PROMINENT blogger has come under fire for blaming Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough disaster despite an inquest vindicating them.
Stuart Campbell, the popular blogger who runs the pro-Independence website Wings over Scotland, faced demands to apologise after he stood by his views that Liverpool supporters were partly to blame for the 1989 tragedy.
On Tuesday, jurors in the Hillsborough inquest concluded that the 96 Liverpool fans who died in the disaster were unlawfully killed.
The Daily Record
Wings Over Scotland blogger slammed for blaming Liverpool fans for Hillsborough tragedy
BY RECORD REPORTER
PRO-INDEPENDENCE writer Stuart Campbell refuses to backtrack on his twisted claims view despite a court ruling the supporters were blameless and were unlawfully killed.
Wings Over Scotland blogger Stuart Campbell blames Liverpool fans for Hillsborough tragedy
A CONTROVERSIAL pro-independence blogger came under fire yesterday over comments made about the disaster.
Stuart Campbell, who runs Wings Over Scotland, was previously criticised for claiming Liverpool fanswere partly at fault over the deaths of the victims.
In 2012, the blogger insisted that “every single solitary person who died at Hillsborough was killed by Liverpool fans”.
But when asked on Twitter about the verdict yesterday, he said: “My thoughts are that anyone trolling for a reaction on it can go and get f***ed.”
Asked if his views had changed since 2012, he said: “No” and vowed to block those “trolling” him.
A CONTROVERSIAL pro-independence blogger came under fire yesterday over comments made about the disaster.
Stuart Campbell, who runs Wings Over Scotland, was previously criticised for claiming Liverpool fanswere partly at fault over the deaths of the victims.
In 2012, the blogger insisted that “every single solitary person who died at Hillsborough was killed by Liverpool fans”.
But when asked on Twitter about the verdict yesterday, he said: “My thoughts are that anyone trolling for a reaction on it can go and get f***ed.”
Asked if his views had changed since 2012, he said: “No” and vowed to block those “trolling” him.
'Wingnuts' Over Scotland (14/03/16)
I learned the other day that I have been blocked from the Twitter feed of 'Wings Over Scotland' which I take as something of a backhanded compliment, I have to say.
Because this blocking business arose after I criticised as 'juvenile and sexist' an image that was being promoted by 'Wings' (and some his online chums) to mock and ridicule JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books.
Now the chap behind 'Wings' goes by the name of Rev Stuart Campbell who is not a real reverend, by the way, and lives in middle-England despite being a fervent Scottish nationalist.
But the Rev had the brass neck to say that I 'disrespected' him (as if he was deserving of my respect in the first place) during our Twitter exchange which focused on whether the image was crude and stereotypical.
Needless to say Wings and his Twitter pals thought differently, like naughty schoolboys at the back of the class with their name calling and personal abuse, although I could well imagine the uproar if Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, had been portrayed in a similarly unpleasant light.
If you ask me, the Rev must suffer from 'wee man' syndrome which is familiar to folk in the west of Scotland; the symptoms normally affect vertically challenged males who are highly sensitive to criticism or ridicule while being in a permanently 'gobby' and angry state themselves.
In other words, they love to dish it out but they don't like it one little bit if others stand up to their boorish male behaviour.
From my short exposure to these Twitter loons I would rebrand them as 'Wingnuts' Over Scotland because their intolerant and oafish behaviour is a poor advert for Scottish independence which is presumably why Yes Scotland decided to disown Wings during the 2014 referendum campaign.
Or as Frankie Boyle remarked on Twitter recently:
"Can't help feeling that this persuading people to vote for Independence by telling them to go fuck themselves tactic has a few flaws."
Now that is funny, thoughtful and perceptive, and so much more important, politically speaking, than the angry, finger-jabbing invective that is often found on Twitter.
