Guido Fawked – One More In The Eye

[Update at end of post]

The temptation to spin is never easy to resist for the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines, who styles himself Guido Fawkes, and especially after he has been once again exposed as a shameless hypocrite. Moreover, the greater the exposure, the greater the temptation to veer into the realm of forthright dishonesty, as can be seen today in his vain attempt to explain his appearance in the latest Private Eye.

Nah, it was in a blog I've never heard of

The Eye has picked up on the hypocrisy of the Fawkes blog going after Labour MP Chris Bryant for having a column in the Independent and calling him out for taking money from Russians, and that same blog taking money from Russians for running Russian embassy propaganda – as Zelo Street readers will already know, as this was covered last Saturday.

But here a problem enters for Staines and his tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole: there must be no mention of Zelo Street, as of course neither of them read it (like heck they don’t). So The Great Guido has had to invent a plausible route for the information to get to the Eye, and this is that Bryant fed the story directly to them, “according to a Labour MP source”.

Here's a Labour MP he invented earlier

Sadly, this is purest bullshit: the only reliable “sources” anywhere near the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere are spelt differently and go by the names of HP and Lea and Perrins. While Chris Bryant might well have tipped the Eye the nod – and he did re-Tweet one of mine on Saturday evening, so knows about the Zelo Street item – there is a more plausible explanation.

Among the hundreds following the Zelo Street Twitter feed is one Louis Barfe, author and freelance journalist, and occasional contributor to Private Eye for many years now. As the Fawkes hypocrisy was mentioned on Twitter several times over the past weekend, he could quite easily have noted the post concerned and mentioned it to Mr Emmanuel Strobes and his team in time for inclusion.

All that was required was a little original and restrained dialogue – the Eye piece refers to Staines as a “salad-dodging blogger” and a “portly pundit” rather than just calling a spade a bloody shovel and letting its readers know that he’s a lumbering fat lush – and hey presto! There it is on Page 11 of issue 1318, with the added bonus of mentioning Staines’ interest in MessageSpace.

And to no surprise at all, there is no “Labour MP source” required. The Great Guido is once again being so creative that he does not require facts to get in the way of his thirsty scribblings. Another fine mess, once again.

[UPDATE 1450 hours: Louis Barfe assures me that he was not involved, but as he goes on to say, the source could be anyone.

It will also come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the modus operandi of those at the Fawkes blog to see that the flannelled fool Cole, who claims never to look in on Zelo Street and went from following my Twitter feed to blocking me, magically picked up on the exchange despite not being named in it.

Cole is obediently on-message, replying to Barfe that "one of [Bryant's] MP colleagues told me to look out of [sic] it the day before the mag came out" which he also made up. As if the Parliamentary Labour Party has a queue of members wanting to talk with this buffoon.

What Cole does not explain is that, even though he and Staines supposedly knew about the Eye article, neither mentioned it until a day after the magazine was published. And their smokescreen of asserting that "it was all in the Standard a while back" misses the hypocrisy over the Russian embassy adverts.

Still, good to see that the less than dynamic duo are awake later than lunchtime. Another fine mess, indeed]