Guido Fawked – Thornberry Snark Falls Flat

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog are so keen to keep up their campaigns of petty vindictiveness that, when stories are not available to help with their knocking copy, they have to take whatever is going and twist any facts to fit. The resulting lack of veracity means that, as before, they are still full value for that 4% positive trust rating.

Fart in lift inquiry suffers serious blow

Take, for instance, another attack yesterday on Labour MP Emily Thornberry, who, according to Staines, was unwilling to allow his children to commit an act of trespass and so, in the vindictive world of The Great Guido, gets kicked whenever the opportunity arises, and even when it does not. The latest lame snark featured Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.

Under the typically fictitious title “Pickles Trolls Thornberry”, the Fawkes folks observe that “Today he’s winding up Emily Thornberry by flying the flag of Lancashire”. Why does flying the flag of Lancashire “troll Thornberry”? It wasn’t involved in the mainly fabricated White Van ruckus from Rochester. Perhaps the former shadow Attorney General has some connection with the county?

That won't go down too well in Keighley

Well, no she doesn’t: Ms Thornberry hails originally from Surrey, attended the University of Kent at Canterbury, and represents a constituency in North London. So what of Pickles? This is where the Fawkes rabble went completely wrong: he, too, has no connection to the Red Rose County. And a Yorkshireman promoting Lancashire is a promotion too far.

No self-respecting representative of God’s Own County would want wave the flag of Lancashire, even on Lancashire day. I’ll go further: had that been a Labour politician, The Great Guido would have been down on them like a ton of bricks. Not when it’s Pickles, though: he’s on their team, he makes agreeably right-leaning noises at their prompting, so they wouldn’t say boo.

And when they recycle Pickles’ text, “Whatever one’s class, colour or creed, flags like the St George’s and the Union flag are unifying symbols for our nation. We should also champion the great diversity of local flags. Let’s fly them all with pride, because this sense of shared identity is one of the things that binds communities together”, they don’t tell that he’s been giving the same speech for years.

So not only has Pickles offended many in the county of his birth, but the Fawkes rabble has claimed that he was “trolling Thornberry” with a speech on a totally unrelated event, managing in the process not to mention that Pickles is a flag enthusiast. Thus The Great Guido has given one of its pals a free pass, and reinforced it with another of those freely-dispensed packs of lies.

Someone fears the Fawkes rabble. But not fact checkers. Another fine mess.