Guido Fawked - New Staff Desperation

As his former tame gofer, the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, waddles off into the sunset - well, to the Sun, anyway - libel bully and amateur human being Paul Staines, the perpetually thirsty founder of the Guido Fawkes blog, continues to cast around for a replacement. What The Great Guido is not telling - so I will - is that his search for another unprincipled sleazebag is proving surprisingly fruitless.

Everybody want to be his pal. Allegedly

We know this because, rarely for the Fawkes blog, the post where the rabble first told the world they were “hiring” has had to be recycled word for word, a month after it was first published. Not that Staines and his pals want you to know that: the original has been deleted. But thanks to the gold old Wayback Machine, it can be retrieved and compared to yesterday’s effort. And the cut’n’paste is then revealed.

Spot the difference: first half of June 24 post ...

So when the “Exclusive” tag was plastered across the post “The Sun’s Harry Cole: New Era Of Punctuation & Punctuality”, it was not, but then, honesty has never featured high among the attributes necessary for membership of this particular club. As can be seen here, that post, which was timed at 1815 hours yesterday, was first posted in exactly the same form at 1602 hours on June 24 last.

... first half of July 31 post ...

Why the need to recycle material, given that Staines can now call on the services of his newly anointed teaboy Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham, and latest recruit Jeremy Wilson, who styles himself “Techno Guido”, while not always knowing much about the technology being discussed? Why indeed. Perhaps this was a mistake, an accidental deletion. But one look at the comments below the post shows that it was not.

... second half of June 24 post ...

Indeed, the comments have been copied over as well! My Occam’s Razor has concluded that this can mean only one thing: Staines is having difficulty replacing Master Cole. That may surprise those who know the circles in which The Great Guido moves: surely there is no shortage of right-wing gobshites and wannabes from which he can select a new recruit? After all, everyone wants to work for him. Don’t they?

... second half of July 31 post. No difference. At all

Well, maybe not: after all, Staines has shamelessly sold out to the press establishment, as witness the gradual subsiding of any criticism of the Fourth Estate, unless it’s the deeply subversive Guardian, the Independent, or occasionally the Staggers. Most of that comment tends to revolve around the supposed financial difficulties all those titles are in, a subject on which Staines has no room to talk.

Even so, it should not prove difficult for The Great Guido to find someone with sufficient ambition and brass neck to join in the industrial-scale dishonesty and sell their soul in exchange for the cachet of being one of the team. But after more than a month, there is either nobody suitable, or some other sticking point has got in the way of Staines’ recruitment drive. What that might be I will leave to others to decide.

Either way, Paul Staines is getting desperate. Another fine mess, once again.