Guido Fawked - Sun Column Cancelled

For three long years, Sun on Sunday readers have had to endure the tedious drivel served up to them by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog. Not any more. Following the removal of (fortunately) former Tory MP Louise Mensch from the roll-call of variously lame pundits has come the news - volunteered by the Fawkes folks, to their credit - that they too have been given the elbow.

So ratarsed he can't focus. Same old Staines

It all seems such a long way from those heady days in 2014 when Staines and his then tame gofer, the odious flannelled fool Harry Cole, welcomed a variety of freeloaders to celebrate the Fawkes blog’s tenth anniversary, although in reality that served only to confirm what many already knew: the Fawkes crowd had sold out to the political and press establishment. The lack of real exclusives was proof of that.

So how are Staines and his pals spinning their having been given the order of the boot by Tony Gallagher? “We enjoyed the challenge of writing a very different product for a mass market tabloid audience, though we won’t miss the deadline stress of sweating over our column all day Friday. The discipline of having to write tight, straight-to-the-point copy is tough”. It’s called Plain English, chaps. You should try it sometime.

But the most interesting part of the Fawkes apologia is when readers are defiantly informed that their group blog is going on to allegedly bigger and better things: “Order-Order.com is expanding in terms of both output and staff numbers, as ever our efforts are focused on breaking more news on the site first”. Glossing over the poor grammar and shonky punctuation for the moment, I have a question for The Great Guido.

Who’s paying? The Sun column was a Nice Little Earner for Staines and Co. If that income stream has gone, yet they’re expanding staff numbers, someone else will have to foot the bill. The idea that Staines would fund it out of his own pocket is risible. So where is the money coming from? And is it coming from the UK? After all, the Fawkes blog was happy in the past to take the Russian Government’s money, wasn’t it?

Or is the Fawkes boast mere bravado in the face of having been snubbed by the Murdoch empire, whose patronage Staines had worked so assiduously to gain? Is his ego in a rather bruised state right now? As for the “breaking news”, my information is that the Fawkes rabble are working on a barrel-scraping hatchet job that would shame most media folk. It seems that desperation may be the order-order of the day.

Today’s offerings from the Fawkes rabble don’t suggest that things will improve any day soon. Take the allegedly “Breaking” item on Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk and his latest expenses imbroglio: Zelo Street had that one a week ago. So when Staines and Co boast “You’re either in front of Guido, or behind”, I have to tell them that I’m well in front of them, thanks. And I don’t see that changing any time soon.

The Sun is well rid of The Great Guido. Another fine mess, once again.