Toby Young And A Sock Puppet Denial

Many people are accused of having sock puppet accounts: this claim has in the past been levelled at Zelo Street, but is totally untrue, but then, it was Dan Hodges pointing the finger. Some actually do have sock puppet accounts. In the no-mans-land between the two right now is the reputation, such as it is, of the loathsome Toby Young, and recent advertisements for another of his piss-poor articles for the Murdoch Sun.

Tobes has told eager Sun readers “From dial-up modems to blocked porn sites, here’s what Jeremy Corbyn’s free broadband could look like”, but then he just starts lying, claiming “the £1.2trillion cost of Labour’s other giveaways”. Tory HQ claims including false assumptions are not fact, Tobes. Try sticking to reality once in a while.

Oh, look at this, Murdoch propaganda: “A similar policy was adopted by the Australian Labour Party in 2006, with an initial price tag of £8billion”. Yes Tobes, and from that point it was systematically undermined by Rupe and his pals who were scared shitless of losing revenue from their satellite broadcasting empire. But do go on.

Ey up, here come the Tobes funnies. “Instead of a wi-fi router, you get a dial-up modem … The service only works four days a week … your monthly bill calculated by Diane Abbott … If you Google ‘capitalism’ you get the spinning wheel of death”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start. This is total crap. But worse was to come.

A racist Twitter feed, now deleted, called @sadjamieross, promoted Tobes’ article, telling “get ready for dial-up modems instead of wifi routers, it only works four days a week and if you Google ‘capitalism’ you get the spinning wheel of death (or worse!)”. Worse still, the Tweet begins “I’ve written the ultimate to Labour’s new broadband communism”.

Then, soon afterwards, that Tweet was deleted, while Tobes’ own feed told “dial-up modems instead of wifi routers, it only works four days a week and if you Google ‘capitalism’ you get the spinning wheel of death”. Note identical punctuation, same use of “wifi” rather than “wi-fi”, and almost identical wording. This, to no surprise at all, has raised suspicion. Suspicion that was only heightened when Tobes began to protest. Loudly.

“[Ash Sarkar] just accused me of being behind a vile, racist Twitter account that’s just been deleted - and then quickly deleted her tweet. What gives Ash? Did you discover that the person behind it is, in fact, a member of the Labour Party?” If it had just been deleted, how come Tobes already knew it was “vile” and “racist”? And it got worse.

After Ms Sarkar responded “I asked a question, and deleted when I saw the original tweet had been taken down. More than happy to be led by your clarification in this case!” Tobes decided to keep on protesting. “But when you asked the question the racist tweet in question had already been deleted. So its deletion cannot have been your reason for deleting your tweet”. If it’s nothing to do with him, why is he protesting so much?

Toby Young may have had nothing to do with @sadjamieross. We may never know. But it is never a good idea to start shouting “yah boo it was Labour actually” when challenged.

Why not just say “It wasn’t me”, Tobes? Or did the common sense solution evade you?

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