Blogger and Daily Telegraph opinion editor, Timmeh Blair, has struck a deal with his employer for the right to do officially what most bloggers do on the sly: blog on work time using work bandwidth. Blair this morning announced that he will be moving his extremely popular blogging activities from timblair.net to the Tele’s website.

This raises all sorts of questions about the pros and cons of such a transition from independent blogger with no real parameters for posts and comments to commercial media blogger bound by pesky rules about things like defamation and commercial interests. We’re planning on fully discussing these issues in tomorrow’s GrodsThink. (End shameless plug.)

But the moment I read Tim’s transfer news this morning I knew that the most interesting thing to watch would be the reaction of his winged monkey commenters who are acutely aware that their days of unmoderated freedom are over. Hilariously, they are bitching on the one hand about the moderation system at the new site which will surely prune 75% of their comments…

So we have to go back to a moderation system Tim?
– Ash_

held for moderator approval

Leave it to a dead tree publication with a website to kill the spontaneity of the threads, which are half the fun…
– Bruce Rheinstein

…but bitching on the other hand about losing the moderation provided by the infamous Andrea Harris, Administrator at the old site.

I miss Andrea already. Can’t you take her with you? Doesn’t seem right somehow.
– Mambo Bananapatch

So who will boot the morons and moonbats if not Andrea?
– Steve Skubinna

For the first time ever Blair’s winged monkeys are going to have to deal with — gasp! — alternative viewpoints without the safety net provided by Andrea’s overzealous use of the delete button. No wonder some are declaring Timmeh’s blogging days over.

Oh well - this is the end of an era and the end of free ranging comments and expression. If anyone wants an idea of what Tim’s new site will be like, just have a look at comments section on Andrew Bolt’s blog

No more free ranging fucking comments!

In fact I remember posting a couple of times to Australian newspaper blogs (not sure if it was the Australian or Bolt) but they did not appear. Either my pseudonym or comments (and they were clean) were unacceptable.

So it definitely will be no more fucking comments. And I dare say there will be no room for detective paco’s adventures. Sigh

Farewell Tim Blair’s Blog
– Wand

I feel like my favourite pub has closed.

Need to find a new one. Been looking at an interesting establishment down the road a bit.

Do you serve Aussie reds at your place Andrea?
– Pogria

But spare a thought for poor Andrea Harris, Administrator who now wields exactly zero power and exerts exactly zero influence over Blair and his ragtag bunch of defaming muppets, not to mention over the lefty minions of evil who dare oppose Timmeh’s thoughts. No wonder she’s left with no option but to beg people to visit her blog despite its complete lack of any content worth reading.

Hey guys, I have a website of my own. I even post to it from time to time. However, my posts aren’t all that interesting these days.
– Andrea Harris, Administrator

You don’t say.

My tiny kitchen has more cupboard space — and a pantry! — than the previous kitchen. So I’ve sacrificed some floor space; so what, it makes it that much easier to fill the cat’s water bowl.

The hot water stays hot for ages. In the previous place I was lucky if I’d get fifteen minutes of actual hot water in the shower with the super water-saver shower head I installed myself. Here I use the gusher that came with the apartment and I can stay in the shower as long as I want.

But thinking again about Blair’s decision to move blogs, it’s difficult to see how it could possibly be a good decision given that it will not significantly boost his stats and will likely cost a decent chunk of his current readership.

I’ve got to admit that I almost feel sorry for Andrew Bolt. Watching Gordon Ramsay on television a few weeks ago he fell in love. There was something about Gordon Ramsay — a man’s man with conservative values and masculine pride — that made Bolta’s heart beat a little faster.

I like particularly the standards Ramsay upholds and which drive him to fury when transgressed.

Ramsay, you see, thinks hard work honours man. Slackers drive him spare: “You might as well just f… off.”

He thinks if a job is to be done, it’s best done well. Sloppiness is an insult to a worker’s dignity. A moral crime.

He thinks if you’re taking a man’s wage, you owe him a day’s labour. Those who bludge on their boss are called “cheats” and the worst, like the manager of Dillons, are out the door.

He thinks reason beats irrational sentiment. If orange paintings of what seems global warming turn off customers, then too bad if the owner loves them to sentimental tears; they must go to save the restaurant.

He thinks some authority is better than none when you want things run well. Three managers in one chaotic restaurant get pared to one, despite the tears, because collectives and group fuzzies just don’t work.

Yet he also believes in loyalty and teams - the little platoons of society that are the bedrock of a community.

But just like a lot of desperate crushes this love was not to be. Imagine Andy’s feeling of rejection when he discovered that Ramsay wasn’t quite the man he believed him to be (with a bit of groupthink thrown in for good measure.)

My faith in Gordon Ramsay’s good sense has been shaken. Tim Blair exposes another eco-hypocrite - a global warming prophet in a Ferrari, and with a disturbing taste for banning other people’s little pleasures.

Having your heart broken is no joke. My thoughts are with you, Andrew.

They can’t win elections, they’re barely functioning, and now comes the news that no-one in the party can even destablise an already shaky leadership properly.

The blog can be read here, and the men behind it can be contacted here.

What’s interesting is that the blog appears to have been leaked to that site from the inside, because the “edit widget” buttons are still there.

Nice work. You can’t even leak properly.

Ever since an illiterate, ranting blogger by the name of Iain Hall stumbled across GrodsCorp in November 2005 he’s been a favourite target of ours. In the two-and-a-half years since that fateful day Iain has discovered the spellcheck function in Microsoft Word (set to US English, of course) and refined his blog design somewhat, but has continued to maliciously stalk anonymous bloggers (Jeremy Sear, Bridgit Gread etc.) and threaten those whose identities are known (by calling their workplaces etc.)

A couple of weeks ago Ant revealed how easily he tricked Hall into outing him as an imaginary person, and today Random Brainwave and GrodsCorp’s John Surname has proven, once and for all, how much of an unethical, stalking scumbag Iain Hall really is.

For the record, we were planning a very special group photo shoot and special edition GrodsDrink podcast episode (emailed directly to Hall) if the scotch arrived, but it was not to be. I tells ya, I could taste that scotch.

It’s worth noting that Hall put the scotch bounty on The Happy Revolutionary’s head in response to Hap allegedly calling him a paedophile; apparently this was justification enough for the stalking and the harassment and the rest. However, here is Iain Hall writing about me at his (now archived) Being Nice blog.

I understand that you are training to be a teacher can you give us some thoughts on that? Do you get close to your students?

The Editor is going away on a teaching placement to an aboriginal settlement called Anangu in deep outback South Australia for three weeks and hopes desperately that things will be back to normal when he gets back on May 23. Please use this time to peruse anything that works on the site and maybe fire off a few nasty emails to “Da Shop” on our behalf. Anyway, touched a 15 year and 10 month old girl’s breasts with her consent, . But now, in the climate of fear over pedophilia this “outstanding teacher”, as described by his principal, staff and students, has lost his job and had his career, and probably life, destroyed.

Hypocrite?

But why is this post entitled “End of an era”? Well, I always intended the scotch reveal to be the last official mention of Hall on GrodsCorp since a man of his calibre ultimately deserves to be completely ignored and, frankly, his presence on GrodsCorp cheapens us even more than Fleshlights (if that’s possible.) So unless the scotch does arrive in the mail this will be the last ever Iain Hall post on GrodsCorp.

Truly the end of an; era.

The Happy Partisan reports the initial action.

GrodsCorp reports the reciprocal action.

Half of me wants to watch the multimedia and the other half doesn’t.

An unfortunate photographic angle over at Bek’s Blog.

Nice, um, handbag.

Congrats to our resident gun-toting loony KG, who today entered the blogging record books for the world’s shortest retirement. Yesterday at 7.33pm the world was a burden on KG’s mighty shoulders as he solemnly announced that Crusader Ratbag would be ‘closing down’:

There are other things to do, other ways to spend my free time. A man’s days are limited and precious and a beloved wife deserves more than the time left over from blogging and cruising the net.

As predicted, the forces of restorative stupidity (ie. MK and his tender touch) went to work, assuaging KG’s petulant temper and/or massaging his bruised ego, and by 8.15am the next day normal transmission had resumed as he declared:

I’ve been talking to MK and to Gecko and the upshot is that I’ll keep going with CR and make more of an effort to stop moaning and get working harder. The knight is not yet unhorsed!

Total downtime: 12 hours and 42 minutes. We’ll all sleep more peacefully tonight, knowing he’s back on watch.

The difficulty with being a bullshit artist is that you have to be meticulous about maintaining your facade, lest you become entangled in the intricate web you yourself have spun. And what makes this task doubly difficult is the fact that chronic bullshitters inevitably begin believing their own propaganda, which makes spotting the little chinks in their story all the more tricky.

It takes something of an evil genius to make a successful career of bullshit artistry; dimwits need not apply. Which is where Leon Bertrand came unstuck last week.

Self-styled superlawyer Bertrand, whose chubby little fingerprints were all over the recent “George Athanasi” debacle, thinks himself an exemplar of the Rational Right; by his own account, a “courageous” conservative with nothing to hide:

[…]
See, right-wingers tend to post under their own names because they are not afraid of the rest of the world knowing their views. It’s probably because our views are generally respected, so we don’t feel there’s anything to hide.
Either that or we are more courageous.
[…]

So imagine my delight last week when I discovered, in the “George Athanasi” comment thread on Bankruptus Maximus’ blog of shame, the following:

Evidently, Leon — silly sausage that he is — posted a sockpuppet comment but forgot to remove his URL from the homepage field. And it’s lucky I took a screen grab of the comment, because if you pay the thread a visit now, you’ll notice that Slandy has kindly removed the homepage from his adorable little sidekick’s comment.

One can’t help but wonder what this courageous conservative hypocrite has to hide.

PS: You’ll also notice, in the same comment thread, that Bertrand has now resumed posting under the name Leon — most likely due to an email I sent him yesterday alerting him to his embarrassing blunder. In that email, I asked him to explain what he had to hide. As yet, I’ve received no response.

PPS: Hilariously, Landeryou isn’t buying my denial that my name is George. Neither is Bertrand, who ingeniously asked me to provide proof that I’m not George. It’s a good thing I have my wits about me this morning: the crafty devil almost tricked me into revealing who I really am!

The Australian blogosphere’s most unctuous bottom-feeder, Andrew Landeryou, has proved once and for all the maxim “if you sleep with imbeciles, you’ll get dribbled on”.

Acting on a tip-off from Queensland’s most pernicious™ semi-literate blogger, Iain Hall, Landeryou last week “outed” me as one George Athanasi.

Partners in grime: blogging superheroes Rapunzhall and Bankruptus Maximus

The revelation raises several questions about blogging ethics. Leaving those aside, however, the most important question it raises is this: who is George Athanasi? Because it sure as hell ain’t me.

Several weeks ago I decided to test Iain Hall’s oft-repeated claim that he’s not a malicious net-stalker by setting him up. I sent him an email from my Ant Rogenous Gmail account, but changed my name to another fictitious one: George Athanasi.

The premise of my plan was that any decent, ethical person would ignore the name at the top of the screen and content himself with responding to the body of the email. If Hall did this, it would go some way to demonstrating that he is indeed the unassuming “respected conservative commentator” he has claimed; if, however, he chose to focus primarily on my “identity” and threaten to reveal it, it would provide conclusive proof of what most people already suspected: he is full of shit.

Predictably, Hall couldn’t resist the urge to go after “George”. His response began:

George
Thank you for sending me an email and is that really your name?
[…]

The fish was nibbling at the bait; it was time to set the hook. I changed my name back to Ant Rogenous and replied:

Never mind what my name is, Iain.
[…]

Hall’s response came quickly:

George
That must be your name as you have now very hastily changed the name that appears to recipients of emails from this account.
Would you care to offer an argument that makes a case for my discretion in the matter of who you actually are?
[…]

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Two sets of correspondence ensued in which I played up my indignation, eventually making a ludicrous counter-threat that Hall predictably construed as blackmail (more on this later).

Incredibly, Hall resisted the urge to reveal George’s identity outright, publishing instead a password-protected post at his ScroteWatch blog, where he merely reproduced our correspondence alongside my photograph and fake name. The password, imaginatively enough, is “George”.

Despite Hall’s claim that “compassion stayed his hand” in deciding not to out me, he clearly shared the information of my “identity” with at least two other people: fellow wingnuts Leon Bertrand and Andrew Landeryou. The former turned up in the comment thread of the ScroteWatch post, obviously having been given the password by Hall; the latter, of course, revealed all about George on his own blog, naming “conservative Queensland blog patriot Iain Hall” as his source.

Landeryou’s post is ridiculous, even by his usually embarrassing standards. In addition to beating up the non-existent story and quoting an obviously satirical, pun-laden biographical note about Ant Rogenous from Meet the GrodsTeam, he tracked down two real people by the name of George Athanasi and published their addresses.

He owes both of these men a public apology.

As a part of his beat-up, Landeryou also wrote the following about my “blackmail” attempt on Hall:

Legal insiders tell the OC that the threat made by George Athanasi is almost certainly a breach of s.87 of the Victorian Crimes Act, which sets out the offence of blackmail and prescribes a maximum sentence of fifteen years imprisonment for offenders.

So, what was the threat? Here’s what I wrote (since Landeryou conveniently didn’t quote it, preferring instead to make a vague reference to “software privacy (sic)”):

Hi Iain
I trust that your copy of Photoshop is a registered and legally purchased version, as software piracy is a very serious offence. It’d be a terrible shame if you’d obtained the software illegally and someone from Adobe received a tip-off and began asking you some difficult questions.
The easiest way around this tricky situation you might find yourself in is to delete the “Who is Ant Rogenous” post from Scrotewatch and undertake never to refer to me as George again — publicly or privately.
[…]

It’s clearly a preposterous threat, but “blackmail”? Hardly. The section of the Victorian Crimes Act to which Landeryou links hoses down that shrill claim itself:

… a demand with menaces (”blackmail”) is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief-
(a)  that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and
(b)  that the use of the menaces is proper means of reinforcing the demand.

Since Hall was threatening to reveal, without my consent, an identity he’d gleaned from my private correspondence, any claim that my threat constitutes blackmail is laughable.

Landeryou’s “legal insiders” seem to be as daft as his source for the information about “George”. But just who are these legal heavyweights to whom he defers? The GrodsInvestigationUnit has narrowed the suspects down to two:

1. The customer-service professional at Brunswick KFC who once patiently explained why Landeryou could not legally use eight two-for-one Colonel Burger vouchers in a single transaction. It is believed that Landeryou was so impressed, he immediately entrusted this 16-year-old with his legal counsel.
2. Self-proclaimed superlawyer Leon Bertrand (pictured below).

“Goo-gah-brrrrrrrr. The prosecution rests”

So, what have the events of the past couple of weeks taught us?

First, Iain Hall is a malicious, unethical net-stalker who, in the absence of an ability to debate intelligently or in good faith, goes after the personal lives of his political opponents, and will swallow the most tenuous bit of bait — which any sane person would recognise immediately for a hoax — if he fancies it’ll give him some leverage. Brigid Gread demonstrated this some time ago with her (admittedly far more complex) sting. Already once bitten, Hall showed that he’s not intelligent enough to be twice shy.

Second, Andrew Landeryou is a miserable, odious peddler of bullshit whose inability to conduct his own research or even rely on that of credible sources gives a good insight into why his business ventures were doomed to abject failure.

In short, we’ve learned nothing we didn’t already know.

People who reside in several safe-houses
to avoid creditors shouldn’t thrown stones

Game off.

PS: Elsewhere, I note that Landeryou is threatening to reveal the identity of another blogger, Chief Bastard (CB) of Bastards Inc. Despite the fact that CB is a malicious, contemptible turd himself, I don’t condone what Landeryou claims he’s about to do. Hopefully “George Athanasi” has taught him to keep it in his pants — or, at the very least, get his facts straight if he’s intent on waving it around.

Stridently heterosexual blogger KG’s long-held fascination with phallic objects continues:

Sigh. I’m too good for some of you. One of you. That’ll be Krypto, who is lamenting the lack of activity on this blog tonight.

But it did get me wondering: what the hell are you all doing tonight? Indeed, how are you all going to spend your long weekend this weekend? Or if you come and look at this blog late on Sunday night, how did you spend your long weekend?

Myself, I’m watching the third season of Blackadder, and it’s very funny. I just love Rowan Atkinson. I’m shocked that I’ve never bothered to watch this show before.

And in about 10 minutes, I’m going to dash to the bottle shop and get another bottle of wine. I’m still sober. Too sober. IT’S A PUBLIC HOLIDAY TOMORROW! Damn. (I’ve just finished watching the episode of the French in England. Damn.)

So, go wild. Say what you like — and say something really offensive so I can delete it.

Oh and Krypto, the name Sam Newman is not allowed on this post, kthxbai.

I suppose that one advantage of being demoted from Foreign Minister to opposition backbencher is that you all of a sudden have a bunch of time on your hands. Some politicians write memoirs, some take up golf, and others start blogs.

From this week onwards I’ll be writing a blog on current issues in Mayo and beyond. You can send me an E Mail and tell me what you think as it’s important for me to get feedback.

As opposed to some other politicians’ “blogs” this one is an actual blog, in that it allows comments (although I’m not sure if they’re moderated.) The few entries so far tend to be long and thoughtful pieces on a range of topics, which is admirable regardless of one’s stance on Downer’s politics. However, as the friend who sent me a link to this blog said in her email “I can’t tell you how much joy this is bringing to my life especially as so many begin with ‘just last week I was talking to [insert former world leader].”

Here are some choice quotes from some of the posts.

Last Wednesday I caught up with an old friend, Chris Patten. He was the last British Governor of Hong Kong…

My putter is Korean. It was given to me by Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations after I cleaned him up on a splendid course in Seoul.

18 months ago I arrived at the Elysee Palace in Paris and was greeted on the front steps by President Chirac.

Over breakfast with Madeleine Albright…

This week I asked Condi Rice if she was backing a horse in this race.

I look forward to reading more of Alexander Downer’s name-dropping blog-of-showing-off.

Last week, KG — that gun-totin’ gay-hatin’ darling of the rational right — posted a typically well-reasoned response to the Daily Telegraph’s idiotic front-page story about the “gay lobby’s” push to ban teachers using words like “mum”, “dad”, “husband” and “wife” in NSW schools.

In his post’s comment thread, a tongue-in-cheek remark from yours truly (suggesting that another wingnut’s comment had made KG seem almost “moderate”) elicited this astonishing mish-mash of paranoid, bigoted and utterly retarded conspiracy theory from the blogosphere’s most likely serial-killer-to-be:

If I sound moderate, then there’s obviously a failure on my part to communicate properly.
Homosexuality is aberrant behaviour and that behaviour is entirely the business of those affected..until those people attack the traditional family structure and attempt to promote homosexuality as being somehow “normal”.
That they can do so via the schools speaks volumes about the moral standards of teacher’s unions.
That the Left is at the forefront of this disgusting social engineering speaks volumes about the moral poverty
of you lot.
Moderate? No–I’d kill leftists on sight if it were possible to do so and get away with it, as sweet revenge for the damage you’ve caused to society.

Well, he certainly showed me!

Anyway, last night’s Media Watch exposed the Daily Telegraph’s story for the shameful beat-up that it was. It’s a longish tale, but one that’s worth reading if you weren’t aware of the Tele’s appalling approach to research and journalistic ethics; or, as is far more likely, you were aware of it and simply enjoy seeing that pitiful rag cop the kicking it so thoroughly deserves.

And don’t forget to stay tuned to Crusader Rightard for KG’s admission that he got his facts woefully wrong.

If he’s even half the gentleman I think he is, his apology will be up on his blog in no time flat.

The wise Leon has created a horseshoe chart that shows what he believes is the political spectrum. Kudos on putting Hitler on the right. Most of your cronies would have put him next to Marx.

In keeping with the spirit I have created my own horseshoe chart:

Australian blogospheric icon Samuel Gordon-Stewart today announced that he has quit blogging.

I am writing this to inform you that I have decided to close this blog, mainly because I no longer have time to adequately maintain it. I have been considering this for some time and I have finally come to the conclusion that it is the right decision.

Samuel’s blog has always been an intriguing read and I will truly miss its presence in my RSS reader. I wish Samuel all the best in all that he does and thank him for sharing what have often been very personal and difficult experiences with us all.

Read all about how Samuel burst (rather unwillingly) onto the blog scene here. And watch an interview he did with GrodsCorp about his aborted tilt at Parliament in 2007.

ps/- Groupthink!