Congratulations… you’re finally a star.

I just dropped by this thread to say ‘hi’ and make a note that I’ve just now finished the task of grabbing 350+ screen captures, each of which will form part of a special 14-second sequence in a new animation that will be with you shortly.

All major threads external to Bloggerheads involving the recent Gilligan sock-puppetry saga to date have been preserved in this way (mostly conversations/reports where he turns up under his own name, plus two crucial threads from 2007). No matter what happens to these websites in the future, the relevant bloggage will be locked up inside the upcoming animation like a little time capsule.

This comment will appear as the final comment in that series of frames.

[Hello, future freeze-framers! ]

Pretty neat, huh?

)

Having worked for John Sweeney for several months, I can’t imagine my swearing topped his… Although saying that, I know half the floor of Current Affairs dept didn’t like my oikey Essex accent sullying their Oxbridge hollerings.

As for the small number of bloggers being the only people concerned?

Er, no. I’m concerned. I’m not a blogger. I’m not from London. If I post on a blogsite – which I do – I like to think I have the bottle and brass to put my own full name. Maybe it’s just something I was taught by my old-style news editor who would batter me senseless with tirades about ethics and honesty and the like.

It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to have concerns about a journo who is able to take apart someone like Ken and his administration so effectively, but then – it would appear – is caught in bed with the person who replaced them. Admittedly, the Standard will shy away from ever criticising Boris, but – one the grounds you’re the kind of reporter who likes to illuminate important issues – shouldn’t you treat BoJo the same as any other politico? Or are you just another Finegold and “only doing my job”? *click heels and salutes*

Additionally by constantly sniping at any of Bojo’s critics (but not using your birthname to do it) and then switching to using it, with dubious excuses for the person who did use your words but not your name – well. It doesn’t look good, does it? It looks tawdry, cheap and rather seedy. Soho on a bad day, in fact.

My concern is, simply, that you’re not being honest with us.

So, tell me about Kennite.

Sorry. Forgot myself there Andrew.

Oi, Cunt, tell me about Kennite.

There. That’s better, yes?

At first, I thought Tim had gone too far then since Andrew appears to have denied the charges of sockpuppetry above in comment 30. Then I re-read the denial…

^^^ This. ^^^

I went to bed early last night, woke up, saw this and immediately thought that I’d wasted 200 sheets of A4… until I actually read the ‘denial’.

Gilligan still has a case to answer, and this latest ‘denial’ only puts him deeper in a hole of his own creation.

Then I re-read the denial and so, for the benefit of those who were taken in by the it like I was, here’s what’s wrong with it.

1. It’s specifically in response to the question asked by Carl Eve in comment 29. Carl’s comment is probably the only one here that asks about sockpuppetry without using the specific wording about leaving comments while pretending to be a third person. Isn’t it odd that out of all the times the question has been asked in this thread, Gilligan only chooses to answer the one that doesn’t specifically mention pretendiing to be a third person in a discussion?

2. The denial includes the words “as I’ve done any number of times before”. Of course, Andrew Gilligan has never denied posting comments while pretending to be a third person before. He’s only denied being ‘Kennite’ – not leaving comments under Kennite’s name, or any other name.

I was going to reword the question – you know, the one about pretending to be a third person – as a denial for Gilligan to save time by cutting and pasting so we can all just stop, but sod it.

Now that hundreds of Andrew’s colleagues know about this, perhaps he might finally take the matter seriously.

If not… well, let’s see.

Over to you, Andrew.

As a fellow journalist, albeit of a much more lowly variety, I must admit I’m intrigued about your writing methods.

Please explain: do you write a column and then leave it lying around before publication so that your partner, Kennite, can integrate key parts of it into random blogs?

Or do you so admire Kennite’s blog comments that you then cut and paste them into your own Evening Standard columns? (Clipboard journalism, you could call it!)

Does Kennite contribute a lot to your articles? You certainly appear to share a distinctive style judging by your published work. In the absence of any shared byline, does Kennite at least get paid for their contributions?

One suggestion: perhaps Kennite could learn shorthand? It might save you both further embarrassment next time you interview a key source.

“What does it say about you that you’ve spent literally weeks, and filed dozens of posts, in one or two bloggers’ cases almost their entire output in that time, on something which, even if it were true, is of so little importance?”

Well, it says that we wanted the answer to a question. You have now finally (I think) answered it. It is for others to look at the evidence and to judge whether you are being honest. Honesty, I hope you will agree, is important for a journalist, especially one whose honesty has been so publicly tested in the past.

You have now denied leaving comments about yourself in the third person. From the evidence I have compiled, I believe that to be dishonest, but for whatever reason you’re sticking to it. Whether or not you are dishonest may be of little importance to you, but it does make it much less likely that I will believe anything you write in the future, especially when it comes from unnamed persons and from unlinked sources.

“What would an ordinary member of the public (you know, the kind whose votes you lost in droves last May) think of how you folks choose to spend your lives?”

Not being either a politician or a member of a political party, I won’t lose too much sleep over it. I will however, look back fondly at a time when one of Britain’s most revered and reviled public figures spent two weeks flailing about, making himself look a complete and utter twerp. Thanks for that Andy.

Yes, I deny it, as I’ve done any number of times before.

No, you haven’t. And this latest ‘denial’ of your collapses under the weight of the following:

How come almost everyone attacking me for allegedly writing under an alias themselves writes under an alias?

Perhaps Mr Gilligan would also care to deny accusations of kidnapping on the basis that people pick their children up from school every day.

(Perhaps Mr Gilligan would also care to fly off the handle and suggest that I’m accusing him of kidnapping now.)

I’ll have more on Gilligan soon, BTW. I’ve been a busy boy this morning…

Ben

Bait and switch – we’re not attacking your for writing under an alias, we’re asking you to explain your sockpuppeting antics. Sockpuppeting is *not* ‘writing under an alias’ but the deliberate attempt to skew debate by pretending there’s support for your position that isn’t actually there outside your own head, either using anonymity or undeclared aliases.

Of course, the only one of us whose name is not in the public domain is 5cc; Dave, Tim, Justin, Adam, Sunny, BenSix and myself are all well known under our real names and any other names we use are easily connected – try clicking on Input or Bloggerheads on CiF. Dave, Sunny, Adam and Justin have all written for CiF under their real names. Clue time : using your real name or *an alias everyone knows or can work out easily* is *not* sockpuppeting, otherwise ‘Mayor BoJo’ is a sockpuppet (real name : ‘Alexander Johnson’), so, it occurs to me, is the Queen and so are ‘Tom’ and ‘Andy’, since our real names are Thomas and Andrew. Got that?

On the other hand, ‘kennite’, your partner, is an undeclared alias – ‘his’ profile does *not* contain his real name, neither can we work it out easily. ‘kennite’, I remember, attacked me on a couple of occasions (such as when I suggested that Peter Hendy was worth his salary, something that Boris Johnson apparently agrees with me on). I’m sorry to say this puts ‘kennite’ in the same category of nasty alias-using attackers that you seem to disapprove of, quite apart from all the plagiarism flying about – you nicked some of his stuff for your column, remember? The ‘certain mad nobility’ gag?

However, we can put this right – can you, following in the spirit of openness as I’ve demonstrated above, get ‘kennite’ to put his real name on his profile? Otherwise it does look rather hypocritical, don’t you think, if your ‘partner’, to whom you’re evidently very close, goes around failing to live up to your own high standards? Of course, It would also answer all those tiresome questions about sockpuppeting, which I’m afraid aren’t going to go away otherwise.

While we’re at it on standards, can you apologise to Alex Harrowell for falsely attributing an observation of his to myself in your hilariously misquoted Standard piece? He was quite a fan of yours back in the Iraq days, but now? Not so much. This is a common pattern I’m seeing.

[As for what ordinary members of the public think, 'knobhead' was one opinion expressed by people I've shown these threads to, and they weren't talking about Dave Hill. Another reaction read : 'The question I often ask myself is how did the Today Programme ever end up thinking Gilligan was a good enough journalist?'. My Mum criticised your English, but then again she actually finished her Cambridge degree.]

“Since I sense that even some of you are getting weary of this topic, let me ask you all a more interesting question before we finish: why are you so het up?”

Don’t come over all amateur psychologist, Andrew, it’s dreadfully boring.

Tthe whole sockpuppet saga (sockpuppeting is different from using a pseudonym as it’s using a pseudonym deceitfully) would have been little more than a blip on the blogipeligo* had you given a straight answer at the time. As it is, you merrily smeared our website (thanks again), Dave Hill and Andrew Ross before finally setting out your position. Presumably you enjoyed the attention.

And, no, we’re not trying to discredit you or your work. I don’t know much about the David Kelly affair, but admire your bravery in taking on Blair, Campbell and other putrid specimens (and very much hope that the public awareness it stoked will lead, sometime, to an inquiry). Similarly, I don’t know a lot about the Livingstone administration, but then he’s not my “hero”, I’m not on his “left” and I couldn’t have voted for him if I’d wanted to.

So, my interest in this affair has precisely nothing to do with your character or previous work, it comes from a) your preference for blowing raspberries at Ken, and us, rather than, y’know, doing your job and scrutinising the Mayor and b) your unwillingness to answer simple questions. Those two minor curiosities aside you may disappointed to know just how little you intrude upon my thoughts.

But, thanks for finally giving an answer (yes, that’s the first one you’ve given), and I for one shall take it in good faith and assume that you have a great deal in common with your “partner”, plagiarise from blog comments and have rather devoted fans – from the Associated Press, natch – that track mentions of you on technorati.

Regards n’ all,

Ben

* Or Nerdistan, whichever.

Because – and I hope you’ll forgive me as an ordinary member of the public for having the temerity to enter into discussion with an “award-winning journalist” – there are old-fashioned concepts of honesty and transparency that still matter to some. You describe yourself – I paraphrase, I hope not too unfairly – as a fearless seeker after truth. Can you not see just the tiniest hint of a possibility of a suggestion of inconsistency in the fact that you have to ask why sock-puppeting is a big deal?

We need sunlight shining in; we need a variety of avenues to expose the corruption and lies that seem rooted in our political and business practices, and these might be blogs or they might be traditional journalists. I know there is tension between the two camps, but they are not inevitably opposed. I realise you probably don’t have much time, literal or metaphorical, for blogs, but that hasn’t stopped many media companies imitating the format.

There was a time when bloggers understood that assertions must be well-founded, mistakes acknowledged and corrected transparently, and disagreement between bloggers conducted civilly. Motes and beams, and all that. I assume there was once a time when journalists understood that also, but I have to say the fact you have to ask your question makes me wonder. What were you thinking about as you waited to discover if you’d got a Paul Foot award?

It’s not your style of journalism that people here find objectionable, it’s your refusal to respond to the substantive points of Dave’s rebuttal of your allegations with anything other than an increasingly tiresome repetition of same allegations, for which your have yet to provide any supporting evidence.

Putting the sock-puppeting thing to one side for the time being, please consider this to be an invitation to you to either put up, and provide the evidence which supports your allegations regarding Dave’s articles, or shut up.

That’s really all that needs to be said here.

What a sad collection LC is turning out to be. Why do the majority of commenters on LC believe that attacking the reputation of one man serves any useful purpose? Why do you seek to hide the comments of those who laugh at your nonsense?

Liberal: sometimes. Conspiracy: definitely.

Are you sure you didn’t lose your job for your inability to stop swearing? Yes, I deny it, as I’ve done any number of times before.

Since I sense that even some of you are getting weary of this topic, let me ask you all a more interesting question before we finish: why are you so het up? What does it say about you that you’ve spent literally weeks, and filed dozens of posts, in one or two bloggers’ cases almost their entire output in that time, on something which, even if it were true, is of so little importance? How come almost everyone attacking me for allegedly writing under an alias themselves writes under an alias? What would an ordinary member of the public (you know, the kind whose votes you lost in droves last May) think of how you folks choose to spend your lives?

You may prefer the safety of Dave Hill-style press-release journalism, and dislike the kind of journalism I do. Lots of people dislike it, particularly those on the receiving end. (That, Carl, accounts for more of what happened to Greg Dyke than any failings of mine, as Greg would happily tell you if you asked him.) But my kind of reporting does at least try to address, and I would argue has successfully illuminated, important subjects – the truth of the case for war on Iraq, the probity of the former Mayor’s administration – involving hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of pounds of public money. It has had some real effect on the politics of London and the country, as your anathaemas, a kind of tribute, implicitly recognise; it has also been recognised by the profession as a whole.

The saga of the alleged sockpuppeting, by contrast, successfully illuminates nothing more than a small minority of bloggers’ claustrophobic self-obsession and lack of proportion.

I ask this as someone who probably sat in a seat you graced at Radio 5 Live Report, near to Bill and Lynne, in White City, just around the corner from Noelle… Remember? It was just after you got bumped off the Today programme and were put somewhere for a kind of gardening-not-gardening leave after the Kelly issue.

I also ask this as one of the poor fuckers who lost his much-loved and hard-fought-for job at current affairs when Dyke left, Thomspson arrived and started cutting the living shit out of the Beeb thanks to your appalling inability to learn shorthand and keep proper, clear and concise notes about which prick sexed up the Iraq dossier.

I also ask this as a bone fide, qualified, common-brand regional reporter, not a blogger with a particular axe, scythe, sword or butter knife to grind.

Please, for the sake of the children – answer the bleeding question about the sock puppertry, eh?

There you go, there’s your question.

Please, just piss away all the anit-Ken, anit-Boris “I’ve never written something that isn’t true about X, Y and Z” shite and just bleeding answer it love. I’m sure that’s not beneath you, even if you are at the Standard.

How’s that, clear enough? To the point? Concise? I don’t even want a press release, just an answer will be nice, ta.

If needs be, knowing your skills for a bit of digging, you could even dig out my work email and send me your answer… I’ll forward it on if you’re too shy yourself.

Cheers

Now, where we were we? Oh yes…

1) Will you withdraw and apologise for your false allegation that a Guardian article I wrote about the cost of Boris’s New Routemaster was “taken from Ken Livingstone press releases”? (Actually, don’t bother – everyone knows you’ve been found out on that one).

2) Do you deny leaving comments underneath your own articles and articles about you, whilst pretending to be a third person?

3) Where’s Kennite these days? Have you split up? Does Veronica know about this mysterious individual yet?

Oh look. This is silly. Just back down quietly and I’ll say no more about it. Can’t speak for anyone else, mind.

By the way, everyone, I’ve just posted an entire Boris Johnson speech on my Guardian blog. Shall I tell you why? Because readers might find it interesting and because they might not be able to read it anywhere else. One of the joys of a blog is that it gives you the luxury of unlimited space for such things. (Some little clues for you there, Andrew).

Is Mr. Gilligan suggesting that posting links to material (something we in academia have come to call: “providing references”) is equivalent to “cutting and pasting other people’s work”. That appears to be the substance of the claim made here.

I haven’t been following what is obviously an ongoing discussion / argument, but if that’s what is being claimed by Mr. Gilligan… well, frankly it beggars belief. And it makes me wonder just how much research he puts into his own work if he finds the concept of linking to (or, if not online, referencing) source material so alien.

I’m willing to waive this one in return for a convincing explanation backed with verifiable evidence of all the apparent sockpuppeting. Apart from anything else my Mum’s thrilled that I’m in the paper – she normally only gets occasional letters published in the Independent, so you can see why she’s pleased. Mind you, since one of her best mates is the mother of one of the guys behind Jerry Springer: The Opera you can see that our family’s got some catching up to do when it comes to public shitstorms.

Fair deal, Andy?

I know there isn’t usually, but is there any chance of you actually responding to the original post this time Andrew. There’s only so many times you can scream ‘KEN LOVER’ or ‘LEE JASPER’ at anyone who dares criticise you.

Not so much as hint of shame, either.