I had to issue a rare ban within the past few days when someone referred to Iain Dale as “some poof (who) inflates his readership figures”. Without this, the contributer may have escaped a ban, even when calling me “a mongish type” and “a bit of a spaz”.

Paul Staines recently laughed off a posts by Sunny and myself about his use of the word ‘chinky’ to describe Chinese food, but it’s clear that its use is far from a laughing/piffling matter when you take into account his publication of comments describing China as “the chink dictatorship” and Sun Tzu as “the Chink who wrote ‘The Art of War’”

Aye. Learn from Sir Stephen of Fry ::

Let it be established here, this day, that no one, on pain of being designated fifty types of watery twat, ever dare repeat that feeble, ignorant, self-satisfied canard ever ever again.

Now that is how you swear.

Um, to prove we are better than them, progressive and liberal in outlook, and hence tolerant with regard to folk expressing an opinion. Don’t have to resort to their intolerant depths of banning: reasoned demolition of their arguments, ridicule (but NOT abuse) and withering contempt (but again not abuse, no ad hominems etc) do the trick.

“I don’t see why we should put up with them.”

Because we’re *better* than they are ))

And we know it… )

Which is probably why I am so hostile to Conservative trolls. The Right wing blogs are non to tolerant of opposing views, so I don’t see why we should put up with them.

I think we have a bit of cognitive dissonance to work through here – the Kardinal appears to be suggesting that New Labour is somehow either socialist or social democratic in its approach to the economy, which I suspect explain why no one manage to follow his argument.

I thought this was a really good post actually it has that precious quality of brevity which some might learn from and by ‘some’ I mean ‘Unity ‘. I was reading his latest into the wee hours the other night and Finnegan`s Wake popped into my head .

To be fair to Unity, some of the things he talks about aren’t done justice to by short pieces – if you want short, unqualified opinion pieces, buy a newspaper. I read Unity’s work because he is saying why he has a particular opinion, backing it up with research, not simply that he has a particular opinion.

Au contraire I like this site and I enjoy the articles and comments which are often tremendously well researched ~ newmania

We’ll take that, tentatively, as a compliment. Thank you.

Actually, on a good day, I’d say YOU are an asset to the site. I like having Tories around to question things. I just get pissed off when they start telling us how we should run the blog or question our liberal credentials (we’re openly a mix of liberals and lefties – not always the same thing. The name of the site was intended to be slightly tongue in cheek).

If the editors decide to ban anyone – it’s a very simple process, and very gratifying.

You should try surfing blogs in the US, where banning trolls is considered good housekeeping – especially on GOP blogs, where liberals are not tolerated. I know, I regularly get banned.

People seem to have got a strange interpretation of what liberalism and free-speech mean.

You can practice free-speech any time you want, by getting your own blog.

Firstly, that’s just Sally for you, ignore her/him/them.

Secondly, you criticised the poster for simply correcting someone’s figures and *then* took that to mean that they were defending some kind of policy that their posting never even slightly suggested….you flew over the top given the source material here, if you wanted to have a debate about British economic policy then just say so, don’t go on the offensive so early

“God and the British cal it Democracy!”

I don’t know how many of us really call what we’ve got a democracy…

“Yet the UK economy is in the most dire state ever.”

And why do you feel that is? If you want to talk about it let’s get your more informed and fleshed out view and go from there.

What I find extraordinary is the LACK OF CONFRONTING THE ISSUES IN THE UK BLOGOSPHERE.

I criticise the incumbant UK government and therefore the smokecreen, defensive, no-arguement
retort is thrown at me that I am a Tory.

Yet the UK economy is in the most dire state ever. I do not ceebrate that fact! I abhor it! But please think. It cannot be that difficult to ask people to think! The Labour Party has cremated the UK.
God and the British cal it Democracy!
So let’s go: to save you time replying here’s your criticsim-:

OK Birkutzki you would say that becaus you are a right-wing Tory and blah,blah,blah.. the Labour Party will rule for everyone and in eleven years will have solved child poverty( just past a law you know) but what if the Tories blah blah…it would have been worse blah!

I am sure nice Mr. Hundal was not thinking of anything so intolerant

Which is exactly what you trolls want to do achieve

Shit everywhere, then get banned , so you can then claim……… “not very liberal are you.”

That is what I have been trying to say Sunny. Most of these people are not interested in coming here and debating. They just drive by and shit everywhere.

Exibit a…..
.
Kardinal Birkutzki “Good God, you get everywhere! And it’s the same one-eyed nonsense! Apparently you’ve found
an error! So that’s alright then: argument over, eleven years of social-democratic nirvana and an economy even more busted than last time (O.K. come out with some figures proving the opposite but let’s just wait and see, heh?) and you have the gall to have a pop at the Tories.

Socialism = dogma = inability to be open-minded.”
Your problem is greater however: IQ too high; CQ (common sense quotient) too low”

That is not debate, it is just smarmy, smug Tory bollocks. But I take on board your warning to me, and I am glad you are going to take action against the trolls.

Nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clapp can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization. (Ezra Pound )

I mean this kindly

Funny, I didn’t see an overwhelming show of support for the Labour economic policy in Chris’s post, only the explanation of how someone got their figures wrong. Some people can see anything in nothing, obviously!

(Psst! His name is ‘Paul’ and not ‘Guido’. He has enough problems with his persona-related fantasies as it is. Please, for Paul’s sake, call him ‘Paul’.)

Or, you could just ignore the fact that you don’t know how GDP growth is measured and resort to tantrums.

Eh? Eh? ohhh.

Other than ‘replace the government with US’, I haven’t seen any actual realistic policy from Tories on the current economic situation. Oh, I forgot ‘turn back time and replace the government of 1997-2008 with US, with the benefit of hindsight’.