The Telegraph isn’t the villain in this – it’s the scumbag who thought they’d use the deaths of 96 people to score a cheap point.

Incidentally, I was at school with Matthew Moore, and he certainly wasn’t a nasty scary Tory back then. Plus I thought he was a foreign correspondent – the Telegraph (owned by two rich pseudo-foreigners) must be cutting back…

@ Justin

Wasn’t it the Sun that used the deaths of 96 people to score a cheap point?

I don’t really understand what the problem is. Were the people receiving the emails not adults? Otherwise I really can’t see how this constitutes harassment or why they should object to being sent an email. It doesn’t really strike me as a clever right-wing stunt, aimed to trick the receivers; it seems more like a journalist trying to find out who bought the ads. It’s the sort of thing journalists do I’d always thought.

“harassed”?

All seems a bit strange. I’d have placed that ad, no problem. The Sun was wrong on Hillsborough, is wrong on Labour and on just about everything else – whether it’s immigration, trades unions – even the hallowed sport section is usually made up guff.

This is not harrassment.

Dave Semple, surely the point is that *nobody* should be invoking Hillsborough in *either* direction. It’s just too serious in Liverpool. Although I’d blame that trade union boss for trying to make the link first more than the google ads person.

Not sure what the problem was with the ad. Don’t know why the Telegraph journalist feels the act would be “instantly regretted”.

Go to Liverpool and the wholly correct seething hatred of the rag is palpable.

So the ad was not wrong.
.
And people ought to remember what a vicious waste of bog roll the Sun was, and, as with the Glen Jenvey affair, still is.

The Tory graph should mind their own business.

Although I’d blame that trade union boss for trying to make the link first more than the google ads person.

Woodley’s from Liverpool.

Although I’d blame that trade union boss for trying to make the link first more than the google ads person.

Oh right… shame on Liverpudlians (or anyone else) for raising that issue again!

I know he is. That was my point. He of all people should know that it’s an emotive subject up there, why drag it into politicking?

The Sun was wrong about Hillsborough, that is fact.

Which is why vermin McKenzie went on radio in Liverpool to apologise.

Of course the slug has since retracted his apology since he no longer edits the comic.

#13 At the risk of Godwinning myself, that’s like saying no-one should ever remind people that the Daily Mail supported Hitler in the 30s, because the holocaust is an emotive subject.

Look, imagine you were a Tory scouser (there must be three or four of them), or even an apolitical scouser who was just fed up with this bloody awful government. Wouldn’t it stick in your caw to see people trying to turn Hillsborough into a piece of political messaging? Using it as an emotive button to try and make you think a certain way? Worst of all, if they were from Liverpool themselves and did that? I’d be bloody furious.

Which is why you’re a lib dem and we’re not.

There are pretty clear political lessons to be drawn from Hillsborough and pretty much the rest of the history of the Sun. It is not to be trusted – on that or on anything, especially when it turns everything but everything, every tragedy, into the political messaging you so affect to despise. It is certainly not to be trusted in what it says of Labour.

And that is true whether someone wishes to calumniate the Labour Party from now until the end of days or whether someone supports the Labour Party.

I don’t see a problem with the advert.

I also don’t see a problem with The Telegraph trying to find out who placed it.

This is a total non – story.

I suspect that the final sentence was the important one:

It basically reads: Don’t have a go at poor, defenseless women or Labour Party activists. Needs a big strong man to do that.

Women have got Harridan Harpyperson to stand up for them (God knows why they would want that.,.) and Labour Activists can try the anatomically impossible.

“…especially when it [the Sun] turns everything but everything, every tragedy, into the political messaging”

I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me that the person who used the Sun as a prop on the Labour conference stage and the person who place the google ads wasn’t trying to turn a tragedy into political messaging? How come turning a tragedy into political messaging is ok when the Labour party does it but not ok when the Sun does it?

I don’t really see the problem. The Sun utterly disgraced itself over Hillsborough. If someone wants to point out that the Sun is a worthless, untrustworthy rag (a perfectly legitimate thing to do), it seems bizarre to say that they shouldn’t use the most glaring example of its worthless untrustworthiness of recent times.

I don’t think that those falsely accused by the Sun at Hillsborough would have a problem with anyone pointing out that the sun is often a little, erm, inaccurate.

Ah, now we’re coming to the nub of it. If the Sun is an untrustworthy rag (which it is), why wasn’t it an untrustworthy rag 1997-2009? Why now the Google Ads, the outrage-on-stage? Unless, of course, they are politically motivated.

Well that’s the point, isn’t it! When Murdoch and his papers, the Sun and the Times (lets not forget that one), were supportive of Labour all was well. Cosy chats and briefings to make sure the message, as opposed to the truth, got out. Now that the wheels have well and truly come off the Nu Labour project (not that I believe they were ever actually on) Murdoch has dropped his support and Labour doesn’t like it.

Well HA! Hahahahaha!

Forgive the laughter, I know it’s cruel and wrong to mock the afflicted but Labour really have brought this on themselves. Can’t blame the Tories for this one, not that won’t stop them trying!

Just to clarify my position…

why wasn’t it an untrustworthy rag 1997-2009

It was! Of course the current Labour attacks are politically motivated. But unless you think that all political campaigning is disgraceful, that doesn’t make them wrong.

As far as I am concerned they are simply drawing attention to an indisputable and pertinent fact. If the Lib Dems or whoever had spent the last 12 years ripping up the Sun on stage I’d have applauded that too.

Alix, you’re being profoundly simple if you’re seriously suggesting that the majority of Labour members thought the Sun was fine so long as it backed us. As the blogosphere should stand testament, there are dozens of blogs – by Labour members and the further Left – which take great delight in tearing apart the Sun for some of its greatest lies. Some of us have been of this opinion since we were old enough to read it and understand what it says.

Not to mention that many if not most Labourites with any sort of historical understanding remember Wapping, remember the reporting of the Miners’ Strike and all the rest of it.

So this idea that somehow this is partisan and that people are only reacting against the Sun because it doesn’t support Labour is ridiculous. It may be true of the Labour leadership but not of Labour as a Party. And the people you’re debating with on this thread – potentially even the person who placed the ad – are not the Labour leadership. They’re grassroots members.

And the people you’re debating with on this thread – potentially even the person who placed the ad – are not the Labour leadership. They’re grassroots members.

I’m not. The only horse I’ve got in this race is a deep distaste for the Sun and the Murdoch empire, and the enjoyment I get from seeing them get a good kicking. As long as its for legitimate reasons, which it usually is, I don’t really care by whom.

. If the Sun is an untrustworthy rag (which it is), why wasn’t it an untrustworthy rag 1997-2009?

Alix do you really want me to point out how many left-leaning blogs there are out there criticising The Sun on a regular basis?
If you think we hold a candle for that newspaper you really are deluded I’m afraid.

So, let me get this straight. I am now simple and deluded for suggesting that it struck me as pretty distasteful to try and make political capital out of a tragedy. As the guy onstage at conference did, and as the person who placed the Google ads did. Of course, I’ll happily believe plenty of Labour activists have been hating the Sun for the duration. But so far as I know, no-one has torn up a Sun during a Labour conference, and no-one has placed a Google Ad having a go at the Sun over Hillsborough during that time.

But yeah, sorry, I’ll keep my reactions to myself in future, shall I?

Actually, you know what? I think maybe I will keep my reactions to myself in future. A little while ago I started to get the impression that this site was turning into a reason-free hate rag, and I admit it’s sort of hard not to start seeing it everywhere once you’ve noticed it to begin with. That Andrew Marr thread from the other day that Don P had to clear out with a shovel? That was just the pits. Everybody who disagreed with Sunny was a fuckwit or similar. I suppose I should be grateful that I only elicited “simple” and “delusional” this time.

Maybe this is the new American online campaigning model everyone is talking about. Oh well. I guess I’ll just leave you to it.

I am now simple and deluded for suggesting that it struck me as pretty distasteful to try and make political capital out of a tragedy.

No, I said you were deluded for saying and thinking that just because the Sun supported the Labour party in 1997 and until recently (apparently) that somehow the left was ok with that.

First you make baseless accusations, and when called out on it you’re trying to make out I criticised you for something else. As for whether Woodley has the right to tear up a copy of the Sun on stage – that’s up to him and I haven’t made any judgements about it. Though I think its a hateful rag and would do the same anyway.

Alix, you are an immensely perceptive and sophisticated writer, but in this particular instance I think you’re wrong.

to try and make political capital out of a tragedy

I don’t see it this way. They’re not really *making* political capital, they’re trying to counteract the large political capital held by the Sun, by reminding people that it is profoundly undeserving of the status it has. This seems legit to me, as it would have been if anyone else had done it over the last 12 years.

@29 Alix, yeah it’s probably better if you do keep such comments as you’ve been making here to yourself – after all, if you actually engage with what we said you might get some “reason-free hate” on you.

I second what Sunny said. I might also point out that, if you genuinely believe that plenty of Labour activists have hated the Sun for the duration, what’s your point?

The Sun chose to make Labour the subject of a story; it is entirely legitimate for Labour to cast up the history of the Sun to correct matters.

If tomorrow a boatload of immigrants died on the way to the UK, and the Sun printed a headline “Sucks to be you” or “Gotcha” or something similarly triumphalistic, would we be equally wrong to call them out on it? And if we can call them out on it, isn’t there grounds for believing and pointing out that if the Sun can be so utterly regardless for, y’know, truth, lives or basic humanity, it can show similar disdain when it opportunistically lambasts a political party?

One that, contra the rest of the Murdoch empire, is composed of people who actually give a stuff whether we have universal socialized medicine.

In a nutshell, that’s the point being made by the ad – and it’s bang on target.

And just to clarify my point Alix, because no doubt several people will try and misrepresent me as they do, my contention is not about who is making political capital out of this and whether they are allowed. That is a matter for debate – some people agree, others don’t.

The problem is that you see all of this in strict party-political terms, so anything the unions do or lefties do to attack the Sun must clearly be to support the Labour govt.

In case you’re not aware, there’s an a Sun Lies blog run by several people who contribute here.

So my problem is with this: If the Sun is an untrustworthy rag (which it is), why wasn’t it an untrustworthy rag 1997-2009? – the implication that we all liked the Sun before it turned against Brown.
I shouldn’t have used the word ‘delusion’ – that was a bit harsh. I’m breaking my own rules.