Regular readers will know that we’ve previously taken aim at two tiresome and ill-informed CiF commentators, who often appear in tandem on Dave Hill’s bus coverage, usually to tell us how brilliant Boris’s new Routemaster will be and how horrid Ken Livingstone is.
The first, ‘newsed1‘, was outed here as Hilton Holloway of Autocar, who has a vested interest, having commissioned the face-only-a-mother-could-love RMXL design from Capoco, and published the results in his own magazine.
The second, ‘kennite‘, combined a strong hatred of Livingstone with a weak grasp of figures and a tenuous grip on reality. Sounds familiar? The Tory Troll thinks so – he’s been having trouble with an anonymous commentator who keeps leaving nasty little messages on his blog, but a decent bit of textual analysis and intelligence work has led him to conclude that ‘kennite’ is, most probably, Andrew Gilligan sock-puppeting.
Now, sock-puppeting is naughty – it’s a way of bolstering your argument by pretending to be a member of the public who agrees with it. Real men rely on having persuasive arguments and the facts at their fingertips. The Bendy Jihadists prefer to skulk behind pseudonyms being rude to their opponents. This, I think, tells you a lot, although it’s par for the course on the British right, and now we know that the two most vociferous commentators on bus-related Guardian comment threads are in fact right-wing journalists in disguise, this invites legitimate questions about the others.
The fact that kennite and newsed1 are both, at least technically, journalists raises another interesting point. If Boris’s transport policy was actually cobbled together by a couple of journalists, what about the rest of his team? After all, Anthony Browne was a journalist, Boris himself still is. What does this triumph of the right-wing crony punditocracy hold for London? What is Hilton Holloway’s real motivation in getting London’s public transport policy dictated by the motoring lobby?
As for the attack on me the other day, it came the day after I posted this on Dave Hill’s latest piece. I reprint it here in the hope that it was what provoked Gilligan’s pathetic and badly researched rant:
newsed1 – aka Hilton Holloway of Autocar – stop puffing your wretched ugly RMXL design, please, it’s not going to win even if the other leaked designs are all copying it. Badly. TfL have stuffed the judging panel with enough sensible people to make a decent stab at swinging the policy back to the Dedring model of using TfL money to pump-prime hybrid development, which would be a good thing. If you’re really worried about emissions, campaign against 4×4s and in favour of trams.
I suspect Gilly and Hilly are worried about the presence of so many real men on the judging panel. Guys like Peter Hendy and David Brown like to see some evidence [PDF of Brown's bendy-myth refuting appearance in front of the Transport Committee] before forming a policy. The Bendy Jihad (and Boris Johnson) prefer to fix the evidence around the policy. You’d have thought that Andrew Gilligan of all people would understand the problems inherent in that approach.
Update – Dave Hill is now covering the original story. I’ll be very interested to see if Hilly’n'Gilly make an appearance in the comments…
Update 2 – Anton Vowl weighs in. His opinion of Gilligan renders him, as usual, NSFW.
Update 3 – Adam has unearthed statistics apparently showing that someone repeatedly visits his site using the keywords ‘andrew gilligan’, coming from Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Evening Standard. Fancy that.
- Tim Ireland, who’s waged a long campaign for better ethical behaviour on blogs and the internet in general, unsurprisingly isn’t impressed with Gilligan. Tim happens to have been instrumental in setting up Boris’s blog, and knows him well. So, if Boris wants some lessons in netiquette and generally being a decent chap when out on the internet, may I suggest talking to Tim rather than Andrew? Who knows, with Tim advising on how best to treat sockpuppets and similar cads and David Brown and Peter Hendy doing the buses, Boris may yet make a decent fist of things. See what happens when you just say no to the Policy Exchange brigade?
Update 4 – Following Mr. Gilligan’s excellent example and searching for stories about him, I find Slugger O’Toole and Lib Dem Voice have it covered, while the Political Animal notes that Boris is diverging from Gilligan’s world-view on the subject of Westfield (which, since I live near it, I’m glad to report hasn’t led to gridlock, as Boris’s well-nourished friend Coun. Stephen Greenhalgh thought it would).
8 responses so far ↓
An excellent link to the Transport Committee transcript – David Brown is absolutely the right person to judge whether bus designs are suitable for London.
It’s interesting how Gilligan (and others) start with the assumption that bendy buses are obviously bad and that everybody hates them, and then go on to suggest that people who ask questions about this issue are defending the indefensible. There was, for example, someone posting on Liberal Conspiracy accusing Val Shawcross of being an idiot for asking questions about the accident rate and for then saying that Boris had prejudged the issue (which clearly he had). He then seemed to be suggesting that people like Shawcross were getting obsessive about the shape of buses.
I think that it is absolutely right for Shawcross to ask questions about this issue: that is the job of an Assembly Member. And we need to defend the principle of taking decisions on the basis of the best available data and not a priori assumptions. I’m fairly certain that there will be more attacks from various people (real or imaginary) accusing questioners of being obsessed or defending the indefensible, but my experience of other issues (such as Weapons of Masss Destruction) leads me to think that it is because they don’t particularly want to look at the facts or even take decisions based on hard data.
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Hello.
The Autocar/Capoco design – despite the suggest given by the Evening Standard – has not been entered for the competition.
Capoco boss Alan Ponsford has entered what he told me was a ‘very detailed proposal’ but I haven’t seen it.
Nor have I seen Boris. Or even talked to him. Or anybody who knows him. Met him once, last November to show him the Autocar Routemaster. Shorter than I expected (Boris, not the bus) and very cautious.
‘I’m not committing myself to anything, here, I am,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see heads about billions being spent.’
I’m delighted that the old warriors like David Brown (with whom I sparred on the letters pages of The Times last Christmas) and Hendy on the competition committee.
‘Cos if these old Leninites give it the thumbs up, you lot will have to fall into line.
Won’t you?
PS – I’ve given my considered reasons for the pushing the Autocar design on Dave Hill’s blog.
From The Guardian 21/10 “There are two more big-name entries for the competition that have not so far been leaked to the press….and at least one is far better looking than all seen so far.” – Is this not the Capoco one Newsed1.
Is a Hydrogen power plant the way forward in the near future. No infrastructure to produce and distribute large quantities of Hydrogen?
Sort of stumbled on to this site and felt i had to say that i hate bendy buses (everyone but Ken Livingstone and his out of work cronies seems to). Come on just admit that they suck. You lot seem to be looking for conspiracies when the truth is Londoners hate them.
I should clarify a coupole of points:
I produced the blog at boris-johnson.com and – as with Tom Watson’s blog – moved to a hands-off position once a working machine and admin team had been established. These days, I only ever turn up in that part of the world if there’s a crisis. That endorsement, though approved for publication by Boris, was drafted by the lovely Melissa. Saying that I know Boris ‘well’ is a stretch.
Now that’s out of the way; if Andrew Gilligan has been taking lessons in online etiquette from the wonks at Policy Exchange, he is taking advice from the wrong people (I’ve traced at least one sock-puppet back to that organisation). But, now we’ve enjoyed the input of David Boothroyd , this appears to be a bad habit going back decades for A.G.
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