Boris Watch

I bet they don’t print this comment on the Evening Standard’s website, either:

Another classy article from Mr. Gilligan there.  Since he’s using his privileged position to attack me again (but without the good manners to name me or the site he refers to), may I be permitted a reply?  Good.

1) Mr. Gilligan’s famed investigative powers extended, on the 27th October, to a brief reading of the bus tender documents on the TfL website, which amazingly he actually managed to misread in order to bolster his weak case.  A more rigorous analysis by me found that they demonstrated the opposite of his case – in particular by his logic, 2-crew Routemasters cost more than bendy buses for the same route.
2) In the same article he merged a quote from *someone else* with a comment from me and ran them together as if I’d said them as part of a continuous statement.
3) We’ve still had no explanation of the origin of various pseudonymous or anonymous comments, left on various websites, that closely match Mr. Gilligan’s public journalism in content, style and obsession.
4) ‘media’ is a plural.

With quality like that, no wonder some of us aren’t particularly willing to be lectured to by the Great Man, who on current form has a great deal to learn about the ‘new media’ he disparages.  I’d rather buy a car from Arthur Daley.

This one snuck through, however.  OK, who’s been having a laugh?

Andrew, as always, you are right about everything. Since you and Boris started setting the agenda, everything is so much better in London.

- Kennite, London

Nice one.  So, if you generously decide to contribute to the cleaning up of public discourse by putting Mr. Gilligan right, but the Standard’s moderators see fit to spare his delicate feelings by binning your comment, feel free to append it here.  Here are two examples of what tends not to see the light of day:

“While it is fair to say that blogs take some stories from other news sources, they at least have the courtesy to provide a credit and a link. This is not something which can always be said about newspapers including your own.

“Also the story about potential cuts in police numbers was first broken by a blog. My blog. London blogs are not perfect by any means but they have at least tried to hold Boris Johnson to account.

“Some journalists at the Evening Standard have also tried to do so. You, on the other hand are stuck on scrutinising the last mayor and mocking anybody who dares to criticise the new one. Isn’t it time you moved on?”

Adam Bienkov

and

Do you deny submitting comments to some of these blogs while pretending to be someone else? Because that’s the issue that’s prompted your outburst about them, I’m sure.

(Just in case your memory is going: the issue you fail to mention in this article is the same one that you got a jolly good ribbing about from your contemporaries this past week.)

Tim Ireland

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