An Conservative party employee used a fake name and email to comment on an article on this blog about anti-semitism in Poland. The Tory party was not mentioned.
An employee of the Conservative party has used a fake name and email address to comment on a Left Foot Forward guest post about anti-semitism in Poland.
The Guest blog post, published last Wednesday, examined the case of a Polish politician, Marek Jurek, calling for the Polish Government to take legal action against London-based Polish Film Director, Aro Korol, for his planned film – “Hitler’s Daughter” – which exposes anti-Semitism in Poland. The article made no mention of either the British Conservative party or the European Conservatives and Reformists.
The commenter, who uses the name “Gordon” wrote:
“So Jurek is a FORMER member of Law and Justice. And Law and Justice sit with the Tories in the European Parliament. So what?
“That’s as tenuous as expecting the Polish Socialists to be embarrassed bcause George Galloway, a former member of the British Labour Party, made an outrageous statement in the House of Commons.
“Is that the sound of barrels being scraped?”
The IP address is registered to host97.conservative-party.org.uk. Although http://www.conservative-party.org.uk is a different URL to the Conservative party’s main website (http://www.conservatives.com) and shows only a Daniel Hannan video and a picture of a pile of cash, an IPBlock query reveals that the IP address is registered to Anne Nunan, Director of IT at Conservative Central Office, 25 Victoria St and Vince Cooper of the same address.
Left Foot Forward contacted the Conservative Party to ask if they would ask their staff member, and other staff, to desist from attacking challenges to anti-semitism in this way.
A Conservative spokesman declined to do so while describing the comments as “innocuous” and “odd.” He outlined that CCHQ did not have “a team of people commenting on websites such as yours” and reiterated that the Conservative party opposed all forms of anti-semitism.
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46 Responses to “Conservative party paranoia on Poland”
Miller 2.0
What’s with the IP address?
Gordon's dad
“This was someone posting from CCHQ to spoil a story and not declaring their affiliation.”
Spoil a story? Get a grip, FFS. Some Tory tosspot made a banal comment in an inconsequential thread about two people no one has ever heard of.
This is exactly why blogs get a bad name – forced and juveline over-excitement over nothing.
FYI
Credit where credit is due please. I pointed out the story’s factual errors, I think there were five of them in total. I also think the original story is imbalanced and misleading, and fails to provide adequate context, as I have outlined in my posts.
I would like to see where the original story was derived from. Was it a press release? If so, can we see the press release please? If so, have LFF checked it for accuracy? Can we please rule out that the author of the piece is connected to the film-makers or whether there may be any other conflict of interest, political or financial?
I would testify to the fact that am acting completely independently. I’m British, and I would say I have centrist or liberal political views. I care passionately about accurate journalism.
FYI
@Anon E Mouse
You hit the nail on the head:
“It’s the way Tony Benn describes the ends of empires – basically Labour is over and every activist, facing at least a decade in the wilderness is clutching at straws in the vain hope the electorate forgives this government for the shameful way it has behaved for over a decade.
The electorate will not forgive or forget and rightly so. ”
And have you noticed how quiet it suddenly got around here?
Henry
Amongst all the noise, we’re no clearer about the Conservative Party’s participation in all this. Sounds fishy.