Friday, November 09, 2007

Liberal Conspriacy congratulates Neil Clark

The new website Liberal Conspiracy has an odd definition of "liberal-left". It launched the other day without a single well-known Liberal Democrat blogger amongst its announced contributors, yet earlier this evening it published the following in its daily Casting the Net feature:
And finally, some congratulations. To Anti-war, anti-neo-conservative blogger, Neil Clark, for winning Best UK blog award in the 2007 Weblog Awards. Congratulations from Liberal Conspiracy, Neil.
You may not be familiar with the work of "anti-war, anti-conservative" blogger. So here is an example of his work from Comment is Free.

Commenting on the campaign for the government to grant interpreters and other staff who worked for British forces in Iraq, which was supported by many of the best left and liberal blogs (and Liberal England), Neil Clark says:

let's do all we can to keep self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain.

If that means some of them may lose their lives, then the responsibility lies with those who planned and supported this wicked, deceitful and catastrophic war, and not those of us who tried all we could to stop it.

The paragraph congratulating Clark has now been removed from Liberal Conspiracy with the following off-hand explanation by its author, Aaron Heath:

Ok, congrats removed. Democracy, etc.

Perhaps it is a mistake to make too much of one contribution on a multi-authored blog, though it is interesting that Heath thought himself qualified to offer congratulations on behalf of the site as a whole.

And it is certainly a mistake to pay too much attention to Aaron Heath's opinions. As the entertaining comments following his posting show, he is unaware of the distinction between the words "odious" and "odorous".

But this incident does confirm the impression that Liberal Conspiracy's view of the world has only a limited connection with Liberalism as we understand it in the Liberal Democrats.

4 comments:

Paul Evans said...

Clark is a quite despicable creature - why CiF give a platform to him is beyond me. He's a cauldron of hate.

Jock Coats said...

Hey! Go easy. He did call my piece on co-operative conservatives a "very worthy read"!

Aaron Murin-Heath said...

What a load of bollocks.

I explained the situation, ad nauseum, at the time.

Okay, maybe I mis-read one word, and maybe I missed the outrage that occurred upon the publication of the said article, but to suppose I'm arrogant because I chose to congratulate him on behalf of LC is beyond the pale.

I never congratulated him on his politics (it was a news story). Everyone and their cat congratulated Norman Geras when he won the exact same award (2005? A big deal then, apparently), even though many loathed the man's positions on Iraq and Bush (something he, himself, has also reviewed).

I stand by my Democracy, etc. line. I have big problems with censorship in the main.

I did need reminding of the article as I don't spend my evenings bitching about Trots. I read it on the day of publication (I even, now I think about it, remember the Oliver Kamm "outrage"). The ramblings of an idiot, I thought at the time. I didn't waste my time getting angry, and I didn't file his name away under "people to be pissed off at".

I still think there was no harm in stating he won the award, but clearly many still have hang-ups.

Hey-ho. BTW. Drop me a line whenever you next drop a bollock - I'll make a special effort to rip the shit out of you on my blog.

Return the favour, eh?

Anonymous said...

Well said Aaron.

I also love the way people are questioning this web award 'never heard of it' 'Only 2000 votes' blah, blah, blah. Of course all weblog awards are nonsense but do you think for one moment these things would have been said if Pickled Politics had won? Of course not. And for somebody considered a non-entity there's been an awful lot of fuss made.