Monday, July 05, 2010

An interesting little spat

In grand isolation in my mill oop North (I really, honestly do live in an old mill – i.e., factory – called Croft Mill), polishing my clogs and shovelling coal out of the bath, I was blissfully unaware that the Great Egg Saga has excited heated passions in the breasts of Iain Dale and Europhile commentator Nosemonkey.

So heated has this become that Nosemonkey has appended this comment to Iain's blog:
I think the reason people are so annoyed is that you pretend to be some kind of leading blogger, yet are happy to unthinkingly regurgitate print media stories without even doing the most basic of secondary checks.

Hell - you think that the Liberal Conspiracy story was written by Sunny Hundal, and dismiss it on that bases (sic). (It isn't, as anyone who bothered to follow the link would know.)

Is that really how far your research extends? Dismissing sources you dislike or disagree with out of hand while instantly believing any old rubbish that confirms your prejudices?
This is getting really terrifying, when "arch Eurosceptic" North and Europhile Nosemonkey agree, and not just on the eggs issue. As Tim Fenton at Zelo-Street points out, the whole affair shrieks of the usual MSM laziness. Thus, it is always disappointing when the blogs dive in and uncritically ape the media – more so when the Great Dale does it.

That is actually where we are in agreement with a wide range of other bloggers, which transcends ideology (not that we have any, you understand – our stance is that we are right and everybody else is wring). To be politically effective, the blogosphere must break free from the MSM comfort zone and forge its own identity. In this, by wallowing in that comfort zone, the Dales of this world have become part of the problem.

Comment: A Euromyth bites the dust