Comments on: Liam and Jody

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:58:26 +0000

Nope - tried, but can’t figure out. It’s something to do with the margin / padding for the comment list. Will try to dismantle the stylesheet later - hopefully without breaking it completely

By: Jo

Jo — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:54:45 +0000

Seeing as my site is out of action at the moment I’ll see what I can do…

By: Antonia

Antonia — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:47:10 +0000

Politicalhack:

“If you have an MP who is hypocritical about homosexuality, then I think it is perfectly reasonable to point out that they are themselves gay.”

I agree with this 100%, and having looked at Liam’s voting record, it would seem he would fit this description. However, I don’t think that those who were making comments about his sexuality were doing it from a sense of outrage that he voted to keep Section 28 whilst they believed he was receiving favours from young men…

By: Tim Roll-Pickering

Tim Roll-Pickering — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:59:52 +0000

Bugger! Does anyone know how to put paragraph breaks in posts?

By: Tim Roll-Pickering

Tim Roll-Pickering — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:59:21 +0000

The Cameron & drugs situation shows how dirty tricks backfire. Now whilst Fox, unlike Davis, had something that actually resembled a campaign team, he also knows when not to shoot himself in the foot in such a way on non-policy grounds. His courting of the Cornerstone Group was another matter though, but thankfully he’s now of the contest and the party has the best possible choice available to it - Cameron offering members the chance to vote for forward looking, progressive, sensible One Nation Conservatism; and Davis offering the party the chance to have the decisive watershed it needs by voting against a flagbearer of everything the public hates about it.

From recollection wasn’t the Donovan case legally about calling him a manipulative hypocrite for denying being gay rather than over whether or not he is? (Although I don’t think the distinction was sufficiently noticed and it cost him large amounts of support.)

As for if this could be considered a smear, there is still a legal argument over whether claiming someone is queer would in itseld be grounds for a legal suit. The court is supposed to ask only if the allegation would diminsh the standing of the plaintiff in the eyes of “right-thinking members of society” and not whether or not the public attitudes themselves are unreasonable. It leaves the question of whether the court judges homophobia to be sufficiently widespread as to be part of “right-thinking members of society generally.”

By: Unity

Unity — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 07:00:29 +0000

In the context of the Tory Party, which has a long history of both intolerance and hypocrisy on homosexuality, yes such an allegation does count as a smear - in fact, having read the interview in the Evening Standard that was precisely Fox’s point in rather cynically raising the issue himself.

After what happened to Cameron on the drugs non-issue, it almost seems as though Fox was deliberately trying to paint himself a victim of dirty tricks as well in an effort to implicate Davis - the inference being that as he was only candidate not to have had rumours spread about private matters then it must have been him and his supporters spreading the rumours - an interesting tactic if that is what he was up to as off the three left until yesterday, Fox would have been the best placed to play dirty as he was the only one to have been a full-time whip; Cameron was never in the whips office and Davis was only ever an unpaid assistant whip, so neither would have had any significant access to the kind of information and ‘leverage’ that the whip’s office has by traditional repute.

By: PoliticalHack

PoliticalHack — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 22:06:29 +0000

If you have an MP who is hypocritical about homosexuality, then I think it is perfectly reasonable to point out that they are themselves gay. Otherwise, it is no more relevant than the colour of their wallpaper.

Jason Donovan won libel damages over inaccurate claims about his sexuality, so it is still considered actionable. I’d be interested to see if Graham Norton could sue if someone claimed that he was straight….

By: Antonia

Antonia — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:09:53 +0000

That is, of course, if you think someone being called gay inaccurately is a smear…

By: Unity

Unity — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 19:25:08 +0000

You’ve got to admit Fox pulled off a political first today - the first MP to publicly smear himself in the press…

Now that takes some doing.