Bobgate - a Staines on my character

I am outraged. I don't know if any of you are aware of infamous political blogger Paul "Piss" Staines (aka Guido Fawkes). He is one of those unscrupulous gossip mongers of the worst kind (makes me look an amateur). It was him that was behind the "William Hague is gay" rumours recently. And yesterday he quite brazenly libelled someone as a benefit scrounger in a storm about Twitter addiction (click here for a useful summary).

But far worse than these two, and countless other examples of his unregulated and unaccountable shit-stirring, he has smeared me.

See here for the inexcusable offence in question.

Yes, that's right. He has called me Bob. I know that accuracy is not one of his strong points but this wilful distortion of facts is typical of just how low Guido will stoop. Indeed even lower than anything he has done before.

Bob. I ask you. I am not a Bob. Nob maybe. But not Bob.

True, I did call him a "monstrous arsehole". But, for once I checked my own facts before firing off a knee-jerk insult. And yes, all of the available evidence points to the fact that he IS a monstrous arsehole and any court in the land would agree with me.

Guido has refused to apologise, indeed has arrogantly sought to make light of his callous slur (see here).

Guido may scare other people but he doesn't scare me. Either he apologises for calling me Bob or I'll, I'll, I'll well I don't know quite what I will do. But it won't be nice. And may involve sarcasm. And possibly spoofery, satire and worst of all, parody. He won't like that. Especially as he obviously considers himself to be beyond it given the way he carries on.

It is behaviour such as Guido's that gives the arguably questionable practice of hiding behind a pseudonym to attack others a bad name.