Martin Coxall :

ConHome had at least two threads on it yesterday.
Iain Dale had a thread on it.
Tory Bear had a thread on it.
Dizzy Thinks had a thread on it.

I mean, I could go on…

The right wing blogosphere’s “almost total silence” is astonishingly noisy, perhaps because it’s a lie and a pointless, easily and verifiably false one at that.

Must try harder.

Well, claiming it is a lie is a lie in itself (all those blog posts were posted after my article was written).

Oh, and LFAT? Here is my reply.

Now, I’m not for a second suggesting that if you don’t blog about this you don’t care, but this silence is quite striking.

Are you really going to slate people who you describe as right-wing bloggers for not reading the Guardian when you did? Or for waiting until more information was in the public domain before commenting when they could get to their blogs? I don’t understand your need to try to validate yourself by trying to look superior because your comments were made sooner than other people’s.

What matters is what the comments said when they were made. If timing is your bugbear then you could have explained that in far fewer self indulgent words.

Mind you, I don’t really care what a fence-sitting, rizla-paper-thickness-different-from-the-Tories-and-Labour LibDem thinks of me anyway. ;o)

Well, thank god this isn’t Greece then, and the vast majority of us don’t feel that the best way of dealing with a possible injustice is to go on the rampage and smash the place up.

Why, it’s almost as if we felt that it’s better to have the rule of law in this country, and hold investigations, followed by any necessary disciplinary or criminal proceedings, rather than react to what a video seems to show, isn’t it? How quaint! How terribly old-fashioned!

Far better to react like two year olds, and indulge ourselves in a public temper tantrum. Viva the emotionally-incontinent….!

I mean, I could go on…

The right wing blogosphere’s “almost total silence” is astonishingly noisy, perhaps because it’s a lie and a pointless, easily and verifiably false one at that.

Must try harder.

James Graham :
Jock – I wasn’t offering a theory, merely an observation. Is your argument that I’ve cherry picked a handful of obscure bloggers to make my point? As for only commenting once the Daily Mail has deigned to cover the story, well that does rather back my point about incuriosity on the issue.
But I will hold my hands up and admit I may have been a little harsh on libertarians here. Some of the blogs aforementioned are libertarian, but they are all rightwing. That was my target.
LFAT – I’ll comment on your latest blog post (which I assume is a spoof, albeit a deeply witty one) later.

Well I was going to make a comment when Alix mentioned Iain Dale that I wondered whether you had mostaken Dale for a Libertarian…:) As to incuriosity, Mummylonglegs clearly posted while it was only the Giardian covering the story. I know I do not have the Mail and Express and several other papers in my feeds, the Guardian produces so much in its feeds and frankly, on things like economics, it has been largely crap for ages and especially in the credit crunch. It’s hardly much of a shock to find that the “right” might not avidly watch its RSS feeds. And it was, after all, their scoop.

As to the bigger point, this is a result of having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force which allows the state to create laws, hire enforcers who are really unaccountable and judge themselves. Whatever happens in this case, as in the De Menezes case, individuals may have to account for themselves, but the systemn will get off scot free, you wait and see. Not just scot free, but strengthened. More “kettling” more surveillance and so on in the name of preventing these sort of “unfortunate misunderstandings”.

If this were Greece, we would be holding a month of riots to commemmorate Mr Tomlinson and the way he appears to have died at the hands of an institution whose founding principle was once to protect people.