Nadine Dorries and blogging
You can call Nadine Dorries a blogger in the same way that you can call me an artist because I once did a colouring-in book when I was a kid. (And, unlike her, I didn't cross any lines.) But finally, I think that everything's come home to roost with Dorries. Now is the time for anyone with any sense to realise that she is not to be trusted, and cannot be trusted. We are talking about a self-confessed maker-up of facts who admits to her blog being 70 per cent fiction and 30 per cent fact.
There is, of course, an alternative reason as to why she might say that - she might be using the '70 per cent fiction' story as a way of avoiding closer scrutiny for what she's written on her blog. But then that would mean she's fabricating the truth. So she is either making stuff up, or making stuff up about making stuff up. This is an elected representative who breezily admits that the things she tells her constituents are not the whole truth. Not even mainly the whole truth - mainly not the truth.
Props to Tim Ireland for clinging on like a barnacle to the Nadine Dorries story, despite all the disgraceful abuse he has received in that time. You should read his post here for a comprehensive descriptions of the layers of deception and intrigue that have been going on for so long, and which are now without question laid open for all to see. Read the backstory and judge for yourself.
But the key thing is this: when you admit to making stuff up, you're going to have to realise that your reputation, such that it is, is going to take a huge dent. You're going to have to face facts and admit that people aren't going to trust you as much as they previously might have done, even those who have been your backers when all seemed set against you. Everything you have ever said is going to be called into question. What was part of the 70 per cent fiction, and what was part of the 30 per cent fact?
But then, that's the thing about admitting to making stuff up. Is the 70 per cent claim just another made-up claim? Is that worth trusting either? Is anything worth trusting any more?
Again, it's worth remembering that this is an MP with constituents. Someone whose previous behaviour - gleefully calling Dr Evan Harris 'Dr Death' at the last general election - should have been warning enough. But will it be? Will Nadine Dorries still be wheeled in by the BBC when they need a Tory spokesperson, despite her admission of fiction? How can we trust anything she says, when she herself admits that what went on the blog was likely not to be true than it was to be true?
It's sad because this is the kind of thing that drags all bloggers down. But I would urge you not to look at the likes of Dorries as examples of bloggers, but the likes of Tim instead. I do wonder, though, whether people will or not.
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October 22nd, 2010 - 10:24
on her blog yesterday she wrote “I suppose if any of my blog were truly fiction, I could call myself a journalist.” ! (guess she means a Daily Mail journalist)
October 23rd, 2010 - 10:02
Yeah, that was lovely. More so was that the very next sentence was “The fiction about location etc. was done…”
“I sneer at the idea parts of my blog were fiction.
Parts of my blog were fiction.”
October 22nd, 2010 - 12:17
You can call Nadine Dorries a blogger in the same way that you can call me an artist because I once did a colouring-in book when I was a kid. (And, unlike her, I didn’t cross any lines.)
This sort of thing is too good to be allowed. That is all.
October 22nd, 2010 - 12:23
“Will Nadine Dorries still be wheeled in by the BBC when they need a Tory spokesperson”
Only if it’s a knee-jerk story relating to Sally Bercow. Although that does account for around 70% of her interviews. (see what I did there?)
October 22nd, 2010 - 20:02
What happened to Tim is honestly frightening, IMO. And I will never understand why people keep posting comments telling him to let it go – who the hell are they to tell him to let it go?
October 22nd, 2010 - 21:38
I have a serious difficulty here. While Nadine Dorries appears to be little short of a fantasist, to the disinterested (although not uninterested) outsider, Tim Ireland’s blog posts are long on self-obsession, yet short on independent objective detail.
In my daily job as a Legal Aid lawyer, I spend much of my week asking people simple factual questions to get a “feel” for the issue in dispute, only to be regaled with a ten minute monologue about the evils of another person about whom all I know is their name. Dipping into Tim Ireland’s world has rather the same effect – he seems to presume (1) that every reader has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the dramatis personae, and (2) that every reader shares his perception.
Faced with a decision on credibility between one of Parliament’s more “eccentric” members, whose grasp of issues is not always apparent, and someone whose ability to write objectively is lacking, I struggle to determine whose version of contested events is to be preferred.
October 23rd, 2010 - 17:33
Given the kind of harrassment Tim has suffered, there is just no way he would be able to write about Dorries objectively. I don’t know why this is hard for people like you to grasp.
October 26th, 2010 - 06:14
Probably the best description I’ve seen of this whole thing.
It was after the Jenvey incident which was an ace piece of work that Ireland appeared to keep ‘going’ but it was never really clear where he was going or why he was going there. It just seemed to revolve around an obsession with what Dale and Mercer may or may not have done or known about at certain points then Dorries somehow got ‘involved’ for reasons that aren’t particularly clear.
His once great blog became this bizarre chronicle of him staring into the abyss and it staring right back at him.
Obviously he doesn’t deserve what’s happened to him but I really never understood what he was hoping for after Jenvey was uncovered.
October 23rd, 2010 - 09:13
Now have I got this right? Nadine Dorries invented 70% (she says) of her blog to cover herself with her constituents because what she claimed on her expenses was truthful but cut across what she said was doing in Mid Bedfordshire on constituencty work. It seems an unusual ethical position for one of Dave’s members to take.
October 24th, 2010 - 00:48
She’s now claiming that her blog is 100% true. Which may interest the parliamentary commissioners…
October 26th, 2010 - 15:40
Nadine is a true Conservative.
I thought the capital ‘C’ was a give-away…