Our friends at the Good Law Project

Owen Jones is about to go work for Zeteo, which has been set up by Mehdi Hassan, so he's going to have to get used to salving his conscience with the chums and audience he'll be reaching

Really? That is weird. I've reported the post to MNHQ and asked them to delete it.

There is a notable similarity between the level of reaction of Jolyon Maugham when asked about the GLP request for donations – "have you bothered to substantiate those allegations before putting them to me?" - and Jason Arday's reaction to being asked about plagiarism – a Carter Ruck letter, and to set the police on the questioner.

If you look out of academia to the business sphere there are more.
Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX crypto Ponzi scheme. The list is endless. When there's money to be made from lying, the lies can't come fast enough.

JM v The Guardian
In his latest post JM is gunning for the (black) reporter who wrote the piece debunking a lot of Arday's fibs. It's been up less than an hour and has already been updated to include a denial by Lanre Bakare that he had any "beef" with Arday, contrary to JM's main claim.
He's also hilariously left the location tag on his reel so it looks like he's blathering on in an Irish bar 😁
Oh and JM had never heard of Arday before the 25th July so making himself central to this mess is even more crass & tone-deaf than his usual social media fuck-ups

I had a massive discussion about Theranos in the Times comments back when everybody (except, it seems, me) was very excited about it. I said something like my gut feeling as a very experienced labscientist in biochemistry and molbio tells me this is overhyped and unrealistic and I got utterly caned.

We only have his word that he is autistic. He doesn't appear autistic when you see him in interviews etc

The 30 marathons with a broken leg seems to be true:

https://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/8350040.clapham-based-jason-arday-completes-30-marathons-in-35-days-for-shelter-and-the-shooting-star-childrens-hospice/

Or was it - where is the evidence from all the other runs? He only had people with him for the last few miles of the final London leg. He could have been sitting eating fish n chips in Blackpool for the proceeding 34 days?

Call me cynical but…

It’s true that the Richmond and Twickenham Times reported that he ran 30 marathons with a broken leg.

I was reminded of Kevin Sinfield's efforts running marathons in support of Rob Burrow, raising money for MND. A quick overview of his efforts here:

Former rugby league player Kevin Sinfield has run dozens of endurance events for Motor Neurone Disease (MND) charities. While his initial 2020 feat involved 7 standard marathons in 7 days, his subsequent multi-day endurance events transitioned into ultramarathons (covering roughly 27.9 miles or 45 km per day). Across multiple annual 7-day challenges, he has completed close to 50 marathons and ultramarathons combined.

Endurance Challenges Breakdown

2020 (7 in 7): 7 standard marathons in 7 days.

2021 (Extra Mile / 101 miles): Ran 101 miles continuously in 24 hours.

2022 (7 in 7): 7 ultramarathons in 7 days from Edinburgh to Manchester.

2023 (7 in 7 / plus Leeds Marathon): 7 ultramarathons in 7 days, alongside pushing Rob Burrow in the inaugural Leeds Marathon.

2024 & 2025 (7 in 7 Together): Further consecutive weeks of 7 ultramarathons in 7 days.

2026 (The Grand Finale): Scheduled final 7-day ultramarathon event covering Super League grounds.

Of curse, Kev Sinfield was a professional sportsman, and ferociously fit. I don't know whether he could have managed 30.

The source for this article is Jason Arday. The journalist just wrote what he told her.

As he told the Richmond and Twickenham Times:

“It was surreal, running through the centre of London - cars were stopping for me, people were cheering.”

Surely the roads would have been closed to cars?

Usually when you register to run a marathon you have to take a chip type thing that records your time and route. It's been standard for years and isn't that technically complicated. All the times are normally kept by the marathon organisers and posted online for people to look up (even if you came 567th you can find your time). Those things aren't kept long term, and links to websites broke so I would be sceptical if someone claimed they had run 30 marathons a decade ago. But if the story was being reported on at the time I would be more likely to believe it was true, even if people weren't actively looking to catch him out or were even trying to turn a blind eye to him lying it would be really hard to lie about that to such a scale in real time.

He may also have been significantly faster of course.

It's entirely probable that Jason Arday was a half-decent long distance runner when he was younger - he had the physique for it at any rate. But as @moto748e says above, to complete even part of what is claimed, JA would have to be a world class endurance athlete, on a par with people who devote their entire lives to training. I'm surprised Guiness Book of Records officials were not in attendance.

Not on a broken leg that swelled up to twice its normal size photos say otherwise

Well, I feel foolish now. How are we supposed to know anything if we can't trust the media? 🙁

I thought JM must have known Arday for a period of time given how much he has centred himself in this story.

Im actually shocked he had only known of Arday for less than a month.

The R + T Times would have had no reason to disbelieve him. They are a small local rag and probably just took his word for it. I don’t suppose they put much effort into fact checking.

In the video I just watched he keeps calling Arday his friend.

I see susceptibility to suggestibility a big part of some autistic people’s personality (personally, I think this is one key element to the link between ASD and trans along with the not being happy in your own skin) and I’ve also seen inflation/exaggeration/fantasy/fabrication as part of some autistic people’s perceptions. Linked, somehow I think, to the susceptibility to suggestion.

An idea is implanted or suggested, an achievement is read about, and in their own mind, they internalise that story to become their story. In the people I’ve known to do this, it’s not ‘lying’ as a conscious act per se. More something like confabulation?

The BBC needs you to know that racism is at the core of any criticism of Arday

I’ve had my UCU memo now telling all of us to know that racism is the only reason for criticising Arday. Even today’s FT article on Arday ends saying that a white professor plagiarising would still be in post ie it’s about racism. Again, ignoring how the plagiarism would never have garnered the wider attention. It was the many fantastical claims that propelled Arday to centre stage.

JM was probably haranguing Arday and pressuring him to go out and fight. Jolyon only got to know Arday because he wanted to make a campaign out of him and use him. The petition didn't help Arday at all, especially when people started withdrawing their signatures. He must have felt as though even his biggest supporters were abandoning him.If anyone placed intolerable pressure on Arday, it was more likely bandwagon-jumpers like Jolyon, who were exploiting him for their own grift and self promotion. Especially when Arday himself obviously knew that he had been embellishing and his critics weren't really wrong. On top of that, the memoir was going to come out and Arday would have to have defended his
many implausible claims.

My post above was deleted because it had a 16-year-old link in it.

In 2010, Arday wrote about his charity marathon runs:

"I will be taking various marathon trials across London culminating in 30 marathons (26 miles a day) in 35 days."

Which marathons is he referring to here? Thirty marathons were not held in London in July and August of 2010. What does he mean by marathon trials? Sounds like he went for a long run and called that a marathon.

Yup it's really unpleasant behaviour by JM when you think about it. I wonder if the people cheering & applauding him at yesterday's vigil were aware.