Did you ban John Hemming (the MP) for outing me ?

[CarpeVinum]

Cos he isn't on The Thread.

And I'd like to know why.

I am immaginging that the party whip we've been phoning, emailing and twittering has tied him up and run off with his keyboard.

Can I hang on to that fantasy, or did you ban him ?

It's not the end of the world to me that he posted my twitter account, knowing it was me and knowing it was my real name. But I will quickly drum up some minding if required to purge MN of his presence.

any suggestions AthelstaneTheUnready

hang out in a Westminster bar for a couple of hours??

Nothing specific or immediate, no; I'm definitely on the side of allowing people enough rope rather than being seen to hand it to them. It just occurs to me that if a person is volatile, obsessed and a drinker, then surely sooner or later there's going to be a very public 'oops'?

x-post

I did wind up an MP to the point of fury on the terrace bar once . He was from Birmingham too, strangely, and was talking ignorant twaddle about the EU. Wouldn't commit as to whether Norway was a member or not . Wouldn't actually admit (shocking) ignorance on the matter.

Oh yes, that's what made me so angry at the time! We were 'debating' the nature of democracy, and he said his voters voted for him, the person, and after that he was under no obligation whatsoever to take any notice of their views; because they'd voted for him he was free to say what he wanted!

Wanker.

deary me, he did rather skip the first chapter of What an MP Does, didn't he?

Oh, he believed it. He had nothing but contempt for his constituents' mental capacity and ability to judge for themselves - so whatever he decided must be right and if they didn't like it, that just proved he was right to do it anyway!

He didn't apply that logic to his own elected status, naturally they were being sensible for that one, solitary day.

Bloody Westminster Village

So, right. Holiday done.

Anyway, MNHQ I wondered if you had had the chance to mull over my tentative request of retweeting our "HemmingGate" tweets.

The "just the facts, marm, just the facts" ones.

Cos I've been thinking, I understand why The Drinking Receptical That Shall Not Be Mentioned got tweeted by you, traffic is traffic is traffic. And I am very pro traffic and clicks and revenue. I used to have a (tiddler) of a forum of my own and would rather stick pins in my eyes then ever have one again so have an idea of how things work, why etc. I am well up for you maing a well good profit one day. I like it here. I wish for its future to be assured... hang on, I had a point, er..... bugger...

Wait! yes here it is, anyway.. so I think that HemmingGate can serve the same traffic/raised profile as Drinking Recpticle, but shine a light on a side of MN that rarely gets much press.

We are not a bunch of "silly women" who exclusively discuss sex, babies and dishclothes.

We are political, we do discuss big fat throny ethical issues, there is a veritible sea of highly intellignet, tenacious and foucsed posters here. They are the reason I hang around. In other fprums they can be a bit thin on the grund, here you have a great big swathe of them.

So, I do think it is actually good publicity for MNHQ if publically people see that we are invested in the poltical legacy we leave for the next generation anybeyond. And what better vechial for that than MNer raising awareness of appallingly low political standards played put in front of their own eyes.

I am not jumping up and down for "an answer NOW dammit" I appreciate this needs to be properly assessed for intended and unintended consequences. But We do kind of need you, or a proxy you might be able to shove in our direction. Our efforts to make a twitter storm are not all that ... windy. I've seen bigger breezes on a turgid summer day in Milan.

Without big numbers or a heaveyhitter on our side, we are sort of fucked really in terms of gaining any attention traction for the extrodinary events that happened here before Xmas.

Is there anything you might be able to do to give us a leg up in this matter ?

Maybe a couple of legs would be better.... Lol

.. and a couple of arms with hands attached.

I do have another proposal.

Could we have an emergecny webchat with Tim Farron or the LibDem party whip ? Becuase it is all very well phoning, tweeting, emailing. But it is really hard to tell if we are getting

Wot Carpe said

At least your keyboard can dpell

SPELL

Fucking iOS update. Making keyboard all funny and wrong spelling.

Well, yes, I tend to get all letters down, not always in the universally agreed order.

I think you are making a v good point about MN being a tiny bit more political than all other parenting fora/ums/i and it would be nice to have some kind of feedback whether the recent activity had any effect at all.

And surely, anything that increases MN's profile is a Good Thing, business-wise, non?
Disclaimer: I know nothing about business OR Twatter.

And surely, anything that increases MN's profile is a Good Thing, business-wise, non?

Aside from the fear of litigation. And having had a v. strong twang of "is he trying to intimidate me?" when he posted my name (justified I believe in light of other posters having felt intimidated by things he said that were percived as being high on the insinuated "be careful, be very very careful" scale. (and please note, I spoke of the sensation of the object of the verb, I did not make any accusations as per the subject of the verb before it all goes Report-tastic!)) I can understand that MNHQ might be reticent if they feel threatened or anticipate feeling threatned. He is an MP and a millionaire. That's not a small potatoes opponant..

But...

The posters here are relentlessly written off to fit the "silly bitchy tittering breeder women" prejudice that permeates the media and much of their readership.

However that does not reflect what I see here. It is just one tiny facet of a big fat bolshy sparkly diamond.

How can the gen pub ever get a more rounded, less "cast in a mysogenistic mould" vision of not just mumsnetters, but women in general, if the only fodder they are actively fed is the stuff that plays into the preconceptions, and not the stuff that challenges it.

I think an awful lot of women here stuck their necks right out. Regardless of the potential threat inherant in challenging a powerful wealthy man.

They live in the same country as the MP, and that makes them vulnerable to a power imbalance, should anybody feel inclined to flex a muscle. But they did it anyway. They battled through thousands of posts and were not passive in the (startlingly blatant) face of a failure to maintain reasonable political standards of conduct.

It feels "not really right" to allow a dust sheet to be hurled over that via non recognistion and an absence of active support. The afrementioned is an aspect of the membership here that MNHQ can be rightly most proud of facilitating, when nobody else does. A platform for women where they are not confined to being entirely defined or restrained by delusions of "femininity".

And if what was done here does not garner any attention, it begs the question, what exactly do the people in the seat of power actually have to do before it is considered to fall far far below acceptable standards of conduct in an elected offical and worthy of a public outcry ?

I maintain that HQ are veeeeeeery possibly a teeeeeeny bit on our sides regarding HemmingGate but doubt we could expect them to come and say so. Would just be too political.
Webchat with one of Cleggy's lot might be the way to go but given past politico webchats I think most would just ignore the question if it were uncomfortable. They are,after all, experts at that....
Isn't his week's ban almost up? I rather hope he comes back to carry on digging his own grave.

X post Carpe.
I think, sadly, he will continue to get away with it because he will trot out the old chestnut that he is posting as a private citizen not as an mp.

I with you on that Drank, I think there was an awful lot of leeway provided on the orginal threads.

But... on "too political" ..not so sure. If the motivating issue were the party being represented being the target, sure. But I think which party is more or less irrelvant in this instance.

It is not possible to challenge overly low poltical standards of conduct and not... touch the poltical. This is a site for parents, but who more than parents are invested in providing a decent poltical standards of conduct legacy for the next gen and beyond ?

It's not a cut and dried easy peasy lemon squeezy decsion, I am not saying that. And there may be complications we can't and don't know about.

But... lots of "little people" stuck their necks out here. And there has to be a point where the bigger, stronger voices do a bit of "supoortive sticking out" too. Or the risk is all our necks get chopped off as "getting away with all sorts of shit" becomes engrained in the norm. At which point, Britian becomes ..... Italy. Where there really isn't any point in even trying anymore.

I don't think it has to be obvious. I have no real love of the idea of MNHQ walking stright into a pile of shit in their own name. I am quite happy for a work around whereby better known people who know people ... suddenly track down some of the earlier (pure fact/well spelled) tweets and inexplicably start tweeting them to their squillions of followers.

sadly, he will continue to get away with it because he will trot out the old chestnut that he is posting as a private citizen not as an mp.

But as Madame so rightly deduced, he didn't hold those private legal papers as a private citizen.

He had them in his posession becuase he was an MP.

Whoever handed over the private motivazione of the sentence in AP's case heard at the Tribunale di Minore Rome ....did not hand it over to Joe Bloggs Nobody, common or garden british bloke who likes going to the pub and Brownies. They handed itto John Hemming MP, man with power and influence.

Ditto the unredacted page from the legal doc in the ongoing case he emailed to a poster when trying (and failing) to prove a point in a debate on a forum.

He can't have his cake, eat it and then want to make trifle out of it.

He can't be JH MP when it suits on half a post in a thread and less than a paragraph later revert to JH "pub and Brownies goer, common or garden man"

MNHQ, surely you can say whether or not a poster had been banned/suspended?

Remembering in AF case a lot more information was given than that when she was suspended.........

tootired, Justine posted here that JH is suspended and they will review after Christmas.

Carpe, maybe you should report your posts/email MNHQ to bring your thoughts to their attention?

Agreed Carpe- he was happy enough huffing and puffing and boasting about Who He Was until everyone suddenly said "hold on, is Who You Are allowed to say that?"

Aha! Thanks Bore.

Or the risk is all our necks get chopped off as "getting away with all sorts of shit" becomes engrained in the norm. At which point, Britain becomes ..... Italy. Where there really isn't any point in even trying anymore.

Exactly. First reason I left my country. Fighting was pretty pointless, general public was in a political coma already.