Simon Heffer is a fat fucking liar

[webofevil]

SIMON HEFFER IS A FAT FUCKING LIAR

Ed Balls, the Children’s Minister, has gone down in history—well, according to Hansard at least—as having ejaculated “so weak” from the front bench when, in his response to the Budget, Dave said, quite correctly, that we now have the heaviest tax burden in our history. He in fact yelled out “so what?” ... Hansard was spoken to and the so-called record now reads “so weak”. [Simon Heffer, Telegraph]

The Hansard reporters in the room heard “so weak”, the video footage catches the end of Ed Balls mouthing “weak” and, more to the point, Hansard does not change anything just because it is inconvenient for the government, or indeed for anyone else. Anyone who says otherwise is an ignorant poltroon or an opportunistic shitgiblet.

If this seems like an unnecessarily ad hominem attack on the crapulent unwitting falsehood-spreader [That's a bit better - Legal dept], it’s worth remembering that an attack on Hansard reporters' professionalism and integrity is pretty ad bloody hominem in itself. And nothing less than I would expect from that repellent [the rest of this entry cut for length].

Comments

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Man, that footage needs to appear on YouTube. Is all I'm sayin'.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's there (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM6plAeFwUs&feature=related) all right. It's just that, like Guido Fawkes's blog, it's a lightning rod for the fanatically angry right-wing, disaffected anti-immigration middle-class types who have no real reason to bitch but have been persuaded by the Mail and similar that their lives have been DESTROYED by politically correctness.

Comment most likely to give anyone who actually has to watch these two in action the dry heaves: "Cameron and Osbourne are the ones to make Britain great again"

Comment most likely to have been posted by someone at Tory central office: "lol cameron is hilarious he spices up the house of commons"

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I actually read the rest of his article and from first to last it's a poisonous little diatribe, isn't it? Per my post yesterday about a similarly vituperous rant in the Times about that Mills woman, I am increasingly shocked that this sort of crap gets printed at all. It's blog-padding, and not high quality blog-padding at that.

Dude. We should start our own pigging newspaper.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_moggy_/]

I met a terrible right wing blogger. Devil's Kitchen. He was the biggest arsehole I've ever encountered.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

He's not a blogger, he's a model.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_moggy_/]

UGHHHH!

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find that beauty is in the eye of the libertarian beholder.

[vivalabridgetta.livejournal.com]

Must resist hate!sexy! thoughts.

[matgb]

Heh, how drunk was he? I've met him a few times, (and his ex turned up at Conference and was amased I knew who she was), he gets more and more obnoxious depending on alcohol consumption, which is why he's trying to cut back.

I find him mostly fairly amusing.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_moggy_/]

Quite drunk and still talking about what he did at University. He also denied the existence of global warming.

[arampus.livejournal.com]

Private Eye are also saying that "Balls even got the Commons' official record, Hansard, to change its account of what was said" in its account of the non-incident. A well-worded pseudonymous letter might get in there...the Torygraph is a different matter.

[matgb]

Two things. 1) I'll happily write this up somewhere like Liberal Conspiracy, I know you're a bit cautious about incoming links and similar, d'you want one?

2) If you do want more coverage, especially Google traffic, put the header text into the LJ subject line and tag it Simon Heffer, can give it much much Google Juice then (if you want it that is).

Balls might be an arse, but he said what Hansard reported, 100% sure of that.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

All incoming links are welcome. If this were filtered, it might be a different story, but this deserves an airing.

[matgb]

I'm writing the post in between childcare stuff, but am struck by a thought. You can't make an amendment after the three hour deadline—when did Balls leave the chamber, and when would the deadline apply from—it was an interjection, so is it counted from when he said it, or from the end of Dave's speech?

If from when he said it, he'll have been in the chamber for a chunk of the following debate, can 'proove' he didn't get it amended. Any way of finding out how long he was in the chamber for?

We've definitely got Heffer on one complete factuall innacuracy though:

When Dave, again quite rightly, quoted Mr Balls's silly comment back at him, he did not deny it. The denial came only when the loudmouthed twerp was told of the hideous damage his idiocy could do to his party

Except he can clearly be said mouth "so weak" in the damn video, which is after Cameron said it but only a few seconds later, so regardless of what Hansard says, or what Balls said initially, Heffer is lying with that point anyway.

Post'll be later this evening though, I have a 4-year-old to entertain...

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

> Heffer is lying with that point anyway

For the benefit of new readers, matgb and I have developed our very own code when discussing matters political. Here, crucially, he is using the word “lying” in our unique sense of “accidentally and innocently misrepresenting events”!

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

YOU CAN ACTUALLY HEAR HIM SAYING "SO WEAK" THE SECOND TIME! WHY IS THIS HARD?

Pardon the caps.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Duly pardoned.

[(Anonymous)]

English law allows actions for libel to be brought in the High Court for any published statements which are alleged to defame a named or identifiable individual or individuals in a manner which causes them loss in their trade or profession, or causes a reasonable person to think worse of him, her or them.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Whoever you are, and for whatever reason you chose to bless me with this potted recap of the law, you are entirely right. Simon Heffer has helped to circulate a dirty fucking lie in a national newspaper at no cost to himself, but to point out the extent of that untruth and his part in disseminating it could easily cost others thousands of pounds.

However, your nudge has reminded me not to leap to uncharitable conclusions. I have taken note and changed the headline to this post accordingly. No-one is going to accuse esteemed historian Simon Heffer of deliberately lying, not on my watch. Clearly, in going to print with an outrageous falsehood, he has been the victim of a serious misunderstanding, or perhaps of his own profound ignorance of the workings of Parliament, in which case I extend my sympathies to him for apparently being so easily taken in.

It’s not libellous to keep pointing out that he’s fat, though.

EDIT: I subsequently understood that my anonymous commenter's oblique intervention was actually intended to demonstrate a flaw in Heffer's approach, not in mine. In the light of that, I have changed the headline back to its original untruncated, if linguistically unadventurous, form. For the record, I initially changed it to "SIMON HEFFER IS A FAT FUCK".

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

Simon Heffer libels himself by existing.

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

How could a reasonable person think any worse of Simon Heffer?