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I quite enjoyed this post, especially the caravan enthusiasts part. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I'm going to (mostly) overlook the bit where the funny second part defeated the leading paragraph. Good work, Charlie

I know, I know. Would seem like low hanging fruit to the McCann's fearless legal team, eh? EDIT: (Did Dave ever say yes ? )

Your post has little to do with left-wingers, and more to do with your ideas of what left-wingers are. Champagne socialists, rich kids that don't have a clue, Tarquin - it's all there. It's more like an Young Conservative A-level student having pop at writing his first Spectator article than evidence of an analytical mind in full flow. My objection to your posts, blog or otherwise, is that you seem to have taken very limited experience and projected it onto a whole group of people. It's got bugger all to do with left wing vs right wing, and more to do with the inherent prejudice of generalising an entire group of people. For the record, I've got plenty of Tory mates too. Not especially proud of them, but there you go

It wasn't. I was responding to Gemmel's query about the reliability of Richard D Hall's film. Thanks for your contribution.

You weren't saying anything. You were quoting an author brave enough to write an article about internet trolls without actually knowing what they are. She's merely pulling the same old memes from the bag. Lonely. Bored. Mental. Bung it all onto that conspiracy theorist label, and assign it to anyone that questions anything. Fair play to you both; shining examples of our "exception-is-the-rule" age. You both present the most extreme in any group as representative of the whole, but you're no better than the simple-minded EDL racist that goes shopping worldwide for the worst Islamic extremism he can find so he can pretend it is happening in Britain. Maybe you should go on a march.

Yup, freedom of speech being characterised as trolling by a mendacious media. As you say though, this is a broad issue that most people have an opinion on, and many of those people don't have favourable opinions towards the McCanns and/or the probity of the investigation. Operation Grange alone has cost over 7m of tax-payer money and hundreds of man years of effort. It's a singular amount of money for one family. The public is entitled to have an opinion. Most of them do, and judging by the activity on the #mccann hashtag today, many are alarmed at the freedom of speech implications, with some justification. This case makes a mockery of the idea of the press' role in protecting freedom of speech, regardless.

.... and had also committed no crimes. No real doubting her interest; the vast majority of her tweets were about the subject. There have already been some nasty little ideas dovetailing this development. Home Secretary May wants to come down on anyone that "damages democracy" (whatever the f**k that means), and we've long had the legal double standard whereby a murderer gets due process but a terrorist doesn't. The group that was set up was called McCann Hate Exposed. For whatever reason, they decided that collecting a dossier of those critical to the McCanns was an important thing to do, and went about naming and shaming. Site was taken down this week following Brenda Leyland's death. There is presently no evidence that this group is directly linked to the McCanns. "Find Madeleine" does have form for this sort of online action, though. Action against vile content was going on as long ago as 2008. http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2008/02/maddie-htfm-cyber-warriors-promoting.html

It wasn't relevant the first time, still isn't relevant now. Your interesting and balanced take couldn't even get the definition of trolling down correctly. Neither can you, it'd seem. You've been on here countless times before and tried to depict conspiracy theorists as people who'll take their madness personal. That'll go after the families of those involved to get some truth which just isn't apparent. Doesn't it bother you a little bit that the sort of behaviour that drove Brenda Leyland to her death is basically what you've attempted to do here on several occasions? Drag someone's name through the mud in order to break them? How did you know that these people you were accusing of having mental health issues didn't actually have them? If you genuinely believe that such people are crazy and unbalanced, isn't your brand of verbose character assassination going to be potentially dangerous to your victim? Or do you just not care? Thing is, as we all know, these kind of bullies collapse when the direction of scrutiny is reversed, don't they? Not so much fun when it's your own name, I guess.

Gone way beyond that at that stage. The full media circus was upon her, and she tweeted that Martin Brunt had been following her himself. Zero proof of trolling.

She needs to get the definition of trolling before making any assertions about those that may engage in it. Contrary to many reports, Brenda Leyland didn't send a single message to the McCanns, because the McCanns don't have Twitter. Instead, a bunch of people who detest conspiracy theories (sound familiar?) and those that engage in them set up a website to target those critical of the McCanns, naming and "shaming" those critical to the McCanns. They likely drove her to her death, helped by the compliant Sky News and Martin Brunt. Go "Team Narrative". Thank fúck no-one listens to you.

Sorry, should have qualified. Intelligent for an art monkey

Bit of research, maybe? You made the point about a Sky News reporter doorstepping some troll. The precise "troll" you meant appears to be nothing but. The issue I've got is a normally intelligent bloke parroting a headline of someone else's making, then saying he was talking about something wider anyway

Well, it's worth doing so. This is a woman that was labelled a vile internet troll and was the foundation of many of the stories, found dead in a hotel. She wasn't trolling anyone, just offering her opinions. The McCanns aren't even on Twitter.

Have you read the tweets in question? Her complete history here:- http://greptweet.com/u/sweepyface/sweepyface.txt The mindless regurgitation simply refers to your wholesale adoption of a media-assigned label in defiance of the details.

I wasn't actually having a go at you in that post. However, since you're here, can I tell you off for mindlessly regurgitating the troll part?

Lord Sugar @Lord_Sugar If the McCanns are not on Twitter, question must be asked who pointed out to media the so called trolling of the McCanns by Brenda Leyland

Poor old Charlie. Attempts character assassination. Unwittingly commits suicide.

I've snipped the rest, but wanted to comment on this post, and may go beyond what's quoted here. I find it interesting that you feel that now is the appropriate time to enumerate just how far left-wingers have gone off the reservation. I mean, your thoughts on multiculturalism are articulate and all, but they're very much unbidden. I deliberately avoided the term "multiculturalism" in my post for two reasons. First, it does carry a lot of negative connotations. Secondly, I've seen my immigrant family go the other way (integration) and do okay out of it. Onto your objections, which are becoming clearer by the minute. The irony is that prejudice lies at the heart of them. You're right; the posts are entirely subjective, but tell their own story. Taking the blog piece and this post into evidence, it's clear that if you determine that someone is a left-winger with a bit of privilege in their background, you don't want to know. Fair play; you admit and qualify your personal perspective, but if your universal set of people who care about the myriad number of issues that may be termed "politically correct" is the left-wingers you met at Uni, then you're only considering a tiny fraction of the whole. It may take you longer to identify the people you don't like. You might have to recon their newspaper of choice at lunchtime or something. Isn't your willingness to characterise and dismiss an entire group of people on your limited subjective experience borderline discriminatory itself? Furthermore, your assertion that positive discrimination is a bad thing because you met a left-winger with weird views is another example of extrapolating the behaviour of an individual to an entire sub-group, especially when there's every chance it could be largely fictional in the first place. I'm just guessing, but back in the day, did you ever front your obviously strong opinions in the Student Union and get shot down by a gang of left-wingers? If so, it has left a hell of a mark.

Arf. How did we get from Clarkson to here? Oh yeah. That's right. Thick posters running out of arguments on the discussed topics. I'd expect it from a web designer, but I thought ship's cooks were jollier.

You said this before QPR.

Missed out this year. Narked because I would have loved to see AC/DC there. Well done to all that got tickets.

I don't deny it, VW. The cheques are rolling in

I'd like to address a recurring theme of this thread, and indeed Rasiak-9's polemic against an imagined population. This notion of a PC mob, ready to jump on anything that might offend somebody, somewhere. We live in a society comprised of people from around the world, and do it reasonably well - something we should all be proud of. One of the reasons we do it reasonably well is because in general society, we've taken a hard line against some of the worst excesses of prejudice. Going back to the offence that started the thread, Jeremy's toying with a racial slur in an archaic nursery rhyme. That's a term that carries deep connotations of de-humanising the target, and still has the capability to carry deep offense when employed in its old context, and it still is. One of my kids came back from school at five years old asking me what a "n****r" was, against a backdrop in which five year old kids had racially abused the new black kid in class. Racism is like a hereditary disease. If a primary school teacher had been caught using the term in any context, let alone an offensive one, he or she would at least be up for a meeting with the governors, possibly heading out of the profession depending on the severity or the publicity of the offence. Ron Atkinson's TV career went down the pan when he was caught off-camera. Malky Mackay and Iain Moody have a long way back into polite footballing society, if it exists at all. It makes me laugh that the people who cry "PC gone mad" are the same sort of people that don't think "n****r" is offensive, and would possibly like to say it again. I know, I know. You've all got black mates; none of them are offended when you launch into your repertoire of escaped racial slurs from the 1970s, and do you know what? I'd actually believe you in a lot of cases. A big part of having mates from other races is celebrating and laughing about your different perspectives, but not all of those views will be suitable for public consumption outside of context. Thing is, it's really not that hard to treat others with respect or have an inkling of what might upset them. Clarkson knows, certainly. He's made a career out of working out what it is that annoys people, annoying them and then pretending that he didn't know he was being annoying. We call them trolls round these parts.

It's 8am on a Sunday morning. Turn on the telly and watch some real cartoons. Might be good for you and Rasiak-9 to learn from the professionals before creating more of your own.

If he'd really cared, he'd have sat outside St. Marys wearing a cardboard sign saying "Please re-employ me". He'd still be there now.