Blog wars

There's a real spat going on in the blogosphere right now. Martyn Bradbury from Tumeke is upset at Scott from Imperator Fish, who paraphrases things in a post he wrote yesterday:

Have you ever been involved one of those endless disputes on the internet that you just can't seem to escape? It's like one of those schoolyard fights where the first person to walk away and say they've had enough is labelled a coward and loser by the other, even if the reason why you want to walk away is because the other person is talking gibberish, and because it is three in the f**king morning and you just need to sleep. It's okay to sleep sometimes.

I have not yet reached that point in my exchanges with Martyn Bradbury, but I fear things are escalating. To recap, he wrote a post about me, I wrote a post mocking him, we had an exchange on Twitter, and now he has written another post about me. My immediate reaction is to want to taunt him further, particularly with regard to his claim that Cameron Slater is my new best friend (a claim that anyone who actually reads my work will find as entertaining as I do), but I suspect that lefties labelling each other as friends of Slater may be something similar to the phenomenon known as Godwin's Law.

Ironically, I was engaged in drafting a legal settlement agreement when this all erupted, so it got me thinking. Surely we can settle this dispute and save ourselves all a lot of bother and boredom. It seems a more attractive proposition than our continuing this stoush, which would inevitably involve either a point by point rebuttal of Bradbury's dubious claims, or another post poking fun at him, which would in turn draw forth more incoherent rage from Bradbury.

I also seem to have stumbled into some kind of anti-The Standard thing, and Bradbury seems to be particularly put out that some of my posts occasionally appear on that site. I suspect one could devote quite a lot of time forming a theory on why Bradbury is quite so fixated on The Standard, but it's a fight I don't want to get involved in. The Standard folk asked me if they could occasionally syndicate my posts and I said sure, fine. I never asked them to do anything for me.

But all this is beside the point. I don't appear to have the rage Bradbury does (which again, I won't speculate about), which is why I am offering the hand of peace.

So Martyn, if you will sign and return to me the below settlement deed, I'm sure we will both put this behind us.

The Settlement Deed is a work of art, and as Scott has some experience as a lawyer in the area of Intellectual Property, we won't try to paraphrase it; go and have a read (and a chuckle) for yourself. We must say though that the feather dusters clause is masterly!

And overnight, Martyn has responded; over at Tumeke, he blogs:

UPDATE: So Labour Party hack Scott Yorke has responded. What a condescending prick. It normally takes lawyers decades to reach that level of god complex, he's done it overnight.

So in response.

1: You are right, you are not Cameron Slater's new friend, a far better definition would be puppet.

2: Your condescension reeks of all that was bad about Labour 2008.

3: Your pop psychology 101 rendering of me seems more a projection than considered opinion. You insinuate that I roll my eyes at the Standards use of you because I am jealous of you Scott, oh far from it. I roll my eyes at their use of you because your tedious, safe and bland opinions are far from what Labour needs.

Have fun with your new friend Cameron Slater.  

Oh dear; hell hath no fury like a jilted Bradbury. Martyn demonstrates once and for all that he has no sense of humour whatsoever. He's getting an absolute pasting right across the blogosphere, and all his latest response will do will get him pasted and mocked a whole lot more.

Martyn Bradbury tries to concoct an image of being some kind of urban guerilla. That's why we don't call him by his nickname; it only encourages him! He's in a snitch with everyone because of the Open Parachute blog rankings, and has even had a whinge at the very mild-mannered blogger there, Ken. Martyn seems not to be in a happy place at the moment.

The sensible thing for Martyn to have done would have been to politely admit defeat, or to have at least maintained a dignified silence. By ramping this "war" up again' he's merely going to attract scorn from right across the blogosphere; sheesh; even Trevor Mallard is saying that Scott has won!

Game, set and match to The Fish, wethinks.