Shot by both sides » general ranting

A foreword by the author to the 2012 reprint

John B — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:11:21 +0000

If you like offensive blogs from seven years ago, then you’ve come to almost exactly the right place. This was one of the UK’s more popular (or at least, more visited) political blogs from 2003-2005. The final post from the original blog gives a good indication of how that ancient history panned out. All the original comments from the site are also preserved, although WordPress isn’t showing the number of comments by post on index pages (for mildly annoying reasons that aren’t worth fixing). All images and internal URLs should now work, as well.

On the other hand, if you prefer blogs that aren’t seven years out of date, then my current blog is Banditry; I also occasionally write articles for Liberal Conspiracy, and I wrote a fair few pieces for now-defunct group blog The Sharpener, also now archived around these parts. Or if you prefer media forms that aren’t themselves retro-tending-to-obsolete, then I’m on Twitter.

Sorry, most of you

John B — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 18:00:15 +0000

Time to go. For all those of you who enjoyed arguing on SBBS, I’m glad you had fun. Any of the sites on the right-hand-side, including but not limited to Matt Turner, The Pine Marten and When there were no doors would be good places to carry on said arguments.

For those of you who lied, twisted, cheated and bullied until the least worst choice available to me was to close the site, congratulations. You’ve won. I hope it was worth it. It would be ungracious of me to hope that bad things happen to you in return, so I’ll merely take solace in my knowledge that you have to go through life having a personality like that… Good work, fellas.

My writings will continue on the Sharpener (another good place to argue), and perhaps elsewhere.

Update: thanks to everyone for all your support. Too many links to acknowledge, but I really appreciate them all. I’m going to miss this site, including the people who think I’m a dick but don’t seek to screw up my life because I’ve written something they dislike.

Kevin Donnelly is a crack-addled baboon

John B — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:00:01 +0000

“In the US it’s known as the culture wars; the battle between a liberal-humanist view of education based on the disinterested pursuit of truth and those committed to overthrowing the status quo and turning students into politically correct new age warriors.” – Kevin Donnelly in The Australian.

No, the US culture wars pit a liberal-humanist view of education based on the disinterested pursuit of truth against Christian fundamentalists. The people in academia *are* the liberal humanists interested in the disinterested pursuit of truth. Only right-wing loons think that banning gay-hate groups from campus is a worse threat to liberal values than making kids learn creation myths as fact…

The rest of the article is just as bad. Mr Donnelly mostly attacks an Australian teacher called Wayne Sawyer, who has written that John Howard’s victory at the last Aussie election raises questions about public morals.

Since Mr Howard is a proven liar and cynical race-hate-monger (irrespective of your views on his contribution to Iraq), this is not a particularly controversial view: even a Victorian puritan would disapprove of him on moral grounds. Mr Donnelly, however, takes the opportunity to lie that Mr Sawyer wants kids to be taught left-wing propaganda, and then goes on a traditional no-nothing ‘political correctness has gone mad’ rant.

Alternatively, Mr Donnelly’s claim is that only people on the left still believe in honesty and in not stirring up hate for electoral advantage. This would certainly explain the current US administration…

(via Barista [blog dead, now a malware site], who also gives Donnelly some good punishing)

Brave Sir Robin

John B — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:00:01 +0000

Conservative writer Lee Ellis compares George Bush and John Kerry [blog dead, now a malware site]: “here we have a draft dodger who accidentally found himself in the Vietnam War compared with a presidential candidate who flew many missions in a dangerous plane out over the Atlantic, completing five years of military service in the Texas Air National Guard”.

At least, I think he’s a conservative writer. If he’s a satirist, then the world is ever so slightly less dangerously mad than I currently believe it to be.

(via World O’Crap, which is worth a read).

I like the moon

John B — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 00:00:01 +0000

I’d so far managed to miss the stormlet-in-teacup about American sandwich chain Quiznos licensing Joel Veitch’s Spongmonkeys in its new advertising campaign.

The news is good news; particularly given that Weebl and Bob now also star in a butter advert [link dead, now a malware site], it seems clear that B3TA is the new sex.

One particularly nice touch is that the Martin Agency (a deliberately “quirky” offshoot of ad giants Interpublic), which commissioned the Quiznos commercial, also represents the US Department of Homeland Security. I can’t wait until John Ashcroft and Little Goth Girl are united on screen…