MARGO KINGSTON’S ‘WEBDIARY’ MORPHS INTO THE ‘ELIOT RAMSEY’ BLOG.

It seems that the once popular Australian current affairs blog ‘Webdiary’ has been taken over by a character now calling himself ‘Eliot Ramsey’ whose sleazy patronising comments appears to dominate in virtually every thread of the Webdiary blog. The resultant is that other Webdiarists, incensed by his blatant and extreme right-wing views, feel obliged to construct their arguments to revolve around his viewpoint thus denying Webdiarists an opportunity to discuss and debate the problems that beset the world without interference from this fraudulent propagandist whose sole purpose it seems is not to debate but to disrupt.

Around the middle of last year ‘Eliot Ramsey’s’ alter-ego, ‘C. Parsons’, was banned from further commenting at Webdiary. Almost instantly ‘Elliot Ramsey’ appeared on the Webdiary scene posing as a new Webdiarist who had just stumbled upon the blog and wanted to join in the commenting. It soon became clear that Eliot Ramsey was simply C. Parsons trying it on under a different name. When challenged by Kingston, Ramsey at first pleaded ignorance saying he hadn’t heard of C. Parsons – ‘how could I’ he said, ‘I’ve only just arrived at Webdiary’ was more or less his response. A little later, under pressure from other Webdiarists, Ramsey was pressed further by Kingston who asked him straight out ‘are you C. Parsons or not?’ Ramsey, of course, denied he was.

Kingston then decided to take this lying fraudster at his word allowing him to continue commenting at Webdiary despite having banned at least one other commentator that had been discovered with dual identity. A person close to Kingston later inferred that, since Ramsey had denied he was C. Parsons, Kingston was under some sort of legal obligation to let Ramsey continue commenting. This, of course, is utter nonsense. Kinston has no legal obligation to publish anyone’s comments.

Kingston has made it very clear in the past that the right-wing commentators at Webdiary are important to her. When she left Fairfax to start up Webdiary she had envisioned some sort of commercial enterprise that may make her a reasonable income to partly make up for her loss of income from Fairfax. She said then that she was pleased that the right-wing commentators that had been with her at SMH Webdiary had followed her over to her new project. So important to her were the right-wing commentators that when debate and discussion turned to subjects that the right-wing didn’t like and threatened to leave Webdiary, Kingston banned discussion on those subjects with her brother Hamish Alcorn going so far as to say ‘powerful’ right-wing forces had even made death threats to Kinston if she allowed these subjects to be discussed.

As we know, Kingston caved in. Discussion on the events of 9/11 became out of bounds for Webdiary as did most subjects that in any way could be construed as being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist.

Now Webdiary has become a blog for Elliot Ramsey’s sleazy cynicism, rants and tirades. All discussion now revolves around what Ramsey has to say and Ramsey, it seems, has an awful lot to say. By responding negatively to every issue, he dominates discussion forcing Webdiarists to respond in turn to his negativity rather than taking the debate forward. The quicker Webdiary gets rid of this fraudster the sooner many of the other serious contributors who have told me personally that they have been turned off by Ramsey’s presence at Webdiary will return for some serious debate on the important issues of our era.