The Wardman Wire

This will be a daily update about the Dave Walker case. This first one is longer than is normally planned, because a lot has happened over the weekend.

The Dave Walker case is beginning to get some more attention among British Political Blogs - for whom attempts to restrict comment by threats using our Libel Laws are a very hot potato indeed.

Links Today

A selection of links:

• Liberal Conspiracy have a roundup of no less than four current “Cease and Desist” cases.
• And Dave’s case was in the Britblog Roundup.
• And it’s also gone into Spanish.
• And Lee Griffin continues to Program His Own Mind.

If I get time later on, it will also go into Welsh (using my 4 words of Welsh salvaged from the blog buttons last time). I hope I won’t make the Swansea Council “W*nk Away Zone” mistake, and put up buttons saying “Dave Walker must be silenced”.

How Innaccuracies SHOULD be handled … as demonstrated by Mark Brewer’s organisation

And David Keen has a look at how inaccuracies on a blog should be questioned - ironically taking an example when Mark Brewer’s organisation the Society of Saint Stephen the Great handled themselves in a more reasonable manner:

One of Dave Walkers archive posts mentions a letter sent by SSG to Phil Grooms website, asking for some inaccuracies to be taken down.

The letter begins:

Dear Sir;

I write to request that you kindly remove the following from your website which I was most shocked and disappointed to read when perusing it today:

That’s the way to ask for things. I still don’t quite understand why that approach wasn’t taken with Dave’s blog. Specific things, and a polite request to have them removed, and a presentation of the true facts of the case. I don’t think Dave has ever had one of these letters, which makes it all the more bizarre that he’s suddenly asked to take 75 posts down and threatened with libel if he doesn’t. Even if there is any merit in the libel charge (which I don’t think there is), it can only apply to 1% of the content of the posts, most of them would still be fine to keep in the public domain.

Cartoons of the Day

This is my contribution - I like architectural history, with apologies to John Nash and to All Souls Langham Place. Anyone can use this cartoon with an attribution to mattwardman.com.

You can read the background to the original 1824 cartoon here.

And another one from ASBO Jesus. Click on the image for the full size version. Jon Birch has done this as two cartoons, which I have combined into one to make them quicker to include; I have also added an attribution into the image.

These are free to use non-commercially with an attribution.

I’m hearing rumours that J Mark Brewer has been quoting Old Testament Bible Verses in his “Cease and Desist” letters, and the cartoon above puts that in context - as (for Christians) the New Testament is supposed to do with the Old Testament.

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When this

Wrapping Up

I’ll continue doing a “Dave Walker Daily” in the morning or at lunchtime, and an article on some aspect of the controversy at teatime or in the evening - when I will also aim to update the list of links on my “Who’s Posting” article.

To help those who have not been following the SPCK story, today I’ll post a full set of links to all the coverage over the last 18 months in the Church Times - which is the only outlet I am aware of (apart from Dave) which has covered this in anything like detail.