Tuesday 10 February 2009

TractorStats WTF?

What's happened to the blogger formerly known as TractorStats? Is he due to be found in a field in Oxfordshire?

38 comments:

Michael said...

"Blog has been removed"

Some fucking dodgy shit going on down Google way...

WV: coints. That's what they are.

Null said...

Still the Google cache, but not for long. What happened?

Martin said...

I have been wondering the same thing.

I say we immediately jump to the conclusion of government conspiracy.

Obnoxio The Clown said...

Well ... I got the distinct impression he worked in the civil service ...

Hacked Off said...

Anyone have a link to DARWEN REPORTER?

They seemed to know each other...

The Penguin

Mark Wadsworth said...

http://www.darwenreporter.com/

Jon said...

Alien abduction?

Obnoxio The Clown said...

He's an alien?

Hacked Off said...

Have sent email, will report any news

The Penguin

Hacked Off said...

Mind you, that's if I'm still around, having also just sent this to the Home Secretary:

smithjj@parliament.uk

Dear Ms. Smith,

I am writing to you because I am concerned by the reports in the newspapers and on the internet about the amount of money that you have claimed over the years as an additional living allowance.

If the facts being reported are correct, and I have not heard of you refuting them, then you have claimed tax free allowances supposedly for the maintenance of a second home either close to Parliament or in your constituency so as to be able to effectively carry out your duties in those places. However, most reasonable people would not consider that lodging a few nights a week in your sister’s spare room and contributing to the household equates to maintaining a second home, let alone being able by some peculiar argument which defies logic that it is in fact your main home, thereby enabling you to claim the maximum possible within the guidlelines towards your home in Redditch as being a second home. After all, that “second home2 in Redditch is where you spend most (long) weekends with your family, including the husband who is on your payroll at taxpayers expense and who writes such nice letters to the local papers praising you.

How do you justify such behaviour? It may be within the rules as interpreted by other parliamentarians who are similarly taking advantage of an incredibly lax and overly generous system, but to the general public, including those who you would wish to vote for you at the next general election, and who do not have such a system of benefits and perks, that it is morally indefensible and completely unacceptable for an MP, let alone a minister of the crown to behave in such a money grubbing and insensitive way.

Many people would conclude that it is downright dishonest, and in any other walk of life would lead to criminal charges for deception and fraud. It is little wonder that people regard politicians with such suspicion and contempt, and little wonder that so few bother participating in our democracy. Are you proud of your behaviour? Do you think your children’s school friends will understand your position in claiming to have done nothing wrong, when similar behaviour by their parents would lead to prison? How is your case different to that of Michael Trend?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

The Penguin

Anonymous said...

I remember that he did a photoshop of a nude Broon, complete with a cocktail sausage erm...cock. Still gives me nightmares, that does.

Could it have been that that got him into trouble with the powers that be?

Anonymous said...

Well done The Penguin. Hope it won't lead to ....... in memory of the Penguin ..... RIP.

Hacked Off said...

Look, I'm the New Polar Fucking Bear, I'm going to be made extinct by the evil Global Warming (proprietor Al Gore, Nobel Prize Winner and Cunt ) so what the fucking hell can Mr Creedy threaten me with? Besides, I'm not completely on my own. It's a big family.

I'll stick a picture over on my blog.

The Penguin

Unknown said...

And Electro Kevin is gone as well.

Anonymous said...

Damo Mackerel said...

'And Electro Kevin is gone as well.'

Well he was a miserable cunt! I needed a toot on acrack pipe if I read his depressing shite!

Hacked Off said...

Hi there,

I've no idea what's happened! I have had a matey relationship with him but clueless on this one. He was still on last night. I wonder if someone has complained about him to Google?

Linda
Darwen Reporter

Hacked Off said...

When they came for the miserable cunts I didn't speak up....

The Penguin

Odin's Raven said...

The Machiavelli blog also disappeared a few days ago.

Odin's Raven said...

Possible clue to the sudden disappearance of anti-government blogs?
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10158

MrAngryman said...

This is all slightly worrying.

Mark Wadsworth said...

"This is all slightly worrying."

Classic British understatement of the week.

Anonymous said...

Old Holborn had to delete his blog. Some cunt grassed him up to the mossies, fucker is in hiding with his family.

wv...etlkboloks

Trident said...

He was pretty paranoid about his blog, in an email to me:

"started this blog three times with different names and nearly
gave up after the first few posts. I do pictures because I'm not
knowledgeable enough about anything to write.

I got a bit worried about things I posted so I read up about
anonymous blogging which is why I'm using this strange email
system. This is my first message with it."


Will keep you updated.

Lester Taylor said...

"Old Holborn had to delete his blog. Some cunt grassed him up to the mossies, fucker is in hiding with his family."

He's still here, and back with a lot of mates: http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/

cartermagna said...

I only noticed this afternoon that the number of followers on my blog had dropped by one which is a bugger and no mistake. Not because of the number following my blog dropping (it is *exactly* that) but because he was/is very funny and was quite a bit better at photoshopping that one-eyed Scottish idiot than the rest of us.

You can't blame him for being paranoid. If my name was Adam Mottram and I worked for the MoD and lived at 39 Mintons, Twickenham BG56 1AH and my phone number was 07866468777 then I'd be worried too.

Shit.

Lester Taylor said...

"Odin's Raven said...
Possible clue to the sudden disappearance of anti-government blogs?
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10158"

The real problem here, as the majority of readers will know, is that the CIU has been set up by ACPO, wich is in reality just a private limited company, not a public body.

Trident said...

Wouldn't surprise me if that prick Draper is behind this. Playground grass...

Clunking Fist said...

:^(

Back up your work, boys n girls.

If G--gle/blo--er can't be trusted, who do we use to host our blogs..? I cannae speak in ach tea em el.

Clunking Fist said...

"Targets will include environmental groups involved in direct action such as Plane Stupid, whose supporters invaded the runway at Stansted Airport in December."
Commissioner Plod went on to say "Weeell, that's for starters. Once we're bored we'll go after them bloggers. They're fermenting dissent and we can’t have that. Number 10 have already been on to us about that Tractor Stat bloke. Sorted him good n proper we have.”

Apologies in advance to the peelers if it was a technical glitch or he used words like CoUNTer and FiretrUCK too often.

JuanKerr.com said...

Expect more. This is LAbours strategy, despite a hostile press they still lost in Scotland 2007, the internet and blogging/comments forums being the cause. People assembling freely in a bianry fasion, diseminating the news, Brown likes centralized news, the stuff he gives out to peston.

Draper will be behind this, also Blears, She gave hints that an all out attack on thr blogosphere was iminent. This is just clearing the decks before election.

If you cant win fair win dirty as the Labour motto goes.

Word ver: Spita, she was last night....boom...boom......

The article below shows the average rationale of the average Labour Trough swiller. Blears the stepford politico/poison dwarf.

Filched from the penguin, many thanks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/hazel-blears-george-monbiot

Just in case they disappear it:


An open letter to Hazel Blears MP, secretary of state for communities and local government.

Last week you used an article in the Guardian to attack my "cynical and corrosive commentary". You asserted your political courage, maintaining that "you don't get very far in politics without guts, and certainly not as far as the cabinet table". By contrast, you suggested, I contribute "to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics" that I make my living writing about. You accused me of making claims without supporting evidence and of "wielding great influence without accountability". "We need more people standing for office and serving their communities," you wrote, "more people debating, engaging and voting; not more people waving placards on the sidelines."

Quite so. But being the placard-waving sort, I have a cynical and corrosive tendency to mistrust the claims ministers make about themselves. Like you, I believe opinions should be based on evidence. So I have decided to test your statements against the record.

Courage in politics is measured by the consistent application of principles. The website TheyWorkForYou.com records votes on key issues since 2001. It reveals that you voted "very strongly for the Iraq war", "very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war" and "very strongly for replacing Trident" ("very strongly" means an unbroken record). You have voted in favour of detaining terror suspects without charge for 42 days, in favour of identity cards and in favour of a long series of bills curtailing the freedom to protest. There's certainly consistency here, though it is not clear what principles you are defending.

Other threads are harder to follow. In 2003, for instance, you voted against a fully elected House of Lords and in favour of a chamber of appointed peers. In 2007, you voted for a fully elected House of Lords. You have served without public complaint in a government which has introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers; which talked of fiscal prudence but deregulated the financial markets; which passed the Climate Change Act but approved the construction of a third runway at Heathrow; which spoke of an ethical foreign policy but launched an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died. Either your principles, by some remarkable twists of fate, happen to have pre-empted every contradictory decision this government has taken, or you don't possess any.

You remained silent while the government endorsed the kidnap and the torture of innocent people; blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon and backed a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils his prisoners to death. You voiced no public concern while it instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop the corruption case against BAE, announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war, signed a one-sided extradition treaty with the United States and left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay. You remained loyal while it oversaw the stealthy privatisation of our public services and the collapse of Britain's social housing programme, closed hundreds of post offices and shifted taxation from the rich to the poor. What exactly do you stand for Hazel, except election?

The only consistent political principle I can deduce from these positions is slavish obedience to your masters. TheyWorkForYou sums up your political record thus: "Never rebels against their party in this parliament." Yours, Hazel, is the courage of the sycophant, the courage to say yes.

Let me remind you just how far your political "guts" have carried you. You are temporarily protected by the fact that the United Kingdom, unlike other states, has not yet incorporated the Nuremberg principles into national law. If a future government does so, you and all those who remained in the cabinet on 20 March 2003 will be at risk of prosecution for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime". This is defined as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression". Robin Cook, a man of genuine political courage, put his conscience ahead of his career and resigned. What did you do?

It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians.

You demanded evidence that consultations and citizens' juries have been rigged. You've got it. In 2007, the high court ruled that the government's first consultation on nuclear power was "seriously flawed" and "unlawful". It also ruled that the government must commission an opinion poll. The poll the government launched was reviewed by the Market Research Standards Board. It found that "information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer".

As freedom of information requests made by Greenpeace reveal, the consultation over the third runway at Heathrow used faked noise and pollution figures. It was repeatedly pre-empted by ministers announcing that the runway would be built. Nor did the government leave anything to chance when it wanted to set up giant health centres, or polyclinics, run by GPs. As Dr Tony Stanton of the Londonwide Local Medical Committees has pointed out, "a week before a £1m consultation on polyclinics and hospitals by NHS London closed, London's 31 primary care trusts were issued with instructions on setting up polyclinic pilots and GP-led health centres". Consultations elsewhere claimed that there was no need to discuss whether or not new health centres were required, as the principle had already been established through "extensive national level consultation exercises". But no such exercises had taken place; just a handful of citizens' juries engaging a total of a thousand selected people and steered by government ministers. Those who weren't chosen had no say.

Fixes like this might give you some clues about why more people are not taking part in politics. I believe there is a vast public appetite for re-engagement, but your government, aware of the electoral consequences, has shut us out. It has reneged on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It has blocked a referendum on the European treaty, ditched the regional assemblies, used Scottish MPs to swing English votes, sustained an unelected House of Lords, eliminated almost all the differences between itself and the opposition. You create an impenetrable political monoculture, then moan that people don't engage in politics.

It is precisely because I can picture something better that I have become such a cynical old git. William Hazlitt remarked that: "Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." You, Hazel, have helped to reduce our political choices to a single question: whether to laugh through our tears or weep through our laughter.

monbiot.com

Jon said...

Maybe some paranoia is in evidence here. I expect TractorStats just got fed up. If they were going to block anyone at all, it would be Guido, since he still uses the Blogger platform, albeit hosted on his own site. If Guido was deemed too big to attack, they'd have done a number on Old Holborn -- together with a tax investigation, the whole ball of wax.

These blogs are hosted in California AFAIK. We are ascribing too much reach, power and knowledge to these dismal little troughers in the Motherfucker of All Parliaments.

It's nice to know they're impotent. Even if they shut down one blog, two more will spring up. There are other platforms, other packages, hosting opportunities all over the world. You can even set up your own server; a low end Mac Mini would do, installed in the cupboard of a friend in some foreign land. Samizdat, that's what it's all about!

Earthlet Nigel said...

http://ru-ru.facebook.com/

Help can be provided to create an account here

Oldrightie said...

He's following my blog! Pray he's OK. Bloggers get poorly too.

Anonymous said...

Gentlemen, put on your tinfoil hats.

Anonymous said...

I dont think it will be a health problem as who would delete your blogger account if your having a heart attack.
My guess is his employer(civil service) found out and done Mc Dooms dirty work for him.I wouldnt credit draper with this as he is basically thick as shit.

Clunking Fist said...

My employer could block access to blogger via it's server. But they wouldn't be able to delete my account, which I could still access from home.

Trident said...

Tractorstat's image library is still online I have details here.

Anonymous said...

The lord elvis blog has gone now as well