Fire extinguishers, dangerous actions and Guido Fawkes

Paul Staines, the portly political blogger who would rather be referred to as Guido Fawkes, has gone out of his way to criticise and condemn the muppet* who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof of the Conservatives Party’s office building during the first big tuition fees demonstration. When said muppet was jailed yesterday, Staines gleefully reported:

A good day for justice it seems. Edward Woollard who was revealed as the infamous thug who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof off CCHQ, narrowly avoiding killing a copper, has been sent down for 2 years and 8 months for violent disorder. Just long enough to do an Open University course. The judge said the heavy sentence against Wollard is warning to other protesters not to ‘cross the line’.

Fair enough. Woollard did something stupid and dangerous. He propelled a heavy lump of metal at great speed and with no control, an act that could have led to severe injury or death if someone had been unfortunate enough to get in the way.

However, is Staines really in a good place to comment on this? In 2008 and he picked up his second conviction for drink driving. After spending the afternoon getting pissed he drove off across central London with a blood alcohol level that was twice the legal limit. The police stopped him when they saw his car veering across lanes of traffic.

To put it another way, Staines did something stupid and dangerous. He propelled a heavy lump of metal at great speed and with no control, an act that could have led to severe injury or death if someone had been unfortunate enough to get in the way.

Staines generally does nothing to stop some horrendously offensive and downright nasty comments being posted on his blog by his more window-licky readers. However, in the past 24 hours I’ve tried several times to post a message asking if he agrees that first-offence drunk drivers should be given nearly three years behind bars in order to warn other boozehounds not to “cross the line”, but for some reason the Staines massive keep moderating out my question. Last summer Stained announced that he was introducing some auto-moderation to keep out the worst of the lunatics, but apparently this also picks up on any mention of awkward truths about the blog author.

This week’s Private Eye reports that the Daily Telegraph’s letters editor refused to publish any of the hundreds of pieces of correspondence the paper received from readers who were outraged at the tabloid-style sting on Vince Cable and other Lib-Dem ministers. Interesting to see that Staines’ attitude to criticism is so closely in step with the mainstream “dead tree press” he claims to despise.


*possibly Fozzie Bear, judging by the haircut