Those of you who are active on Scottish political Twitter may be aware of a very unpleasant long-running saga involving David Hooks (aka PoliticsScot) and someone called Pauline. There are allegations of bullying on one side, and stalking on the other. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know enough about what’s happened to form any sort of view. Every explanation I’ve read has left me scratching my head – it’s like starting to watch a film in the middle and trying to make sense of what’s going on. My impression of David is that he’s a very decent guy, and I’ve noticed that some of the usual suspects on the radical left have been piling in against him, which leads me to suspect that if I did understand the whole thing better, my sympathies might well be with him. But it would be totally unfair to jump to any conclusions without enough information, so I just haven’t got involved at all.
About a month ago, and completely out of the blue, I received two very long emails from Pauline setting out her side of the story. I ignored them for three reasons – a) it’s absolutely none of my business, b) I couldn’t actually make head nor tail of what she was talking about, and c) the emails seemed to be primarily intended for Paul Kavanagh. It looked like I had just been copied in as an afterthought. She sent me a third long email yesterday, and by then I had reached the point where I just couldn’t be bothered, so I didn’t even read it. But last night somebody claiming to be her mother randomly messaged me on Twitter and needlessly tagged in a radical left troll, so at that point I started to get a bit suspicious, and went back and read the email. I was a bit shocked and bewildered to discover that there was an allegation that I had been directly involved in the saga. This is the relevant paragraph –
“Around 3 months ago a pro indy blogger who I considered a pal at that time contacted my mum and said that he had been given DMs by James Kelly showing that David Hooks spoke to Steve Sayers, its an open secret that he does, but he was accused of passing on information. He was going to do an expose on him, sharpening his knives against him. He said that James Kelly gave him the DMs and wings also knew about this. When my mum pressed him the excuses not to expose him became more fantastic. Pete Bell was brought into it and he said said that it was Pete who had the final say on whether this was going to go ahead.”
For the avoidance of doubt, that is an absolute fairy-tale. I have no idea if David Hooks speaks to Steve Sayers. I do not care less whether he does or he doesn’t. I have no evidence that he does, and I have not passed any evidence on to anyone else. I have not made any accusations or given anyone any DMs.
My involvement in this affair has been literally zero, so there are only two explanations here – either a) someone has got their wires crossed very badly, or b) the entire story about me has been deliberately and cynically concocted.
As I stated at the outset, I know next to nothing about the background to this dispute, and I have not taken sides. But if someone is going to make up a pack of lies about me and email it to all and sundry, I make no apology at all for pointing out what they are doing. Whoever is responsible, kindly just pack it in. Thanks in advance.
