The perils of blogging: it’s rather hard to delete what you wrote

By Mark Pack | Tue 27th November 2007 - 11:01 am

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SCOTTISH LABOUR’S new spin-doctor made a series of damning criticisms of his colleagues weeks before he accepted the job as the party’s head of communications. Gavin Yates used his blog to describe Wendy Alexander as “abrasive”, labelled shadow health minister Andy Kerr as “simply uninspiring”, and blasted Jack McConnell for being a “lame duck leader” when in office…

His comments featured on his WordPress-hosted blog, GYmedia. A message on the blog page now states: “The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available.”

But the Sunday Herald has uncovered a number of Yates’s postings, many of which portray the Labour leadership in a negative light.

The full piece then goes on to quote many of these postings.

Hat tip: doctorvee, who also explains some of the ways your old blog postings hang around on the internet.

Read more by Mark Pack .
This entry was posted in News and Online politics.

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3 Comments

Derek Young 27th Nov '07 - 12:06pm

Yes, but …

Gavin Yates’s SCVO blog was actually a media summary of what other news had been reporting over the previous fortnight. So when he was describing his new boss, Wendy Alexander, as abrasive, or his new nemesis, Alex Salmond, as impressive, he was simply quoting other coverage in the Scottish press. But never let the truth etc. etc.
Andy Mayer 27th Nov '07 - 1:44pm

It will probably make him better at his job. Press Officers need to be honest and challenging to ensure public positions are robust.
doctorvee 27th Nov '07 - 1:50pm

The blog in question had nothing to do with the SCVO (as far as I know) and if he was quoting other press coverage he had a funny way of going about it. No quotation marks, no blockquote tags, no attributions and no links!

Here, for instance, is the full paragraph where he described Wendy Alexander as abrasive.

Next, what happens to the Scottish Labour Party? Wendy Alexander, a former Minister who fell from favour with the so-called Labour ‘West-Coast Mafia’ is in pole position but her abrasive style might not prove popular with everyone. Also, she is seen very much as a Brown acolyte and that won’t go down well with MSPs that want a separate Scottish Labour identity from Westminster. The other front runner looks to be former Health Minister Andy Kerr. He’s seen by some as effective but by many others as simply uninspiring.

And here is Alex Salmond on the top of his game:

The SNP will not win an independence vote before the next general election. There, said it. End of. The interesting thing is that Alex Salmond is more than aware of this and his pincer movement with the white paper yesterday is a great example of a politician on top of his game.