Readers with a predilection for wagers might be interested to know that a few months ago, cs predicted that the Government would lose the next federal election.

Geoff,
I never said BP was accurate but the best. you have essentially strengthened my argument.
Asutenish, the ability to put down someone in a very elegant English way alah any Jane Austen Novel.

By the way Geoff when are you going to write next!!!
Stop bludging the blogosphere needs you.

Gary, read what I said.

And being direct is a more honest and far less tedious then constant obtuseness

You’re a sock puppet.

Just for the record, I haven’t said that LP was wrong.

I remember what used to happen at school. A few of smarter stirrers realised that they could use the teacher’s sense of fairness to get other kids kicked out of class – even the teacher’s pet. The trick was to wind the other kid up while the teacher wasn’t paying attention. The good kid would then lash out by hitting the stirrer and an inexperienced or weak teacher would then kick both kids out.

More experienced teachers would just deal with the stirrer and ignore the feigned moral outrage — “but he hit me miss! It isn’t fair! You said…”. Experienced teachers didn’t allow the stirrers to make and interpret the class rules.

Though slightly off the money in terms of it’s electoral prediction as i recall – and the one about the imminent total mental collapse of J. Howard. Still, it was brilliant fun. Everytime I recall Chris’ rallying cry – “go Latho, you good thing!” – I go all chuckly.

Anyway, Homer, what the hell is “asutenish?” It sounds like a cult.

This is a similarity with Tim Blair. The excuse for banning EP was as bad as any of Andrea Harris. The bad language was as equally bad.

This goes back to my original point of only banning foul/bad language.

If people are going to put people down then it should be done stylishly. Fyodor is a good example of this. He can be brilliantly asutenish at times but quite harrisian at other times.
If a blog has a comments policy then it should implement or ignore it.
Selective interpretation leads to declining standards. Both tim blair and now LP are shining examples of this.

The reason why LP is being debated is because we expect more of LP than Tim Blair.
There is or was sensible discussion on LP albeit from an acknowledged left wing perspective.

One last point.
Whyisitso has stated Chris Shiel is worse that Graeme Bird.
We must acknowledge Mr Shiel has no musical taste and has peculiar vies on economics but he doesn’t compare to Mr Bird.
Unfortunately he has acquired blairitus. He has a glass jaw when it comes to criticism and sometimes responds in an unfortunate fashion.

Chris ,
Backpages was easily the best blog on the last election ( and LP approached that at some stage) because of the humour, insight and contribution for various commenter’s ( where for art thou Fred?)

Get back to those standards and style!

We’ve had quite an enlightening discussion, but the LP apologists haven’t gotten very far — because they can’t control what is being said.

But, honestly, I think we’re demonstrating why re-playing these battles on another blog doesn’t get anyone very far.

Anyway, I’ll leave it.

I just don’t get what you’re trying to suggest.

As to Tim, I have no idea. I’m not that interested in Tim, and I’m certainly not interested enough to go and see how many posts mention him and in what context.

Rob – you should at least admit that a thread about rape, and one on which several commenters admitted that they themselves were victims of sexual assault, should not be the forum for spiteful discussion. EP more or less admitted above that he was trying to push the envelope and stir people up. I suspect a number of others were too.

I felt sorry for Russell, who came in from left field and probably scuttled off, never to be seen again, because of the treatement he got. As he said, the LP’ers response to his wholly innocent contributions was spiked with real hostility and contempt. .

How controlling is this.

“If people want to take issue with my post, I think it would be courteous to Andrew and Catallaxy for them to do it at LP rather than here.”–Mark Bahnisch

http://badanalysis.com/catallaxy/?p=1410#comment-32270

Andrea may have control issues but it doesn’t spill over to other blogs like it has with you and Mark

Unbelievable, Gary! I have very little interest in debating these issues on other blogs. The only reason anyone does so is that other bloggers such as Tim Blair, C.L., and now Don put up posts about LP.

OK, you’ve got some attention, maybe it’s time to start with the logic and evidence now?

Can you give me an example of how you’ve moved the discussion from cow carnage to serious issues?