Brought what upon myself? Are you saying that I caused ATW to post its anti-muslim bigotry? Or is it the fact that I responded to it by calling it such instead of agreeing that bothers you?

About 4 or 5 long, ranting posts about ATW, calling the authors most names you could think of.

You should work as a spin doctor. Anyway anyone who gives a flying monkeys can read the posts for themselves and decide whether that’s true or not (it isn’t - I could think of lots more names for a kick off .

And you have the gall to say they’re picking on you?

Huh? I’ve never said any such thing.

Ive just linked to your website - arent you the guy ATW highlighted recently?

ATW “highlight” rather a lot of people, and usually inaccurately, so you’d need to be a bit more specific.

(But I’m not rioting in France, I’m not “Muslim”, and I’ve little or no interest in northern Irish politics, if that narrows it down for you.

I’d still like to hear you explain how come, if police are so accurate in their suspicions, and so regularly frustrated in their investigations by red tape and pesky rights and so on, they still manage to convict so many innocent people, and even kill them sometimes?

I wondered if nbf meant that. Google said it was the National Bed Federation. I’ve heard of sleeping with the enemy but there’s a limit…

We disagree. Thats life. But i would like to extend a genuine apology -I was rude.

Okay – I don’t have high hopes for a considered response but I’ll try once. Please don’t get rattled by Frank’s response then reply to mine because then you’ll take it out on me.

Your contempt for people who support this legislation is worse than anything the Sun may or may not wish to publish.

Actually, I do despise Tony Blair because he’s a liar and is dismantling everything my wonderful country stands for but I do not hold in contempt people who support this legislation because I do understand people’s instinctive faith in the police that what they say they need they really do need. One of my closest friends is vehment in his support of 90 days. My wife doesn’t see anything wrong with it either. The suggestion that I am contemptuous of people holding a different view cannot be supported by fact.

ONE paper comes out in support of the government and because it does not fall in line with your thoughts on the matter you feel it necessary to ridicule it and depressingly all those ‘THICK’ enough to think the same as the Sun.

Completely untrue, I’m afraid. I could ridicule the Sun for all sorts of reasons – some of its own readers do (it’s the paper whose own readership least trusts it to tell them the truth) - but simply having an opposing view isn’t one of them. I have never ridiculed the Sun for supporting Blair, for example. And where have I even suggested that the public who support the 90 days are ‘thick’?

Actually, in the only piece I did write about the general view of the public (as I perceived it) who supported the 90 day business it was actually an attempt to understand their rationale. I wrote that Joe Average, when he thinks of terrorist suspects, thinks of Muslims and people trying to kill him. And he thinks that this legislation will only affect people who actually are guilty of such a thing.

I also - for the record - stated categorically that Mr Average’s desire to see the suspect locked away had nothing to do with racism on his part or the desire to do harm to Muslims.

Saying somebody is wrong is not the same as saying they’re thick.

You would do well to remember that it is the Sun who will decide who wins the next election and ive no doubt will become your NBF at some point in the future once Blair’s gone.

Whatever the Sun’s influence on the next election I doubt they’ll make their decision based on what I’ve written about them. 90 days in the clink without even a charge is the law of tin-pot dictators and banana republics - not mature democracies founded on liberty and justice. I don’t think I’ll be campaigning for it through fear of the Sun calling me a traitor – a word it clearly does not understand the meaning of - if I don’t.

I genuinely do not know what NBF is.

Whatever your opinions you have done nothing to pursuade me and many like me otherwise. Perhaps you could try this.

I have written a lengthy enough post on why I do not agree with the 90 day legislation – you actually commented on it. That I haven’t convinced you would be a seperate issue. But I have ‘tried it’ as you put it.

You have done your level best to patronise on this issue.

I think that either you are just bad-tempered at reading a contrary view (hence my suggestion that you’re throwing a tantrum) or you do not know what ‘patronising’ means. Otherwise, please present three examples of me trying my level best to patronise. Failing that, two will do. One if you’re desperate. Otherwise none – but accompanied by an honest admission of hyperbole.

Im not at all surprised to see you so self satisfied at your little blast at the Sun.

Again, I doubt you can really explain what you mean by this - let alone support it. I’m not ‘self-satisfied’ but I am pretty peeved that the Sun sees nothing unprincipled in using people’s personal horrors – without permission – to promote its own opinions. Do you not see the wrong in that?

If being peeved with something is not allowed then most of the blogoshere would disappear in an instant – and you with it, I’m afraid.

I have presented some reasonable albeit forceful arguments on your blog

Where? You suggest that the police case for 90 days means the case makes ‘absolute sense’. If that’s your opinion then so be it. Where you are forceful though is in the denunciation of other viewpoints.

You made a comment about cctv too but I don’t think the two cases are that closely related to be honest.

If my opinion challenges yours and i use a style you might not like how does that reduce my argument to ‘bile’ and a ‘tantrum’ and fevered ‘imaginings’?

Bile refers to your use of ad hominem arguments - attacking the arguer rather than the argument. For example, your comment (comment 3 in this post) is mostly a tirade of slurs and temper aimed at me which contains not a single sentence that puts – specifically - your case for the benefits of the 90 day proposal.

Your comments are fevered imaginings because they are all completely unsupportable constructions in your own mind; you imagine I’m patronising, you imagine that I think people are thick, you imagine that I’m sulking – I can only wonder at what else you imagine. It is a tantrum in the sense that your style resembles that of somebody who is angry but unable to channel that anger into some meaningful and compelling argument, one that can be considered, examined and then responded to. So you insult instead.

You are in danger of becoming an intellectual snob.

If only. There is enough high-class writing in the blogosphere - and elsewhere - for me to always realise my lowly status in the intellectual food-chain. I aspire, perhaps, but I know my place.

For what it’s worth Alison I believe that anybody’s argument deserves respect when it is thought-through and logically presented – this applies to arguments for and against the 90 day rule. The argument can be profoundly wrong but still worthy of the basics of courtesy nevertheless.

A person who votes for 90 day detention, further integration into the EU, unlimited immigration, a republic, state ownership of all the means of production, under-age abortion, the descecration of the English countryside and so on is, in my opinion, deeply (and dangerously) wrong but if their argument is sincerely, honestly, (Blair would fail on these two – others might not) intelligently and courteously put – even if wildly and passionately - then it is worthy of some sort of equally intelligent and courteous consideration. One can dismantle another’s point of view and still be friends afterwards. There is no need to try to dismantle the other person themselves.

The blogosphere is an excellent place to learn, to hear other views and to try out one’s own opinions. It’s the main reason I’m here; I learn something every day both from people I agree with and people I don’t – like Frank. Bad-tempered assaults are a disappointing replacement for tightly argued opinions because neither party learns a thing.

Life’s too short.

You can have the last word - I won’t respond, not out of ill-manners or bad feeling but because I’ve had this argument elsewhere and it’s really quite unpleasant in the end. We’re both better off without it.

And you’ve had some reasonable and forceful arguments in return, and your answer is “I’m not persuaded”, i.e. dismissal. If persuading instead of dismissal is so great, why don’t you try it?

As far as I can see from your comments here and elsewhere you seem willing to kill or imprison anyone as long as they’re suspected of terrorism, and even one or two that are not. You don’t seem to give a flaming rats ass whether that is effective in preventing terrorism or not, or even whether it causes more terrorism, just so long as something that seems tough is done.

I’m not persuaded, and nor are many others.

If I say anything that contradicts Alison’s point of view she resorts to bile and her own fevered imaginings of what it is I really think.

Her opinions are, it seems, well thought out, intelligently expounded and, it would appear, unassailable. Mine are patronising, contemptuous, ridiculing etc etc. They actually aren’t but, hey ho.

Most of my conversations with people with whom I am not in agreement tend to be cordial and at least observe basic standards of courtesy. I don’t hold people in contempt because they think differently to me but I do argue my point. It might be that Alison prefers that I didn’t.

I ignore her gibes here (and elsewhere) because I can learn more from well-reasoned and articulately argued contrary views than from somebody who resorts to throwing a tantrum because she’s read a view she doesn’t agree with.

I think you have done a good job in pointing out the real world point that the politics is dancing around. I can imagine there are a lot of people unimpressed with the numbers game being played out in parliament.

But Gary is right to point out the Suns attempt to hijack the issue. This just brings us further away from the basic problems - how to control terrorism and maintain a fair democratic state and why are people in our own country communicating in explosives.

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sssl/ssslstaff/commstaff/johntulloch/

Research Professor in Sociology/Communications at Brunel, I believe he also has tenure at Cardiff.

twunts