Who originally coined the phrase, “Beer and sandwiches at number 10″?

I added that “I would appreciate a reliable source reference.”

This was picked up by @citizen_sane and @JohnRentoul. The latter found researching the question interesting and proceeded to write a blog post on the subject.  It did not take long before the Twitter types decided to get involved. Someone, somewhere came up with what is alleged to be the definitive answer which @JohnRentoul relayed:

Beer and sandwiches update: this seems definitive. The Labour Government, 1964-70: A Personal Record, Harold Wilson, p275. NUR dispute 1966

I would like to thank all of those involved for their assistance.

If anyone knows of any other interesting questions solved by people on Twitter or an unexpected way that Twitter has been of use, please let me know in the comments box below.  Likewise, if someone knows an earlier “beer and sandwiches” reference, please do tell. There are people on Twitter interested in the answer.

The front page of Lib Con is quite busy – you can see snippets of various recent posts, links to interesting stories elsewhere on the blogosphere, and a list of who has recently commented on what.  When you comment yourself, you are still aware of much of this other activity going on.  It’s there on the page in front of you as type.

On HP, by contrast, the emphasis is very much on the post you are reading at the moment  – and the effect, in the comments box at least, is very immersive.  ‘Cosy’ perhaps isn’t always the right word for HP-below-the-line, but there is something quite intimate about the atmosphere – by contrast with Lib Con’s interface which has the effect of reminding you that other people may be watching.

On some blogs – Bob from Brockley for example – if you want to leave a comment then you are whisked away from the post to a separate commenting space – I think this extra stage might incline commenters to be a bit more self-conscious and cautious – and I always seem to fail the ‘are you a bot test’ at least once, which fills me with Deckard-like anxieties.

Of course, there are many other more obvious factors which affect the tone of a blog – moderating policy, the presence or absence of a ‘recommend’ or brownie points function – but I hadn’t previously given much thought to the possible impact of a blog’s physical layout on how commenters express themselves, and wondered whether people could think of further examples.

The Tom MacMaster debacle has sparked a debate about online identity, which the BBC has picked up on. It has been revealed this week, that not only Tom MacMaster was faking a blog identity as the pretend-lesbian “Amina Arraf”, but also that “Paula Brooks” was actually Bill Graber – another straight American white man.

In this post I will reflect on the curious revelations of “Amina” and “Paula”, and how in the same week, these two internet “lesbians” were revealed to be straight men. I am aware that parts of this post might come across as sounding slightly conspiratorial. You are welcome to point out where you think I am erring. But here goes.

When the Electronic Intifada began tracing the internet personality of “Amina Arraf” back to the married couple Tom MacMaster and Britta Froelicher, they confronted the pair with the information they had discovered. They replied:

“Thanks, but as I have stated before, it is neither my wife nor me.” [Tom]

[...]

“Unfortunately, we’re on vacation so I wouldn’t be able to do so. We have already been ‘confronted’ by the Washington post with these and have denied them and will continue to do so.” [Britta]

[...]

“I am not the blogger in question. Whomever that person ‘really’ is, I have doubtless interacted with her at some point. I do not know further than that about her. When I first read the news story, I momentarily thought I had an idea who she was. As time has progressed that seems much less likely. I understand there are a number of unusual coincidences regarding the blogger and either me or my wife. Those are, as far as I am aware, simply unusual. I am not going to make more of that.” [Tom]

MacMaster & Froelicher deny outright, any links between themselves and the “Amina” character. However, MacMaster himself noted the coincidences between the couple, and the character.

A day later, MacMaster wrote on his “Amina“ blog:

I am the sole author of this blog and have always been so. Any and all posts on the blog are by me.

This appears to be an attempt to distract attention away from asking pertinent questions about his wife, Britta Froelicher.

Remember, Froelicher is an expert academic on Syria, and “Amina” had an expert knowledge of Syria, to the point of being able to describe museums in Damascus.

We read in The Age:

In February, just as the Arab Spring protests were swinging into full gear across the Middle East, Brooks said Amina told her she had moved back to Syria with her elderly father. She seemed to have extensive knowledge of Damascus, describing in detail museums that Brooks, who had been to Syria, knew to be true.

Two things stand out here – both “Amina” and “Paula” have a detailed knowledge of Syria. Froelicher’s detailed knowledge of Syria seems to have added weight and depth to the “Amina” character. Significantly, the Age reveals that “Paula Brooks” – who we now know to be Bill Graber –  has spent time in Syria, and apparently knows Damascus well too.

Froelicher, though, denies any involvement with “Amina”. The Washington Post reported:

So Froelicher knew nothing, apparently.

And how was MacMaster revealed to be the blogger?

According to the Washington Post – the first news outlet to track and then break this story – “Paula Brooks” was instrumental in tracking down and revealing Tom MacMaster to the world. We read in an interview with Graber:

Melanie Nathan wrote:

I resigned my interest in lezGetReal a couple of weeks before the Hoax news broke. I want it on the record that lezGetReal has deleted my comments where I have tried to defend my self and my integrity. They did take down one extremely offensive lie but have left more of the degrading material up. I resigned because of the arguments that resulted when I expressed doubt to Paula Brooks about Amina and her authenticity some months back. This led to the question of the direction of the site which I believed was veering from mission.

I have proof in writing that Paula Brooks has refused to remove material defaming me from lezGetReal. I plan to post on any site that has a link to LGR about this, that I am not associated with Amina, and that I objected to her presence on LGR, not for the reasons LGR alleges, but because I knew the stories were unauthentic. I told Brooks about this and have the e-mails, witnesses and chats to back this up.

[...]

By the way Paula Brooks told me she had a crush on Amina…..

According to Nathan – who has the backed-up chats with “Paula”/Graber saved on her PC – Graber pushed her off the site because of the way she voiced doubts over Amina. Moreover, “Paula” told Melanie Nathan that she had a crush on ”Amina”.

Yet the narrative we are hearing, is that “Paula”/Graber worked to expose “Amina”/MacMaster, because “Amina” was “malevolent”.

The story gets stranger still.

Here is a picture of Britta Froelicher with long hair:

Here is a picture of Britta Froelicher laughing:

Here is a picture that “Paula Brooks” used on Facebook and Yatedo:

I emailed Britta Froelicher and asked her if the photo “Paula Brooks” used on her profile was Britta herself.

Britta replied:

Apparently Paula Brooks is some guy in Pennsylvania or something. [...] Look, don’t try to make up connections where there aren’t any.  Whatever picture was used is not me, at least not the one you sent me.  We may look somewhat similar in the sense that many white, somewhat blonde women look similar.  But that’s not me.  Those are pictures of two different people.  I never knew of the existence of ‘Paula’ until… yesterday or the day before, I think.  Again, don’t make up stuff.  As we know, it can really backfire.

It’s hard to trust what Britta says though, especially when it comes to the question of which photos match which people online.

Certainly, Britta bears a very strong resemblance to “Paula Brooks”. Note the hair, the contours of the nose, the face shape, the jawline, the chin, the dimples and the eyes.

In summary:

We are expected to believe that

1. Tom MacMaster and Bill Graber independently decided to set up fake-lesbian blog personas.
2. MacMaster and Graber had different motivations.
3. MacMaster and Graber did not know each other before all this happened.
4. MacMaster worked on this project alone, with no input from his wife.
5. Britta Froelicher had no knowledge of MacMaster’s “Amina” project.
6. MacMaster and Graber collided online, and happened to have precisely the same political outlook on life.
7. MacMaster and Graber flirted with each other online as “Paula” and “Amina”, unaware of each other’s true identities.
8. Graber was so impressed with “Amina” that he promoted her story for months.
9. Graber was so disgusted by “Amina” that he exposed her story to the world.

Yet, we also know that:

1. Graber as “Paula” told a LezGetReal user that she fancied “Amina”.
2. Graber hounded LezGetReal users off the site for questioning the authenticity of “Amina”.
3. Both MacMaster and Froelicher initially denied any involvement in the creation of “Amina”.
4. Froelicher has an extensive knowledge of Syria, that appears to have been used greatly by “Amina”.
5. Graber, as well as MacMaster and Froelicher, has visted Syria and knows Damascus well.
6. Graber went to the effort of creating fake Facebook and Yatedo accounts and wrote a fake academic and personal history for “Paula”.
7. “Paula” was disappeared just as soon as “Amina” was revealed.
8. The pictures Graber posted as “Paula” look incredibly similar to Britta Froelicher.
9. We can’t trust anything MacMaster, Froelicher or Graber say online.

It doesn’t add up.

Thoughts?

This is fortuitous for a man who spreads hatred of Israel with the likes of Azzam Tamimi.

Palestinian academic Azzam Tamimi, who has advocated suicide bombing, has told students he “longs to be a martyr” and that Israel “must come to an end”.
…
At SOAS, he praised Hamas and said: “Today Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation because that’s what the Americans and Israelis and cowardly politicians of Europe want, but what is so terrorist about it?

“You shouldn’t be afraid of being labelled extreme, radical or terrorist. If fighting for your home land is terrorism, I take pride in being a terrorist. The Koran tells me if I die for my homeland, I’m a martyr and I long to be a martyr.”

He criticised calls for a two-state solution and said: “Why are the Jews superhuman and better than anyone else that God would give them a homeland? Is God a racist? A god who would prefer people because of their race is not a god I want to associate with. Claiming they are being given the land of God is a racist idea.

“If the world felt so guilty about the Holocaust, the Jews should have been compensated, not brought to my country at the expense of my people.

“Israel does not belong to my homeland and must come to an end. This can happen peacefully if they acknowledge what they did — or we will continue to struggle until Israel is no more.”

He also urged students to continue hosting debates, despite calls to ban controversial speakers from campuses.

He said: “I want to encourage you not to be intimidated by the pro-Israel lobby. The Zionists tell a pack of lies.”

Dr Tamimi spoke alongside Ben White, author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, who urged students to boycott Israeli goods.

Here is Azzam Tamimi in full throttle:

If this record is pointed out at Sunny Hundal’s Liberal Conspiracy, where Mr White’s screeds have been published several times, including today, when White has set special tests for British Jews, the information is deleted and the poster is likely to be banned.

Mr Hundal is a “progressive”. Innit.

Today, Politics Home shares with us a similar twinning.

Not quite as cool.

Hat Tip

A Retweet by John Rentoul.

Andy Newman, boss of Ultra-left website Socialist Unity has been doing his best to stir up hatred against those who gave evidence against Sheridan. He’s publishing veiled threats against them on his site, cops should shut him down-NOW

Readers of Harry’s Place will know that we do not share Socialist Unity’s politics. In fact, as supporters of liberal, democratic and pluralist politics, and as opponents of Trotskyism and Stalinism, we’d regard ourselves as its polar opposite.

I followed Socialist Unity’s coverage of the Sheridan conviction, closely. It is clear that the website’s line was that witnesses should not have given evidence against Sheridan, and that those who did were regarded as “scabs”. This article, by the male model and racist, John Wight, was particularly disgusting. However, as Andy Newman says, they did not contain “veiled threats”.

Possibly, there were such threats contained in comments posted on the site. Knowing Andy Newman as an opponent, I cannot believe that he would support or endorse any such threat.

On a number of occasions, we’ve considered closing comments on Harry’s Place altogether. Legal concerns are one of the reasons for doing so. As Andy Newman points out:

We do allow a fairly liberal comments policy at Socialist Unity, and the animosity between those who found themselves on different sides of the court cases has been reflected in the comments threads. Comments from both sides were heated: but as Phil at AVPS observes:

McColm takes umbrage at threats supposedly made against witnesses for the prosecution in SU’s comments boxes. While the recent threads were some of the most unpleasant I’ve seen (you’ve got to ask what someone new to socialism made of them), this reflects real life feelings around an issue that has become a dividing line for large parts of the far left. What threats there is were the kind of silly bravado you expect to surface in any heated internet dispute. If one wants to be consistent, applying McColm’s definition of ‘threat’ would see about 90% of Britain’s political blogging scene come under police scrutiny.

However the real danger comes with the idea that a blog proprietor is personally responsible for the content of comments published by third parties on their blog. If that principle is followed then political blogging will become impossible. For the News of the World to single out a blogger by name and call for police action is an extraordinary act of attempted intimidation.

Of course, in reality Euan McColm knows that we have not stirred up hatred, that there were no veiled threats against prosecution witnesses, and that the police have no grounds to investigate our website.

I wish I could share Andy Newman’s confidence that the police will not come knocking. Let us not forget the outcome of the Twitter Bomb Threat Trial. Or the arrest of Tory Councillor, Gareth Compton for an off the cuff remark about Yasmin Alibhai Brown.  Or the visit that our own guest bloger, Joseph Weissman, received from the police as a result of his investigative blogging about links between the far Right, Islamist groups, and the Rev Stephen Sizer. The police told him to delete his blog and, intimidated, he did. Before those incidents, who could have predicted that the law would be used in this manner?

I couldn’t disagree more with Socialist Unity about almost everything: but on this matter, I’m in solidarity with them.

One day I was running from the truth,
To speed me up they gave me these shoes,

So tie my feet with Nike’s,
Tell me lies about the 11th of September

By “lies” he means this:

It was the planes.
Not controlled demolition,
The BBC didn’t report the explosion of Building 7,
20 minutes before hand, on my television,
They found passport’s and plane flying manuals belonging to terrorists in the rubble.
That all makes perfect sense

He also peddles the conspiracy theory that Coca Cola donates its profits to Israel, and encourages a boycott of Marks and Spencer:

Every coin is a bullet, if you’re Mark’s and Spencer,
And when your sipping Coca-Cola,
That’s another pistol in the holster of a soulless soldier,
You say you know about the Zionist lobby,
But you put money in their pocket when you’re buying their coffee,

The last line is likely to be a reference to another conspiracy theory: that Starbucks is part of a Jewish conspiracy to support Israel.

It is being suggested on a handful of sites by Lowkey’s supporters, that he is one of the student fees rioters who the police are seeking to interview. This is the photograph released by the police:

Here is a publicity shot of Lowkey:

It could be him, I suppose.  These people think that the man pictured is Lowkey: although they appear to be conspiracy nuts themselves.

In other news, as has been widely reported, the son of legendary Pink Floyd guitarist, Dave Gilmour has been arrested on suspicion of violent disorder. The centre Right press is having a field day. Damian Thompson at the Telegraph has rather cruelly republished this piece from The Times, in which the young fellow discusses his favourite Savile Row tailor:

Charlie: I’ve always loved good-quality clothing. My style is vintage stuff and skinny jeans — leggings-style H&M girls’ jeans that no man should really wear! My parents said that if I got into Cambridge, they would buy me a Savile Row suit. All the other tailors seemed a bit fuddy-duddy, with fox-hunting stuff in the windows. I’m not into that aristocratic thing. Spencer Hart is modern and chic, with nothing fusty about it. They made me two suits — a single-breasted day suit and a slim-cut dinner suit, which is useful, as there are all sorts of feasts and formal occasions at Cambridge. I wear it with an almost Edwardian clipped-collar shirt and a slim, mod-ish dog-tooth-check tie. I haven’t worn the day suit much yet, but if I’m ever having a work crisis, I put it on and it gives me a sharp frame of mind. I never feel better than when I’m wearing my suits, and people take you more seriously. They fit perfectly.

The tailor in question is Spencer Hart. His stuff looks pretty good, I have to say.

I do not approve, of course, of attempts to destroy flags on war memorials.

However, can a man who sets fire to a copy of Socialist Worker really be all bad?

UPDATE

Rather plaintively, Lowkey confirms that he is unwanted, having already spoken to the police.

Who was the Kevin MacDonald fan at the University of Strathclyde? I think it may well be Tom Griffin. If I’m wrong, I’m very happy to post his denial.

In an important post, which is well worth reading, Tom Griffin does so deny it:

An anonymous post on Harry’s Place has alleged that I am responsible for posting anti-semitic material by Kevin McDonald on the Neocon Europe website. This allegation is false and I demand that Harry’s Place retract it.

It was unfair of me, I think, to put him in a position where he had to make a denial. I really would like to know, though, who it was who did reproduce the neo Nazi, Kevin MacDonald, on the website. Are they still working on David Miller related projects, for example? Tom Griffn does not tell us.

I don’t think that there have been any departures from Spinwatch etc. since the Kevin MacDonald incident. I expect we will never find out.It wouldn’t be right to accuse each contributor in turn, and so I won’t.

There is useful material on Spinwatch. They do, correctly, identify some of the more dangerous associations and trends within groups like the English Defence League. What is objectionable about their approach is that they seem to regard Muslim liberals as their enemies, and supporters of far Right South Asian and Middle Eastern politics, as their allies: when it should be the other way round.

I love blogging becasue I love writing. I love politics, I love the Labour Party, I love writing abut Labour Party politics.

But the blog has become a burden. It’s taking up too much time (though not as much as some might think – I am a very fast writer), it’s getting me into too many squabbles with people I have never met and are likely never to meet. And increasingly I’ve felt like I’m adopting stances simply for the sake of being confrontational and provoking a row.

Basically, the bottom line: blogging is having a negative effect on my personal, family and political life for reasons too many and complicated to recount.

I’ve allowed this blog to define me politically. It’s done the job pretty accurately – I’m acknowledged as a dyed-in-the-wool Blairite, a point that would perhaps have been open to debate had I never taken to the web. But I’ve become a blogger who is also an MP rather than a politician who blogs, and that was never the aim.

Mike Smithson from Political Betting has been speculating wildly about the reasons for Tom’s retirement:

I am sure that there are other “blogging crimes” that Tom is deemed to have committed but the above spoof ad bitingly illustrated what the party’s London mayoral candidate, Ken Livingstone, did during the recent campaign for the mayoralty of Tower Hamlets.

Labour figures are not supposed to campaign against anybody other then the official party candidate and the ad was designed to take the mickey out of Ken’s “excuse” which was apparently accepted by Labour’s NEC.

Since then Ken, under grilling by Andrew Neil, has conceded that he was working against the official choice in Tower Hamlets yet one assumes that once again they’ll let Ken get away with it.

Unless something is done about Labour’s mayoral candidate then everything that Lurfur Rahman does in Tower Hamlets is now tacitly supported by the party.

It’s easy to pick off small-fry like Tom Harris but has the new leader got the bottle to take on Ken? If he hasn’t then I believe that Labour can kiss goodbye to any hope of booting Boris out in 2012 or even returning to power in 2015. It’s that serious.

In response, Tom returned from the grave to call, well … bullshit:

I just did an interview for BBC World Service who, believe it or not, wanted to discuss why I’d given up. Having thought a bit more about my reasons overnight, I said something which I didn’t mention in last night’s post: I want to see Labour win the next election and I want to make some kind of contribution to that victory, even if that contribution is simply shutting my face. As a supporter of the policies of the last Labour government, I am out of step with Ed and some of his own views – on Iraq, taxation, electoral reform, tuition fees, to name a few. As my mum used to say (actually she didn’t but she probably should have), if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

This response was taken as an indication that I have been leant on by the party to stop the blogging. I don’t think MPs should use words like “bullshit” on a publicly available blog, and I’ve always tried to be careful not to lower the tone in such a way, so I won’t say “bullshit” now. But what a load of b******t.

But what’s provoked me to make this last and final post (honest) is Mike Smithson’s question – which I trust will feature in John Rentoul‘s ongoing and successful series of posts entitled “Questions to which the answer is no” – “Has Tom Harris fallen victim to Ed’s new assertiveness?”

Never, at any point in the whole of my blogging career – including the period when I was a minister – has anyone in the Labour Party asked me to stop blogging. Not once. The last conversation I had with EdM ended with him telling me: “Keep up the blogging.”

In fact, the only thing that could have persuaded me to keep up the blogging would have been if any senior member of the party had “instructed” me to give it up. That would have been fun.

So, no, Mike – there’s no conspiracy to gag me. The Boris Johnson poster which Mike predicted might cause me trouble has done nothing of the sort; I’ve received only congratulations from Labour parliamentary colleagues for it and for the point I was making.

Good to leave blogging on a high note then. So long Tom – we’ll miss you!

And, yes, that “Vote Boris” poster does look a little familiar.