Rod Liddle in the Times: "Always fatigued — yet they never tire of claiming their malady really is a virus"

I'd put this in a different section, like Advocacy Alerts, or something, but outside of 'ignore this' I'm not sure what action the alert would entail. A lot of people probably should avoid this, as this guy is, along with Edward Shorter, arguably the most abrasive pundit who's ever written a word about ME. I'm paywalled on the Times, so I can't read it, myself, but something tells me that this is revealing to people who would never have noticed before, and are generally on our side, at this point, what we've always had to deal with. But to an extent that has the potential to top the 2011 'death threats' saga. And the more they push, the more, I have a feeling, the people who have seen enough to generally be on our side, are going to be willing to push back.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...ming-their-malady-really-is-a-virus-d7s7qlvbk

 

I think reacting to Rod Liddle is utterly pointless. He is a racist, misogynist provocateur and the people who read his garbage are not going to want to hear the other side of the argument.

Although he has written a slightly new angle on this, apparently we have the power to sway WHO and NIH. If only!

 

Sadly The Times website is telling me that I've reached my free article limit, and I'll have to pay £1 if I want to read this. I can think of many, many better things to do with a pound.

 

Rod Liddle is a racist, bigoted bully. To be written of by him kinda shows we're in the right, to be honest. Anything Liddle is against, I'm probably for.

 

Liddle is a very sad character. We should have the common human decency of sympathising with him in his plight. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that he modelled his career on Private Eye's Phil Space, and never realised that it was a spoof.

 

I'm sure not even Michael Sharpe wants the support of Rod Liddle.

 

On Page 15 of the print edition.

In the early 70s, I freelanced for a few months at the Sunday Times when Harold Evans was editor. It sickens me how the current editor continues to give Liddle (who has no background in clinical practice, medical research, or in science or medical journalism) a platform.

He opens his rant with:

"Do you remember Morgellons
disease? It was all the rage a
few years ago..."

"...The ME lobby insist their illness is
"real", that is, occasioned by a virus,
rather than being a psychiatric
condition. Wessely finds it astonishing
that they would rather be the victims of a
thoroughly nasty virus than a mental
condition that might be gently assuaged
by therapy. The US spent a lot of money
investigating a link between ME and two
unpleasant retroviruses, XMRV
(xenotropic murine leukaemia virus)
and pMLV (polytropic MLV); the
conclusion was that there was no link
and, further, that the notion that ME
is caused by any virus should be written off
"once and for all".

Such is the success of the provisional​

wing of the ME lobby that the evidence is
ignored by the World Health
Organisation and our own National
Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Let them have their medical illness if
they want, seems to be the response.

Increasingly we live in a post-truth​

world where those who clamour loudest
are indulged - even if this mitigates
against finding some sort of relief for
for what is unquestionably a serious and
miserable disorder, and even if their
complaints about a virus have no basis
in fact. It is similar, in a way, to the
demands of the transgender lobby..."


Sad individual. Don't give him traffic.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Liddle

https://www.theguardian.com/media/g...y-ipso-for-rod-liddles-discriminatory-columns
The Sun censured by Ipso for Rod Liddle's discriminatory column

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/mar/29/rod-liddle-pcc-spectator
Rod Liddle censured by the PCC


https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) is the independent regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK. We hold newspapers and magazines to account for their actions, protect individual rights, uphold high standards of journalism and help to maintain freedom of expression for the press.

Editors' Code of Practice

12. Discrimination
i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's, race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.

 

I've read it. It's contentious and offensive because that's exactly what he's paid for.

The ME section is followed by his thoughts on Brexit and concludes with a short section on millenial snowflake 'awful people' who don't know how to work.

This is the phrase that pulls all the themes together I think:

Don't we just, and Liddle's doing his best to keep it that way.

The ME section is the longest part of the piece so I can't copy it to here under fair use and I don't really want to quote him piecemeal.

I know some people think it's useful to archive things like this so perhaps someone will archive it and post a link for those who want to read it but don't want to give it traction.

I don't know if complaining is worth the energy or not. Perhaps one of the charities could take that on. There are already a lot of comments (not all ME related) online; Rod Liddle has his following. A few people have posted supportively, but I haven't seen a comment that challenges the assumptions about Sharpe's work with facts.

 

Various journalists are opining about Liddle on Twitter (in general not about today's article)

https://twitter.com/user/status/1107010962656239616

 

The charities should send a joint response to the Editor.

 

It appears from that transcript that this article is merely a hasty reworking of Liddle's earlier diatribe-was it in 2015?. I don't intend to waste time looking.

What seems to be of interest is not the content of the article but the reasons for the Sunday Times commissioning it. They knew exactly what they were going to get.

 

The Sunday Times have a pattern. They've published numerous inaccurate things about trans people recently too (which they manage to shoehorn into this article).

They don't believe in live and let live; it's always judge and be smug instead, even if it means lying.

 

Moderator note: Most of the Liddle piece had to be edited out as the forum cannot breach the copyright.
[Edit: Apologies to moderators. If anyone wants a copy of the full article send me a pm]


Liddle is so widely despised I wonder if having his guns pointed at us may actually be a positive. Here is his predictably vile diatribe in full:

I’m wondering if it would be worth complaining to the IPSO. My guess is that Liddle’s columns are routinely screened by the Sunday Times lawyers and that they are therefore confident that any complaints would not be upheld.

The IPSO Editors’ code of practice states:

Any thoughts @JohnTheJack @adambeyoncelowe @Sarah @Nathalie Wright?

 

Rod Liddle And the same old diatribe, same old rehash .....of sensational disrespectful contemptuous journalism- but hey, he gets paid for it ?????????? LOads of money, ££££££££

2015........

"Do you ever wake up worried that you have tiny fibres growing beneath your skin, all along your spinal column? Possibly wriggling little fibres, placed there by the government or by aliens? By aliens I don’t mean asylum seekers but proper aliens, quite probably creatures with bifurcated tongues and scaly lips from the Planet Zog. If so, you may well consider yourself to be suffering from ‘Morgellons’.............


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...ming-their-malady-really-is-a-virus-d7s7qlvbk

Always fatigued — yet they never tire of claiming their malady really is a virus
March 17 2019, 12:01am,
Rod Liddle

Do you remember Morgellons disease? It was all the rage a few years ago, popular with people like me who take the Bizarre Diseases Quarterly magazine and log into websites called stuff like “How the Zionist Occupation Government Is Trying to Kill You”.

 

*Newspapers will print something controversial to generate a reaction which they'll print and things go on from there for several days.

*The Times (if not the Sunday Times) hasTom Whipple who has written good balanced piecespieces in ME. He can be encouraged to do so again.

*I'm sure Messrs Wessely & Sharpe are embarrassed by the endorsement by Liddle.

 

Absolutely. The Sunday Times is worse than The Times proper in this sense.

 

Seems a fairly straightforward breach of the code and maybe the law.