Not a good day for Thatcher's PR guru, Tim Bell...

[Gromit]

His firm has just been caught manipulating wikipedia pages of its clients. Unfavourable facts were deleted, and good comments added. Wikipedia advices that users should not edit pages in which they have a commercial interest.

The Lobby firm has been criticised and its methods called unethical. It is ownby Lord Tim Bell, ennobled after steering Mrs Thatcher to 3 election wins and credited with running sucessful advertising campaigns for the then Conservative Government.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16084861

InterestIng to observe that the BBC fails to mention his connection to the Conservative Party, or to Margaret Thatcher. Knowing that, makes the story far more interesting.

The BBC trying to be impartial perhaps, or not wanting to upset the Tories?

[jno]

I don't think he's done anything significant in politics for a long time; he was embaronned by Tony Blair in 1998, presumably for services to his heroine. In the BBC's place, I don't think I'd have bothered mentioning work he did in a previous millennium either.

He does apparently chair the Tories' Keep the £ campaign, which seems a rather pointless exercise.

[Twenty20]

Why would it mention a connection to Margaret Thatcher? It was 21 years ago that she stood down. That's a pretty long time ago. Was Wikipedia around then?

You really need to let go and move on!

[anotheoldgit]

You should stick to your Daily Mail Gromit, they don't hold things back, not that his past attachment with Lady Thatcher is relevant at all.

http://www.dailymail....overnment-policy.html

/// Last night chairman Lord Bell, who was an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said: ‘The conduct of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism does not remotely constitute responsible
journalism. ///

[Gromit]

That is my point AOG. Most other news organisations that have cover the story mention the Margaret Thatcher link, but the BBC doesn't. It may be because it is irrelevent, or it may be they do not want to upset the Tories.

http://www.thisislond...e-head-all-this-st.do

[anotheoldgit]

/// Bell remains a true Thatcherite, unreconciled to any notions of there being a useful Third Way. Modern politics, he says, are undermined by an obsessive and misguided belief in equality. "It's just wrong to try to convince people that you can achieve that Utopian ideal." ///

Much as some would disagree with him, he is in fact speaking the truth in this case.

That was the dream of true communism, and we all know what happened to that dream.

[emmie]

BBC and Tories are not a match made in heaven, there has and still is a very left wing bias in the BBC, so perhaps they think it's a non event

[jno]

That's the BBC whose political editor, Nick Robinson, is a former president of the Oxford University Conservative Association?

A friend of mine spent a few hours in the BBC Millbank offices (ie the political HQ) before the last election, and told me he was surprised how Tory they all were there - cheering whenever Cameron was on the telly and booing whenever Brown came on. He couldn't see any leftwing bias no matter how hard he looked.