I can’t respond on Red Alert so I’ll do it here.

After being banned at Red Alert yesterday – “Is Trevor afraid of spades” – Trevor Mallard now appears to be accusing me of trying to breach the ban. He’s used my previously blocked comment to post this “warning”:

That’s bizarre. Since he banned me yesterday I haven’t tried to post anything at Red Alert using any email or identity. I have always used my own name when posting at Red Alert.

He’s either confusing me with someone else – who would be being blocked from commenting too simply because Trevor has guessed wrong about their identity – or he’s trying some sort of warning message.

Or he’s trying to establish a pretext to ban me for longer.

I have no intention of posting during my ban from speaking at Red Alert. If I did want to get around the ban Trevor wouldn’t know about it.

This all seems very trivial. As one other commenter there said:

Tim G says:
April 12, 2012 at 2:35 pm

The trouble is Pete, I think you are giving your post too much credit. there is really nothing in there worth censoring.

I wasn’t giving my post credit for anything. There’s nothing I said that justifies being censored. It’s simply a case of Trevor Mallard wanting to control his own message, and being draconian about any perceived criticism.

If MPs really want to engage with the electorate via blogs then they have to seek and allow engagement.

Red Alert as a concept could work very well, with MPs making themselves available for discussion with the plebs. But Red Alert has a reputation of a farce, with talk of bans and censorship being common.

It’s a prime example of MPs using social media without understanding it’s potential – and it’s potential pitfalls. It could help Labour, but instead it damages the party.

It appears to me that Trevor Mallard thinks he has a right to swing spades of accusations and smears – inside and outside parliament – but when he thinks he has control he’s willing to be draconian in suppressing people who are simply calling a spade a spade.