Founder of the Rod Liddle/Indy Facebook protest replies ....

Dear Madame,

Came across your blog post while Googling around and wondered, as the founder of the Facebook group, 'If Rod Liddle Becomes Editor of the Independent, I Will not buy it Again' if I could briefly respond to the points you made?

"I don't recall a Facebook campaign against the Indy's present editor Roger Alton..."

A couple of things to say to that. If I'd thought of the idea back then and thought that a Facebook group might actually be able to block an editorial appointment (as it may do in this case...), I probably would have tried to prevent the job going to Alton for exactly the reasons you mention.

Protests don't just happen by themselves - they require someone to actually do it and work themselves ragged in the process - even with all these easy-to-use online tools. And they require sufficient people to feel aggrieved enough to take part in it (which sometimes requires repeated insults). So it doesn't really make much sense to argue against a protest on the grounds that the protestors should have protested something else as well. Maybe they should have?

"What standards in the British press?"

Well, quite. That's the point of making a stand for them! Liddle isn't just about to be given another column in which to be loathesome but actual control over the content of a major national newspaper.

Support us!

Best wishes,
Alex Higgins

Dear Alex

Thank you for your letter. You are to be admired for your derring-do (ie, for going to the bother) but I take the view that newspapers by and large have outlived their usefulness, are generally bullying and vulgar, and do more harm than good in their present form.

Liddle perfectly fits the spec of a national newspaper editor: a red-faced boor whose insular perspectives are unrelieved by the slightest sign of big-heartedness or reflection. Like the many excitable clowns whose fat arses occupy the leather-bound swivel chairs of newspaper editors' offices, he has created a personality caricature of himself which to complacent reader-gigglers and -hoppers is (in his case at least) digestibly entertaining. Provided he plays up to their humdrum prejudices, that is.

If Liddle's rumoured appointment has the effect of speeding up the Indy's closure then let it be. Neither it nor he serves any useful purpose.

But my best wishes to you and your idealistic Facebook protesters.

Madame Arcati