Is there a conspiracy brewing in Barnet?

Conspiracy theorists often work by joining up all the dots in unrelated patterns and arriving at a conclusion, which whilst being supported by their view of these facts, is often quite clearly a string of coincidences. I'd always suggest a a degree of scepticism when dealing with such theories.

It has been suggested to me that there is a community in Barnet that is out to knobble the bloggers of Barnet. The basis for that supposition is that two members of that community have been quite vocal recently in their dislike of me. It never fails to amaze me how certain sections of our Borough are keen to jump on such facts and try and stir up feelings and  tensions which don't exist.

Deeper analysis by any sane and rational person would reveal that one of these people has been on the end of much negative comment within this blog for a period of several years. The first time I ever heard his name was when I was blogging at the Hendon Times. The then editor was telling me that certain members of the local Conservative elite had taken against me and were threatening all kinds of dire action if my blog wasn't pulled. I asked who these people were and they responded ****** **** was on the phone all the time complaining about me. As I hadn't got a clue who he was or why he was using so much energy in his campaign, I asked a friendly Mill Hill Conservative. "Oh, don't worry about him , he's just Brian Colemans dancing monkey. Coleman gets him to ring up and complain, because he can't be bothered to". So I didn't worry. In fact I more or less totally forgot about him, until he got a cabinet position where he threatened mayhem on one of Barnet's finest institutions. I then sought more advice from my friendly Mill Hill Tory "He's a little bit thin skinned you know, I don't think anyone really likes him very much".

As to the other person. Let's just say that we don't see eye to eye on many things. Which brings me to the point I'm trying to make. It is inevitable that if you write a blog like the Barnet Eye, you will occasiaonlly make enemies. If you don't want this to happen, don't write a blog. Whatever you may think of the people who don't like you, they are perfectly entitled to dislike you and call you anything they like. They are also perfectly entitled to talk to each other, meet up the pub and work out ways where they collude on how to wind you up. It hopefully comes as no shock to anyone that the Barnet bloggers occasionally have a pint and discuss themes for the blogs we write, so we can't be too arsey when people meet up to slag us off. It's a free country.

So in short, to the people who have emailed me and suggested that there is a conspiracy brewing. Well it is always possible, but if I had to have people planning a conspiracy against me, I must say that the two people they have identified as the leaders of that conspiracy are just the people I'd want to lead it as they are both (in my humble opinion) not exactly gifted with the skills to engineer the downfall of the Barnet Bloggerati.

And for the avoidance of doubt, you may ask which community they belong to? They belong to the community of political has beens, also rans and never will be's who float around the edges of the political pond in Barnet. I suspect that they actually perceive the bloggers as being far more important than we really are, for the simple reason that we're the only people who ever give them a namecheck.