"1892 Insider" - 1892.insider @ gmail.com
"Koptalk Outsider" - koptalk.outsider @ gmail.com
"Insider Insider" - Koptalk.Insider @ gmail.com
by Rupert Insider
Early this morning this blog passed 500,000 total hits.
A good many of those would have been from Duncan Oldham, the sole owner of Koptalk. Since the blog started in the summer, he has been one of its most avid readers.
But he has never once mentioned the blog’s name on his site. That’s a bit odd isn’t it?
In the latest version of his sales pitch in which he tries to persuade unsuspecting net-surfers to pay him £30 for annual membership, he boasts that his site is the most controversial precisely because he publishes what others dare not. He says he allows his members to make up their own mind – which is very good of him.
The only thing he won’t let them read is a blog about his site, a blog that everyone else is reading!
Since the blog started 85% of his members have left and thousands of lurkers abandoned his free site forcing him to close them down.
Not to worry, he says. It’s so much better now. His few existing members are “more mature and more adult” than the “kiddies and numpties” whose money and practical help he took for years.
But evidently they are not mature enough to make up their own mind about this blog. If anyone so much as mentions it on Koptalk, their post is deleted within minutes and they are banned. In fact mentioning the blog is one of the ways they “ban themselves” – a kind of automatic ex-communication from the Oldham cult.
Of course he cannot help himself from talking about what’s always on his mind. So we do get snarling asides and melodramatic rants about “them” – clear evidence that he hangs on our every word.
But before he tells his readers what “they” have said about him he has to run it through his own mouth first before spoon-feeding them. Surely an odd way to treat “adults”.
We publish everything he says verbatim – even his rants against us. Our Comments section is open to everyone, even to Oldham – and we do believe he and his paid helpers post on the blog under pseudonyms.
But he has no need to hide behind psuedonyms on here as he does on Koptalk. The blog has given him a standing open invitation to get in touch with us privately or publicly. But he never has.
The blog is not about money – we don’t take any directly or indirectly – we don’t advertise. Its not about ego because we are anonymous. It’s not about personal issues with Oldham because we have never met him or had any dealings with him. Its not about rivalry because we are not a regular forum footie site and we will go out of existence when his site does. And its not about hits.
I mention hits today because Oldham and a few of our critics claim that we are loners and not representative.
Its true that the site was started by one man – Insider Insider. He says it used to attract 30 hits a day. We’ve had as many as 10,300 in one day and two weeks ago we had more than 8,000 in one day. Typically we have thousands every day. And all of this despite the fact that by the very nature of our objective we have to repeat ourselves for newcomers that come to the scene.
The blog’s readers and contributors are a broad cross-section of domestic and international LFC supporters and professionals familiar with Oldham. Many of them write to us privately to support the aims of the blog. Some of them use the blog as a clearing-house for information and for direct representations about Oldham to LFC or to various authorities.
The interest in the blog is proof of the deep loathing many LFC fans have for Koptalk and its owner and their desire to see him disassociated from their club.
If this is your first visit to the blog may I suggest that you start with the toolbar across the top. There is a short About Us section and then a brief summary of the issues in Blog versus Koptalk.
Kids hospital in Liverpool won’t get the money, threatens charity conman
December 4, 2006 — Insider InsiderAs expected, Duncan Oldham’s “Alder Hey Appeal” has turned into the “Duncan Oldham How Dare They Sabotage Us Appeal”.
How exactly have we sabotaged this then Duncan?
Have we told people they shouldn’t donate at all, or have we showed them how to donate in a much more efficient way?
Have we told people not to donate at all, or have we just pointed them to alternative ways of donating – ways which include a registered charity number?
Have we told people not to donate at all, or have we told people to consider whether or not you can be trusted with this money?
We’ve given our reasons as to why we don’t think you can be trusted.
You’ve actually given other reasons why you can’t be trusted too though haven’t you? Hacking into people’s user accounts to post as if you were them, and then pretending you hadn’t? This was this week. Over the past months we’ve shown you are a conman and a thief Oldham, and people who see why we say this will not donate a single penny if it has to go through your hands.
Is that what you mean by sabotage? Warning people about you? We’ve not told a word of a lie about you, Duncan.
Readers of this blog, current and former Koptalk members or not, might still want to give money to Alder Hey. I’ve set up a page on JustGiving.com – www.justgiving.com/notdunk for anyone who wants to donate now. Have a good look around that site to see how it all works. Thanks to the UK rules on “Gift Aid”, the first £25 donated was actually upped by an extra seven quid, so keep that in mind if you aren’t sure if you can afford much. Even one pound would be something, and if you’re British would be upped by 28%.
At the same time though, don’t feel pressured into giving to this particular charity. If you’ve got some new toys that you’d like to donate, why not get in touch with a hospital or other worthy cause near to home. If you’d rather give to a research charity for something that means more to you personally then again – give to that cause instead.
A lot of people left Koptalk over the course of this year – if you’ve not spent the membership money you saved yet then why not donate a little bit of it to this charity?
Whatever you do though, don’t trust Dunk. Seriously.
And Dunk, we know you read this (after all, you keep pointing it out on your site) – what did you do with all that money collected in Lauren’s name? Why were there no acknowledgements from Lauren or her family? You owe it to your readers and all those who donated, but instead you hide behind excuses that we are “attacking” you. We aren’t. And if Lauren does need any help, I’m sure a lot of ex-members of your site would still donate to her, as long as you and your mam weren’t near any of the money.
What I am going to ensure though, is that every penny that you collect gets handed over to Alder Hey. Every last one. If that happens, then I’m happy. I still think you set all of this up as part of some scam, but as long as you’ve got receipts for everything then who can complain.
And it’s not just me watching either.
Last night came Dunk’s pathetic and contradiction-filled post about his appeal…
This is one I said I’d come back to. He said, from the beginning, that he would only accept donations from people who left their name and the details of the amount on the Koptalk website. Above, in his Sunday rant, he says, “It has also been made perfectly clear that nobody can contribute to the appeal unless they state and record their donation on the site.” So why has he allowed this then?
Pedantic that I raise the issue of an anonymous donation, which is against the self-imposed rules created by the one-time Sky Card condman? Possibly, but he said he won’t let anyone donate anonymously.
I hope he remembers to include this sum in the amount of cash he’s going to eventually hand over. What’s $500 in UK sterling?
That post was made on Saturday morning at 10:30am, but by last night at 10.55pm it still hadn’t been added to the list of donations. Why not? 36 hours later and the largest donation hasn’t been included.
Here’s the list as it looked last night (see the edited time at the bottom rather than the time of this post)…
We’re keeping an eye on you Dunk, and we’re hopeful that by doing that we’ll stop you from turning this into a new scam. We’d love to hear the truth about Lauren’s money, but we know that we won’t, because you’ve stolen some of it. If we’d been around when Lauren’s fund first began then she’d have got every penny pledged to her, not you.
If anyone reading this is good with spreadsheets why don’t they store this information on one for us. Let’s keep an eye on things together. And you can access this appeal without being a member too remember (koptalk.coN/members). As many people as possible please keep an eye on it (watch out for posts being deleted with people having just paid via paypal for example).
One way or another, those people who’ve handed over their money must not be disappointed. Not again.