SUN-lovers

Click on image to see the full-sized version directly from Koptalk.

Duncan Oldham of Koptalk bans anyone who mentions the blog. He has a dozen ways of referring to us without mentioning our name.

But we always give him a right of reply. And we also post verbatim all his various attempts to defend himself.

The following is taken from Insider Insider‘s post on 15th April 2006 in which he quotes Oldham’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and then deals with his Frequently Told Lies (FTL) Click HERE for full article.

Notice how Oldham interviews himself and refers to himself in the third-person.

Q. Oldham: Is it true that KopTalk supports The Sun newspaper?

A. Oldham: This is a silly one. That’s how low some rivals have to swoop to try and earn brownie points. To use the innocent lives of 96 Reds to try and target us disgusts us but doesn’t surprise us. As stated above if people want to buy The Sun newspaper then that’s their right. We wouldn’t encourage them to do so for many reasons but we have no right to tell people what they will or won’t do. We’d prefer it if they didn’t buy the rag and we’d encourage them to boycott it but that’s as far as it goes.

(Silly? Despicable more like. Brownie Points? Disgust actually. The S*n is boycotted because they tried to turn the blame for Hillsborough back onto the Liverpool supporters. Worse than that, they made claims that our supports pissed on the dead bodies of those fans who lost their lives. They made claims they we pickpocketed from them. Do some research if you’ve never seen what the S*n wrote. They’ve never apologised, apart from a half-baked attempt after Wayne Rooney had sold his soul to them. The editor at the time, Kelvin MacKenzie admits he knew that they were lies that he allowed to be printed, but he really does not care. What The S*n and Kelvin MacKenzie did played a big part in our 96 lost ones not getting the justice they deserved. That’s why that Arsenal game in January started off with six minutes of singing for justice for the 96, and why the Kop held up a mosaic for those six minutes asking for “The Truth”. Not everyone knows about the boycott of The S*n, and it’s not unusual to see a naive forum member on one LFC forum or other quote from that rag. Usually the poster is told about the boycott (sometimes politely) and the poster apologises. Later on a moderator removes the offending quotes. Nobody questions the boycott. Nobody feels it needs to be debated, perhaps with the exception of a debate over what it would take for the boycott to be lifted. Everyone agrees though – the S*n is boycotted and it will stay boycotted until the families say otherwise.

Except on Koptalk. On Koptalk last summer I saw an exchange where Dunk’s moderators attacked someone who pointed out that quotes from the S*n weren’t welcome. Then Dunk came along and locked the thread, claiming his readers don’t want to be bothered with serious things like that. As the summer went on Dunk’s true feelings about The S*n became more and more apparent.

He told more lies about why he wore a hat promoting The S*n at France ‘98, even though he’d known about the boycott at the time he was wearing it.

And then I spotted a pattern. Some of his news stories linking Liverpool with players from other clubs didn’t appear anywhere else on News Now. Love it or hate it, News Now have long since stopped including stories from The S*n on their LFC page. So how did Dunk get these stories, some of which included quotes from players or managers? Google News helped me to find the answer. Stick a player’s name and part of his quote onto Google News and you’d find the story’s source. The S*n. Google News don’t actually boycott The S*n, so a search on Google News will include their stories in the results. Often there would only be one result with those quotes. Usually if it appeared anywhere else in Google News other than the S*n it was on some newspaper from overseas many hours later. But Dunk had taken the story and used it as his own on Koptalk. And with Google News a relatively new service, most Reds hadn’t a clue that Dunk had got his story from The S*n. Soon Dunk’s story would be number one on News Now – well it was the only story on there linking us to player “X”. Dunk’s now banned from News Now. For the second and hopefully final time. Dunk tried hard to defend himself over this. He was asked questions by his members. One day he claimed that Liverpool players spoke to The S*n. (The BBC are notorious for taking comments given by a player to a press conference and following them with “told the Sun”.) LFC PLAYERS DO NOT TALK TO THE SUN. Dunk tried to make out this wasn’t true. “Rushian”, well known on many Liverpool websites, pointed out to Dunk that he was wrong to say Reds players spoke to the S*n. Dunk again had a go, claiming Rushian was wrong, “and you know it”. The thread was locked. Then Dunk claimed that Peter Crouch had been speaking to the S*n. And what’s more, Dunk said he had the tape to prove it. And, like any true Liverpool supporter would he claimed he was going to use that tape to end Crouch’s career whenever he felt like it! LFC Fan? Sure.

Shortly afterwards Dunk admitted to buying the S*n. In fact he claimed he had it delivered every day, along with some other papers, but he claimed he bribed or threatened the paper boy to give it to him free of charge. Then he filmed him and Steve burning that day’s edition. And then he said he had to buy another copy so that he could type out the story that he’d been so outraged over.

Using the 96 to have a go at Dunk? Days before the anniversary I think his claims are insensitive to say the least, but Dunk took advantage of that boycott to make himself some money. As for supporting the S*n, well he refused to allow any discussion on the matter on his sites and actually seemed to be trying to persuade his members to soften their stance towards the rag. It’s an ideal paper for him, he hates the fact that he can’t talk openly about something he read in there that morning. The other way he supports it is that he copies directly from the BBC their round-up of that morning’s newspaper football stories. He never removes the references to the S*n, claiming outrageously that he CAN’T remove those references (even though it’s a cut and paste job). By removing any threads that inform his members about the boycott and the reasons for it, then printing quotes from the BBC talking about stories in it, he is effectively encouraging his members to satisfy their curiosity by going out and buying a copy of it. If that sells one extra paper for the S*n, then I consider that to be supporting it. Koptalk supports The S*n. )

Q. Oldham Fair enough but what about running ads for The Sun newspaper on KopTalk?

A. Oldham KopTalk has never taken a single penny from The Sun for advertising. Our advertising is organised and displayed by advertising agencies with the exception of Blue Square and Amazon. Every month the agencies add new campaigns. None of the agencies we use now or we have used in the past notify you of what ads will be run. If an offending ad is displayed, once notified we can disable the particular ad but only once we are aware. With Google Ads you can block/ban certain websites (advertisements) before they appear so obviously we have banned the website of The Sun newspaper. From time to time offending ads can appear, not just from The Sun but also from other advertisers that are maybe not appropriate. Any LFC site signed up to the same advertising agencies would have the same problem. In the entire history of KopTalk we have had to disable adverts for The Sun newspaper twice. The minute we’re made aware of such ads we disable them for obvious reasons. If anyone out there thinks we’d actually knowingly run ads for The Sun they must either be very naive or very, very stupid.

The last time S*n ads appeared on Koptalk, Duncan Oldham played a game of pretending he didn’t know where they were. It’s well documented on here how he played this game, not taking any action until his members had got pretty irate. At the time there were only three possible sources for ads on his site to appear in such a way. Instead of going into the control panel for each one of those three he played his game. He did it to prove a point, to attract attention. As he admits himself above, he hates being told what to do, and he no doubt had a great thrill to see how he’d upset so many Reds. He made no apology for those ads appearing. He instead had a go at those who’d complained. Liverpool fan?)

Click on image to see the full-sized version directly from Koptalk.