Pistonheads moderators: stupid, stupid, ignorant, arrogant, spineless morons

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Note: I am not "janetanddolly" and I would not write "lol" in an ebay advert.

Update: So, it seems I have now been banned from Pistonheads for what I have written, not on Pistonheads, but on my own website. Looking at the access logs for this page it is clear that the prime instigator of this was Stuart Forrest. Well, there's a surprise... of all the people on Pistonheads who are noted for their arrogance, stupidity, lack of respect for the users, tendency to get completely irrational ideas stuck in their heads and then pursue them willy-nilly regardless of how often or how clearly it is explained to them how untenable they are, and generally treating people like dirt and crapping on them from a height, Stuart is top of the list. His response to every instance of discontent on Pistonheads shows this very clearly, and his access to a position of control over it was the worst thing ever to happen to the site.

When I try to post I now get the message: "Access Denied - You have been banned from the forums for the following reason: I find the material you've posted on your website about our moderators completely unacceptable, and it is clear that you have no respect for the site or its policies." Followed by a link referring me to the forum rules, regardless of those rules having precisely zero relevance to anything I post on my own website.

Well, screw you, Stuart. The first thing you need to do is take your head out of your backside and admit that you are in the wrong. You have brought this "material" upon yourselves by your utterly ridiculous actions which not only I but many, many other users of the site find unacceptable. You are in the wrong, and neither banning me nor deleting the posts of those other users - yes, I see you've been at it again - will change this. You can't make yourself right by forcibly silencing anyone who disagrees with you. Stalin tried that, he was still wrong, and the same applies to you.

And "you have no respect for the site or its policies"? Do me a favour. I have been a member of Pistonheads since 2003 and have managed to keep within the rules and policies for over eight years - nor have I transgressed them with this page, since this is on my own website and regardless of what you might like to be the case Pistonheads rules have no relevance here... which is why I posted it here and not on the forums. If you are going to bleat about "lack of respect" you need to put your own house in order first, since if you didn't show such gross disrespect for the users of Pistonheads and anyone who disagrees with your irrational nonsense this page would not have been written.

As I said in the main body of the text, I absolutely will not be silenced by force. If you see fit to attack people because you are too stupid to appreciate the difference between a class of criminals and a race, or to get it through your head that pikeys are not a race and therefore the word is not a racial insult, then you can expect an angry response. If you don't like what is written on this page, realise that you have brought it upon yourself by your own unreasonableness and that there is a very simple remedy: stop censoring references to pikeys on Pistonheads, stop censoring and deleting the posts of anyone who happens to disagree with your unreasonable attitude, and start showing the users a bit of respect. Or better still, just resign as a mod altogether... the site would be better off without you.

Indeed, if anyone is being "racist", it is yourself... since you do seem to think that the class of criminal behaviour in question is inextricably linked with race, and refuse to listen to anyone such as myself who tells you it isn't. You utter hypocrite.

A message to the moderators of the Pistonheads.com forums. It is pointless trying to post it on the forums themselves since in your arrogant stupidity you have already deleted three pages - and maybe more in other threads I haven't seen yet - of people expressing similar views, in an attempt to prevent criticism of your unreasonableness. But I absolutely will not tolerate people who try to silence me by force and so I am posting it somewhere over which your cosy little gang of idiots has no control.

And yes, I am bloody furious. At your censorship, at your arrogance, at your stupidity, at your refusal to accept that you are wrong even when it's blindingly obvious, at your use of force to stifle criticism so you can carry on swanning around in your ivory tower crapping on your site's users from a height, at the way you pretend to allow people to react but don't really give a toss what they say, ignore it all, make patronising and dismissive comments and then lock or delete the thread so people can't call you on your ignorance.

Oh, and don't just dismiss it as an overreaction to a trivial cause. That cause is just a trigger; this page focuses on it because it is simply one example of a malaise which affects not only Pistonheads, but society in general. I have been a member of Pistonheads for nearly eight years now and have watched it decline over that time, from a place which had a voice and was not afraid to use it, to a place which is infused with the mores of the very nanny-state whingers so many of its members complain about - or used to - and subject to arbitrary, unreasonable censorship by ivory-tower mods who persistently refuse to accord any value to the users' point of view. (Not to mention the utterly irrational and childish spite of its policy of deleting links to and mentions of CTF, which has been "explained" in terms of allegations for which there is absolutely no rational basis whatsoever.) It may be a cliche to say it but the downhill slide has definitely been accelerated by the sale to Haymarket, and I think it is no coincidence that the mod who is the very epitome of the ignorant, closed-minded fool who pretends to listen to people but then completely ignores everything they say and carries on doing whatever it was people were complaining about with an arrogant "well I'm a mod so I'll do what I like and sod what you lot think" attitude is Stuart Forrest, who is a Haymarket employee.

Listen to this, you complete and utter fools. Pound it through your unutterably thick skulls. Use a sledgehammer if necessary - it's not as if there is any brain in there to damage. Just do whatever it takes to get what passes for intelligence in that mush between your ears to register some very simple facts.

The word "pikey" is NOT a term of racial abuse. It has got sweet FA to do with race. Got that? NOTHING. Pikeys are not a "race". A pikey is a thief. A pikey is someone who goes round stealing anything that isn't nailed down, plus plenty of things that are nailed down and indeed things that still have 11,000 volts running through them; who lives outside of the law, as part of a violent gang who so intimidate the police that no effective action is ever taken against them. That is what "pikey" means - a habitual, rapacious thief who uses mob tactics to repel police attention.

I repeat: it has got absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with race. They can be white, black, brown, yellow, purple with green spots, or have ten legs and come from Alpha Centauri, it makes no difference, it's got precisely bugger all to do with the matter. They are pikeys because of their criminal behaviour. Being part of a gang of criminals does NOT count as being a "race".

I'll repeat that because it seems your ingrained stupidity is of a sufficiently high level to blind you to an incredibly obvious fact. Being part of a gang of criminals does NOT count as being a "race".

The word "p*k*" is a racial insult. It is applied to people because they are of a brown-skinned race and is intended to denigrate members of that race. Its use and meaning are entirely based on race and are derogatory, therefore it is a racial insult.

The word "pikey" is not a racial insult. It is applied to people because they engage in a certain class of criminal behaviour and is intended to denigrate said criminal behaviour. Its use and meaning are entirely based on criminality and are derogatory, therefore it is an insult to that class of criminals. It does not imply that it is members of a certain race who engage in that class of criminal behaviour, nor does it imply that everyone who engages in such behaviour is of a certain race. It's what they do that makes them pikeys. It's entirely to do with criminal behaviour and nothing whatsoever to do with race.

I really don't see how I can put it any more clearly than that. Are you still too bleeding stupid to understand?

If someone takes offence at the use of the word "pikey" then either they really are a violent rapacious thief, in which case insult is deserved; or if they are not a criminal, then the word does not apply to them and there is nothing for them to take offence at.

To say that it is "racist" to call someone a pikey makes as much sense as saying that "paedophile" is a racial insult. It's just ridiculous beyond all reason. It is stupid beyond words.

And I don't give two hoots how many people are stupid enough to allow the pikeys to bamboozle them into thinking otherwise. Anyone that stupid deserves no more respect than an insect - after all their mental capacity is on the same level.

So if someone who is that stupid complains to you about people on the Pistonheads forums using the word "pikey" - and face it, there's hardly anyone there who doesn't use it all the time - and starts whining pathetically about it being "racist", the correct response is to tell them to fuck off. Explain to them, as I have explained above - it isn't difficult - that being part of a gang of criminals does NOT count as being a "race". Tell them to stop bloody whining about nothing. Tell them that if they think it appropriate to manufacture offence on behalf of a bunch of violent thieves they may well deserve to have all their stuff nicked but certainly don't deserve any sympathetic consideration. Tell them that to say they have the brains of an amoeba is to insult amoebas. Or if that's too long just tell them they're fuckwits. Whatever. They deserve only contempt for their utter crass stupidity so treat them with contempt.

And no, I don't give a living crap who they are or what politically correct garbage they can spout in support of their ridiculous position. They are manufacturing offence on behalf of a bunch of criminals. Worse, they are tacking a totally false and irrelevant "race" card onto it to try and force people to take notice. What they are doing is indefensible, unreasonable and not worthy of being taken seriously for a millisecond. They are nothing but troublemakers, trying to stir up trouble over nothing to bring some gloating self-satisfaction to their miserable little lives by trying to control other people's thoughts and force people to conform to their pinkoleftie dogma.

What is NOT a correct response is to spinelessly cave in to their utterly unreasonable demands, stick your tongue so far up their backsides it's tickling their tonsils, ban the use of the word "pikey" off the forums and censor and delete people's entirely reasonable objections to such an unreasonable act. To treat your users like dirt in response to stupid troublemakers not only shows you to be more stupid than they, or to be spineless weaklings with no respect for those without whom your site would not exist, but it makes you worse than them as you are the actual agents of causing trouble. They can only cause trouble because you allow yourselves to do it for them. There would be no trouble if you simply told them to get stuffed, as you would do if you had any balls at all.

One strong characteristic of the Pistonheads forums has always been the importance the members attach to matters of "law and order". There are constant complaints about theft, vandalism, antisocial behaviour, driving of uninsured vehicles, disruption of public facilities, consequential damage and loss from other criminal activity... the list goes on. There are also constant complaints about the trivial or nonexistent punishments the legal system hands out to offenders and about the pinkoleftie idiots who think all criminals are sweet and lovely really and only need a hug and a free trip to Barbados. Yet when one of those pinkoleftie idiots decides to complain about an "insult" to a group of criminals who not only are notorious for taking all the abovementioned behaviours to a whole new level but also manage to evade punishment altogether because the police are too scared to tackle them, what do you do? You become pinkoleftie criminal-huggers yourselves and tell people they are not allowed to insult these blights on society. Do you really not notice the massive hypocrisy of this?

And do not dare, do not DARE to have the sheer brazen gall to sneer at those who post their objections as being "hard of understanding". It is YOU who are "hard of understanding". It is YOU who are too stupid to tell the difference between a bunch of criminals and a race. It is YOU who are too stupid to recognise those who manufacture offence on behalf of a bunch of criminals for the troublemakers that they are and too spineless to treat them with the contempt they deserve. And it is YOU who are too blind to recognise the outrageous hypocrisy of your position. How dare you level such an accusation when your own lack of even the most basic understanding is the whole cause of the problem.

Get. Your. Stupid. Bloody. Heads. Straight.

Update 2: So that arrant fool Stuart has seen fit to email me about this page. Has he taken the slightest notice of anything it says? No... which given his past record is no surprise at all. He is still adopting the same patronising, ignorant, dismissive attitude and arrogantly refusing to admit the slightest possibility that anything he does can possibly be wrong. So... Go away, Stuart. Do not attempt to contact me again, by any medium, either directly or by any form of proxy. Any attempts will be binned without being read. Unless and until you cease the censorship on Pistonheads and post a public apology for your stupidity and unreasonableness I don't want to hear or see one more word emanating from that pint of mush which is your excuse for a brain. The email and my response are below (Stuart's words in sans-serif):

Well you don't take anyone else seriously, so why should you expect to be taken seriously yourself? You persistently ignore anything anyone else has to say if it doesn't happen to accord with your own viewpoint, no matter how many people repeatedly and clearly explain that you are wrong, so you are quite right to expect the same treatment in return.

however you've made a number of very specific allegations about me on your website which I consider to be defamatory, and which have the potential to have a serious impact on my professional reputation. That you have linked to my profile at www.linkedin.com means that there can be no confusion between me or anyone else sharing my name, and identification has clearly taken place.

What I have done is comment on your actions taken in public in front of well over 200,000 people, on a forum from which it is very easy to identify you... I found your linkedin profile by googling the details in your Pistonheads profile, as anyone else could do. If you are so ashamed of those actions that you fear for the effect of the reaction to them on your so-called "reputation" then you should have thought a bit more before taking them. If you act like an arrogant closedminded fool in front of such a huge audience then you can expect to be called on it. Any "impact" is entirely your own fault for acting that way in the first place; if it exists, you have brought it on yourself by your own extremely public and identifiable actions. Don't you dare seek to blame your own self-inflicted wounds on me. If you don't want negative comment on your actions then don't act in such a way as to invite it.

To negate your selective quoting, if I can call it that, I quote the relevant passage from further up the page:

There you go. Seems you didn't read it properly the first time. Well, have another go. Clear, is it? No? Well, read it again then. And this time read it as what it does say rather than what you want to twist it into saying to give yourself an excuse to attack me.

People complain about instances of a particular class of criminal behaviour and you then react as if they are talking about a race. This implies that you consider that class of criminal behaviour to be a defining racial characteristic. You bolster that impression by your ignorant response to anyone who tries to tell you that race has nothing to do with the matter, and by your insistence that it does. Now do you see what I'm saying or are you just going to carry on dismissing everything I say except the bits you think you can twist to attack me with?

That paragraph is simply another component of my attempt to get you to realise just how hypocritical, irrational and stupid your position is. Nothing more.

(More selective quoting; you have missed out the words which follow - "and anyone who disagrees with your irrational nonsense".)

And you are too convinced of your own self-importance to realise what you have done to make me say that. But it's been analysed ad nauseam in this page already. You join with some anonymous outsider in attacking the users for something they haven't done. You then refuse to allow any criticism of your actions, censor and delete replies, and lock threads to prevent discussion of them. By so doing you make it perfectly clear that you have no respect for the users, don't care what they think and are determined to carry ignorantly on in your own sweet way regardless of what the users think. If you weren't so blindly convinced that you can't possibly do any wrong it would be crystal clear to you why I have said that.

3) That I am not "an original PHer at all." In fact I've been a member of PistonHeads for longer than you have, which is evident if you check both my posting history, my profile notes and my membership number. To allege otherwise would clearly, and incorrectly, call into question the legitimacy of the apparent length of my membership in a community where such things are valuable.

OK, I admit I didn't check your membership number before I wrote that. I have now changed that bit. But you certainly give the impression of being a newcomer: I don't remember seeing you post anything before the Haymarket takeover, and everything I've seen you post afterwards has been the same patronising, contemptuous, self-righteous dismissal of other people's concerns that has aroused my anger here.

I am making a formal request for you to remove this content from your site, however the tone of the written word on the page suggests that this is highly unlikely to happen

Is that your way of saying you actually have read the bits where I say I will not be silenced by force?

...Ah, obviously not. Or else you are choosing to ignore it in the same way that you ignore anything else that doesn't agree with you. You act like an arrogant fool in public, then you have the further arrogance to try and forcibly silence comment on your foolishness? You really think you have some sort of right to try and screw me over because you can't handle receiving a negative response to your unreasonable actions? Who the fuck do you think you are? If you don't like what I have written then cease the censorship on Pistonheads and post a public apology for your unreasonableness. If you don't like it it is your own fault, Stuart, it is your own fault for acting with such contempt in the first place, so don't you dare try and silence criticism by force.

Well, that just about takes the biscuit for the most egregious piece of arrant nonsense I have ever read. You can't take the slightest criticism of your actions and you have made this perfectly clear not just on this occasion but on previous occasions too. When people try to criticise you on Pistonheads you censor and delete their posts and then resort to locking the threads so people can't criticise you any further. You sin-bin and ban people for disagreeing with you. You even have the temerity to try and force the deletion of material you don't like on my own website. And then you come out with a piece of absolute garbage like that? Good grief, I can hardly believe I read it.

and it is clear that you do not understand the issues behind the moderating decision we've taken.

Just how much of this page have you actually read and how much have you ignored? Again I quote from the main body of the text:

I know perfectly well what happened. Some moron or collection thereof made false accusations against the members of Pistonheads concerning "racial hatred" - accusations of which the falsity was childishly easy to demonstrate since the subject of the posts concerned was in fact a group of criminals, which is - as I have explained ad nauseam - a completely different thing to a race. I don't recall seeing one single post which mentioned a race. Yet instead of pointing this out to the aforesaid morons and telling them to stop being so bleeding stupid, you joined with them in attacking the users, censored and deleted posts concerning the criminals in question, added a term for that group of criminals to the swear filter, made a ridiculous attempt to justify your actions in terms of the completely stupid idea that a group of criminals can be considered a race, and then turned your efforts to stifling criticism of these unreasonable actions by further censorship and deletion. So don't try and tell me I don't understand. You joined forces with some troublemaking outsider in imposing the will of said troublemaker on the users of Pistonheads who had done nothing wrong, and then forcibly silenced criticism of your action. You unspeakable, spineless, contemptible worm.

However I am entitled to protection from defamation or malicious falsehood, and you are not immune from your responsibilities not to make false allegations about an individual, particularly when such allegations can impact seriously on that person's professional reputation, despite what you might think.

Once again you demonstrate your unbelievable arrogance in refusing to even consider the faintest possibility that anything you have done could possibly be wrong. I'm not making any kind of "false allegations". I'm simply commenting on actions you yourself took in a very public way before several hundred thousand people. If you fear for the effects of comments on your public actions on your "professional reputation" then you should think a bit more before you take actions which invite such comments. If your reputation is that precious to you then don't act the fool in public, and don't you dare have the cheek to try and blame your own faults on someone who had no influence on your actions and is doing nothing but comment.

Any damage to your "professional reputation" is entirely your own fault. Just try and think for a minute. I look at your posts and actions on Pistonheads and conclude that you are an arrogant, closedminded fool. Does it really not occur to you that a potential employer might look at those same posts and come to the same conclusion? And which are they more likely to see, a page on a small and relatively obscure website or posts on a huge and well-known website which has an excellent Google ranking? Don't dare blame me for simply reacting to and commenting on stuff which you have done so publically that it will reach a wider audience in a day than I ever will in years.

Of course you will try and dismiss that paragraph with some thought along the lines of "nobody would ever agree with a nutter like Pigeon"... Well I've got news for you, sunshine, people do agree with me. Other people than me have also looked at or been the subject of your posts and actions on Pistonheads and formed a similar assessment of your character. And I'm not talking about just now, either. People have been saying things like that about you for a considerable amount of time - all based on the same evidence, ie. your very public and identifiable posts and actions on a very large website. You really do need to step outside your own head for a bit and try and see yourself as you appear to people who don't share the "Stuart is God" attitude which you seem to have.

I'm not saying anything which is "maliciously false" or a "false allegation" or anything of the kind. All I'm doing is making commentary on your public actions and you are too stuffed full of your own self-importance to realise that that is in fact how you do look to other people. People, plural, not just me. I'm far from being the first to derive such an assessment of your character from the way you act on Pistonheads. If you don't like having your faults pointed out then do something to correct them.

I've already wasted too much time and effort in a no doubt futile attempt to make you aware of your failings. And why? Because unlike you I do have some respect for the ordinary users of Pistonheads - as a group, that is, there are inevitably some ordinary members I don't have much time for - and for the site as it always used to be. It isn't like that any more; you are a large part of the reason why - in other people's estimation, too, not just mine - and if you would only realise that and change your ways then it would do a whole lot of good to the site.

Until I see some evidence that you have dropped this God-complex attitude and made some reasonable effort (ie. not just lip-service, but a practical demonstration) to acknowledge your fallibility - rescinding the censorship on Pistonheads, reinstating the deleted posts and posting a public apology for your actions would suffice - then I see no point in having any further converse with you, since not only do you never listen to anything anyone else says but just carry on your own sweet way regardless, but you also make use of selective quoting to take bits of my words out of context and twist them into something to attack me with.

Do not attempt to contact me again, by any means or medium, either in person or by any form of proxy. Any such attempted contact will be binned unread. Do not, either, attempt to interfere in any way with any of my activities whether on the internet or off it. You have removed me from Pistonheads; now remove yourself, entirely, completely and permanently from all aspects of my life.