Plagiarism!

It's surely been suggested somewhere that newspaper diarists were perhaps the first bloggers. Well, The Guardian's Marina Hyde managed to demonstrate that yesterday when her column, Britain's leading source for gossip about Labour Party PR flacks, ran an item substantially identical to a post of Nosemonkey's, without attribution...

Meanwhile, we are forced to call Tory central office on reading that top brass there have decided to issue proceedings against the Times for a story saying Michael Howard has been advised to give up hopes of winning the election. Could you settle an argument, we ask party media manager John Deans? In terms of cretinous things to do in the run-up to an election, is suing a Murdoch newspaper more or less obviously suicidal than, say, Neil Kinnock's Sheffield rally? A pause. "Good afternoon," says John. Click, brrrrrr."

(The Grauniad, 09/02/05

Compare and contrast, Nosemonkey at Europhobia:

"How to lose a General Election
Step 1: Have no policies to speak of
Step 2: Be led by a shifty bloke who everyone blames for the Poll Tax
Step 3: Sue the single biggest media owner in the country

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Conservative party: political fucking genius.

(Links later when they appear. Rest assured, the Tories are suing the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times newspaper, thus ensuring the hostility of Sky News, The Sun and The News of the World to boot. The Sun and The News of the World - lest we forget - having more readers between them than pretty much every other newspaper in the country put together...)"

Europhobia, 08/02/05. Did yer see what she did there? Anybody spot that batsqueak of recognition and gratitude? Thought not.