Minor point of order – that’s not true. They bought an original nearly-full page article from me for their international section-before-last. And it wasn’t about celebs. Compared to what else is out there, I the Tribune’s international section is pretty good.

Well that was the whole point of the post. A rather tongue in cheek suggestion that because a number of Irish bloggers had connections to the Tribune it could easily survive the loss of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.

I assumed that nobody would take it as seriously as the Phoenix have. They must have had an irony bypass in there. Perhaps I should write a post about how Irish blogs will cure cancer and bring about world peace – perhaps they might get it then. The Trib post was obviously far too subtle.

And I’ve seen the new article and yet again Goldhawk insinuates that Delevan and I are the same person, something to which many people, not least of all myself, can testify to completely and utterly untrue.

The fact that he links to my blog does not make him me. The fact that he used a link to my blog in a press release does not make him me.

Whatever the Phoenix’s beef is with him is causing them to overlook the basic facts and it’s making them look really quite stupid.

No wonder you won that Irish blog award. Genuinely, who else is out there? There must be half a dozen media-related blogs in circulation and nobody has the inside track on anything happening in the media. The content of Irish blogs is largely irrelevant. It’s Sindo-hack-style self-promotional dross peddled among a small core of mutual admirers. Someone should write a Ross O’Carroll-Kelly-style column on Dublin bloggers who don’t get the joke that the are mostly an internet verison of Sindo ‘03 Girls desperate for some undeserved status. So… ’self-congratulatory filial bond among bloggers in Dublin’… yeah absolutely.

What u mean ‘the Phoenix fess up to cocking up their story?’ I’m not defending the Phoenix which has come down firmly in sympathy with a buddy caught up in a bit of major legal warfare that makes Basra look like Ballsbridge. The Phoenix has gladly adopted the benevolent role of PR office for one wounded soldier who is conscious he may face a firing squad if all goes pear-shaped. My original point above is that the most recent dispatches suggest that the Phoenix’s buddy has decided to start directing some fire into the home camp, at another soldier’s boot-cleaning recruit!

Does he really get a lot of space on this blog? He’s been mentioned twice in relation to this Phoenix thing – and yes it’s because I ‘know’ him through blogging but it’s hardly ’self-congratulatory’, is it?

Did the Phoenix fess up to completely cocking up their story?

Twenty may appreciate the humour of Phoenix describing his blog a tad dismissively as ’someone called Twenty…’

More importantly, those of us fond of trying to figure out what goes on between the lines might be inclined to think that such a leak to the Phoenix, (a magazine which is friend to some but not all in the upper echelons of the Tribune) might spell trouble for those who are inexorably linked by patronage to those who fall foul of the Phoenix’s claws.