Consistency amongst the censors? Not at the Huffington post it seems.

 

The “Huffington Post censors (or “moderators”, I am never sure which is the correct title), are a strange crowd, where consistency has little if any meaning in the decision to publish or not to publish,. For example, yesterday (Sunday 15th December 2013) a story appeared in the press, including the Huffington Post, concerning a rather nasty little man, who currently is Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon. The story appeared under the headline of “Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi Calls For 'Two Child Limit' On Benefits”.

Having written about Mr Zahawi on previous occasions, particularly about his unsavoury MP's expenses claims for heating costs and other business activities, I put together another posting under the heading of, “Nadhim Zahawi: Competing to be the nastiest of the nasties.” for publication on this blog and in the comments sections of other publications.

In the Huffington Post, comments are restricted in terms of the number of words allowable in each comment. Consequently, posts are, as in this instance, sometimes submitted in two or more parts, with each part presumably treated as one post. It seems that Part 2 of my post yesterday was acceptable to the sensors at HP, but for some reason, Part 1,containing the main point of the post together with criticism of Zahawi and his ironic hypocrisy about people assuming that taxpayers having a bottomless purse, was deemed to be unfit for publication.

Part 1: Not Acceptable.

Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi would limit child benefit and tax credits to a families first two children.

Another of the "Nasty party's" nasties to crawl out of the woodwork with proposals to save money for the tax payer. Zahawi, a member of David Cameron's policy board, rationalises his proposition with the notion that, "Capping welfare by family size would save billions and help the next generation think more carefully about their relationship with the welfare state".
Politicians are renowned for their ability to have selective memory lapses when it comes to their own acts or omissions, but Zahawi takes first prize for patronising contempt, when he adds that "they can no longer assume the taxpayer has a bottomless purse",
This is the same Nadhim Zahawi who received £5,822.27 for electricity and heating oil for his estate, funded by the taxpayer through the notorious MP's expenses gravy train. This petty little hypocrite also claimed 31p on his expenses for paper-clips, 53p to buy a hole punch, 63p for ballpoint pens and 89p for a stapler.

Part 2: Acceptable.

He has also been criticised for reclaiming business costs on Parliamentary expenses, used a company in an offshore tax haven to buy a house in his constituency and during 2012/13 claimed a total of £170,234 in expenses. For him to now champion a further malicious assault on living standards of families is gross, as the effect is directed specifically at the children.
It is remarkable how so many Tory MP's are able , without any sense of shame or irony, to implement measures which, in the name of "saving tax payers money", inflict hardship and misery on families and individuals across the country. Measures which are spiteful, divisive and more akin to dismantling the welfare state than to improving the lives of ordinary people, pensioners, disabled and unemployed in Britain.
In this, Nadhim Zahawi is no different from the rest in scrambling for the dubious honour of being the nastiest of the nasties.

I am at a loss to understand why Part 1 should fail the test of “acceptability” with the moderators, and yet Part 2, which when read in isolation, lacks any coherence with the main story. It is not as if Part 1 contains any threats, personal insults, untruths, abuse or is in contravention of any of the other guidelines generally accepted as the norm for on line publications. Indeed, it could be argued that a significant number of the other 206 postings against this article are contraventions of the “rules”.

If one or other of the Huffington Post censors, moderators, or editors happen to read this blog, perhaps they could comment and enlighten me and presumably others, as to what actually is acceptable generally and what was particularly offensive about this specific post, which was acceptable elsewhere.