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A shower of Titians – Tories caught fiddling with Wiki

By Derek DraperWiki

You may have seen Paul Waugh’s astonishing piece about the Tories changing Wiki following PMQs to make David Cameron look right.

Well, that’s just the start of it. They’ve been at it before. You can see all of the changes made to Wikipedia from the Conservative Party IP address here.

Yesterday they added the following terms to the list of collective nouns:

A fistful of fingerpuppets
A troop of staples

While on February 6, one CCHQ staff changed the entry for Jennie Elias – who’s she, you ask? Well, apparently, not as important as she thinks, according to CCHQ:

”’Jennie Elias”’ is a notable political figure in the [[United Kingdom]].

They changed this to:

”’Jennie Elias”’ is a political volunteer in the [[United Kingdom]].

They also changed:

David Cameron was born watching porn in London

To:

David Cameron was born in London

They also changed this entry on Peter Bone’s page:

His first action was to try to accept praise for Paul Stinchcombe’s work at PMQ’s. PM Tony Blair slapped him down like the child that he is with his reply. He is one of the busiest MPs in the House, and is regularly one of the 10 most active, in terms of Questions asked and other contributions. Exactly how this makes him busy is anyone’s guess. Most of the questions that he asks are a waste of parliament’s time. He also works as a [[Sven Goran Eriksson]] lookalike.

To:

He is noted for a similarity in looks to [[Sven Goran Eriksson]].

Unluckily for CCHQ changing people’s perceptions of the Tories as a bunch of lightweight charlatans is a little harder.

Derek Draper was the founder and first editor of LabourList.<br /> <br /> In his political career, Derek worked for Peter Mandelson for four years during the mid-1990s, and founded Progress Magazine in 1996, which was instrumental in the development of New Labour and which is still going strong today. In 1997, he published the book Blair's First 100 Days.<br /> <br /> Derek is also a writer and psychotherapist. He was a former regular on ITV1's Kyle's Academy and featured on an ITV Tonight Special on phobias in November 2008. In 2007, he was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Mental Health Charity MIND, and wrote the chapter on mental health in the 2006 book _The Future of the NHS_ which you can download here. His new book, Life Support: A Survival Guide For The Modern Soul, was published in April 2009 by Hay House.<br /> <br /> Derek is married to Kate Garraway, the GMTV presenter, and has a wonderful 3-year-old daughter, Darcey and new son Billy.

View all articles by Derek Draper
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