Rewriting history in Epping Forest
I’ve just received a very interesting tip-off about Boris’s Epping Forest canvassing gaffe.
The source of this story, it seems, was an article on the Epping Forest Guardian newspaper web site:
[Boris] may well be ahead in the latest opinion polls in the mayoral race - but we can tell him that he is targeting the wrong electors!
He has written to the Epping Forest Guardian - which covers the entire local authority district, and no part of any London borough - seeking voter support.
In a letter emailed to Epping Forest Guardian editor David Jackman, for inclusion on our letters pages, Mr Johnson wrote: "Last week the contest to become Mayor of London Mayor began. A contest that will make a big difference to your lives in Epping Forest." […]
When contacted by the Guardian, Mr Johnson’s campaign office issued a statement saying it was aware that "many" residents of Epping Forest were not eligible to vote - yet the facts are that NO residents of Epping Forest district are entitled to vote in the London mayor elections.
All good stuff of course – a nice illustration of Boris’s incompetence and how poor his grasp of even the most basic information about London really is.
However, the story has since taken a rather sinister turn. This is a link to the article – and this is what the page now says:
The selected article was not found.
Who has got to them, and how did they persuade them to erase an embarrassing piece of history in this way?
And in the light of today’s Boris campaign material masquerading as front-page news in the Sunday Telegraph, just how many favours can Boris call in via his powerful media cronies?
Fortunately, Google’s cache has retained a copy of the original article.
And when that eventually disappears (when Google notices that the article has been removed), all will not be lost: we’ve saved our own copy too. We’re too good to you, Boris-stoppers, we really are.