I am (not) Spartacus

There seems to have been no small furore over our identity, a reverse Spartacus, if you like, with each member of the crowd shouting out. 'I am not Spartacus'. If it helps, we're happy to say that all the theories we've seen are wrong.

Some points though, particularly on the discussion on Phil Bradley's blog (note Phil, that we bear you no ill will and will honour the usual conventions of citing a blog when we talk about it...you're free not to, of course, though we think it diminishes you):

• We're not stalkers. We have no interest in Tim's private life, indeed the idea rather revolts us. Everything we write about is in the public domain
• We're part of an honourable internet tradition. If there was an inspiration for this blog, it was perhaps AaronovitchWatch, which chronicles the rightwards journey of Dave Aaronovitch, son of the rather good Communist economist who, having taken Murdoch's shilling, moved rapidly to the right and took to writing a contrarian column in the Times. You'll find many other sites in the same mould, usually around someone with a particularly high, and perhaps unjustified, view of themselves
• And, as for Gareth Osler's suggestion that we're the BNP, after we'd picked ourselves up from the floor, we thought we should mention that Tim is, as far as we know, neither Jewish, nor black, not Muslim....and we can write English unlike knuckle-dragging racists.
• Do we indulge in ad hominem arguments? Perhaps, but this is politics, and it is a dirty business. TC is not known for fighting according to Queensbury rules
• We don't particularly care if people follow or unfollow us. We're going to keep doing this so long as libraries need saving, and Tim keeps trying to disrupt the struggle to do so
• Tim has to be understood politically. He represents a right-wing 'libertarian' point of view. It hates people who work, and believes in managerialism, in the power of the 'consumer' and the market. It is profoundly reactionary

We made an offer to Phil today. We repeat it here: if he can obtain a binding commitment from Tim to stop attacking library workers, we'll pack up and go home. If he doesn't someone needs to speak up for people who will lose their jobs and services when a council pays Tim a fat fee. We think back to the miners' struggle of the 1980s: which side are you on, we used to sing.