Huffy Flounce

As I read it, there's a 17 year old girl who created a Twitter hashtag devoted to her love of Ed Miliband. Weird for a kid, but whatever. She's entitled. The hashtag took off, the Sun got wind of it and sent a reporter to her Mom's house (where the girl actually lives), Dad's house and Grandma's house.

The troubling part of it is that by all accounts, she's only ever used Twitter for the #milifan stuff. On Twitter, she is known merely as "Abby." No last name. Her dad and grandma were both entirely unaware of it. And again, she's 17....

...which makes it troubling that the Sun claims to have gotten her information from the public voter records, where she couldn't possibly be found as she isn't old enough to be registered to vote.

And then from that grey area, how do they find her dad and Grandma? The Sun claims it was all on the up and up, but that's also a Murdoch paper, so they've done more than enough to lose the benefit of the doubt.

I don't doubt it's a minor story in the grand scheme of things, but it's more than a little sketchy, to say the least.

Here's the Twitter feed in question. 17 year old Adam would've been madly in love with this girl and way too awkward to know what to do about it.

https://twitter.com/twcuddleston

Oh and here's a Buzzfeed story about it. http://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahjewell/te ... at-the-sun

So she proclaimed herself something of a leader of a political social media movement at election time and was surprised when asked for an interview?

She was surprised when they showed up at her door to ask for that interview considering she never disclosed her last name, let alone her address and is a minor.

She was equally surprised when they showed up at her dad's and grandma's, given the above privacy violation.

Like I said, I totally agree that it's an awfully minor issue in the grand scheme of the election, but it raises a fresh batch of disturbing questions about the methods and morals of a Murdoch newspaper. That's the big story as I see it.

The bigger story is The Mirror doing the same (and The Guardian themselves managing to support enemies of freedom of the press) yet only The Sun having journalists dragged to court because the Director Of Public Prosecutions was a Labour stooge.

I prefer to look at the whole wood rather than a tree or two.

You talking about the phone tapping thing or showing up at this girl's door?

I don't doubt other papers are shady too, Murdoch's just seem to be very brazen about it.

Phone tapping in general. And not even Murdoch's mob would be stupid enough to carry on.

Talking of stupidity, I do wish people would stop referring to it as "Hacking". Just because Sienna Miller is too stupid to change her voicemail passcode from 0000 does not mean a bunch of cyber warriors with nefarious purpose practised dark arts.

See, I only know of Murdoch's group being involved in the tapping because the media here had a field day with it. How could they not, given the hellscape that Fox News has launched on this country? I also don't think they carried on with that and I only brought it up as a separate issue which lent to their loss of credibility.

Which is why it seems especially troubling that they managed to hunt down a 17 year old girl based on her Twitter account which never revealed her last name or address.

Or maybe that's a far easier task than I'm aware?

Far easier. Our anti-fraud team have a field day with social media accounts. Nothing is ever private and nothing is ever deleted.

....... So as we were saying. Jockestan.

Then why would they lie and say they found her in the voter registration information? I don't doubt you, I'm just not understanding.

And what the hell is a Jockestan?

Scotland.

How many total seats are needed to take power?

In the UK, or in the troublesome Northern wasteland?

In the UK. If Ed Miliband were to be prime minister, Labour would need to win ____ seats?

More than half of the 650 seats.

650?! Good lord, how does anything ever get passed?

650 or 3.

A vote is still a vote and a winner wins all the same.

Only the House of Commons is up for election, right? Lords are appointed?

Yup. Some sent up from Commons, some hereditary.

The Guardian seems to have it as a Labour/Tory tie, with no really good options for a Tory-led coalition government.

I'm completely unfamiliar with the political leanings of The Guardian, Dalty. They right, left, or middle?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng- ... projection

They are as left as they come and as partisan as you can get.