Dawn Butler (Lab - Brent South) and Sarah Teather (LD - Brent East) will be fighting it out for the re-drawn seat of Brent Central at the next election, but online the battle has already started. The conflict is taking place on their Wikipedia entries (Butler, Teather), and researchers and party supporters almost definitely involved.

If you look at the history pages for both entries, and you’ll see a user called Brent Central has been duelling with an anonymous user working in the House of Commons (the most common Parliamentary IP address is 194.60.38.10). The fight has been going since mid-June and involved more than 60 edits in under a month.

Brent Central appears to be a Labour supporter, whilst the anonymous user looks very much like a Lib Dem researcher in the Commons, given the IP address and the edits they make. Getting supporters to edit your Wikipedia entry is sad, but using Parliamentary resources for party political work is naughty. I wonder who could possibly be employing this Lib Dem?

So how has this battle manifested itself? Well, on 4th July a paragraph on Dawn Butler’s entry read:

Butler has most of the credentials of the left; opposing the war in Iraq, opposing up-front university fees and favouring a return to the grants system.

Anonymous Lib Dem (ALD) researcher then added: “However, this has not been borne out in her voting record, as she has consistently voted with the government since taking her seat, including voting against investigating the Iraq war, for ID cards, and, in the majority of votes, in favour of renewing trident.”

Brent Central removed it. ALD put it back. Brent Central removed it. ALD put it back again. And at the moment that’s how it stands. 1-0 to the Anonymous Lib Dem researcher

Over on Sarah Teather’s entry, ALD added “She is the only Brent MP not to claim her second home allowance”, and Brent Central removed it saying it was ‘inaccurate’.

And it is inaccurate, because Teather gets the London Supplement (which she does claim) and is thus not entitled to the Additional Cost Allowance (to help support the costs of a second home). 1-1, but I’m tempted to deduct a point from ALD for the clear dishonesty.

And so the battle continues.

In the meantime the entry for Barry Gardiner (Brent North) has had only 8 edits so far this year, and none from our protagonists. He must be feeling so unloved.

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