An open letter to the Glossop Chronicle - not a 'hacker' but certainly 'hacked off'

Last week's Glossop Chronic showed how desperate the Longdendale Siege Committee are to keep themselves in the paper. Last week's article about the 'hacker' that somehow broke into Robert Haycock's email to send a message to his mate David Jones was reprised again!

It's often said that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true, and that's what Siege and the Chronic are up to here. So we've decided to write to them both, and we'll display our email below:

Hello Bob & David

Well, it's very interesting to see how you are spinning the story of the 'hacker' who broke into Longdendale Siege's email address. Trying to stretch this story across 2 whole issues of the newspaper seems pretty desperate to us.

By us, I mean our blog - known either as 'No Mottram Bypass' or 'Stop the A57/A628 Bypass' - we've been writing on the bypass for over 12 months now and you've done your best to ignore us. Even when we provide you with material for stories, as we often do, we get no credit.

But there's no hard feelings. By the way, as you know, it was us that pulled the April Fool hoax. But before we look at your accusations about hacking, we must first remark that if Mr Haycock is so concerned about his email address being used by others, then why is it still displayed on the Longdendale Siege website as the contact address? Furthermore, the Bob contacted us with the exact same email address you say we 'hacked' and not the new one you mention in the article.

As for the 'hacking' - well, we wish we had such abilities. In truth we created an email address - bobhaycock@gmail.com - and then placed Bob's real email address (robert@haycock1.fsnet.co.uk) in the 'account name' section of the settings. All this meant was that instead of displaying a 'name', the email address was displayed. Merely a confidence trick.

You see David, we know you are trying to wind your readership up by taking more potshots at those opposed to the bypass. But we don't care - I'll wager more people from Glossop and Longdendale search Google daily than read the Chronicle each week. And if they search for information about the bypass, they have an excellent chance of landing on our website and reading all about the things that you ensure don't reach your readership.

We know there isn't a cat in hell's chance of you printing this email. But it exists on our site, and anyone searching for Glossop Chronicle, Robert Haycock, Longdendale Siege and 'Hacker' will land here and read it.

Isn't all this such fun?! Until next time...

PS - David - how about a weekly column in the Chron? We'd charge much less than Anthony McKeown does to get his face in the Advertiser, as long as we can wear our balaclava for the photoshoot, it's OK by us...

The Joke's on Siege

The less cynical amongst you may have noticed that this story that we published on Tuesday was actually an April Fool wind-up. That fact notwithstanding, we did spend a certain amount of time carefully crafting it so that it sounded quite convincing. Personally, we think we have Siege's Mike Flynn off to a tee, we even managed to bring the petition up - like they do at every opportunity.

To make the joke somewhat funnier, we tried to get it published. We're unsurprised to report that David Jones of the Glossop Chronicle (known round here as 'Chronic' from now on) didn't fall for it, and there's a feature in this week's paper about our 'hoax' (viewable here). It doesn't name us - after all, why give us free publicity - so we're adding this post to ensure that those curious enough to search the internet may land on this site.

But for us the funniest part of this story is the accusation that we 'hacked' into Siege webmaster Robin Haycock's email address to send the release. We only wish we had such powers, as if we did, we'd have got up to all kinds of mischief by now. So to slay this dragon and spell things out for the unimaginative (or the downright thick as pigshit) this is how we did it:

We created a (free) googemail account as close as possible to 'robert haycock' (bobhaycock@gmail.com - someone has already taken roberthaycock@gmail.com). We then placed robert's actual email address (robert@haycock1.fsnet.co.uk - lots of spam coming your way Robert) in the 'account name' bit, so that that would be the first thing anyone would see when they got a message from the (anti)bob. No hacking involved, just a confidence trick.

We subsequently received a message from Robert Haycock on the same day, it goes thus:

Hi folks

just like to say thanks for hacking into my email and sendind (sic) the spurious email to the Glossop Chronicle. If you are this desperate then no wonder that you do not have the support of local people. If you would like to contact me for any "quotes" please feel free to contact me and I will be glad to have the debate or meet face to face.

Regards

A long time resident of Hollingworth who lives on the A57.

Bob Haycock

Longdendale Siege Secretary

Whatever... we're game for a laugh, unlike Siege and their resident hack at the Chronicle. The spoof press release follows:

Longdendale Siege Committee call for donations large and small to ensure construction of the A628 Bypass

The Longdendale Siege Committee, who are campaigning for a Bypass to be built to relieve Longdendale of traffic, have today called for the general public to donate money to their campaign to ensure that the bypass is built.

Siege chairman Mike Flynn outlined the plan:

"We're obviously concerned about all of the delays to the scheme that seem to keep cropping up, plus the mounting costs. Although we think the potential benefits outweigh any costs, we're aware the government might not see it that way, so we're asking our supporters and anyone else who wants this road to donate what they can."

Mr Flynn envisages that a Private Finance Initiative could seal the deal, "a PFI is increasingly in favour in government circles, so rather than the taxpayer stump up all of the £184 million, we'd like to encourage companies, private investors, institutions and the general public to dig deep and help form a PFI to make sure the road is built."

Mr Flynn was hoping to meet with Tesco representatives, who are planning to build a store at Mottram over the next few years to ask for their support and possible donations: "as Tesco say, 'Every Little Helps'. They stand to benefit greatly from the increased custom at the Mottram site for their new store which the bypass will bring, so they might not be averse to helping us out a little".

"We've got 9,000 signatories to our petition that we presented to Parliament, and over the next few months, we'll be contacting them all to ask them to give what they can. If everyone who has signed our petition gave us £20,000, we'll be well on the way to paying for the scheme by ourselves. Obviously, we don't expect people to give that much, but the point is that some will be able to give more than others, and we may be able to reach our target before the Public Inquiry is over".

"Plus we'll be taking to the Streets all around the area again on Saturday mornings with our bucket if folk want to donate".

The Longdendale Siege Committee have a website at http://www.longdendalebypass.co.uk/ and pledges can be emailed to robert@haycock1.fsnet.co.uk.