We are going to be self indulgent here in this post. This post is not to gain any support or sympathy, let that be clear.
Debunking Tamworth exists in a very grey and murky area that makes it very easy to go down a path that was never originally intended, but nonetheless it happens because it is so easy to do. This site came into being to counteract the vile and hateful rantings of one Paul Brina Brindley. Someone who thought nothing of using his large Facebook groups, that he purchased from others who built their audience, to mock, betray, spread lies, and bully people he didn’t like. Namely they were Conservative Councillors, people he had a personal vendetta against. He spat bullshit without any comeback and revelled in it. All whilst preaching about mental health and toxicity.
Naturally there are others in a town this size who also spread misinformation and lies, or a rather warped perspective. People like Ron Brown who to this day doesn’t realise or care whether what he states on his Facebook page is true. It is rather worrying that people like him exist in society, that think nothing of writing some of the abominations he has, and throwing his dummy out and belittling people when they challenge him. His supposed intellectualism could be used for good and for real challenge if only he decided to use it that way. Rather he has decided to spread his own version of the truth and play on clichés and stereotypes that generally cause harm.
Then we came along. We’ve been here for nearly two years. Some people believe the people behind this site are the spawn of Satan, usually because their name features on the site in a not so positive light. We certainly became a thorn in the trolls side, and Ron Brown just carried on as normal believing of course that we were the problem. It was thought we would go away, or that we would be somehow found out and ‘punished’ for what we are doing here.
We know that some Councillors featured on our site have become obsessed with finding out who we are, have actually spent money to do so. We’ve even heard a rumour that our site has been hacked and there’s a bunch of names doing the rounds. Come on guys, as if there’s a list of people’s names contained within this site, do pull the other one. At best there’s been attempts to look in our gallery folder to see whether pictures exist that implicate anyone (did you think we wouldn’t notice?), it might well have meant at worst that some who didn’t bother censoring Facebook posts that they sent in to us were seen. So, apologies if you’ve got caught up in all of this, but as we state on the contact form, that’s on you not us.
What all this means of course is that Debunking Tamworth itself has become the talk of the town. Rather than what we report on. There has been subtle pressure that we sadly responded to, against our better judgement, to report on things we had never ever intended to do. Things that we knew would cause problems with people’s personal lives. We published, believing that those people would perhaps get a fairer hearing than if those revelations had come out on social media. Even more so the belief that if these particular revelations had come out during an election campaign, particularly for one person who wanted to be an MP, that this would be so much worse on a national scale than some small blog based in a small town.
Those that hate this site, hate us usually because their behaviour has been put up in front of them in a way that no-one has ever done before. Some people we feel, fully deserved to be exposed for what they are. Those people are usually the ones who scream the loudest, as if we are doing them some kind of injustice for daring to call them out. Those people have no intention of changing how they behave, they’d rather just silence the people pointing it out. To them, they have done no wrong. Some of those people are your Councillors. People who should be held accountable for decisions they make in office, and behaviour they display as part of the role they have.
What we at Debunking Tamworth should have done, is resisted the urge to delve further. We didn’t ever wish to be a gossip rag although some people absolutely love it apparently. Believe us when we say gossip is rife in political parties, but they prefer it behind people’s backs rather than published for everyone to see. There’s plenty of it to report on. So much of it doesn’t make it here. The point though, is that it easily could. The Conservatives are famous for in fighting, and it is often said of them that they would win more elections if they put more effort into that than stabbing eachother in the back. Then you go to the Labour side, which is too far the other way where they are almost a hive mind ruled by fear if they say or do anything out of step.
What we have already published and put out there is done. Would we have done things differently had we known the aftermath of some of our stories? Probably yes. It is all done now and we can only keep to our commitment to remove old news about people that is no longer relevant (mainly those that focus on private shenanigans). We will maintain however that this will be on our terms and no-one else’s. We have and always will be anonymous to ensure that pressure cannot be put on to us to hide things away that make certain people uncomfortable. We are in no doubt whatsoever that some people would use physical means to do that, which is apparently acceptable compared to what we are doing. Strange old world isn’t it.
From now on, we are only publishing articles that pick out and push facts, counter arguments and opinions (this goes for the mailbag too). Which is what we always intended this site to do. This may mean sometimes there’s nothing on the front page for weeks at a time. That doesn’t bother us in the slightest. We aren’t here to make money, it costs us real money to keep this site running with the security we have especially. We must be mad to be quite honest. We could just as easily shut down, and walk away. That really is an attractive option.
We feel however that now we are here, we have to remain here. Otherwise there becomes a hole that will be filled with lies and deceit from people who got away with it for years before we existed. At least if we are here we can expose the lies that were so easily told. So many people visit this site now that it frankly astonishes us, and it would be a travesty in our opinion to give that up and give in. What would make us happy and consider throwing in the towel would be if a certain troll gave up his Facebook empire and stopped manipulating the people of Tamworth. Wishful thinking hey.
Thank you to everyone who does support us. We appreciate you. Thank you to all of our contributors, especially to the Mailbag and to Will I Am Not Wordsworth, who in particular helped us to start diverging away from the path we had gone down. We are staying for now, but we could just as easily pull the plug tomorrow.
We would love for more people to contribute to this site and air their opinions, be that in the Mailbag or as an article. We do believe we have a good thing here, and it can be better. For now, being better and not salacious is the path we are going to walk down. Join us, don’t join us. Celebrate that we have this choice in this country compared to others where freedom to speak up is criminal, where given the opportunity for some people, it would be here too.
