Sizer - well and truly sized up

The Revered Stephen Sizer

Today, a story has exploded over the blogosphere.

Late last year, a Christian student blogger, Seismic Shock,  was 'debating' with a fellow Christian, the Rev. Stephen Sizer. The Reverend Sizer's writings appeared on a Holocaust denier and anti Semitic website, AAAGH.

I suspect  the Reverend may believe that his piece on the AAARGH site has vanished, but it's still here via Google cache.

At the end of November, Seismic Shock received a visit from two officers from his local nick. This is what he writes as a guest, over at Harry's Place

At 10am on Sunday 29th November 2009, I received a visit from two policemen regarding my activities in running the Seismic Shock blog. (Does exposing a vicar’s associations with extremists make me a criminal?, I wondered initially). A sergeant from the Horsforth Police related to me that he had received complaints via Surrey Police from Rev Sizer and from Dr Anthony McRoy – a lecturer at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology – who both objected to being associated with terrorists and Holocaust deniers.

He continued.

The sergeant made clear that this was merely an informal chat, in which I agreed to delete my original blog (http://seismicshock.blogspot.com) but maintain my current one (http://seismicshock.wordpress.com). The policeman related to me that his police force had been in contact with the ICT department my previous place of study, and had looked through my files, and that the head of ICT at my university would like to remind me that I should not be using university property in order to associate individuals with terrorists and Holocaust deniers (I am sure other people use university property to make political comments, but nevermind).

I must confess it's hard to think of  Seismic Shock's behaviour as harassment, but like the greedy law firm  Shillings over the Alisher Usmanov affair and the stupidity of Carter-Ruck with Trafigura the daft Sizer forgot about The Streisand Effect.

By now, the Reverend Sizer's dodgy friends are all over the internet, a fact that I suspect his parishioners at the  Christ Curch, the international community church of Virginia Water and beyond  [my emphasis] are not too happy about.

I think it's about time we heard from the The Most Reverend Rowan Williams on this subject. 

Comments

[Roger Pearse]

You wrote: ""The Reverend Sizer's writings appeared on a Holocaust denier and anti Semitic website, AAAGH"

This said to me, and I imagine to most people, that he was writing for that site.

When I look at the link, I don't find anything justifying that. All the site has done is to use some of his material, probably without even his knowledge.

I'm beginning to get a bad feeling about all this. The police say that Sizer called them because of harassment. When I look at comments like this one above, I can see his point.

[Alec]

Comments like what, Roger? Negative remarks on a blog? Remarks which refer to Sizer's own writings and attested associations?

The ones who brought this into the real world were Stephen Sizer and Anthony McRoy, and it's been publicized only after the former threatened to report another blogger 20,000 miles away and falsely claimed Seismic had been cautioned.

[Tony]

Roger,
I'm suprised that Sizer has not as yet claimed his piece has been used by AAAGH, without his authority/knowlege. Most bloggers are aware that their stuff can be used on other sites, sometimes out of context. Often this goes unnoticed, but in this case the piece was pointed out to the author. Had that happened to me,I would have e-mailed the site involved and asked them to remove the offending piece. Had they not done so, my next step would have been to complain to their web host. If those actions had failed I would have been in a position to explain what had happened to any interested enquirer. No way would I complain to the police let alone then go on to lie that one of my correspondants had been 'cautioned' by the police when I knew, or ought to have known, the truth.
t
t

[Carl Lundquist/LA]

Jeez Tony, how is it that the police get involved with a clearly civil matter?