"Guest, Guest" and one or two others may be interested to read this post, but most will want to skip it as it is completely off-topic. For the record though, I think it's only fair that I explain the background to the PN I sent Gareth.

The packet Gareth said I had claimed to post, but which he complained he had not received, did eventually reach him. He has acknowledged receipt by PM, but I would not expect him to do so publicly as that would spoil his inuendo that I promised to post something but did not do so.

On the whole, I took the tone of his PM to be conciliatary, and I even dared hope that this spat, which has besmirched Mudcat, was finally over. His post above would suggest otherwise.

A trawl through his messages, and mine, would reveal that for some months Gareth has been following me from thread to thread with feeble insults, usually unrelated to the thread topic (witness this thread). Or sometimes he settles for snide remarks about me in threads I've not entered. By and large I ignore that sort of crap. But Gareth has taken things a good bit farther than feeble insults.

Some months before I knew anything about him, beyond the name he posts under, he abused a PM I sent him, using it to reveal my full name on Mudcat (as I had revealed it to him), and also where I live (he must have foraged this from some non-Mudcat source, perhapos through those Labour Party connections he boasts about.

I didn't particularly mind, but most mudcatters would leave it to indiviual members to decide how much personal info they wish to publish about themselves.

Having publicly identified me, Gareth proceeded to publish a series of incredible lies about me, some allegedly concerning my membership of the Labour Party. Even in the face of my flat rebuttals, Gareth continued to repeat his rubbish, ad nauseum, despite having not a shred of evidence (because none existed). Keep in mind, Guest,Guest, that through all this, I didn't know Gareth from Adam.

I don't know whether he invents his fantasies, which would seem wildly improbable, or picks them up from Chinese whispers in the Labour Party. His puerile abuse (witness this thread) I don't mind. But I am entitled to find out where the barefaced lies are coming from, so that I can try to stop them at source.

The packet I sent Gareth was evidence in rebuttal of other lies and insinuations, this time about my work in journalism. I sent it in direct response to his repeatedly challenging me to do so, and his public claim that two magazines I claimed to have worked for did not recognise me as a contributor. (He publicly named the mags.) I was on the board of one of the mags at the time, and no-one there can remember Gareth's call. Quite apart from the fact that he came up with the wrong answers (and based his insinuations on them), his snooping around in this way was, to my mind, intrusive and offensive.

Gareth's grand assessment of the stuff I sent him - magazines, photocopies and other evidence of my work for national newspapers and magazines - was that he was "not overly impressed." No hint of an apology of course.

Lastly, here's one other little detail for anyone who might think I've exaggerated Gareth's inability to distinguish truth from fantasy. He says in his post above that I "insisted" my PMs to him should be kept confidential. I wonder if he can give any evidence of me saying anything even remotely close to that? If it were true, he would have no difficulty. Unless he's lost my PMs - in which case I could send him copies.

Well, Ake, very sorry to clutter your thread with all this, but as I've said before, as long as Gareth continues to repeat his shite, I'll go on rebutting it in whatever forums he publishes it in - and rebutting it in any other ways that seem relevant.