Across the pond

This is one of those highly scientific newspaper surveys done on a Sunday afternoon, when the editor of the day is whipping the journalists unlucky enough to be on the Sunday rota to produce some interesting copy for the Monday paper. The size of the sample is 58, which is substantially more than the number of Labour MPs even the most energetic political journalist could ring on a Sunday to get a view as to whether they thought Gordon Brown should resign before he does even more damage. This is the kind of research journalists do before they write those stories which start ‘Most Labour MP’s think……’.

In my new found zeal to keep my computer clean, before lunch I went into the folder where the WordPress Spam filter, Akismet, places those comments on my blog which it thinks are spam, and pressed Delete All. When I checked this evening there were already 58 new comments awaiting my moderation.

I scrolled down through the whole lot. And found that 57 of the comments were most definitely Spam. Roughly 70 per cent were clearly motivated by greed – attempts to use my blog to get people to spend their money in casinos, or buying mobile phone ring tones, insurance, etc, etc.

The other 30 per cent were apparently designed to appeal to lust. Or at least that is what I first thought. But then I went through again. They were not comments from individuals hoping to satisfy their urges by finding partners on the net, they were attempts to get them to spend their money on buying sex products.

There was one comment, which appeared to be a rcoherent and easoned discussion of rape and how it should be dealt with. So with fear and trepidation I clicked on the link. Only to find that it was trying to get my readers to buy the Best Rape Movies.

So the result of my survey has produced what the Sunday afternoon journalist survey never produces. One hundred per cent agreement. All of today’s Daily Novel spammers are concerned, not to get my readers into bed but to take money out of their pockets.