Whitewashing Wiki embarrassment: David Amess

David Amess’s Wikipedia page used to contain information about his expense claims. It also contained information on when he was stitched up by satirist and comedian Chris Morris for his spoof documentary series Brass Eye. (Curiously, I couldn’t embed the youtube video onto this page as the embedding code was “disabled by request”. Hmm.)

However, we can see from Wikipedia’s ‘Revision of History’ for the David Amess page that a user called KellyPR has removed all of the content that makes Amess look like an arse. It paints the picture of his move to Southend West as perfectly innocent, with Labour’s Angela Smith winning his former Basildon seat. This perhaps reflected incompetence in his handling of Basildon, although KellyPR1234 decided that Amess had a “significant personal following”. Why leave, then? Southend West is an extremely safe Tory seat. You could put Gary Glitter in a blue rosette and he’d still probably win. Could it have been that Amess was running away from an inevitable defeat? Not according to the newly amended Wikipedia page.

KellyPR’s contribution list is solely made up of edits to Amess’s Wiki page. Indeed, most of the edits are described as “section blanking”.

Is this just some vigilante pro-Amess lover, working off of their own back? Or is it a pre-election damage limitation PR campaign for an under-fire MP?

I’ve contacted Amess to find out if he uses any PR companies, or PR people, and who exactly they are. If he is, I sure hope he isn’t dipping into the public’s purse to fund this wiki-purification.

p.s. I’ve quickly thrown the expenses bit back in, but I’m sure it could bebetter, so please amend, add – let’s undo the censorship.