Well here’s a turn-up for the books. Plagiarism now. Someone has helped himself to the article I wrote for In Focus recently, ‘What Is Elitism?’ and posted it on a philosophy forum without so much as a by your leave. Not a word about B and W, not even a shy mention of the fact that he hadn’t written it himself. Well except the dopy last sentence, he may have written that; I certainly didn’t. But I bloody well did write the rest of it.

I’ve been emailing him on the subject, but answer came there none. He did append a vague (and highly overdue) remark to the effect that ‘a version’ of this article appeared somewhere or other, naming two places where it damn well did not appear and not mentioning the one where it did, which he knew perfectly well, since I’d just written him about it! It’s quite funny really. In a maddening kind of way. So then, apparently realizing that hadn’t quite mollified me, he helped himself to yet another B and W item and posted that! He did say it was from B and W this time, but without a link, without permision, and in its entirety, which unless you have permission (did I mention that he doesn’t?) is a violation of copyright. Even funnier!

A kind reader emailed me about all this, or I never would have known. Unfortunately it’s not possible to expose and ridicule the plagiarist on the forum, because as my correspondent told me, he is the moderator and manager, and posts go through him instead of being posted directly (odd arrangement). So he simply (surprise!) doesn’t post them. I’ve written to the server, but who knows how long that will take to do any good. So I just thought I might as well expose and ridicule him here in the meantime.