http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/01/13/smtaylor113.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Taylor_%28Labour_politician%29
from the magazine yesterday...
"One little charge he has found hard to shrug off is that of writing his own entry on Wikipedia, the online encylopaedia to which anyone can contribute. The accusation is even appended to the entry, in the form of a quote from Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Daily Mirror.
'The Downing Street thinking,' Maguire writes, 'is that this item is so congratulatory, presenting Taylor as a master of the universe famous for amusing anecdotes and witty one-liners, that no one else could be responsible.'
The problem is that, by the time I visit Wikipedia, the entry is rather subdued. It records youthful stroppiness, possibly a response to lack of paternal nurturing: he was expelled from school in south London, and 'failed to get his O-levels first time around because he had eloped (to exotic Maida Vale) with a girl called Pandora'. Later, there was a fight with the Southampton University Labour Group which led to his setting up his own Socialist Society. But there's nothing about witty one-liners.
Has Taylor deleted his own boasting? As a Labour spin-doctor during the 1990s, he was, after all, responsible for developing the party's rapid-rebuttal unit. Absolutely not, he insists. When I produce a printout of the Wikipedia page, he says he's never seen it before, and chuckles at the quote from Maguire. ('I like Kevin, but he really doesn't like me.') Then he blinks in surprise at a blurred snapshot of him with his arms around two girls in a snow-covered Southampton street in 1982.
'That's my old girlfriend. I haven't seen her for 20 years. God, how weird. I wonder how she feels about being on that website. Isn't it amazing that we live in a world where this sort of stuff…' and he pauses. 'I mean, what will it do to us?'
Clearly, Taylor has already spent a lot of time worrying about the explosion of consumer choice, the deluge of information bearing down on us, the menace and promise of new technology. But that Wikipedia photo has touched a raw nerve.
'I'm gobsmacked,' he says. 'What will this do to relationships – the knowledge that dumping a girlfriend, throwing up at a party, anything at all can be on our internet profile for ever? We'll either end up being more tolerant of the fact that we're all flawed, or we'll have to be led by people who have kept their noses clean since the age of three.'"