I am thoroughly disgusted at the lengths some people will go to in an attempt to cause grief and pain to others for no other reason than pure jealousy. I hear you scoffing at that but I’m here to tell you that that is how the multitude of fans who have stood up in defense of Leigh and Dionne perceive your vicious attack on a community that the majority of fans are happy and content with. Your accusations are baseless and completely made up – you’re not dealing with a person who knows jack about computers either so all of your doubletalk and vague connotations about server logs do not fly with me. You’re greatest achievement however, is the fact that you managed to convince a few weak-minded people who have their own personal grudges against the Admin and mods of the forums themselves and that makes you dangerous.

I’ll also mention straight out, though I probably shouldn’t, that the all of the logs have freely been given with no reservation at all to the band’s management. There is nothing to hide as I said because all of your accusations are figments of your imaginations. No members have been banned from speaking out, no moderators were ‘fired’ for the reasons you gave – they were simply let go due to inactivity and a scaling down of the forums – whatever they say about it is all in their head. The owners of the official site have worked hard to make it what it is for over five years, and they’ve really had to work their hardest after Suzanne pulled the plug on the large server space out of the blue and forced Leigh onto a smaller one – causing much disgruntlement from fans at having to put up with smaller forums due to bandwidth issues. And the response we have gotten from the fans when they discovered this insane petition has been overwhelming. The majority of Placebo’s fans are some of the best people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet and I think that speaks volumes for the band. Unfortunately, there are always a few who are jealous of that, and want the attention for themselves and so will stop at nothing to get what they want, even if it means hurting decent, friendly people who’ve never caused a bit of harm. Venus in furs (Lynne), I was told that you’ve met Leigh and Dee and that they were nothing but nice, spending time to chat and have a drink with you – but during that time you began slagging off Suzanne who never showed up. I’ve also read old threads in which you spend some time slagging off Sian (Cruella) as well. My my, the backstabbing never ends does it? Not even within your own “group”.

And now I come to my own little mention in this petition. I will even quote it because the website has been taken down or moved:

“Moderators of the Official forums are permitted, and sometimes encouraged, to harass members both on the forum, via PM, and on other websites. One moderator, Melia, maintains an online journal in which she makes derogatory remarks about the BSH forum members. Despite member protests, BSH Admins not only permit this behaviour, but also allow a link to the journal from the forums. This moderator is also known to berate members in an unprofessional manner, again condoned by the Administrators.”

The online journal being referred to is this one of course, in which I wrote about the run-in I had with Cruella on my birthday. This is what I wrote:

“Did spend a little time dealing with a weirdo Brian obsessive. Dealt with a slew of 'you're pathetic, you don't know anything' PMs (Private messages) from her all because I told her off for berating some poor user who had a great experience of getting to share a plane with the lead singer of the band - She likes to think it's her place to tell people how to behave around him. It's terribly easy to hide behind a computer though isn't it? Her last one said 'I should pop in to the Silver Rocket chat' knowing I hang out there. She has a self-professed fear of chatrooms so I thought, well cool, she should take that first step and pop in there. We can have a 'talk' then. So I checked all day today and not a sign of her :) Just as I suspected.”

I have never PM’d her to harass her, only responded to the threatening PM’s I got from her. I discovered she’d complained to Leigh about my personal journal, on my personal website, unaffiliated with the BSH in any way – telling him to ‘grow a spine’ and make me remove it. I forgot I’m not allowed to have an opinion on anything because I’m a moderator. I’m not allowed to express it in semi-private on my own website. As for the ‘berating of users in an unprofessional manner’ well fire all the mods then because I’ve seen much worse. I did no such thing and I’m amazed at how well this petition is worded to make it seem like I’m some monster. I simply told her to stop making it her personal crusade to tell people how to behave around Brian. I was polite if a little disdainful, did not use profanity and in return I got a slew of PMs entitled ‘You are WRONG’ which were full of some of the most immature rubbish I’ve ever seen. At the end of it she became threatening towards me then shut her PMs off. She has done the same to others. One poor fan was afraid to go to a gig for fear of running into her because of some threats Cruella had made. The moderators of the BSH forums are only volunteers willing to give a little more time to ensure the rules and guidelines are followed. We aren’t paid to do it, and contrary to popular belief, most of us have never met the band, nor do we talk to the band on a regular basis – we are human beings like anyone else on the forums and just because we have a mod status does not mean we’re not allowed to express our opinions the same as everyone else. And for the one or two perks our mod status gives us, we have to put up with an awful lot of abuse and crap. We’re ‘Nazis’ and Leigh is Hitler of course. We spend all of our time plotting how to make it miserable on the forums because we truly want to drive everyone away. And if you can’t read the sarcasm in that I’ll just point it out.

Wow my longest Blog ever. Oh well if you’ve managed to read through the drivel so far (and I’m sure my biggest readers are of course the fabulous six or seven who began this crap – helloooo to you all! I can see your IPs you know :D) I’ve just a couple more things to say. This entire incident reminds me so much of what’s called ‘The Admin Wars’ on TCZ that happened several years ago. A small group of our Admin there became unhappy with the direction the game was going and so they began a hate campaign, fueled by petitions and underhanded dealings to try and bring down a great place. But it didn’t work then, and it’s not going to work now. So Lucile Braucks (AKA Half a Person), Chloe Govan (AKA Breakthefever), Siân Walters (AKA Cruella), Sonia Mahieux (AKA Sick Sex Toy), Claudia Schmölders (Owner of Carpe Diem Fan Mag and site), Lynne Kirkman (AKA Venus in Furs), and most of all, Suzanne Barnett (Simple One), if there is anything you succeeded in, it’s rallying more love and support for Leigh and Dee than they even knew existed. There are a multitude of fans poised and ready to flood the Band’s management offices with handwritten letters full of love and support for our wonderful community. So don’t expect to gain anything except vilification from everyone, now that this is out in the open.

I think Leigh and Dee have shown tremendous dignity and stoic honour in keeping this out of fan’s eyes, not wishing anything to taint their love of the band. But you brought it out in the open and they have no choice but to defend themselves against your horrible and untrue accusations. And so the full story will come out.

I had to do a search for some clipart recently. If you've never done this, then you do't know that most free clipart sites are heavily sponsored and popupad-driven. You open one page that you think looks promising, and all you get is a list of other clipart sites. Along with the popups that open new popups when you close them. Ohhh I hate that most of all. They went crazy one time and my toolbar was full of about 50 Internet Explorers all trying to sell me something and everytime I closed one, 2 more would appear. Onetime a popup ad got quite uppity and installed a couple of programs on my computer without asking permission to do so. I was fuming - smoke coming out of my ears, seeing red - the whole bit.

So why do websites use them? They create more clicking, they annoy the user and go a long way towards ensuring that user never returns to your website, and I can't imagine they generate *that* much money. Why can't these people just do simple banner ads? It's on the page, in your face, so to speak, for the duration of the time you're browsing the site and perosnally, I would be more inclined to give it a chance. Popups are evil and they must be stopped.