Falling victim to goblins and trolls (below) is no longer a fairy tale as internetizens find out on a daily basis. The price for principled objection to sighted ratings by a wine guide now owned by a credit card company controlled by people who own wine brands themselves, is to fall victim to anonymous libels from trolls.

In my case that guide is Platter and a comment posted on www.winenews.co.za implies that my opposition is a result of having been fired as a taster.

“I tasted for the Platter wine guide for five years and the experience has turned me against sighted tasting forever.” should read ” I tasted for the Platter wine guide for five years and they fired me and that experience has turned me against Platter forever.”

Of course this is a lie as an email from Philip van Zyl, the editor of Platter, to that other troll (now deceased) the widow (Tim James in drag) confirms:

From: Philip van Zyl
Date: May 2, 2008 1:35 PM
Subject: The Window & Neil Pendock
To: Tim James
Cc: Neil Pendock , [email protected]

Dear Tim

Readers of the May Day edition of The Window might infer that Neil
Pendock (copied herewith) was fired from Platter’s Guide. This is
incorrect, and I’d appreciate it if you would note this on the
website.

Best

Philip

Even worse than being trolled is the attitude of the online publisher, Kevin “komputer kid” Kidson, who refuses to remove the libel, claiming he cannot find the delete button on his keyboard. Mr. Kidson is cashing in on a libel.

“Unfortunately, I can not remove it – once an article is published on the internet, it is quoted in the social media, it is linked to from numerous sources, and it is thus impossible to remove. And Neil knows this.

Neil can counter these allegations if he wants, he knows how to use WineNews and he most definitely knows how to add a comment.

Please advise him that we can not remove the article and if he wants to counter the allegations he can make a comment.

If he wants anything more he can speak to me.

Good luck with your competition.”

So here you have a situation in which I was interviewed by a wine impessario seeking publicity for his wine competition and who presumably gets paid for my words in his interview – around R1500 for 700 words, I hear. When I object to being trolled (all comments are approved before they are posted) the Kid refuses to delete the libel and wants me to respond to boost his puny readership statistics and earn him some more moolah. How would he feel if a troll called him a paedophile on this blog and I asked him to respond via a comment?

This is an outrageous and abusive situation. It’s Silvio Berlusconi with no bunga-bunga and no Ruby the heart stealer. Surely there is a wine loving lawyer out there who can take this Kid to the kleaners?

While I search for Messers. Sue, Grabbit and Runne in shining armour, let’s hope that all decent producers who fund this morally bankrupt little Somerset West kottage industry will take note of the outrageous behaviour of their service (sic) provider. Producers, take your internet business to www.winetimes.co.za. You know its the right thing to do.