Usmanov shuts down Blogs

Just when you thought everything was rosy in Arse-Land (top of the league courtesy of three points at the Lane, a great win in Europe and Jose gone) matters off the pitch have started to get serious. You may recall a couple of weeks ago I posted a link to the website of Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who made some serious allegations about Alisher Usmanov and his associates. Numerous blogs and websites posted the same link, and Usmanov hired a top London Law firm, Schillings to threaten those sites who had repeated the allegations, or indeed linked to them. As of yesterday, Murrays webhost, Fasthosts, has pulled the plug on the server hosting Murrays site. Unfortunately this has also affected a number of other sites hosted on the same server, most notably that of Boris Johnson MP and prospective candidate for Mayor of London. This action has rightly caused consternation in the blog-world, and has been widely condemned (see here, here, and here amongst others). As Arseblogger rightly points out, this action reflects badly on our club, given that Usmanov is now a major shareholder, and it’s shameful that David Dein, who claims to love the club, is having anything to do with him. If you missed Craig Murray’s allegations the first time round, I recommend using a good internet search engine, say Google, and having a look for it. If you can’t find it, email me (address on the right) and I’ll send you a link, but I won’t post anything here for obvious reasons.