[Julie Steiner]

Well, the Spectator did, after all, call it the President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Contest. And everyone seems to agree that favoring a celebrity's mediocre entry--after disingenuously inviting entries from the entire English-speaking world, as if all the rest of us lowly scribblers actually had a shot--was an offensive way to run a poetry contest. Indeed, it evokes the cronyism and abuse of public trust associated with President Erdogan. So I'd have to say it was truth in advertising.

(Announcing that rhymes on "Ankara" were deprecated, and then choosing a winner containing exactly that, was a particularly offensive touch, I thought. Inspired!)

[Matt Q]

Know only this my secret lover:
that I will be with you, whatever.
Though none can know of our affair,
I promise to stay true.
................................– T. Blair.

[John Whitworth]

Julie, it was Douglas Murray's money, not the Speccie's. He is surely entitled to do what he likes with it. Or are you a Socialist?

[Matt Q]

John,

The money was donated by a reader. Who knows whether that reader was consulted on the Boris stitch-up, but if not, the money was donated by someone under the impression that Murray had been telling the truth about trying to find the most offensive limerick, rather than trying to get the most publicity for his competition.

I'd say Murray misled everyone who invested time and energy into entering the competition in order to give Boris (former editor of the magazine Murray writes for) £1000 of someone else's money. (Boris probably wasn't even aware that he'd entered the competition). Is Murray entitled to do that? Obviously he's legally allowed to. But if he's entitled to do it, then people are entitled to call him an arse for doing so, no? It works both ways.

Matt

[Brian Allgar]

I entirely agree with Matt. To accept £1000 that someone had offered as a prize for the competition as described, and then to give that money, well before the closing date, to a mediocre piece of drivel that respects none of the rules, but that just happens to be by the wretched Boris Johnson, seems to me to be verging on the fraudulent, and is an insult both to the generous donor and to eveyone who took the trouble to enter the competition.

I don't think one needs to be a socialist to find Mr Murray's behaviour extremely shabby.

[Roger Slater]

Whoever the money came from was, as John says, entitled to do with it whatever he wanted to do. And what he chose to do was announce a contest which was publicly represented to be legitimate, inducing a large number of people to take time out of their day to compose limericks under the expectation that they would be fairly considered for the prize. It was that announcement which turned out to be fraudulent. (I suspect that there are probably laws in Britain against that kind of fraud, by the way, though I'm sure that no one will lift a finger to enforce them, nor am I saying it's serious enough that this is a bad thing).

[Julie Steiner]

John, I never entertained any delusion that I might actually win, so the prize money was always irrelevant to me.

I feel ripped off because I was led to expect that the winning entry would be a limerick of legendary proportions--a breathtakingly elegant confection of filth, invective, and clever wordplay.

That, and not £1000, is what I was hoping for, and indeed felt promised.

The poem that would have won (had the contest not been rigged to favor friends in high places) may be just such a work of genius. But it unjustly remains in the shadows, where we cannot appreciate it as it deserves. Why? Because the judge couldn't resist the temptation to plant a very public kiss on an inferior contestant's famous arse.

Yea, verily, this was a crime against literature itself.

Granted, it's only a misdemeanor. But a crime nonetheless.

[John Whitworth]

Matt, I didn't know that. Who was the reader? I thought it came from Mr Murray. If it wasn't his why did he control it? Did the reader give him that control? I would like to know.

Lighten up, people. Writing a limerick can't take (at the outside) twenty minutes. And there was only one prize so your chances were pretty small.

Boris took thirty seconds. I'm sure if he had taken 19 and a half minutes more, he could have made it rhyme and scan.

[Roger Slater]

I don't like it when someone wastes 20 minutes of my time by lying to me. Heck, I don't like it when the car in front of me wastes 2 seconds of my time by not moving as soon as the light turns green.

[Julie Steiner]

LOL, John, this is me lightened up!

My daughter's transplant buddy, a darling 12-year-old girl, came home on hospice last week, after immediately rejecting the second of two heart transplants she's received in the past six months. Her doctors have said that there's no point in listing her for a third--her antibodies are just too haywire, so she'll just reject that one, too. She's had her milrinone PICC line removed because she really wanted to go swimming with her siblings. She'll probably die in the next few days, if she hasn't already--we're still waiting for news.

So yeah, I'm distracting myself by focusing on trivial kerfuffles like this one.