There has been an unprecedented rush of people canceling their subscriptions to this blog the last five days. Not one person has given any reason, and where there have been messages, they have been of this unfriendly but uninformative nature. This is a real example:
I wish to cancel my payments of £2 per month with immediate effect. Please ensure this happens. Thank you.
Of course, all the people canceling had previously provided invaluable support, and I am grateful to each of them. There is always a daily churn of cancellation and subscription. But cancellations are running at about thirty times their normal level, starting very suddenly, and I just cannot think what has caused it. There has been no obvious controversy and I have not expressed any views I had not expressed before.
The obvious concern is that some information is circulating about me and being given credence by people who have supported me, in a manner invisible to me, and I have no way of knowing if it may be untrue or unfair.
If anybody has any ideas on what is happening, I should be grateful to know.
I don’t know of anything adverse circulating about you but I’ll share my own donating experience which may be relevant. I have supported you with a monthly donation of x for several years. When you were sent to jail I added an extra donation per month of 4x to provide solidarity for your family while you couldn’t support them. I recently cancelled the additional subscription to support other bloggers while continuing the original one. Nothing personal against you, I felt your time of tribulation had passed. It is just over a year since that unhappy event and maybe other supporters thought similarly?
Please keep up your writing and telling it as you see it.
Could be one of two reasons Craig:
I’ve only read a couple of dozen or so of the comments, and most of them are saying that it’s probably due to the increase in the cost of living and having to tighten their belts, but then why not say so, and why the curt, unfriendly tone if that’s the case.
Wild speculation perhaps, but could your subscriber list have been hacked by someone malicious?
Can you contact the persons cancelling their subscription to check whether they have in fact done so, and – not to sound too paranoid – some third party hasn’t hacked a list and cancelled on their unknowing behalf?
Good point. Certainly people continually find they have unfollowed me on twitter.
I can only speak for myself, but in my case it is down to the cost of living crisis.
I have recently had to take the regretful decision to reduce the amount I contribute to this blog, and to several other worthy causes I support.
It is absolutely no reflection on you or on anything you have said.
Perhaps people are cutting their cloth due to the cost of living crisis.
Or you are being nobbled by those you annoy and the donors don’t know their subscription has been cancelled. Easy enough to miss nowadays.
I work at a subscription based magazine and online sales have collapsed from 70 orders a week to 8 or 10. I reckon people are looking at their bank statements and seeing what they can cut.
I’m reading a lot of stuff concerning Paypal these days. Do these subscribers make payments to you via Paypal? If so, it’s maybe a basic choice; continue donating to you and risk having their Paypal account suspended. Personally, I couldn’t afford to have my Paypal account suspended and maybe these subscribers are in the same boat? It’s either you or Paypal.
Nobody is going to have their paypal account suspended, because they donate to someone Paypal doesn’t approve of. Come on. Paypal might suspend the recipient, but not the people making the donation.
Yet
Paypal permanently banned me, with no chance of appeal, and the reason was “proprietary”, and they stole my positive balance. I had the account for years, with no complaints or fraud. The only odd thing I’ve done is support Craig, and it was right after I added a second subscription to him.
It may simply be belt tightening in anticipation of high energy bills and inflated grocery prices.
Sorry to see this. Fwiw, if anyone’s telling you I cancelled my monthly donation, they’re wrong.
Cf. recent reports of Paypal cancelling accounts of the Free Speech Union et al.?
Likewise! I have reduced the amount I contribute, but not cancelled it.
My guess on cancelations is your two recent articles about the Monarchy. The queen was “to be frank, not particularly sharp or bright”. Brits, even left leaning ones like your audience, can’t think straight when it comes to the monarchy. You were hitting a little to close to the heart.
I was a subscriber for many years, but I cancelled when you did that free (?) advert for Pfizer, and I know of other people who cancelled at the same time for the same reason. I also wasn’t a big fan of your post about ‘refugees’ recently, but that wouldn’t have been enough to stop my subscription. I generally like your writing very much (it was well worth the subscription fee), and once I’ve forgotten about the jib-jab stuff I’ll probably re-subscribe.
It’s 5 days since the queen’s funeral – could there be some connection there?
I haven’t heard anything Craig. I cancelled after your trans/women views & anti Alba policy just after you came out of Saughton.
Well I’m not a subscriber of your site, as your site is not in my general interest. I liked to read about Assange and Skripal case and since then look here once or twice per month.
Anyway I can imagine that inflation and high energy costs may people think twice where to spend money on. My 2ct
Best Regards
Either Ukraine or the monarchy. If it were the cost-of-living crisis, you wouldn’t get the passive-aggressive treatment. I’m inclined towards the latter, as the English’s forelock-tugging atavism runs deep.
I myself have withdrawn funding from some publications where left-leaning turned into full-tankie adulation of Russia, but that’s not your case.
My thought, too. That bit where you rebuke the campists …
The Crimea is even more difficult. The population was historically majority Tartar – Crimea was within living memory a Muslim land – and the Krim Tatars were deported brutally by Stalin. This is not ancient history. Much of the deportation did not happen until the 1950’s. I cannot understand those who join me in wanting the Chagos Islanders to get their country back, but do not take the same view of the rights of the Krim Tatars.
You’re going to get all sorts, you know.
I’m not a subscriber (but perhaps I ought to be). Thank you, Craig, all the same. I most certainly do not always agree with you, but I appreciate what you write.
Hi, Could it be something you “liked” on twitter? I got a “Graig Murray liked” tweet a couple of days ago and it was something I didn’t agree with and was surprised that you had liked it. I imagine some subscribers might have been quite disappointed. Sorry but I can’t remember the subject, just that I found it a bit distasteful. I’ll dig away on Twitter tomorrow to see if I can find it but I’m far from an expert.
I suspect it to be a hack, not loyal subscribers believing a smear against you. We aren’t that stupid.
Please make sure I am still subscribed. I also have a minimal recurring donation because I am eternally grateful for your coverage of Julian Assange’s extradition hearings in 2020. You changed my life.
Have you looked at Patreon? Gives subscribers a choice of funding methods. I’m off PayPal because they defund people they don’t like, e.g. Wikileaks
Most opinion is free and everywhere. If someone wants opinion they can find more than enough of what they are looking for on twitter. I have never subscribed and I have no insight into the minds of those that do (or did). I suppose people pay when they feel they are supporting some cause or getting a useful service. Why is the opinion here more useful than offered on any twitter account? (say https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love ). Otherwise what is the cause? If I was to pay for every opinion I read on twitter or reddit, I’d be bankrupt. In general, I’m not convinced people would pay for either your or my opinion on any matter, but then again perhaps I am just excessively tight. Perhaps people subscribed at a time when you had legal expenses (more of a cause fighting the justice system), and now just drift away as they find their views don’t quite align with yours and the comments are dominated by tankies and endless disinformation (but that is hardly new), although nobody is actually forced to read let alone be baited by the comments. I sincerely doubt there is any coordinated plot against you. The Paypal theory also seems beyond implausible.
Opinion is one thing. Informed opinion is another. I don’t always agree with Craig’s opinions. His pivot from expecting total Russian defeat in Ukraine, even discussing them relinquishing Crimea, to advocating a peace settlement based on the current situation was pretty startling. But there are facts that he knows and I didn’t, that don’t appear in the MSM and that need to be accounted for in forming my opinions. His coverage of the Salmond trial was invaluable. I will be continuing my support.
if last week then it’s clearly royalists. i was shocked by how many of your regular commenters announced themselves as royalists.
You can be a socialist worker and still an ardent fan of the royal family; equally a right wing Tory who thinks the royals should be abolished. It is an issue that cuts across both left and right – so it is perhaps not surprising to find that this is an issue that divides Craig’s mostly left wing audience.
such people are not socialists. of that you can be certain.
I am not a republican. But I’m not going to go out and fight for the monarchy in any civil war. But there is a difference between being a republican and having the extreme and distasteful anti-monarchist views that you have, Craig. Your disdain for your fellow Scots that voted to remain part of the Union in the referendum was shrill and distasteful too. I commented on this at the time. There is an element of paranoia and promotion of conspiracy theory. Indeed your very question about the cancellations of support contain an element of this. But surely anyone supporting you over the years would know your character by now and will be doing so despite this flaw in the way you express your opinions at times, or that just simply strongly disagree with you. They support you because the good far outweighs the bad.
So I suspect that there’s nothing sinister at all about the loss of folk supporting you financially, but it’s much more the case of lots of folk reassessing their financial commitments. Times are tough. We should change the government, and the way we run our societies, certainly, but in the meantime folk have to live, eat, keep warm, and you’ll just be part of the general contraction of our economy, I’m sure. And everyone needs to understand that this is not all the government’s fault, we are reaching the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth, and “peak wealth”, and this is now a permanent state of affairs, and will only get worse. That’s why Starmer’s answer to everything, “Growth, growth, growth”. is actually “Insane, insane, insane”. . We need to be able to construct a working society and economy that continues to function and copes fairly with stasis and contraction. Our present economic and political systems cannot do this. For instance, there’ll be millions of folk earning their keep at the margins of the economy, hair dressers, beauty parlours, coffee houses and eateries, hospitality, tourist businesses, etc that will not now be viable, nor any time in the future. Their only hope is a directive economy which values the input to our society of every single person and puts them to more useful and sustainable work.
“how many of your regular commenters announced themselves as royalists.”
Actually I don’t remember reading even one comment that expressed royalist views (I don’t read all comments of course); we are surely all republicans here. What I did see was comments objecting to personal slurs against individual members of the royal family. Some of them are just parasites, of course, but some are genuinely trying to make the best of the obsolete role that (through no choice of their own) they have inherited. Then there were some responses from readers which were so childish that they should have been deleted by the moderators. If there is a moderation policy at all (and there is), Craig bears some responsibility for allowing them to remain.
My take is your previous article satisfied no-one.
We are in all probability headed towards war, which forces people to choose sides.
Your article most likely alienated those who may support Russia by belittling Russian efforts and capability.
And failed to provide the other side a rousing chest-beating homily on their entirely virtuous quest.
Although I agree peacemaking is the optimum outcome, as a diplomat you seem naïve to the extent and effects that propaganda causes.
The genie is out of the bottle. The dogs of war have been loosed. The time for your diplomatic intervention was earlier, but you missed that boat.
Apologies for being so direct, but that’s my take.
We can’t be headed to war with nuclear powers because of MAD. Our leaders are not bright, but they are not so stupid or propagandised to destroy all life on Earth when a proxy war will do the job of economically damaging competitors (Russia, China, EU, Germany). Russia has won a lot of support around the world (87% of countries) but even Russians belittle Russia’s efforts. Of course, Biden is a rather destabilising force, publicly talking about breaking up Russia and direct military conflict with China. (Recall Kissinger presenting Nixon as a madman in their good cop/bad cop routine? Maybe it’s an act.) I will also grant it’s not inconceivable US experiences loss of unipolar hegemony as an existential threat and will go full psycho ex-boyfriend on the world, but murder/suicide doesn’t seem like something nations do. I will also grant the world is dividing into East v West, as economic war drives a wedge thru Europe and pushes Global South toward Asia, which could ultimately lead to WW3. But again, MAD raises it’s head. Solution: the people who want to play nuclear chicken, in a room with guns to each other’s heads. Afterthought: Maybe the cost of sanctions crisis is a tactic to economically ‘extend’ Craig 😉
“Russia has won a lot of support around the world (87% of countries) but even Russians belittle Russia’s efforts.”
Where does this statistic come from?
The countries opposing Russia are:
The US, the EU (27 countries), Sweden, Finland, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – 36 countries.
The number of countries in the world is around 188.
I’d say Biden sometimes blurts out the consensus opinions of the US regime, which they’d rather not have said public. In a crass inarticulate manner, due to his tendency towards gaffes even before obvious mental decline set in.
I’d bet this is much to thechagrin of people who have to clean up after him, Also I imagine between them the Russians and Chinese have a fair idea of who and what they’re dealing with.
One of the reasons for this war in Ukraine after all is that Russia considers the collective West ”not-agreement-capable”. I.E Their given word is verbal flatulence and a signature on treaty is a waste of ink & paper.
I have not seen or come across anything. Inflation bites? People cutting down on discretionary expenses?
Dear Craig,
Your blogs and your courageous stand against this slick of depravity and corruption, lapping at our ankles, have kept me sane. Keep up the good work. I wish I could afford to increase my subscription.
Kind regards
AM
Could it be due to people leaving PayPal due to their closing down of e.g. the Free Speech Union account? There seems to be a little groundswell of closures being flagged on Twitter.
Yes, Matt. That’s MY reason, Paypal’s ‘deplatforming’. Time to show the ‘tech giants’ that we, ‘the peasants’, are not prepared to tolerate their suppression of free speech by deplatforming the views of decent people.
I don’t subscribe but have donated to your calls for support where I agree with the cause: Assange, your imprisonment, etc. And I’ve purchased your books which are informative.
We have widely different views on some topics, some of which you censor, and this could p*ss some people off. But it’s your blog which I respect, and why I visit.
On the whole this a great blog that I visit regularly. I don’t do social media at all.
Keep up the good work.
Fuel bills. I know people who are cancelling their subscriptions to various things like this because their electricity and gas bills have doubled
Mr. Murray, for long I have no option to subscribe or donate, because my only PayPal funds were coming from Etsy and now Etsy have closed all Russian shops, and PayPal no longer works for Russia.
I suggest you contact the moderators team. Perhaps, commentors complained of smth and that may give you idea of what were they unhappy with.
—
[ Mod: Thanks for the suggestion but, for your information, Craig can easily view all suspended or deleted comments containing messages to and from moderators, in the admin screens – and there’s nothing to explain a sudden increase in subscriber cancellations. ]
Thank you. I just thought that, from my experience, the most common things a moderator encounters are: calling discussion participants trolls, and demands to remove inappropriate content. If there had been a noticeable increase in such requests, it might give an idea of the reason for unsubscribing.
I may be able to offer one reason for supporters cancelling their pledges. Here is MY reason: Paypal have been ‘deplatforming’ people whose views don’t correspond with ‘narratives’ (packs of lies) we’re being pitched. A number of genuine people with “non-controversial” things to say have been unceremoniously dumped by Paypal. Their funds are being retained for 180 days, and may not be returned.
My SOLE reason for cancellation is the attitude and censorship displayed by Paypal. I was unaware of their sinister dealings with those with whom they disagree until it was highlighted on GB news on a couple of occasions.
I’m prepared and willing to support you if it’s possible to effect this without Paypal involvement. PLEASE ADVISE. “It’s not you, Craig………it’s Paypal”
Other supporters may be of similar opinions. It might be useful if you requested UK Column News to highlight this and may also encourage the return of those who have taken actions similar to mine.
Kind regards and all the very best,
I use a standing order direct to CM’s account.
It couldn’t be simpler and cuts out the percentage that PP takes.
It’s not that complicated, a lot of tankies are getting cold feet (my sincere apologies to snowflakes who take umbrage at the term.) Your last piece, while filled with your usual clever nuance, still concludes with the the pro-Russian position that Eastern Ukraine “wants to be Russian”, and that that, not Putin’s criminal and genocidal invasion, is the key fact. There are surely many on the left of Scottish nationalism who feel that their fellow travelers’ dishing out ire to someone like Tony Blair 20 years after the fact of the Iraq war is disgustingly hypocritical in light of similar and more grave crimes being committed on the eastern borders of Europe. Couple that with Putin & Lavrov’s new stream of nuclear threats and some of them, and their consciences, have had enough.
It may well be that much of Eastern Ukraine has to be surrendered to Putler to avert WW3, but any sane analysis records this as a matter not of principle but of pure Realpolitik. Hell, Hitler had a case to reclaim the Rhineland, the Sudetenland, the corridor to Danzig. But no-one in those days was daft enough to argue for the aggrandizement of Germany on the basis of democracy. Putin’s just another bloody monster in a long lineage since Ivan the Terrible and the only important question is how to get rid of him without killing ourselves.
In 2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed in The New York Times after he had backed a deal that prevented U.S. military intervention in Syria in which he expressed his happiness at the increasing trust between the U.S. and Russia. Bloody monster or naive fool? According to Hopeless we are to forget about the bloody monster, Tony Blair, because the extermination of some 2 million Iraqis including 500,000 children happened 20 years ago ( It was ‘worth it’ according to the late Wicked Witch from the West, Madeleine Albright)! I mean has Putin been interdicting the import of Baby Milk products into Ukraine like Blair? Any humanitarian in the UK can certainly advocate for the prosecution of Blair for genocide. But No! We in the peace-loving UK should rather concentrate on the descendants of Ivan the Terrible. Now, how long ago was that?
I really do not comprehend where the US/UK imperial flag wavers here imagine this is going to end. Russia is not Vietnam or Iraq or even Grenada. But I bet Blair’s offspring won’t be volunteering to go to fight and arrest the war criminal, Putin.
Sir Tony doesn’t care about people in Ukraine anymore than Politically Homeless does mate
Blair Says Forget The People Of Ukraine, Let’s Side With Putin And Fight Radical Islam
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/23/tony-blair-ukraine-putin_n_5196236.html
@Politically Homeless
Please acquaint yourself with the following facts (which are easily checked):
On 21st September you defended Kwasi Kwarteng on Twitter.
Perhaps that didn’t go down well?
Indeed, though to be fair racist or sectarian attacks on the man are uncouth.
However, fact that he’s a klepocratic Tory-boy wanker, working for a corrupt, dishonest, incompetent and utterly discredited government consisting a zombie party proped up by dirty money and led by a moron, who was voted in by a tiny cabal of liches.
Works fine for any decent person.