Bio

Guido Fawkes’ blog was launched in January 2004 with the aim of making “mischief at the expense of politicians and for the author’s own self-gratification”. The blog covers politics in a sensationalist fashion with The Sun of the 80s being an inspiration and “the camp, politically incorrect tone of the media /music / culture / whatever website, Popbitch, is deliberately echoed”. The name Guido Fawkes is an alternative name for Guy Fawkes with “the thinking being that Guy Fawkes had great name recognition, a memorable ‘brand’ and a great reputation as the only man to enter parliament with honest intensions”. Editor Paul Staines is a British-born Irish political Blogger and writes under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes. Paul became interested in politics in the 1980s before moving on to promote acid house parties as a PR officer for the Sunrise collective in the 1990s. He then spent several years in finance before various business relationships broke down causing him to eventually declare himself bankrupt in October 2003 which enabled him to devote time to the blog. Paul became a libertarian in 1980 after reading Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies and soon after joined the Young Conservatives whilst at Humberside College of Higher Education “because they were the only people around who were anti-Socialist or at least anti-Soviet”. He later joined the Federation of Conservative Students and described his politics as “Thatcher on drugs” and whilst at college was a “right-wing pain in the butt who was more interested in student politics than essays”. He then went on “to work in the various right-wing pressure groups and think tanks that proliferated the late eighties”. Paul has previously been active in the Libertarian Alliance and worked as a Foreign Policy Analyst for the Committee for a Free Britain. He eventually launched the blog anonymously in 2004 before being ‘outed’ by a BBC Radio 4 documentary in 2007. Posts cover anything to do with daily politics in the UK and the wider affect they have on the world and the people of the UK. Previously written posts can be refined by tags such as the name of a politician or party, an event or a news story. The team have also expanded into vertical niches such as media and the world of technology entitled Media Guido and Techno Guido respectively. Paul can be reached by telephone or email. Awards: 2014 - London Press Club Awards, Blog of the Year (winner) 2013 - London Press Club Awards, Blog of the Year (nominated)