Originally Posted by Major Sinic

The 'planting' of 'press releases' and 'propaganda' by members of the forum who almost certainly neither researched nor wrote them, only ever post on a single issue, and will not respond with any substantive debate when challenged is becoming a personal source, albeit a minor one, of irritation.

I refer specifically to posts from Iftikar and his crusade for exclusive Muslim schools in the UK paid for by the taxpayer, and Sudan who supports the North Sudanese government, whose president has an international arrest warrant outstanding for his part in the murder of 1.4 million southern Sudanese.

Do other members agree that such posts are not in the rough and tumble and very personal debating spirit of this forum, and contribute nothing of any substance?

Yes, I have to agree with you. In fact there was an unwritten policy here some while back that straight 'press releases' or cut and pasted articles from the media needed to be both attributed and accompanied by some comment by the member who posted it which provoked a discussion, otherwise they were liable to being deleted by a moderator. Of late though this seems to have slipped off the radar, and perhaps it is time that we brought it back in, there've been an increasing number of sometimes very long, biased and unattributable 'articles' appearing which have little to no interest or relevance to this forum despite being 'political'.