Miscellanea Sensibilium

Censored By The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Recently, I attempted to advertise within the pages of the Huddersfield Examiner (actually, in the 'Stop Press' bit on the back page of the paper). The sole reason for this advertising frenzy was the fact that I had received two free classified adverts up to the value of £6 for having their paper delivered for eight weeks.

Now, I had bought their papers and paid up fully for the eight weeks ordered so the vouchers were valid, and I had nothing to advertise except for this site, so I set about making my advert.

A little while later, I had decided on the advert shown to the right.

I took the advert down to the local Examiner office, and upon submitting my advert to the gentlemen behind the desk, I was thoroughly questioned about what I was advertising. When I showed them the vouchers I had, I was told that they could only be used for advertising items for sale, something that the person I'd phoned previously had denied.

I then had to put up with a barrage of questions about my site, and told that my website was trade as I could be selling stuff. I told him again and again and again, that it was my personal website, and no profits could possibly be gained from visitors.

To decide whether my advert could be placed, I was told that they would get someone to 'look over' this site, and ring me back when they had reached a decision.

The very next day, at work, the same gentleman rang me to tell me that my advert could not be accepted, because of the 'swear words' (which I pointed out were only concentrated in one area - namely, Legion), and he also stated that the Management of the Huddersfield Daily Examiner would not want to put their readers in the position of visiting my website. After telling him I was a reader, he then altered his comments with the addition of two word's, 'majority of' (readers).

'Great', I said, 'So you're censoring me?'
'Ho-ho, yes', he replied.

I hung up.

Bastards.

Please note: As at the 14th June 2002, things are different around here. The Legion site is now totally integrated with the rest of this site, and the 'swear-words' are scattered all over the place.
Fuck you Huddersfield Daily Examiner. :p

Update 20/10/2003

We feel we must point out that The Huddersfield Daily Examiner are alright really, but we were most upset at not being allowed to advertise our site in our very own local paper. But such is life, that's fine, we don't hold any grudges against them as such, we still buy it now and again, so they can't complain really.

We also feel we must apologise for the totally unexpected result of affecting Google's search results for "Huddersfield Daily Examiner". It was such that this article popped up in third place, with the last few words of the previous addendum in the description. It was in that place for a very long time that's for sure, but now this article has been wiped from the results page, they must have complained, I would have in their position, I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner really.

Anyway, it was never our intention for all that to happen, but it was rather amusing. :P