Call me mischevious if you want — but I’m a little annoyed that the best the Daily Mail’s PR office could do was to claim the Twitter and Facebook responses to the hideous article by Ms Moir was part of an organised campaign to target the former food writer.

I mean — the amount of effort to go to in an attempt to convince a large audience to react negatively without making the decision for themselves. Well, it’s insane.

It would be far easier to spread a story about a small boy taken away by a balloon… or something similar.

Can they not, for one moment, realise a conclusion that a very large number of individuals were made aware of an article. They read it. And then came to their own conclusion they disliked the tone, inference and content of that article.

And then they got vocal about it.

Worringly of all — some of these people who got vocal and were offended and realised just how hideous the article was weren’t even gay. Even worse some may not have had best friends and relatives who were gay. Some were even just good, everyday folk.

Stephen Fry and his celebrity twittering friends do have a wide reach — but they don’t have an ability to mobilise people without fair reason.

Or do they?

Well, wasn’t it just — and by public life I really mean the bit where the twitterverse and the real world collide.

If you go to the home page of TheGuardian.co.uk today (pictured) there are two stories that probably wouldn’t be there if not for Twitter — and the power the ‘gossiping masses’ now have.

I imagine most of us were blissfully ignorant of Trafigura until earlier this week; when their slightly mis-judging lawyers attempted to stop a newspaper reporting on the goings-on of our government. Maybe sometime back in the 20th century there was a point where this may have covered something up or contained it for a while.

But really — had they not heard of Twitter? Or Facebook? Or… email? Did they really think a big corporate attempting to hush up free press in such a public way wouldn’t cause one or two problems? Whatever they did or didn’t do — I think it was time to PR your way out of it.

And then came yesterday. The lovely Ms Moir of the Daily Mail and her (ill) considered piece on the demise of Stephen Gately. The woman is either very very blind to the modern world. Or she’s got a book coming out.

I’m not going to comment on the article as plenty of other people have done so. But really, Jan, do you expect us to believe, even for a second that you weren’t aware of the strength of feeling when diatribes are published seemingly against any minority? And did you miss the Trafigura tweetfest? REALLY? And — Daily Mail editors — if you’re to promote a food writer to moral overseer can you please at least have the stomach to stand by material already published or retract it. Changing headlines and pulling advertising just reeks of the lowest behaviour.

The world is changing — the people don’t need to resort to arranged protest or a media campaign to make themselves heard. If you are in the public eye it would do you well to learn this and not to misuse your position by trying to suppress or subvert these views.

And for sanity’s sake — please don’t for one second imagine those of us out here in the real world are so lacking in things to do that we’re sat planning campaigns to bring about the demise of fairly low ranking journos.

We’ve better things to tweet about, Jan

Maybe I’m a victim of too much political correctness, or maybe it’s just a virtue of having taken part in online chat for 16 years or so — but I am constantly amazed by just how uncaring some people can appear to be when taking part in online communication.

After a day or so of chatting online you will be aware that can indicate someone being a little jokey. But, when this is omitted, is it always the senders fault if the receiver doesn’t get that the comment was a joke?

Another example is — when the writer has an obvious inability to empathise with the other users of that space; no measure of how a blunt comment or specific action will almost certainly cause annoyance — why do we feel bad for getting annoyed at them?

Thru millennia we have established effective body language to assist us to communicate face to face.

Over recent centuries we have worked out ways to use written language to achieve the right reaction when producing considered, written material such as newspaper reports or letters.

So why is it that, in under two decades, we have not yet managed to solve the problem of effectively dealing with people who don’t understand how importance of effective communication?

Oh, we have — blind ignorance!