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William Plague defaces No.10 Web site

Racist, homophobes and pranksters invade discussion forums

The Tories were seeing red at the weekend after personal attacks and racial abuse appeared on the new Number 10 Web site. The Downing Street site, which went live on Friday, includes interactive forums for Joe Public to email opinions and views to our glorious leader. But people have been taking advantage of the freedom of the Policy Forum to attack many minorities, including the Conservatives. One person, whose comments have now been removed from the site, masqueraded under the guise of "William Plague", while another used the name "Dead Alan Clark, MP for Kensington and Chelsea", the Sunday Times reported. On Saturday, a discussion group asked "What are the biggest problems parents face today?" To which William Plague replied: "Paedophile uncles and Portillo." "Tommy Blair" answered with rascist abuse (using a combination of letters and numbers to bypass any possible filters) while "Dead Alan Clark MP" was calling for criminals to be sterilised. Today the site also saw Labour fall victim via the site's Speakers Corner forum. Comments ranged from "Blair is about as cool as a bowl haircut", to the more straightforward "Blair is a f**ker". It also included anagrams of the two parties, with The Labour Party coming out as "A Bluer Tory Path", and The Conservative Party Conference emerging as "French contraceptive on every seat". The Tories were not amused, with one representative saying: "We think that if the government is going to have a chatroom on its flagship Website, sensible steps should be taken to ensure that the material featured is tasteful". Meanwhile, Downing Street seemed overwhelmed by the situation. "There is a filter on the site for swear words, but it's impossible to stop every combination," said a representative. There are three staff responsible for monitoring the Website, but they only currently work office hours. "If a message is put up in the middle of the night, it could stay up until the morning," the spin-doctor admitted. The site, which cost £75,000 to set up and will have yearly running costs of £130,000, is to include a weekly online broadcasts from Tony BlairRelated Story Tories pull plugs on ill-fated ISP

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