Talk:Sean Gabb

Edit Notes

I have cut some of the material that had been added to the page. Notes below. I also note that http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch:Policy#Groups.2Findividuals_posting_articles_on_themselves is relevant in judging how to handle this material. --Bob Burton 02:39, 4 October 2007 (EDT)

• "He has been an increasingly prominent libertarian and conservative since the 1980s, and may now be regarded as the most prominent libertarian in Britain, and perhaps the most prominent conservative intellectual. This assessment is based not on any claims about the quality of his written and media work, but on the volume of his work and its great circulation."

maybe, but this is not exactly an independent assessment or testable. And given it was added by Gabb himself, it is better left off the page.

• "He currently receives no funding from any business interest. This is partly because he has not hidden his contempt for big business, and partly because he lacks the skills and inclinations needed for effective networking. He has often stated, however, that he would gladly take any funding offered, so long as it allowed him to carry on saying what he thought"

I think it would be worth including the last sentence if there was a direct quote and a reference;

• "But funding is unlikely. As said, he does nothing to endear himself to big business. Indeed, he goes out of his way to deny that large business organisations are part of what he regards as a true free market order."

this is not really necessary if the other direct quote on his views on big business are included. Better to have something that is a primary source and referenced than something which is speculative and/or unreferenced.

• "This document was almost certainly written by the late Chris R. Tame when he was Director of FOREST in the early 1990s. Its purpose was to attract more funding from the tobacco industry by advertising the abilities of those connected with FOREST. If this was the aim, it fell short, as the tobacco industry steadily scaled down its funding of the tobacco rights movement after about 1990. Had there been any increase in funding, it would probably have led to Gabb's marginalisation within the tobacco defence movement. This is partly on account of his contempt for the big tobacco companies - see above - but also because of his denunciation of laws to prevent young people and even children from buying cigarettes."

again, this is speculative.