Tarquin, in his infinite wisdom, has once again published things about ALUG that are completely biased, and only related on his findings in the group, for the full blog entry see his blog, it's about 2 thirds of the way down that page.

ALUG, as many of it's members will tell you, is not an unfriendly group, except to those that repeatedly act in a nasty and malicious manner to the group. Tarquin is well known to many people, including several that I know outside of ALUG, and they all basically have the same view of him, he's an arrogant muppet who deliberately sets out to alienate people. Before he left ALUG the first time, he actually told two guys that they were homophobic, never mind the fact that the guys in question where (and still are) going out. He has an abbrasive attitude and often posts things under pseudonyms to try to fool the general reader. I have found him to often upset entire groups of people that he is involved with, and I know some of the RUNG members have left because of him.

Many of the ALUG regulars have met many times, and we get on very well, we had a fantastic christmas meal organised by Kirsten Naylor and Adam Bower, and I'm sure none of the people that did attend felt threatened by any of us by the end of the night.

We hold monthly social meetings in the City Gate in Norwich, where we have actually gained another 2 members recently (waves at Peter and Luke).

We are not unfriendly to new people. We like new people! We like to spread our knowledge with our peers. We do not like people spreading FUD like Tarquin does.

This post is my view only, of course, and should not be associated with the entire group, but I am very upset by the continues abuse that Tarquin gives to the group. The first time he left us he posted inflammatory material about the group to the GGLUG list.

So, in short, don't let Tarquin's jaded view of ALUG influence you, he has just repeatedly upset most of the core of the ALUG membership repeatedly, and scared off some new members in the past.

If you've got down to here, you must be utterly bored. Go find a sysadmin and give them a hug ;)