Say what you will about Mike Arrington, but he does reliably make news. The prickly Valley publisher has fired the head of his UK operation after criticism of a conference that Techcrunch was sponsoring. Sam Sethi damned the appearance of a conservative candidate for President of France at Europe's top web conference this week. Nicolas Sarkozy, a controversial interior minister who damned rioting Arab youths as a rabble, was allowed to make a thinly-disguised campaign speech at Le Web, irritating many of the participants, as Sethi noted. Valleywag's take: we're with Arrington on this. Sethi should have been dismissed, if only for describing himself as an entrepologist, and for the tortured style he demonstrates in his final Techcrunch posts.

Following yesterday's post about Le Web and Loic's retort. It seems Mike Arrington has disagreed with my post and opinion believing my actions to be vindictive towards Loic. What was said between Mike and I will remain confidential but suffice to say I can no longer remain with TechCrunch UK & Ireland. It is a very sad after all the work that has gone into TechCrunch UK and Ireland. I wish all of the UK and Irish entrepreneurs well. I will be personally blogging back at www.vecosys.com and looking for something new to keep me busy. Bye.

Last year another senior executive at Six Apart didn't appreciate the feedback from one of the Brits attending and this year it seems the same it true again. A case of Loic having a case of the Trotts? So this (hopefully) is my last post on the subject of Le Web3. I personally thought my comments on it were honest and tame in comparison to the rest of the web community but it seems not. Although Loic has not updated his own blog, he has been kind enough to post a comment here on TCUK. "Sam. There is no word to qualify you and this post. You are just an asshole." (Loic Le Meur)

12:38 PM on Wed Dec 13 2006
By Nick Denton
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5 comments

Comments

not-a-cyber-perve at 02:31 PM on 12/13/06
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Hmm

Would be interesting to see this one at an IT/ET ime not sure you could justify fireing someone over this certainly under Uk law.

Wonder if the NUJ would be interested.
Joe Clark at 08:03 PM on 12/13/06
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Well, of course you're in favour of sacking subordinates. You're the pioneer.
egoboss at 03:21 AM on 12/14/06
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sounds like par for the course regards anglo-french relations ...
schvitzatura at 07:30 AM on 12/14/06
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Yup, it all went to hell in a handbasket, all the way back in the 9th century C.E., when French king Charles the Simple granted title of Normandy to the Norman/Norsemen...who just luuurrvved to move about, invading hither and yon.

Poor, poor Anglo-Saxons and their housecarl shield wall thingee. The Norman mounted knights, that era's equivalent of Web 2.x, applied the beatdown.

So goes the relations between Albion and the French...
computerjoe at 10:13 AM on 12/14/06
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I liked how Mike deleted two posts too :P