The Progressive Labour Party's official website has come under attack from the party youth wing's former secretary for churning out "crass and pathetic propaganda".

Jonathan Starling complains the site wastes its time on petty issues; actively censors comments to hide criticism; and blurs the lines between Party and State by acting as a Government website.

"The cynical manipulation of discussion and information, as well as the low quality of critical thought and presentation that the 'official' sites of the PLP currently offer are not befitting of the Party, nor are they representative of it.

"Not only can the PLP do better, it should be much better," wrote Mr. Starling on his own blog, Catch A Fire.

Mr. Starling wrote: "I have been resisting commenting on this issue for some time now with the hope that the controller of the PLP site and its connected blog would mature in their postings. So far I have not seen any indication of that being the case.

"The official site of the Party should be treated with the dignity that a Party with as illustrious past as the PLP has, not as some crass and pathetic propaganda machine."

The tipping point seems to be the PLP website's recent attempt to label another blog, Bermuda Is Another World, as a United Bermuda Party partisan site after somebody there criticised former PLP leader Dame Lois Browne Evans.

"I personally don't think that the official PLP site should be wasting its time on such petty issues as that one in the blogosphere," he wrote, adding that it was inaccurate to describe Bermuda Is Another World as a pro-UBP site.

On the PLP's censoring, he said: "There is also a constant complaint that the official PLP site actively censors comments on that site, so much so that in general people have ceased to bother commenting on it altogether.

"This is not acceptable. The only valid censorship that should be practised is censoring obscene language and personal attacks.

"The Party should be able to engage in critics of the Party in a constructive manner through dialogue, not censorship.

"If it is feeling it necessary to resort to censoring out all opinions critical of Party posts then that implies that it cannot argue against them. The Party is composed of many intelligent people — I cannot accept that it is incapable of responding to criticism constructively."

Mr. Starling also pointed out that Government press releases are available on the PLP website but inaccessible on the Government website.

Articles on the PLP website are listed under the pseudonym "PLP" and the party refuses to reveal the author's identity.

Party chairman David Burt, whom many people think is responsible, did not reply to e-mails asking for a response yesterday.

Despite the fact the PLP website publishes most of his statements in full, the Premier's Press Secretary Glenn Jones says he does not know who is responsible for the website.