Nadine Dorries to quit blogging?

Yesterday at Conference (am now back in London) I did an event with Guido, Devils Kitchen, Iain Dale and Nadine Dorries. During the discussion Nadine announced that she is considering stopping her blog because of time constraints. Newspaper diary columns lose another vital source?

I realise that some might say she's not a "propa blogger" because she turned off comments (after threats were made to her and her family), but at the end of day it would be shame if her diary disappeared.

Note: Croydonian blogged this news live from the event.

UPDATE: It;s been noted in the comment by Unity that Nadine did not turn ocmments off because of threats but because she ran away scared from lots of bloggers who accused her of making statements about a journalist falsely. What Unity has failed to realise is that it is perfectly possible for the faslity against a journalist to be true simulatenously with the threats against her and her family. Of course, if you instantly assume that anything someone says is a lie then an acceptance of logical reality will never work anyway.

That LabourHome poll. A comment and confession

Sorry about the lack of update yesterday, I was busy building a new ssl-enabled ftp platform and was banging my head against a brick wall trying to get TLS working. As always I forgot to set the permissions to 600 on the cert, so once I remembered it was all fluffy. After that I spent sometime writing some management tools for it as it was using Berkeley database for authentication. All good fun!

Now, onto politics, I see that there has been much excitement about the Independent's front page yesterday and the fact that it commissioned LabourHome to do the poll of the Labour grassroots. Unity got pissed off that it wasn't a proper poll and unscientific; Tom Watson was not amused with the founder of LabourHome Alex Hilton (a PPC) agreeing to it, nor was another Labour blogger, Luke Akehurt.


Meanwhile, Iain Dale thought it all very amusing, which inevitably stirred Tim Ireland to call Iain a hypocrite because of Iain's own poll where his readers, and readers of other political blogs, voted for their favourites. On this point, the really funny thing is not actually the Labour Home poll but instead what Tim Ireland wrote.

You see Tim, when he isn't engaging in one his email bombarding or phone call making campaigns, is a great titan of the blogosphere who takes newspapers like the Sun and Daily Mail to task for distorting the truth. I

t's richly ironic then that Iain Dale's post - which simply quotes some of the blogs I mentioned and says that they hold "a sentiment [about Alex Hilton] many of us can easily concur with" - has been turned into a post titled "Iain Dale slams dodgy poll. (No, seriously.)" and says

Iain Dale hahahaha frowns on hahahahaha fellow 'blogger' hahahahaha selling out hahahahahaha with unscientific poll!

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.... *breeeeeathe*... ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Having read Iain's post to check a few times I don't see the slamming, and I don't see him saying that the poll was unscientific, nor does he accuse Alex of selling out. So basically, a guy that complains about distortions by bloggers and newspapers all the time has willfully distorted something. Now that really is funny.*

Anyhow, putting that aside I have a confession to make right now about the Labour Home poll. You see, I took the poll. In fact I took the poll on numerous occasions from numerous locations. I kind of figured that all I had to do was say I was a Labour member to make sure my answers would be included.

For the record, I said I thought Brown should stay. He is the best asset the Tory Party has right now.

* Please note, this attack on Tim will be be interpreted by him as coordinated by Iain Dale because is my mate, and I am apparently a thug. I do not write independently of Iain or Guido you see, I only do their bidding.

It's a funny old world!

**** This is not true, it is satire inspired by the latest Bloggerheads vs Dale stuff and Iain Dale's blog poll. If you don't know about it, or more likely, don't actually care, stop reading now ****

Reported in the Daily Piss-Take
EXCLUSIVE: Labour Party tells YouGov to stop including it in polls

In a shock move today, the Labour Party has announced that it has written to YouGov advising them that they no longer wish to be included in its polls because they consider them biased. They have also demanded that they be removed from all polls currently published as they believe association with the poll will lower their excellent reputation with the public. They have also made clear that YouGov use their polls maliciously to get at Labour.

A spokesman for the Labour Party said "YouGov was set up by a Tory, it's clearly biased against us, and this is why we poll poorly with them. We no longer wish to be associated with this pollster and have requested that they stop including opinion on us in their research. We do not consider them even-handed and every time they include the party in results it damages our excellent record and reputation. They diddle their results just to have one over on us."

**** This is not true, it is satire inspired by latest Bloggerheads vs Dale stuff and Iain Dale's blog poll. If you don't know about it, or more likely, don't actually care, please forget you ever read it. ****

Amusing post on Liberal Conspiracy

When 'Liberal Conspiracy' was set up as a collective lefty blog, its founder Sunny Hundal went on the Radio and explained that the name of the site was chosen in order to gently mock the right wing conspiracy theorists that claim there is a left-liberal conspiracy in the UK media's style of news and reporting.

Yesterday, the very same Sunny Hundal posted on Liberal Conspiracy arguing that those on the political right who question whether Gordon Brown is a bit of a weirdo are engaged in some sort of deliberate strategy to create a "malicious narrative"... a conspiracy basically.

There is something quaintly amusing about someone setting up a site with a name designed to mock the notion of left wing conspiracy theories, who then posts something arguing that there is some sort of right wing conspiracy going on.

The sad fact of course on the matter of Brown is that quite a lot of people, political and apolitical, do think he comes across as a bit of an oddball. Then you read some of the quotes attributed to him and not denied by Downing Street and you can't help but wonder if he's a bit chicken oriental.

Expressing such a view is not about trying to create a meme, it's about being honest enough to say "you know what, I think he's a bit of a weirdo". Of course, the comment thread on Sunny's post is amusing as well. It appears that a lot of the leftie contributers seem to think Brown's a bit of a freak too.
Hat Tip: Guido

Pravda Central indeed!

When you look at the LibDem Voice blog it says that,

"Liberal Democrat Voice is an independent, collaborative website run by Liberal Democrat activists,where any individual inside or outside the party can express their views. Views expressed on this website are those of the individuals who express them and may not reflect those of the party."

It's interesting then that they've posted about"The Blog of the Year Awards, run in conjunction with Liberal Democrat Voice, are back for their third year" where nominations are to be submitted to ecampaignteam@libdems.org.uk .

How very "independent" of it that it should be using official Lib Dem email addresses? Can't ever recall or imagine ConservativeHome or LabourHome competitions where you sent your entries to the party HQ, can you?

Personal statement move along....

Have just read this hilarious Which right-wing blogger are you? quiz by "Me No Mad". Am rather pleased to say that when I answered the questions I came back as me! It would ahve been horrible to have come back as Iain because he is old and has grey hair, and what with me being young with ever so marvellous good looks and an arrogance to die for such a result would have sent me into fits of depression not seenj since I heard they were scrapping Knightmare.

Of particular amusement in the quiz was where it was suggested that "An online confrontation has just come to a head. It's time to put up or shut up. You have nowhere to go but backwards, but you don't want to be seen backing down or admitting that you made a mistake. What do you do?" In that the question that would get you me back was "Go on holiday".

This is because every time I have had an argument with old Loony Tunes I have had flights booked to go off and enjoy myself you see. Obviously, if you're a bit of a thicko you would come to the conclusion that people are running away. It's easier that way you see because everyone is so fearful of your terrible exposes of the truth! And being telephoned on a publicly accessible number is such an outrage too remember!

Those would be the truths of course, where Fruitcake Larry failed dismally to set me up of course and equally fail to draw attention to this link which showed him to be a complete and total cock. Instead it was far easier to make insinuations of "blackmail" like the panty wetting girl and shame to the rugged-manliness of Australia that he is.

So, Fat Boy, please take this post and stick it in a warm, dark and sticky place.... Oh yes, and I'm back, and feelin' greeeeeeat! Politics and other such fun shall reconvene in full shortly. Ciao!

March stat pr0n.... not!

Look right, I don't do stat porn OK. I know I did it once with Alexa but I was bored and had nothing to post about. The reason I don't do stat porn is multi-fold really. Mainly, I am an old Bulletin Board/Usenet/Forum kind of guy. Stat porn is a bit like post counting. The more posts you do the bigger your name becomes in the "community" that you post and thus you get respect. This results in the "milestone post" where someone says "Hey I posted 1000 times! Go me!". It's a little bit like standing up in a pub and saying "I have emailed 1000 random chicks I don't actually know and will never meet on match.com. Go me! I'm dating!".

OK, so blogs are not quite the same, they're just websites, and with the growth of their usage, be it individuals or media, traffic is important. This is especially the case if you spend lots of money on it of course. You want to know that people are looking at the content after all. It's useful to know where your traffic comes from; it's useful to know how much traffic you're getting. In my job the latter is fundamental from a performance point of view. The problem is the assumptions that one can make about that data.

Now, the reason I raise this is because the irritant or as I like to call him the "Buy Canestan Cream!", of certain bloggers' existence - the ever so non-obsessive Tim Ireland - has posted a particularly good piece on the problem of stat porn. I'm not going to go into the detail, you can read it for yourself, but the key here is what his cheerleader Justin McKeating (no pom poms or short skirt included) has posted in the comments along with Tim's general point. You see, it's all about extrapolation.

I turned my servers AWstats on last month and in the last 14 days of March I got a total of 232,766 *hits*. Extrapolate that over 30 days and I'd have around 465,000.

Justin is of course absolutely right. Extrapolation, especially that which is linear, is universally stupid. It becomes assumption layered upon assumption, then wrapped within another assumption, at which point the idea that the answer is in anyway scientific, or dare I say it, truth becomes as risible as watching a man with only his right arm and leg taking part in a right-hand drive manual car race where everyone else has all their limbs. And no. I'm not ridiculing the disabled before you suggest it. Basically, it's called wit and you wouldn't understand.

Inevitable left wing non-obsessive criticism covered, I would like to take this opportunity to point out just slight - and possibly mild - inconsistencies in Justin's and Tim's posts about extrapolation. Whilst they're right to point out the very real problems with stat pr0n (along with the downwards, more serious, and statistically honest analysis of the figures), I'm still left feeling rather... shall we say... confused by their errant masturbation over their self-imposed genius.

You see, both of these "bloggers" (and I use quotes only because Tim does when describing anyone that does not fit into his view of what the definition is because he's not in anyway mad (or madder than me I should add)), are quite vigorous anti-Iraq war people. I cannot find reference on Justin's blog because his search facility is poo, but on Tim's he actively promoted back in August last year the "fact" that we must "feel the weight" of one million... yes 1 MILLION!... dead Iraqis and it was all out fault.

Where does that figure come from? Well... It comes from extrapolation that's where. It is based on nothing more that an extrapolated figure with another linear extrapolated figure rising upwards. You see it all began with The Lancet Iraq Body Count survey. The Lancet published a linear extrapolated survey of just over 1000 surveyed people asking them how many people they knew that had died a violent death in Iraq. Based on the response the extrapolation was made that approximately 600,000 people had died since the invasion of Iraq. Worth noting here that it was not an extrapolated figure because of the invasion, but an extrapolated figure since the invasion.

As one would imagine, the anti-war lobby leapt on this figure, and online they created a neat little time extrapolation that has increased the figure by piecing together random reports, records, and other 'evidence' to the point that the ticker rises as an almost constant. Put simply... it's bollocks. That doesn't mean that no one has died, it doesn't mean that lots of people haven't died either. What it means is that the figure is an extrapolated one based on a small sample, layered with further questionable evidence to suit a political purpose.

Now the latter point is absolutely fine in my eyes, the anti-war lobby is, after all, anti-war. They're fighting a political campaign and want to win, so I won't begrudge them doing their best with the data that they can find and manipulate to their political ends. This is politics right!? However, actively promoting extrapolated data whilst simultaneously complaining about extrapolated data elsewhere doesn't exactly place one in a strong position now does it? (I'm sure I've done it to on occasions I should add).

Don't get me wrong here guys though. I'm not saying you're wrong about the dangers and problems of stat pr0n. All I'm pointing out is that when you stand up and scream like big wet girls blouses about dangerous extrapolation and dishonesty - especially against those who are politically opposed to you - you should probably make sure that you've not committed the same sin yourself. It doesn't make you wrong on your point, but it does make you look rather silly, foolish, and some might even say big fat steaming great hypocrites (who are not very bight (maybe, I don't know?))?

Incidentally, before someone points out that because the Government has "accepted" the Lancet figure, that does not mean that it is right, or more correctly a truth. I'm not questioning whether one or 50 million have died in Iraq. I'm pointing out that the starting point for the figures is fundamentally flawed and so parading the figure as a matter of truth is bloody stupid. No. Actually. It's not stupid, it's retarded. I realise that calling Tim and Justin retarded might seem somewhat harsh, but whilst they might think they're on to a winner they're desperate quest for the "truth" misses two very core fundamentals, the first of which is hidden in Tim's own post about stat pr0n.

1. No one really gives a shit. OK? Seriously. We've got lots of people reading us all. They care, but most people don't, and when they see a post like yours - or for that matter a post like this one - they just scroll on by. Click, click, click.
2. More people will probably read this because they want to than will read yours. However, see (1) for how important that really is to the wider scheme of things.

P.S. Before it is suggested this is some sort of big defence of my blogging chums it's not (although obviously it will be for Tim because those are the rules of engagement and I understand that). The truth is, I just get overly irritated with people who can sometimes be quite clever being rather pointless tits (bit like me at the moment really without the preceding cleverness!). I also happen to have a soapbox upon which to shout about it (for no one to actually listen).

Here's a word of advice Bruce. Stick with issues you have about smears, and your (non-evidential) crap about sockpuppets. At least it had a modicum of intelligence to it (kind of) and you didn't have to contradict your own previous posts *wink*
Note: This is what is officially know on teh interweb as a 'flame'. I find Pinot Grigio helps.


Update: It would appear the battle of stat pr0n is now over at DK's. For the record, and if anyone is wondering, if you ask me face to face about my traffic I will give you a guesstimate. I'm rather pleased about it personally, for much the same reason as DK points out in the comments - sheer astonishment that it is as high as it is.

NHS Blog Doctor dies in car crash?

UPDATE: Apparently this is bollocks and a wind up by someone.

The last time the award winning NHS Blog Doctor posted was in October and the following comment appeared on the thread on Wednesday night.

Hello to you all.

This is not an easy comment to write, and I apologise for the lack of a full post, but 'John' was more than a little security conscious when it came to passwords, I have contacted "blogger" to explain circumstances but as yet have not had a reply.

Getting to the point, so to speak, I am a senior partner at 'John's practice, I have only become aware of this 'weblog' after accessing his email account through our internal system. Other partners have read this website, but none of us knew who the author was - although in retrospect there are a number of clues we could have picked up on!

There is no easy way to say this, but the doctor known as 'John' or 'Crippen' passed away in a road traffic accident mid-October. Although I appreciate the esteem in which many of you obviously held him, I must ask that the emails cease as of now - they are all redirected to our mail server and this is causing some difficulty.

Dr. Crippen's identity may no longer need to be secret for his own purposes, but out of respect for his family and remaining colleagues I shall not be sharing this here, neither will I post another message or reply to any left. This webblog will be removed once I can circumnavigate the security protocols for obvious reasons of confidentiality.

This said, I thank all who visit here for their support of our dear, and much missed colleague.

Kind regards, Dr.P.

Tragic news if it is not a wind up*.

* I have known a few people that have 'killed' themselves online as it were in order to reappear anew like a phoenix from the ashes.

It's all so trivial really!

Well it's Saturday and I have a few minutes spare so I thought I would just do a post which is blogging about blogging, and I apologise for how long it is. In recent days the female blogger Ellee Seymour has found herself the latest target of the ever so tenacious Tim Ireland. This attack has followed the now standard modus operandi of any of Tim's targeted onslaughts.

The whole thing revolves, as ever, around Tim's one-man crusade against anonymous blog comments, or what he calls the abuse of them, and a comment on Ellee's blog which called Tim obsessive. Now, whether Tim is indeed obsessive is a matter of debate and comes down to one's own personal prejudices and definitions of obsessive behavior of course, so I am not going to say he is an obsessive, rather I will say that I can understand why someone might think he was if they were simply watching from the sidelines.

However, putting aside the content of the comment which Tim considers a libelous smear, it's worth noting what happened next. He started to email Ellee demanding the IP address of the person that posted. When Ellee refused, quite rightly, to disclose the data belonging to her users the attack took on a more aggressive edge with veiled legal threats relating, bizarrely, to EU laws and commercial astroturfing.

At this point a reference to a recent legal precedent on this very subject is required I think. A case has just closed about postings on Sheffield Wednesday message boards where the unfounded suggestion was made that the Wednesday CEO "blew money on hookers". The judge, Richard Parkes QC, refused to force the bulletin board owners to disclose the IP address details of posters saying,

"I do not think that it would be right to make an order for the disclosure of the identities of users who have posted messages which are barely defamatory or little more than abusive, or likely to be understood as jokes." The judge also said that the messages "border on the trivial" and were "no more than saloon bar moanings".

As I said above, I'm not going to call Tim Ireland obsessive or even a stalker. However, if such a case ever reached court it's highly likely a defense case would present argument to uphold that such a statement could be a valid use of adjective to describe someone's character and/or behaviour without directly being a libel. And in specific reference to the precedent set by Parkes' judgment, it is unlikely that a political blogger (who like most of us political bloggers) is actually no one of great consequence, thus making such comments considered to be trivial and not worthy of forcing the disclosure of identity.

There is also another very important thing to remember here. This was not a libel case, but was a case brought to force the disclosure of IP addresses in order to seek libel action. Tim's email demands for that data from Ellee thus holds zero legal weight without first going to court. He neither has the right, nor the power to make such demands, and as such Ellee had every right to refuse as she did. If he wants the data he will have to go to court and convince a judge that the comment on a blog with a niche market reach did not "border on the trivial" and could not be seen as "saloon bar moanings".

However, it's not just anonymous comments and what they may or may not say about Tim that is the problem for Tim. He also has an issue with Ellee, and others, who may (or may not in the case of Ellee) delete comments from threads on their websites for whatever reason. For Tim and many of his supporters, deleting critical comments is morally reprehensible, or, as Justin McKeating said, "disgusting. Craven, nauseating behaviour". A little over the top I know, but we should remember that both Tim and Justin's outrage is 100% wrong because they're talking about someone else's property which they have zero rights over.

What does and does not remain on any website anywhere, as comments, uploaded files, or whatever, remains down to the decision of the owner and admin of the site in the first instance. This is the Bastard Operator From Hell approach to IT. My website, my rules. Think of it like this. If you go into someone's home in the real world and start saying things that they dislike in an aggressive accusatory manner you're not going to offer them a cup a tea, you're going to kick them out. Same principle applies online. Don't like something? Delete it.

Of course, whether you do this perfectly legitimate act of maintaining your property in the way you choose or not, then you will, as Ellee discovered, find yourself written about in detail. Evidence of your alleged immorality will be presented to the world with "mirror" shots of your website. The veracity of these mirrors, not just in Ellee's case but anyones is questionable though. After all they are simply plain text files that can be edited. The time stamps of the files can easily be manipulated too, and the image content if the person involved has considerable photoshop skills.

Of course doing this would be totally dishonest and make someone a liar, and it would be wrong of me to say that Tim Ireland had faked screenshots or is lying, so I won't. However, what should be remembered in all circumstances where electronic data is presented as evidence online, is that it can be easily faked. Things are not always as black and white as they seem when it comes to such things. In the case of Tim versus Seymour however, whether Ellee did or did not delete comments matters not as the act of maintaining one's own website, as I have already mentioned, is neither morally or ethically wrong because the ultimate arbiter of those rights is the website owner.

What however should have been done by Tim in this whole situation was to follow the standards and protocols hat have been laid out in the thousands of RFC's that self-regulate the technical and communication specifications of the Internet. If you find something that you believe is libelous against you online in the first instance you contact the hosting provider via the abuse@ email alias that is reserved for such things. You take it to honest arbitration. What you don't do is send emails with no legal weight, and attempt to intimidate someone into disclosing information that you have no legal right too.

Interestingly, anyone can write an RFC and submit it to the Internet community for peer review with the hope that it will be adopted as a standard. If Tim Ireland and his supporters genuinely believe that there is a problem with both anonymous commenting and the owner of a website acting in their interests to protect their property, then they should write an RFC and put their proposals to the community to decide whether they should be adopted. If the community agrees then those ideas will become accepted standards.

I should probably now declare an interest that I did actually point this out to Tim Ireland on his blog, but unfortunately he decided to edit my comment, post the full comment in a text file that is difficult to read because there are no carriage return word wraps, and then banned me for 12 hours. This is of course his right, as it's his website, so it is run under his rules. Some might say that makes him a hypocrite, but I don't. I think he acted in a way that protected his property and argument quite legitimately.

However, even though he did that it doesn't change the fact that his campaign on standards takes the wrong approach. Instead of attacking through email and web pages, he should be using the proper channels for dealing with abuse online, and for his wider campaign he should be submitting a Request For Comment to the wider community.

It isn't pickled politics, it's les politique au vinaigre

Have just stumbled across a rather bizarre post which essentially asserts that "Brits can't blog". The argument goes like this. The really popular blogs are not analytical enough, and tend to be echo chambers for media style gossip. Ergo they impoverish blogging.

The post on Westminister Wisdom was sparked by this post by Sunny on Pickled Politics. The post was titled "Challenging the elites, and the blogs" and made the same point about the current state of UK blogs and also goes on to the say that there is elitism in the NGOs, think tank etc towards blogs because of their impoverished debate level as already mentioned.

Isn't it wonderfuly amusing, and dare I say beautfiully ironic to see someone bemoaning blogs for being tabloid and requesting that debate be raised to higher purpose analysis away from the dumbed down masses, whilst simultaneously moaning about elitism outside the world of blogs?

Death to the tabloid proles, lets have elitist debate! Death to to the elitist snobs who stay away from us because of the tabloid proles! I wonder if that simple two sentence analysis is a little too tabloid?

Geography lessons may be needed methinks

How bizarre, the Labour blogger Mike Ion appears to agree with the assertion that, "At their best, the Tories were a party for the Home Counties. Now they can't even properly claim that constituency".

Shurely shome mishtake?

Note: In fairness to Mike he is (a) a northerner, and (b) a Manchester United fan (I think) and the total letter was really making a clever football Chelsea metaphor. Of course the latter team won last night, whilst the former lost...... to Coventry, hahahahahaha.

Quote of the Day

Taken from LabourHome, uttered by "doctordunc":

"This is frankly terrifying! So you're saying we needed Thatcher to reform the unions? I hope nobody on ConservativeHome spots this thread!!"

I think they found it.

A question about questions?

Rather amusing post over at Unity's blog all about my post from yesterday. To save you the time reading through I shall paraphrase here for you. Basically, Unity has decided that (a) I should not have used the word "leaked" in the question in my title. And (b) because some other blogger posted somehwere explaining that the Labour Party didn't need permission to film where they did I was not allowed to ask the question, "did they get permission from the Serjeant at Arms?" (which was in brackets suggesting I considered it throwaway anyway).

The thing is, there is a wider question here for me about, funnily enough, questions. This is not the first time in the past few days that someone has asked a speculative question and found themselves shouted at by commenters or other bloggers on the basis that "if you have no evidence you can't ask the question". Or alternatively (and what they're really saying), "your question is really a hidden accusation because I have decided it, therefore I will treat it as such rather than as it is".

The problem I have with this rather circular thinking by, sadly in most examples, left wingers, is, if I may put it in a question. How do you - as a blogger who has a comment feature for readers to reply through - find out evidence? Is it by osmosis or by.....errr...... asking questions?

A union for bloggers?

Weird article over in Wall Street Journal about how a group of left-wing blogegrs in the US are trying to form a union so they can get health insurance and engage in collective bargaining.

It's a commonly held view that we're a few year behind the US when it comes to the Internet, so how long before bloggers here satrting making the same sort of calls? As a rabid anti-Union type person I'm not sure what the point would be, but that's just me.
Hat Tip: TechCrunch

Forget the 'blogosphere' it doesn't matter

Alan Drew at the Daily Propaganda blog has written an interesting piece taking myself, Iain, Unity, PragueTory and Tom Watson to task for encouraging apathy, cynicism etc etc about politics. Ironically, the post that was linked to here was one of those exceptionally rare occasions where I did a "blogging about blogging" post and pointed out the absurdity of Unity's sudden denunciation of the guy that defected to the Tories in Ealing.

However, I think it's worth addressing the criticism that Alan makes just so I can do two blogging about blogging posts in one day. I think Alan would have a point but for one small problem which is the premise. At the very base of his argument is the assumption that the so-called "blogosphere" is special. It isn't, and, frankly, I think I would be bordering on delusions of grandeur if I thought otherwise. Blogs, and the online community in which they operate, are merely disjointed bulletin boards. Each is its own private forum where the author is the Nazi moderator everyone loves to hate once in a while. They have their lurkers just like any other, but crucially, they are speaking to a niche group of people who are already engaged anyway.

The pettiness and point scoring is merely a reality of the social space. The flames, the cross posting, the fisking. It's just the Internet, and no amount of high-mindedness is going to stop it. You only have to look at the 'Melissa Kite' incident to see that even journalists stepping into the arena find themselves engaging with the sub-culture on its terms, not theirs. And we shouldn't forget as well, that your average Joe probably hasn't heard of any us anyway.

Put simply, I don't think the point-scoring or the gossip is negative or dangerous to debate. I think it's far more dangerous to believe that this tiny virtual space in which we exist is more important than it actually is.

The Ministry of Politiking

Yesterday morning, when the new of five Labour councillors defecting to the Conservative Party in Ealing Southall broke I said it would not be long before the five were trashed and smeared, and here it is. If you can't get yourself through Unity's ever present dense style where you get to the end and forgot what it was you read eight days ago at the begining, the general gist is that the five councillors are linked to terrorists in some way.

It's pretty outrageous news huh? So outrageous to Unity in fact that he couldn't be arsed to write one of his essays two days ago demanding they be expelled from the Labour Party because they're all such dodgy bastards. The fluidity of moral indignation coupled with political expedience is always amusing to observe. So to is the rich irony that the title of his post makes reference to spin.

Update: Quite a funny follow-up from Unity here which I think is his way of admitting that I'm right.

What's good for the goose is not good for Chris Paul's gander?

In a rare moment of blogging about blogging I feel compelled to royally deliver the smackdown to the Labour blogger and irritant commenter Chris Paul. Yesterday evening I posted that Michael Gove's promotion to shadow Ed Balls on schools was excellent news. This morning, Chris Paul has left a comment asking "How can a public schoolboy pronounce on the state sector?".

Presumably this is because Gove once attended Robert Gordon's College in Scotland after having also been in the state sector. Interestingly, Chris Paul has not made the same argument against the appointment of Ed Balls who went to the independent all-boys fee paying Nottingham High School.

Funny that!?