Immigration amnesty - 12 comments

Jon Rogers wants the trade union movement, through the TUC, to commit to supporting an amnesty for migrant workers, and cites the following principles, agreed at UNISON's conference:

1. That no worker should be classed as illegal.
2. All workers have a right to put a roof over their head and food on the table.
3. All workers should enjoy the same rights at work, including the right to organise a union.
4. It is not the workers who should be blamed, prosecuted and deported for working here without papers, it is the employers and gangmasters who make it possible. Only with an amnesty for the workers and a few company directors prosecuted will we see any improvement in this shameful situation.

(1), (2), (3), and the first half of (4) are pretty fundamental. I'm not entirely convinced about the need to convict company directors - without an employer who may profit by employing them, how could the migrant work? - unless that employer is exploiting the migrant's precarious position by making unreasonable demands, or offering conditions that only somebody who was in fear of the authorities could accept.

'Legitimising' workers benefits migrants, the government, and taxpayers too. Does it encourage more economic migration to the UK (you might expect so), or are the possibilities already so tempting that the elasticity of immigration levels with regard to 'leniency of approach' is likely to be particularly low for the UK? I don't have those figures.

To sum up, I would definitely support an amnesty of the sort proposed.

However, I'd much rather it was unnecessary and that we were able to lift all restrictions on migration (if only there wasn't those pesky social problems). After all, the whole point of amnesties is that they're irregular and infrequent, perhaps in reaction to exceptional events a government could not have predicted. Whatever the economic benefits, it would be undemocratic to claim to be following a policy intended to reduce some disfavoured type of immigration but to deliberately not carry the policy out - or only do so half-heartedly - and to use regular amnesties to express the government's real intentions. More honest would be to remove the illegality that cause immigrants to 'disappear' in the first place and apply any new benefits (as a whole, not merely social security) to all existing economic migrants, rather than go down the amnesty route, reasserting existing laws and restrictions, and only lifting them for those fortunate enough to be here now.

John4Leader / World Trade - 11 comments

John McDonnell's campaign blog has been part of B4L for a couple of weeks now. It wasn't a difficult decision to add it: he's a sitting MP and he supports the party, even if (as judged by comments left on his blog) the opportunity to speak his mind in public exposes a pretty fundamental division between his vision of the Labour Party and what you could simplistically call the 'current' one.

My suspicion was that the temptation would be too great for a 'left-of-New-Labour' candidate to set out a principled case for worldwide democracy, development, and universal human values, given the mileage (within the party, and the 'diaspora') that could be made from simply conflating the most activist-unfriendly policy changes since 1994 (or, indeed, any political development since 1976), and standing against a chimera that embodies tuition fees, nuclear power, Iraq, Bush, Israel, Blair's character, religion, 'big business', 'spin', and so on. The woolliness and incoherence that comes from trying to build support from a coalition of 'antis' rather than 'pros' is the worst possible way to challenge the captivating vision - only partially realised - that Tony Blair set out before 1997.

Who amongst us isn't looking for a radical left-of-centre programme that challenges income and power inequalities, employs policies on the basis of their effectiveness, is public-private neutral, offers no special favours to particular genders, races, or religions, and isn't motivated by sentiment for a decade (choice quote here), bureaucracy, state control, and geopolitical insularity?

The throwing of policy tidbits to activists was repugnant enough when the Conservatives used to bring up capital punishment and worse at their Party Conferences, without us resorting to the kind of anti-Israeli and anti-American raw-meat that is present on John's blog. Of course there are elements of truth, but credibility is sacrificed along the way.

Concentrating on John's WTO post (see last link), it is unlikely that readers will consider him the sole authority on the matter and not consult elsewhere, but - while the USA undoubtedly shares culpability for the apparent collapse of the World Trade talks - John's need to push the anti-American button allows him to avoid all references to economics and the actual trading aspect of trade, lets Europe and the non-European developed nations of the hook, and incoherently suggests an American motivation to foster big business, free trade, and protectionism. And, frankly, the idea that Noam Chomsky can produce a credible critique of the WTO is too ridiculous for words.

Some more useful links:

• Owen Barder, on the Top five trade myths
• Stumbling and Mumbling vs. Martin Jacques, on (Why) does free trade favour the rich?. Warning: it actually talks about international trade.
• The Global Development blog on Where is the U.S. Leadership on Trade?
• This week's Economist - leader is a 'premium' article, sadly.

I had originally planned to post this at the end of Thursday night, but ran out of time, halting my little 'run' of posts.

MPs, music, and me - 7 comments

Do MPs get asked about their musical tastes more than any group in society? I don't see a lot of evidence that they attempt to appear 'hip' (sorry for my antiquated terminology) in an attempt to reach out to young people, it just seems to be a media fascination. Still, perhaps not unreasonably for a group of generally middle-aged people, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Oasis appear prominently in the list of MPs' favourite UK Number One albums (complete list here), as reported by the BBC.

I don't own a very high proportion of the 785 albums that have reached #1 in the UK - 17, in actual fact:

1964: Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
1971: Deep Purple - Fireball
1973: Rolling Stones - Goat's Head Soup
1983: U2 - War
1987: U2 - The Joshua Tree
1989: New Order - Technique
1991: Seal - Seal
1992: The Orb - U.F. Orb
1993: New Order - Republic, U2 - Zooropa, Pet Shop Boys - Very
1994: Blur - Parklife
1997: Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole
1998: James - The Best Of James
1999: Jamiroquai - Synkronized
2005: Basement Jaxx - The Singles, Gorillaz - Demon Days

NB. Entries in bold are albums I (a) bought more or less at the time of release, and (b) actually paid money for.

The list does give a horribly distorted picture of my music collection: 3 U2 albums in the list, and not a single German or American album among the 70s hits, to name just two abuses. And the list is hardly heavy on classics. So which one would I clutch to my chest and prepare to be interviewed by a BBC web editor about?

I probably ought to exclude the compilations, while War, Seal, and Parklife irritate me intensely, so they're also in the skip. Fireball was a bit of a disappointment, while Goat's Head Soup, Joshua Tree, and Dig Your Own Hole have a few decent tracks and several I'll play only rarely. Cutting down the list to just three, while Technique's a very fine album, it's a little one-paced for me, making U.F. Orb and Very my final two.

It's a tough choice, but while I have a soft spot for the trippier Orb releases, U.F. Orb is perhaps the closest we're ever going to get to an Orb album you can listen to from start to finish, and should be especially cherished for that reason.

Anyone care to make a different selection from the above list?

Local Democracy Campaign - 3 comments

We are now sporting this banner:



"The Local Democracy Campaign is issuing an appeal to political bloggers of all persuasions to help us to promote Local Democracy. We have recently launched a new website to promote the campaign and are working to encourage local authorities, schools and individuals to get involved in activities that are designed to educate the public – and particularly young people – about the workings, the structures, and the values of local democracy."

How you can help.

Young Conservative - 1 comment

I don't think we have any fourteen year-old bloggers but here, via Laban, is Sam Tarran.

Here's his account of some of the social and economic divisions in his own area. To be honest, when I was about 12 or 13 I might well have leapt to the same conclusions he has (assuming he doesn't have a satirical wit well beyond his years), until what I can only describe as the weight of childish fear, suspicion, and selfishness, was lifted. Somehow, my attitude to human beings I didn't know changed dramatically.

I can't say I've consulted the literature in depth, but I've heard from many on the left who report repudiating right-wing, authoritarian views during their early teens, and it would be interesting to see how Sam fares as his contact with the outside world grows (sorry, that is particularly patronising).

Of course what happens when you reach 30 40 is another matter.

Update: for a Conservative, Sam has a rare wit:

Everyone says Cameron will be in next time. Obviously, he's doing something right because my mother is actually considering voting for the first time in her life, and she says she'll vote for him. All his "tree-hugging" stuff will hopefully go soon after election. He'll do all his manifesto promises on it and that'll be the end of it all. Then, hopefully, we'll get to see the cold, uncaring, remoresless Conservative soul that we all know and love.

[...]

In the Commons, if you look at the Labour frontbench and the Tory frontbench, the difference is jarring. The Tories look young and ready for a fight, with Cameron grinning, Davis shouting, Hague laughing.

I think I'm going to enjoy this blog.

New Bloggers - 6 comments

April 2006 - date

It's been far too long since the last update, but vastly more bloggers have joined our ranks since April. Many you will already have read, but the full list is included at the end of this post.

Some will recall that I lamented the decline in blogging councillors back in May. After that grim Thursday we found ourselves down to just 26 Labour Councillors. I'm pleased to say we've already surpassed our original total, and are up to 40. 14 of those are from London, which is great, but surely a proportion we'd like to see fall, and there are none (still) from Scotland. Who fancies being first?

New joiners:

• Steve Pound - Stephen Pound, 58, has been MP for Ealing North since 1997. He will be blogging on all things about life and Labour.
• Mark Bennett - Cllr Mark Bennett was re-elected to Lambeth council in London in May 2006, following a by-election win in October 2005. Aged 37, he represents Streatham South, together with two Labour colleagues.
• Pensions Reform Blog - James Purnell, Minister of State for Pensions Reform's blog about the Government's Pensions Reform proposals.
• Young Labour Democracy - This site has been launched by several members of Young Labour concerned by the lack of transparency and open communication within the organisation.
• Labour Party News
• Bexley Young Labour
• Pipes of Pan - A voyage of self-discovery, and maybe some discussion on life in Labour in part of West Yorkshire
• It's a West London thing - Loyal supporter of the Labour Party. Always have been and always will be. Born and raised in West London, something I'm immensely proud of.
• Real Labour Blogger! - The blog of a 20 year old politics student at the University of Kent
• John4Leader - .. another world is possible
• Jon's union blog - Member of the National Executive Council [NEC] of UNISON, the public service union.
• Charlie Harden
• thebigissue.net - The Big Issue is a fast moving, edgy and provocative weekly radio broadcast. A 360 degree look at society's major talking points covering topics and people not always featured by other networks as well as the views expressed on the blogosphere.
• parburypolitica - the blog of Will Parbury.
• George Eaton - A blog by the chair of Warwick University Labour Students taking a centre-left perspective on the Labour Party and arguing the case for Labour to adopt a stronger and more cohesive vision of the good society and social justice.
• Emma Jones Bruce Grove blog
• Riverside Views - lives in Bermondsey, suffers a Lib-Dem MP, 3 Lib Dem councillors, a Lib-Dem/Tory coalition running the council, but is comforted by a 6% swing to Labour in the last two elections
• Mary Foulkes - Elected as a Councillor For Livesey Ward, Southwark, in 2005
• Louise Baldock - Louise Baldock is a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, a Liverpool City Councillor and an active member of the Co-op Party.
• Living With The Human Machines - Labour supporting, twenty-something bloke airs his thoughts on the issues of the day.
• Tygerland - Occasionally acerbic, cultural and political comment
• Nicola's Blog - Economics student at Durham University
• North Regional Young Labour Members World Cup Blog
• Stockton South Young Labour - Young Free & Political
• Cllr Ted George - Labour Councillor for Gwersyllt East and South
• Brownswood Councillors - Councillors Brian Bell, Feryat Demirci and Darren Parker, Labour, Brownswood Ward, Hackney.
• Could have been a contender - Labour politics and free software
• Steve's thoughts - I am a PPE finalist at the fine insitution that is Merton College, Oxford.
• What's new pussycat? - An insight into the adventures, antics and misfortunes of Cat as she tries to prove the critics wrong!
• Omar Salem - Omar's Blog
• johninnit - john's blog - work, politics, unions, web stuff, funny things.
• Ridiculous Politics
• JK's World - Enter At Your Own Risk
• snowflake5 - Am a Labour supporter (though have not yet joined the party). Am deeply interested in politics. Was motivated to set up my blog after the all the toe-curling cheerleading being done in the Guardian lately for David Cameron.
• guerrapittura
• Luke's Blog - A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, the Labour Party and Hackney - With subtitles for the Hard of Left.

Update: Oops, there are 31 others to come:

• Labour's World Cup 2006 (Sadiq Khan) - Sadiq Khan is the Labour MP for the London constituency of Tooting, and has agreed to blog his way through the World Cup, charting England's fortunes as they attempt to emulate the success of 1966.
• Labour's World Cup 2006 (Alastair Campbell) - Alastair Campbell is a Labour Party activist, a fervent Burnley and Scotland supporter who wants England to win and a former Press Secretary and Director of Communications and Strategy to the Prime Minister. Aged 49, Alastair will be writing an exclusive
• Alan Pugh - AM for Clywd West
• THEWHOLETRUTH - A regular comment on modern affairs to keep the party in the Labour Party
• Hull University Labour Club
• grumpyoldben - a place for random ramblings, mid-night utterances and lunch break revelations. my not too serious view of the world - surprisingly written, edited and published by me.
• Snedds Blog - The inane ramblings of a left-leaning, socialist-action denying, Blair-baiting, bandwagon-jumping, election-loving, cliche-filled Labourite
• John Paschoud - An experiment to see whether a blog that's meant to stay this focussed gets kept up by me, and looked at by anyone else in Perry Vale - the ward I represent on Lewisham Council
• The Ministry of Agitation and Propaganda - This is the Ministry. And I am the Minister. Welcome to the Agitprop Office.
• Rhod on Public Affairs - Political, social and economic commentary from Edinburgh
• Someday I Will Treat You Good
• Ephems of BLB - Brian Barder's website
• Parks Ward Swindon - What have I been doing? - Blog for residents of my ward
• Peter John - Labour Councillor for South Camberwell. Elected in 2002, I am currently the Leader of Southwark Council Labour Group.
• NightHawk - The weblog of Roger Darlington
• Labour Humanists - Information, news, comment and hopefully debate and a focus point for Humanists and others with secular life stances, who support the aims and values of the Labour Party. Happy Humans for the People's Party! Views and ideas welcome to humanistsforlabour
• The Biggs Report - John Biggs, Assembly Member for City and East London (Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham - representing about 650,000 people).
• Hoxton Councillors - This is the new blog for the Hoxton Councillors. We are Philip Glanville, Clayeon McKenzie and Carole Williams.
• Chris Gale's Weblog
• Rob Shorrock - A blog dedicated to democracy, community activism and political accountability.
• Warren's political blog - General political blog by a Brighton & Hove Labour councillor.
• Chirk Labour Party - The web voice of Chirk Labour Party
• Captain Smoo - Cynical or Optimistic Ramblings from Your Youth
• The Poor Mouth - My personal blog featuring my take on issues and articles of interest
• Oxford Labour Party - The official website of the Oxford and District Labour Party
• janestheone - Jane Griffiths - I was Labour MP for Reading East from 1997-2005
• Pat McFadden - MP for Wolverhampton South East
• Paul Bell - A former parliamentary candidate and NPP List Member
• schmoo on the run - 'schmoo on the run' writes from a not very 'safe house' in central london, having given the 'forces of darkness' the slip yet again. Sponsored by 'schmoogle'. Satire
• The Wonderful World Of Lola - The mostly lowbrow ramblings of a woman they call Lola. WARNING: topics may include an excess of Labour politics, naff television, cake, diets, make-up, gossip, white wine, and other ridiclousness.

Perpetual Crisis - 1 comment

Paulie has started a worthy campaign against journalists and political commentators (see original post).



It already has a badge you can add to your site - I think you'll find it fits snugly in your sidebar.

Update: We are three.

Thirtysomething - 8 comments

Terribly predictable title, but then irony doesn't work on the web.

I have felt the cold, skeletal grip on my shoulder tighten as my 30th birthday draws ever nearer. Sunday is the fateful day, though I will be kicking off a weekend of celebration and commiseration this very afternoon at 5-ish, which may somewhat temporarily interrupt the flow of well-thought-out blog posts on hot political topics.

If anyone's in the City (London) this afternoon, specifically the Broadgate area, and doesn't mind brushing past some work colleagues to say "Hi" and/or "Your creative days, and ability to stay up late enough to watch Newsnight, aren't necessarily behind you", then you'd be most welcome.

I'll post details of a venue when it's been decided. The refurbished Crispin in Broadgate gets the nod. If it's still awful, we may decamp to the Fleetwood.

It seems my place of birth - Ashford, Middx. - has some trivia that might amuse:

A V for victory, and an outline of Winston Churchill's face can be seen made out from the roof tiles of the Spelthorne College sports halls.

It also contained a Henge (now beneath a women's prison), and is near to one of the UK's "most important" ponds. 'Drive-by's are somewhat rarer than we are led to believe is the case in neighbouring Staines.

Big Tent / Manchester in September - 3 comments

It's not often that a blogger joins our ranks with a long-running spoof blog already operating against them, but Hackney Councillor Luke Akehurst is in that privileged position.

Without dwelling overly on the content of the spoof blog, not being au fait with the ins and outs of Hackney politics to name just one factor, I'm delighted to see that, entirely off their own backs, they have commissioned and erected an unofficial Bloggers4Labour 'wigwam' somewhere in the Greater Manchester area (yes, we all know it's actually a tipi).



Though accommodation arrangements have not been finalised, I do intend to arrange a get-together for Labour bloggers and sympathisers, to coincide with the Labour Party Conference - at the very least, one on similar lines to Brighton last September, and London in February, though it could turn out to be a fully-fledged 'BloggerCon'.

Either way, I intend to be in the vicinity of Manchester and hope to meet many of the Labour bloggers that geography has thus far denied me, and possibly some of the more hard-core southerners too. Let me know if you're interested. A topic will be set up on the forum accordingly.

Back in June there was also talk of an Oxford get-together. Unfortunately June and July haven't given me much time, which is why nothing's been arranged. Still, if a decent number of people are around in August, it can still go ahead. Again, let me know if you're interested.

Life, the BNP and everything - 1 comment

Before I forget, here's a must-read from the Ministry of Truth: covering the BNP and the "No Platform" approach, the reaction of (parts of) the Labour blogosphere to Cameron and to the Prescott and Lord Levy issues, Kerrongate, and finally, ASBOs and 'fast-track' justice.

It is something like 6,000 words long, but well worth the 10 minutes it takes to read it.

A Mathematical Problem - 5 comments

Before we begin, this post is a little odd. Especially so for it being Friday night, when other bloggers will be twisting and gyrating as the music takes control of them, deep within subterranean clubs - or else reclining on DFS sofas, watching the tail end of Newsnight Review with sophisticated friends, knocking back white wine by the bucketload.

I'd class myself as a militant pedestrian, having no truck with cyclists, car drivers, or taxis. If the journey'll take less than half-an-hour, I'll walk. I also work in central London, where the slow movement of traffic and weight of numbers has given pedestrians a healthy contempt for the rule of the road: cross where you like, whenever you see a gap.

The rather sad point I'm getting to is that these factors allow a pedestrian to consider the optimum route for crossing a road, to minimise the time and distance travelled. Assume one wishes to cross from point P on the left-hand side, to Q on the right-hand side, thereafter continuing until the end of that road, R. For the cautious pedestrian with a lot of time on their hands, the usual plan is to wait for a gap in traffic at least large enough for several carnival floats to pass, cross from P to Q at an angle of 90 degrees to the pavement, turn one's body to the left, and proceed from Q to R. They spurn the chance to take up Pythagoras' advice and walk directly from P to R, along the hypotenuse. Assuming a combined road-and-kerb width of 2.5 metres, setting off at an angle of 85 degrees from the pavement, and continuing until you reach the other side, will let you complete the triangle in a mere 28.68 metres, 2.39 metres less than if you had walked along the other two sides of the triangle, a saving of 7.69% and perhaps 1.5 seconds of your life.

Was it worth doing? Spending all that time in the road just to ensure you reach your destination before your rival? Soon the inquiring mind turns to the question of the optimum crossing angle for reducing the distance walked. Isn't it obvious what it is? Put it this way, there aren't many possibilities. All the same, can you prove it mathematically?

All distances can be expressed in terms of the angle at which you leave the pavement (0° ≤ θ < 90°) and the width of the kerb-plus-road (W). I'll also refer to the proportion of journey saved by walking the smart, dangerous way, as Z. With a bit of fiddling about, you come up with:

Z = 1 - ( sec θ / ( 1 + tan θ)) ... or ...
Z = 1 - 1 / ( cos θ . ( 1 + tan θ))

The higher the better, clearly. You want to find the angle θ where Z is at a maximum - that is to say, where the rate-of-change is zero, and the rate-of-(rate-of-change) is negative (slope has had a positive gradient, now flattening). To do this, you need to differentiate the above function, to give you a new function that gives you the rate of change of the the proportion of journey saved, not the actual value. Then, set that equal to zero, and you should be able to rearrange to get a formula for the optimum θ itself.

Well, that's as far as I got - my ill-remembered Maths lessons, a couple of books, the Wikipedia, and even this have failed to give me something that works. It was addictive, but I had to give up at 10.45 - it, basically, being a waste of my time.

Of course I know what the optimum angle is: (a) it's pretty obvious when you think about it, and (b) you can graph the above function in Excel to get a good idea, then focus in. The question is also academic, given that the purpose of your journey is actually to reach your destination R, not be marooned on the kerbside partway along the road, albeit with a smug grin on your face, knowing you've made an efficiency saving of 29.89% on your reduced journey. All the same, it would have been nice to know that I'd managed it properly.

For the sake of regular readers who may be a little concerned, let me assure them that I don't intend to publish any future trigonometrical teasers for A-level pupils. I have plenty more politics to post about, and normal service will be resumed...

Update: fixed the Z formula - duh.

NEC Voting - 2 comments

My envelope packed with Labour goodies arrived a few days ago, well over a week after other members seemed to have received theirs, and mysteriously slit open from end to end. Any members of the security services at a loose end will, however, have discovered that - unlike Tony Benn who reported on his own surveillance during the 1970s and beyond - my dustbin cannot be driven away in the back of "a fast car", as I use a communal dumpster and only throw away food waste and non-recyclable plastic packaging. It had to be said.

Time to decide who to vote for for the Labour NEC (Constituency section). I'm sure I've mentioned in the past how I used to take this as an opportunity to give the leadership a "bloody nose" by electing the candidates I believed they would least like to see there. I'm not convinced my more sensible votes will make much of a difference, given that we're electing 6 members out of a total of 32, and that Walter Wolfgang has been selected as a candidate in a calculated bid to win over the kind of people who think that renationalisation of the railways and a retreat into pacificism are appropriate discussions for a body that oversees the running of a 21st century party. Still, we'll learn a valuable lesson if Walter is elected, so let the members speak.

Plenty of other Labour bloggers have expressed their views (list courtesy of Antonia, but let me know if you've been missed out): here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, but I think I'll be going for:

• Louise Baldock
• Lorna Fitzsimons
• Ellie Reeves
• Naz Sarkar
• Bill Thomas
• Peter Wheeler

You can find pen-pics at the other blogs I've linked to, but if I get some time I'll amend this post and add them here.

Recommendations / Greasemonkey - 7 comments

I've posted a couple of times about our recommendations facility: your chance to give thumbs-up to your favourite posts from the B4L bloggers, allowing us to identify the most popular articles, and the bloggers who have published the most such pieces.

At the moment, all 'votes' are collected by clicking the "Recommend" link on our various recent posts pages. This is fine if the post is less than two days old, and you do all your reading through this one site.

Now we offer you the chance to recommend articles from within the very blog that published them. How - are we going to somehow 'add something of our own' to that site to make it possible? In a way, yes.



Firefox users (please use version 1.5 if you possibly can) may use the well-established Greasemonkey extension, which is available here, to achieve just that.

What is Greasemonkey? Well, it's a tool that lets you run custom 'scripts' in a secure environment on any browser page you load. You can download it here (it's tiny), or - if that doesn't work - by clicking on the most recent version here.

Once installed, restart Firefox.

Now, all you need do is visit our script's page.

It won't look like much, but if Greasemonkey is installed OK, at the top of the page will be a red monkey logo and, on the right, an "Install" button.

Click that button, it's perfectly safe. Once again, no personal information is transmitted in either direction.

Next time you load up a page in Firefox, check the bottom of the Tools menu. There'll be a menu at the end named "User Script Commands", containing two options. If there isn't, try reloading the page.

• Recommend page to Bloggers4Labour - select this to recommend the page you have open before you. It should, of course, be a page from a Labour-supporting blog that is 'on our books'. Any other page will give you a surprisingly patient and tolerant warning message. If the vote went through, we'll tell you, together with the current score for that page.
• View Bloggers4Labour recommendations - select this to visit our page with all the scores.

Hope that's clear, and you find the new facility useful and interesting.

Thanks to Andrew Brown for the inspiration.

Incidentally, if you're a developer and want to know how the system works, or need detailed assistance, I'm happy to assist, however, a small donation (say £5.00 or equivalent) - see PayPal link at foot of page - will greatly increase the likelihood that I am able to take time out to help.

Political Influence of Bloggers - 5 comments

Just to put your mind at rest, I affirm that I will never post about the political influence of bloggers ever again, and neither their influence on the mainstream media (sorry, "dead trees"), nor what the mainstream media can learn from bloggers.

I will also abstain from claiming to be a journalist - especially a "citizen journalist" - and a media commentator. Unless the price is extraordinarily right.

The craft of a journalist is just not something I aspire to. As long as the truth is exposed by somebody, and corruption and dishonesty is exposed wherever it lies (not merely to further one's own political cause - something that obviously couldn't possibly happen in the aggregate), that's the main thing.

Another crime to be punished by my summary execution is the citing of blogging hit counts as an indicator of the value of a particular blog, especially compared to the readership of daily newspapers.

Last but by no means least, I will never, never, not even under pain of death, comment on the issue of whether the British blogosphere (that is a buzzword I will continue to use, however) is "years behind" the USA. It may be a bind at first, but you'll learn to live, dear blog reader, without ever thinking about the relative states of advancement of the various national blogospheres.

The smarter reader will no doubt be thinking, "Hang on, you hardly post anything anyway, what's the big deal?" You've got a point there, but I won't always be this quiet (maybe I'm suffering from this? Via).

Inspired by Iain, and many, many others.

P.S. If you're feeling satirical, feel free to write in with your pet hates about blog coverage, either from within the blogging world, or from outside.

Update: didn't realise/forgot that several others were posting on this theme, around the same time and before - Tom has a roundup.

Lest we forget - 4 comments

Few, if any, seem to be lamenting Portugal's exit from the World Cup. However, the campaign against Ronaldo is extraordinary. OK, he's an arrogant cheat, but hardly unique in that role. For the benefit of those who feel Rooney was hard done-by, here's the young scamp caught in the act:



Sure, Sven's tactics made things more difficult for Rooney, but the brutality of the little man showed his lack of self-control, lack of professionalism, damaged the team, his own reputation, and makes it that much more likely that canny opponents will be able to reduce England to ten men in future matches. Perhaps he should seek professional help rather than plot revenge against his Man Utd team-mate.

The quality of the Germany v. Italy game also showed the idea that England could win the World Cup on merit - rather than scrabbling through, edging tedious matches - to be ridiculous. I can't claim to be an entirely neutral supporter, but there were precious few quality moments to remember when I try to account for the time I spent watching. It was sociable, but I'd hardly call it fun, let alone inspiring.

A final point to illustrate the ineptness of the England setup, as revealed by Peter Crouch on Tuesday:

"We have come in for criticism in the past for not practicing penalties but I can assure you, we had been practicing them all the time after going to Germany in early June - and before that.

"They had been going well in practice - but we were fresh then. We were in an empty stadium as well, which is a different ball game to Saturday.

Perhaps this is obvious, but presumably the reason England practice taking penalties so much is because of their terrible record at penalty shoot-outs in major tournaments. As far as I know, England's record with ordinary penalties during matches is fine. Given that shoot-outs only occur after at least 120 minutes of play, what is the point of fresh players practicing them? Wouldn't it make sense to change the training program so that this only happens at the end of the session, or the end of the day? And secondly, if the players felt tired, as Peter says, why did the two players - Crouch himself, and Lennon - who had only played 60-70 minutes not take over?

Declaration of interest: I stand to win £40 in a sweepstake if Italy triumph on Sunday (enough to buy several self-help books for troubled teenagers). I also had an Italian great-grandparent, apparently.

Recommendations Update - 5 comments

Our recommendations facility is proving popular: 12 days in, and 344 votes have been cast for articles from 78 different blogs. You can check the results here.

As things stand, the most recommended article has been Mike Ion's Compass post.

The most recommended sites are Norm's, Kerron's, Skuds', and wongaBlog, with 75 votes between them.

There has been some irregular voting, and by irregular I mean people recommending many different articles from the same one or two blogs (and nobody else's) in the same session. It's rare, but easy for me to fix when it happens. You may have noticed the totals have since this afternoon.

For the most part, though, I'm very happy with the way it's gone. Please continue to recommend.