2020 Vision - 2 comments

I once published a bleating post that, rather than stating explicitly what my concern was, ended up sheepishly calling for "a debate" on said issue, thus avoiding having to express my own view, dodging criticism from one side or the other, and consequently failing to frame or inform the debate in any way.

Just like this, in other words. OK, that's harsh - some people do nothing else, and who can honestly say they haven't pulled this trick once in a while? If anyone had indeed taken up my call on those terms, they'd have found it a pretty unfulfilling experience. For one thing, how can anything be resolved if every view is valuable, as good as any other, there are no wrong answers, and no prospect of the hypothesis (supposedly) under discussion being applied in the real world?

This only worries people who aren't interested in answers, or in truth.

Anyway, back to 2020 Vision, launched today, and backed by Charles Clarke, Alan Milburn, and several Labour MPs and Lords. I'd certainly class it as well-meaning (but helpful?), and there are some good sections in the various launch statements, but here are some of my issues with it:

It's yet another web-site, professionally executed, upon which a fair amount of money will have been spent, but developed in secret, and launched upon the world without any clear idea of its place, its role, its competitors, and so on.

We have blogs (in the UK) by the million, we have sites produced by professional think-tankers, plus endless talks and pamphlets. Can we really expect another site seeking "progressive answers" to find a niche, rather than distracting energy and attention from others? Like Progress, for example, or Compass (aka the Programme for a New Swedish Century - only kidding, guys).

Haven't we reached the limits of the comments-box model of democracy?

You only need to see a small selection of the comments at 2020 - or indeed any high-profile political discussion site - to realise that:

• The motives of commenters are probably evenly distributed from helpful and positive at one extreme, to downright mischievous at the other, with a good range of pedants and grandstanders throughout. Some sifting has to be done.
• People are wrong, illogical, incoherent, and inconsistent about so much. Comment boxes aren't good environments for arguing to a conclusion, minds are closed, and it's embarrassing to have it shown that you're wrong.

Ultimately commenters bear no responsibility for the policies they advocate, and those they shoot down. Talk is cheap and easy, and without solving this problem, these web-sites and the noisy debates they produce seem to me to be a complete dead-end for democracy. I don't think it matters whether a million people leave comments, and Tony Blair is at the other end, scribbling ideas down on a pad as they seep through - without involving people directly in the making and application of policies that affect them, in a decentralised way, the problem of alienation between politician/provider and citizen will remain, and people will continue to be moderately disgruntled about their lives and expectations. This sort of politics has to die.

Perhaps economics has the answers we're looking for?

Update (March 1st). A large collection of articles on the same theme.

Goodbye Snap previews - 4 comments

I've turned off those little Snap preview boxes that appear when you hover over links. The technology's great, but I can't honestly see the value of a postage stamp-sized preview of the linked-to site (especially if it doesn't even show up, first time around), with text far too small to be legible. Sure, they can be tweaked, but when 90% of the little boxes' appearances were by accident (I'm a poor clumsy user), that starts to get annoying. Any thoughts?

MpURL and vastly more blogs... - 2 comments

I had a look last night at the updated MpURL resource that is available to all Labour members, to discover that all blogs hosted there offer RSS feeds - I'm sure that facility weren't there before.

We're now running 30 or so of the most active of these blogs (our total is now 440). The problem is that, though the feeds (and previews) are available to the public, and can be read by anyone at B4L, the posts themselves are (by default) only visible to party members with a valid membership login, so non-members will not be able to read the full article, or read selectively from the blog.

Now, Labour's software does provide the ability for these "private" bloggers to make their sites available to the general public, with a friendly URL. Only a handful seem to have done so, and the "public" blogs not only look completely different, but don't indicate the fact that there really is a feed available. If you discovered these facts the wrong way around, as I did, you might be a little confused, but I think I understand now.

What Bloggers4Labour does, therefore, is use the public URL and "private" feed if a public URL is supplied. That should deliver the best of both worlds. Otherwise, we fall back to using the private URL, and in these cases you'll need to log in to view the entirety of a post you've clicked.

There's a huge number of these blogs on the Labour system: a simple calculation suggests over 360. Some will be duplicates of/proxies for blogs we already syndicate, but many/most seem to be the handiwork of blogging newbies, who often wonder if anyone's reading. Hopefully our syndicating them will help.

What I can't explain is that we have a couple of sites with a public URL, but no discernible "private" blog to back them, hence no feed at all. Here are the two blogs in that boat:

• Cllr Matt Cooke
• Anne Snelgrove MP

A social revolution - 1 comment

"A social revolution is taking place in X. No wonder the Y and their friends are determined to discredit it.", is the well-worn argument George Galloway uses here.

Isn't that normally followed up with, "Gulags? What gulags?"?

Most popular posts @ B4L - 2 comments

Here's a list of the 20 most popular posts (hits appear in brackets) that have been posted at B4L over the (gasp) two years and ten days. As you can probably guess from the top post, these are not necessarily my 20 favourites, nor the 20 best - I blame the general public entirely:

1. fish-girl - the sensational tale of the girl who allegedly kicked a Koran and turned into what can best be described as an obviously bogus, plastic lump, vaguely resembling a discarded Doctor Who sea monster suit stolen from a dumpster behind BBC Television Centre. Depressingly, relentlessly popular (1159)
2. immigration-amnesty - economic reasons for a full immigration amnesty, and why I couldn't go quite that far... (684)
3. british-empire - is a picture of whipped slaves an accurate, and/or constructive introduction to the British Empire? (507)
4. labour-home - my rather graceless welcome to LabourHome (319)
5. making-labour-our-party - I plug the LabOUR Commission (295)
6. meeting-in-manchester - I announce our 2006 Conference meetup (294)
7. labour-blogs - I plug Labour's new blogs page. Incidentally, this was almost exactly a year ago. We had 160 blogs then, 408 now (280)
8. labour-home-ii - a more comradely introduction to LabourHome. So why don't we work together? (262)
9. road-pricing-and-stealth-taxes - I aim to justify the principle of road pricing - something the roads lobby is loath to engage with - and to show that not only need the cost of motoring not rise, but that it couldn't be less like a stealth tax (240)
10. compass - my first comment on the Compass group. Once upon a time I felt that might be my natural home on the Labour spectrum (so to speak). I can't help feeling now that it's almost the opposite of where I am, if you can believe that (226)
11. euston-enemy - my first, rather bad-tempered, response to speculation about the Euston Manifesto Group. Actually the follow-up was even more forthright, and produced a record number of comments (206)
12. party-funding - why capping donations ignores political influence (205)
13. blairwatch - I used the f*** word for the first and only time in a post here, but it actually contains a pretty good defence of the autonomy of party-political bloggers (202)
14. sea-of-trivia - covering the media's obsession with Blair's date of departure (191)
15. top-political-blogs - my response to Iain Dale's selection of top political blogs (185)
16. new-blogs - a round-up of new blogs, up to April 2006 (182)
17. guest-post-1-jo-salmon - our first guest post. Jo talks about teenage pregnancy (179)
18. new-bloggers - a round-up of new blogs, from April-July 2006 (178)
19. invalidity-benefit - I tried to challenge the idea that the kindest policy was to allow disabled people to live on benefit without being helped/encouraged into the workplace. That was the plan... (162)
20. bloggers4labour-summer-essays-4 - James Hamilton's marvellous contributed essay, What's Left? (158)

Feel free to plug your most popular posts too.

More on bonuses - 5 comments

I had planned to comment on Peter Hain's plea (actually, it was a veiled demand) a fortnight ago that City firms donate "two-thirds of their bonus pots to charity rather than giving employees six-figure bonuses", but I didn't take it seriously. However, city bonuses seem to have become a cause célèbre for politicians who seem to have lost the will to talk about genuinely egalitarian politics.

Chris Dillow cites Ian Gibson MP's recent comments [via]:

I don't think people should have bonuses at all. They are unacceptable. I think it’s got worse. If the Labour Party recognised this problem then they would have more support today.

Well, why might bonuses be offered? Sure, there are fiddles, but the most plausible reason is to make it worth workers while to work harder (without compulsion), to improve the running of their organisation, take responsibility for its success, and to come up with ideas for making it more efficient. Without making it too obvious which one is which, I will have worked in:

1. An organisation so large that my personal contribution couldn't possibly affect my bonus.
2. A tiny organisation, unable to offer any incentive at all for a greater contribution.
3. A small organisation that was able to offer large bonuses in successful years.

Clearly the incentives are non-existent in (1) and (2), but where they do apply - in (3) - do they promote greed? Well, not necessarily. I don't see why any of the above would not apply just as strongly in a future socialist economy/society, characterised by cooperatives, a one-off equalisation of wealth, and controls on inheritance. People need reasons to do anything, and to make it impossible for them to benefit from their actions is a nail in the coffin of the legitimate economy, whatever economic system is in place. In the case of City bonuses, The Treasury/charities might be lucky enough to earn a windfall in Year 1, but the fund will swiftly dry up, reappearing elsewhere in a different form.

The real danger comes about when these "bonuses" are entrenched, allowing the recipient to gain economic or political power in this generation, or giving their offspring an undeserved head-start in the next - but these abuses can be tackled in other ways (inheritance tax, for one), as they very well should be.

Tom S lists a number of practical objections to bonuses in a comment left at Chris' blog above, and to deal with one of those here: of course we hope that human beings would work hard and innovate for the sheer love of the State it - their colleagues, their profession, the public they serve, their community, and so on. Perhaps this is an impulse it's harder to imagine existing if you believe that work is "alienating" (in the Marxist sense). Surely, though, our society should benefit as a result of human benevolence, rather than being dependent upon it.

So the challenge as I see it is to find some way of encouraging (or perhaps, rediscovering) benevolent and charitable behaviour - a feeling in people that they ought to contribute to society because it makes for a more contended place for all, rather than leaving this decision entirely to governments, and concealing your wealth whenever you have enough of it. I don't accept this is just a "City" problem: the lack of benevolent behaviour ("greed", if you like) is not the preserve of the super-rich - it increases with income, from a low base, and particularly affects the non-religious - even though the sums involved here are huge. Moreover, for too many on our side, "the City" is a place of fear, mystery, and conspiracy, and it's too tempting to single it out rather than tackle a society-wide problem.

China in Africa: neo-colonialism? - no comments

My friend Dan runs the blog, Hii Dunia (Kiswahili with Arabic roots meaning ‘this world’), which focusses on issues in International development, global politics and the environment.

In the second part of a series, we see the historic basis of China's relationship with the world, the conflict between their ideological and economic motives for support for African states, and finish with the following quote from Howard French:

"At one time many African countries, whether colonies locked in liberation struggles or fledgling, often non-aligned states viewed China as a progressive ally and counterweight to the west. But those days are gone, and increasingly, China’s involvement in Africa is pure big business."

Hii Dunia gratefully encourages anyone wishing to contribute to the site with original, relevant material.

Thousands March - 6 comments

[Via] For a quiet life, appeasement of Iran, against internationalism, and to oppose mistreatment of the Palestinians - when it suits them:

Armed groups in Iraq have killed dozens of Palestinian refugees since 2003. Last month, Human Rights Watch documented killings, threats of violence and other security concerns of the estimated 34,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq in the report, "Nowhere to Flee: The Perilous Situation of Palestinians in Iraq."

How many more blogs? - no comments

Via Peter Wheeler's blog I came across the site of Forest of Dean Labour, to discover no fewer than three County Councillor blogs, dating back as far as 2005, and last updated in January.

How many more of these blogs can there be out there, linking to nobody, linked-to by nobody, and (I guess) missing out on the kind of publicity that might encourage their authors to keep them updated? I've added those three, taking Wessex's total up to 9, and the grand total up to 408, but you could help me bring other bloggers from the parallel blogosphere into our own, by:

• Looking up your local Labour Party's web-site
• Letting me know about - or submitting - any blogs you spot there that we don't already have.
• Contacting the blogger to let them know about us.

Today's Idiocy - 4 comments

In no particular order:

Tony Blair emailing over 1.7 million people, then displaying the very same content on a page that those 1.7 million people could have read themselves at their leisure (assuming they're interested in the arguments), and at no extra cost to the taxpayer or people's inboxes.

The BBC attempting to calculate the cost of sending those mails, without even questioning the sanity of the exercise, or warning readers about the consequences of spamming.

Jade Goody axed from Comic Relief. This one writes itself:

Organisers had filmed a Question of Sport spoof in which Goody appeared with comics Jack Dee and Frank Skinner. [...]

A Comic Relief spokesman said the sketch felt "out of date" and they were concerned it could detract attention from the fundraising.

Was it 1993 or 1994 when Jack Dee stopped being funny?

Meacher enters Labour leader race. I'm not going to criticise Michael - he's beyond satire already. The tragedy for the Left - if you think that's where someone who proposes a foreign policy based upon "fundamental British interests" belongs - is that it's the considered opinion of something of the order of 20-30 Labour MPs that Meacher is a sounder bet than John McDonnell, who, at the very least, appears to have a vibrant campaign behind him, and the support of a large number of bloggers.

Nonetheless, one of these days a genuinely internationalist and pro-democracy Left will emerge and wash these white-haired crocks away, offering a vision of an alternative economy and society, rather than taxes and identity politics. Until then, I'm going to continue to back serious politicians, with plausible policies for incremental progress.

Blog and Post reviews on the Wiki - no comments

I've created two more pages on our Wiki site that everyone (yes, everyone, whatever their political persuasion) has the right to contribute to. What they give you is the opportunity to post reviews of Labour blogs, and reviews of the top posts (as judged by the Recommendations facility).

There are a number of motivations for these new facilities. Firstly, they're part of a move away from "recommendation by authority" - self-styled (what else is there?) blog gurus selecting their own favourites, however reliable their skill and judgement might be. They're also a move away from opinion polls - however cunningly set-up and well-meant, little commitment is required by the voter, and rarely any opportunity to make a detailed statement. All the evidence suggest bloggers like to write, like to write about their friend's blogs, and are thrilled to have things written about their own blogs and articles. Seeing as most of us would be shot-down in short measure if we tried to set up Wikipedia pages for our blogs, here's a similarly democratic and decentralised alternative, albeit without the entry requirements. Malicious or abusive entries will, of course, be dealt with, just as they are on Wikipedia.

If you look at the pages I set up, you'll see a few rules and suggestions, but these are just intended to keep people on the straight-and-narrow. I'd like to see as many blog- and post-reviews as possible - at the very least, so people are more likely to find good and accurate ones. If this catches on, I don't think it's too fanciful to think we might have something worthy of (paper) publication. So, if you're worried that Tim Worstall's BritBlog roundup has given the same few dozen blogs enough gongs already, perhaps we can breathe some life into the whole democratic blog-reviewing genre.

Once again, if you've seen some posts on a B4L blog that you like and fancy reviewing in one or two paragraphs, or want to immortalise a few of your favourite blogs in text form, please head over to the relevant page. Do also check in to see if you've been reviewed yourself, and help us spread the word on your own blog!

RSS feeds are available on each Wiki page.

Blog-linking scandal of the day - no comments

The Labour Humanist reports that our own David Miliband MP - whose blogging progress we have watched with genial interest - links to a mere three Labour blogs. Iain Dale responds, gracefully (or not?), with "Diddums", and in entirely unrelated news, right-wing trolls scuttle over to the Labour Humanist to leave snide and unfunny comments (especially unwise if your name is "Reagan Fan", I should have thought).

I say relax. Bloggers4Labour is neither linked to by David nor by Iain: surely that must mean our finger isn't on the pulse, that we're not on the inside track, or that we don't write in a compelling manner. Nah. You wouldn't believe how peacefully I sleep at night.

FAQ - no comments

I've started a Bloggers4Labour FAQ on a new Wiki page - please head over there and help us fill in the gaps!

Yes to road pricing - 6 comments

Vote now - we need to catch up the other lot. [Via].

Here's my argument, and there are more here.

18 Doughty Street and Ken Livingstone - 26 comments

As you might have noticed, 18 Doughty Street has been publishing adverts through the MessageSpace ad network promoting an "attack ad" on Ken Livingstone. This has failed to go down well on the Labour side, or among those Labour bloggers who accepted ads from 18 Doughty Street on the basis of that site/organisation being a non-partisan political news and discussion service for "adults", rather than the Conservative front organisation it appears to be (why else would anyone want to interview a Tory MP on the make?), and everyone thought it was when it started.

I did reply to Benjy's comment earlier this morning along the lines that I felt our readers were intelligent enough to make their own mind up - and Ken has hardly not always behaved in a way that has united Labour supporters in his support, with his embracing of Islamists and South American dictators - and so I'm not sure I've got a very strong reason to demand that those particular ads are taken down. I should add that we've made a grand total of £1.69 from 18 Doughty Street, which hardly equates to thirty pieces of silver, and is not my motivation.

Surely, though, if 18 Doughty Street isn't, in fact, a Conservative front organisation, and wants to reach out to all strands of political opinion (in an adult way), then it ought to consider whether the "attack ad" is compatible with its avowed aims, and mightn't be grounds for anti-Conservatives to take their stories, their plugs, and their vox-pops elsewhere - at least until the organisation comes clean about its objectives.

What do people think?

Update (15 Feb @ 1215): Minor edit - too strong before.
Update (15 Feb @ 1328): I foolishly wrote "South American dictators" when I should have said "dictators from South America and the Caribbean".

More slowness - 7 comments

Apologies for the slowness of the site today, after a couple of days of more-or-less normal operation. There has definitely been an upsurge in junk traffic since Sunday afternoon, though I'm no longer convinced that's the whole story.

I will (continue to) see what I can do to alleviate the problems, though the assistance of well-meaning geeks would be greatly appreciated, if you fancy getting in touch.

Incidentally, blog-aggregation (including feeds and email newsletters) is working fine, it's the web-site that's affected.

Update (14 Feb): How's it looking now - better?

Remembrance of policies past - 7 comments

Reading Paul Anderson's wonderful collection of George Orwell's writings for Tribune - surely essential reading for political bloggers - and the comments here, got me thinking once more about a venerable Labour Party policy, namely nationalisation of the land.

It's mentioned in Election Manifestos as early as 1900, and as late as 1964 (in a fairly vague kind of way), before disappearing in 1966. The policy has similarly failed to make the cut in the New Labour years. Here's what we used to say, back in 1918:

The Labour Party means to introduce large schemes of land reorganisation, and it is fully aware that this can only be done in the teeth of the most powerful vested interests. land nationalisation is a vital necessity; the land is the people's and must be developed so as to afford a high standard of life to a growing rural population not be subsidies or tariffs, but by scientific methods, and the freeing of the soil from landlordism and reaction.

Reading the whole thing is definitely worth five minutes of your time - and in 1945:

Labour believes in land nationalisation and will work towards it, but as a first step the State and the local authorities must have wider and speedier powers to acquire land for public purposes wherever the public interest so requires. In this regard and for the purposes of controlling land use under town and country planning, we will provide for fair compensation; but we will also provide for a revenue for public funds from "betterment".

So I'm interested to know:

1. Whether there's still any enthusiasm for a policy like this.
2. Whether support is any greater on the far-left than on the (Labour) right.
3. What your views are - wherever you are on the political compass.
   

Reefer Madness - 2 comments

So Cameron 'smoked drugs at school'. What I find most worrying about the story is that someone is writing a biography of Cameron at all. Given his lack of interesting past, his lukewarm analysis of today's problems, and hackneyed vision for the future, exactly how many chapters of the book is this drug anecdote going to fill?

Conservative spokesman on Rural Affairs, Peter Ainsworth, said he saw little relevance in the story.

"I frankly don't give a monkey's...it's simply not relevant to what we're doing today with the Conservative Party or to British politics."

Well, let it all hang out, I say, but I'm going to remember that statement for the next time the Tories decide to pick on a group for the infringement of one moral code or other. Of course the hardcore Conservative won't be offended by this liberated behaviour: I suspect the slant he reads in his Mail or Telegraph will be a completely different one, this 'story' being spun for the benefit of the liberal/left.

Putin on the warpath - 2 comments

Perhaps this is inadvisable, given the cyber-attacks of the past few days, but is there one single issue on which this semi-tyrant, leader of a corrupt and bullying regime, can lecture other countries?

"One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way, [...] This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law."

You make it sound as if that's a bad thing!

Shooting Fish / Competitive Sport - 2 comments

What strikes me about journalists - and this seems to be particularly the case with bloggers - is the temptation to pick the softest of targets when a deadline looms, so that one's word limit can be reached with the minimum of original thought, and the maximum of boilerplate text that the intended audience will instantly recognise. Familiar concepts, familiar language, and familiar targets allow the reader to sail from beginning to end without feeling short-changed, with a vague feeling that something significant was said, even if they are unable to identify what the point was.

Sadly, this approach has a cancerous effect on comment-pieces that deal with Tony Blair. It is so widely believed that his authority is diminished, and it is so rare for commentators to defend him/his record, etc. that the journalistic bar has been lowered to not much more than an inch above ground-level. This is what makes reading Blair-themed blog posts (not all, just too many) so dispiriting: it's the fact that, time and time again, the opportunity to post a powerful critique is squandered in favour of something trivial; an opportunity to make a constructive point wasted; and it's the recognition of a writer patently jumping on the band-wagon.

Opportunists will defend themselves by stating that their target is power and authority, even when that power and authority is evidently now in name only, and their iconoclasm is applied only narrowly. Critics can also be accused of being loyal ("slavish", and "unthinking" are popular synonyms, depriving critics of their human faculties) to the target, incapable of independent thought.

Frankly I could pick a couple of Comment is free posts a day to illustrate this, but I just happened to pick on Dave Hill's post, Off the ball, the tagline of which makes the following extraordinary claim:

The prime minister's failings are never more sadly exposed than when he talks about sport in schools.

With the courage of a man confident he won't be challenged, Dave begins:

I've been meaning to respond to the PM's words ever since, but it's been hard to find the time, what with my long nights of weeping interspersed with bouts of hysterical mirth. [...]
As facile claptrap goes it may be small potatoes compared with his evasions over Iraq. [...]
Thus spake the pillock...

Having actually read the whole piece on the Labour web-site, I'd say it was a wide-ranging, and pretty reasonable coverage of the issue of sport in schools, covering societal change, health implications, Government funding and initiatives. It's also very long piece, not well-suited for a one paragraph summary. The aspiring journalist, however, spots the following paragraphs...

[...] for too long, a damaging argument was allowed to run. It said that competitive sport is bad for children. It was thought to be aggressive and set people apart from one another. Actually, like most areas of intense competition, sport of course teaches people to co-operate.

An unholy alliance between some well-meaning but misguided teachers and schools with a peculiar ideological view of sport and a failure to invest in the basic infrastructure of schools, let alone school sport, led to a slow decline.

... is waken from the lethargy that comes from reading something dull and worthy, and 15 minutes later the completed article is ready to be handed over. OK, I don't think anyone's claiming that his "unholy alliance" was universal by any means, but what I'd expect to see in a critique of this is an analysis of how competitive sport is bad for children, how it does encourage aggression, and does indeed set people apart from one another. What do we get?

It is and always has been utterly untrue that participation in competitive sports is automatically a good thing for children.

Who said anything about automaticity? Can you name one single thing that is automatically good for children? Perhaps competitive sport is good for 60% of children, and bad for 20%? If so, it would surely have about as much right to be on the syllabus as any other subject.

I say this as someone for whom the thrill of chasing some sort of a ball around a field was only ever rivalled in his schooldays by that of snogging, but who can also never forget the sheer, pointless misery the inclusion in the timetable of double games on a Wednesday afternoon represented to too many of his male peers.

Well, speak for yourself (though I find the snogging claim rather hard to believe). Either way, the popularity of sport among children tells us nothing about whether sport encourages good health, or aggression, or sets people apart from one another, and is therefore irrelevant to the issue in hand. If you expect school subjects to be popular, you can expect sweeping changes to the syllabus...

A truly brave and progressive physical education policy would start from the conviction that different approaches are needed for different sorts of kids, and that those who are suited to competitive team sports should get a social education in the process of participating in them.

So this is what it boils down to: we should encourage a range of physical education, with competitive sports available for those who like that approach, and those sports; non-competitive sports for others; and perhaps general health education for all. I don't know if this can be called "truly brave and progressive", it seems pretty uncontroversial, and doesn't seem even remotely to contradict Tony Blair's words.

It's great that we can find a consensus on an issue like this - just a pity that we have to wade through so much pointless rhetoric, personalised attacks, and point-scoring to get there.

LibraryThing - 4 comments

If you haven't heard of LibraryThing, it provides an easy way to catalogue a book collection online. The seemingly tedious task of listing your books actually becomes a pleasure, and the more books you add, the more relationships - books shared, favourite authors discovered, and so on - you discover with other people.

I knew a few B4L-ers were already registered, so the obvious next step (so obvious, it took me over a year to take it) was to set up a Bloggers4Labour group to organise us. It's easy to join, so why not do so, if only to see what we have in common?

You can submit up to 200 books for free. Beyond that, the fee is $10/year, or $25 for life.

Under Attack - 4 comments

Sorry for the slowness of the site over the past day or two - we do seem to be getting hit by vast numbers of bogus redirects - I believe this is a fair description of what's happening (except our front page's Google PR is 6, not 3 or 4) - which is slowing the network down no end.

I don't have a solution, yet - and it's annoying that it's happening this week, of all weeks - but hopefully when I've woken up a little I'll think of something...

Update (7th Feb @ midnight): Well, I must say I'm a little disappointed at the absence of fevered speculation over the source of the "cyber" attack on B4L over the past day and a half (obviously touched a nerve somewhere!). Happily, at the cost of a mere half-day of my life, the site does now seem to be generally available once again - nonetheless, ending the day with 140 page views shows the extent of the outage. If you found it incredibly irritating, you can bet I did too. Apologies to all.

Update (7th Feb @ just after midnight): If any B4L-ers would like to learn more about what happened, what I did, assorted theories, etc., please use the contact form or drop me an email.

Update (9th Feb @ 21:50): If anyone's still reading (this blog), I've shifted discussion of this issue over to the Forum - here's the thread in question.

Sacrilege on Sunday - no comments

Are Republicans good for the world's poor?:

The Republicans have in the past spent more on aid than the Democrats: Todd estimates that, based on past averages, the success of the Democrats in the mid-terms will cost Africa about $800 million.

I think we forget the importance of the evangelical movement in the Republican coalition; and that the churches have continued to press for more aid for the developing world. Furthermore, on trade policy, the Republicans are routinely less protectionist and less mercantilist than the Democrats.

All of which shows that we should not make simplistic assumptions about politics in other countries.

I had a discussion with Tyger, and others, about this on his blog yesterday, but I think it's worth bringing up here as part of a general mission to challenge political stereotypes. I'm interested in whether the above analysis is true or not, not who produced it. If it isn't, let it be refuted, and/or placed in an appropriate context. If it is, well, I think that matters in itself, also because who knows what other issues we might have to look at afresh if we lay down our stereotypes?

Update: Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear. I've now replaced a bit in the last paragraph.

A new online battleground for union campaigns - no comments

Eric Lee on making the best use of Google Ads, the Wikipedia, and their ilk - in an ethical way, of course - to promote trade union campaigns. There's some good advice there. As far as I'm concerned, if you have a campaign, and you play by the rules, then you should take any opportunity going to get your message across, letting the community of readers be the judge.

I had been meaning to post this a while back, but mislaid the link.

Euston rocks - no comments

Step Two in my gentle reintroduction to blogging...

This is great - A Blacklist The Left Could Use: Meet the Christopher Hitchens of postpunk:

Does your fan base turn away when they discover Blacklist is an exponent of the so-called "decent Left"? Your lyrics are allusive enough, but you have no compunction about wearing your pro-regime-change politics on your sleeve, at least offstage.

I couldn’t say whether or not our fan base knows about our politics, though in a way they already appreciate them by virtue of liking the music. We play the way we do because we’re sick of complacency. It’s no wonder that much of what passes for independent music today is drab and lifeless - the people who make it are often soft-headed postmodern liberals. We want the intensity that came with believing there was such thing as truth and shouting about it.

That shouldn’t be the exclusive enterprise of conservatives, but it has been of late. What must it have been like to hear razor-sharp, swirling guitars in a dank club in Leeds circa 1982? Likewise, what must it have been like to live in a time when the notion of fighting against dictatorship, genocide, theocracy, and totalitarianism was embraced by the Left? On these two seemingly different questions, the politics of Blacklist is the same, and we preoccupy ourselves with offering an answer. [...]

Here they are:



Thanks D.

Alive / Image - no comments

Sorry for the lack of updates - I'm alive, just preoccupied at the moment...

Paul Burgin has a report on last week's social. There may be other reports on the night's events - I'll track them down in due course. I had a good time, and I'm glad others did, too.

Paul also has a great photo - on reflection, it's just the kind of image I would like us to portray (he says, tongue only slightly in cheek):