Iain Dale's blog is hosting a skeleton service by Grant Tucker and he's just posted Bloggers say goodbye! including this tribute video:
Political bloggers say goodbye from Political Scrapbook on Vimeo.
Showing posts with label Tory Bear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tory Bear. Show all posts
Friday, December 24, 2010
The bloggers we lost
2010 saw a lot of big name bloggers stopping their habit, especially those on the right (and yes Tom Harris, I include you in that).
Iain Dale's blog is hosting a skeleton service by Grant Tucker and he's just posted Bloggers say goodbye! including this tribute video:
Iain Dale's blog is hosting a skeleton service by Grant Tucker and he's just posted Bloggers say goodbye! including this tribute video:
Monday, September 20, 2010
I am worse than Oona King, Alex Hilton, Melanie Phillips, David Miliband, John Redwood and Donal Blaney
Over the years this blog has appeared on the odd list of the best UK/Political/Conservative blogs and I'm very grateful to the various people who've voted for me in successive polls - I'm afraid I haven't always been quick to respond to these votes.
However there are other votes as well and there's one I've only recently heard of. For a while ago A Very Public Sociologist did their own awards and the results are at The UK's 100 Worst Political Blogs. And this very blog has been voted the UK's 71st Worst Political Blog.
However looking at some of the other blogs on the list I feel I'm in okay company. The likes of Iain Dale, Tory Bear, Guido Fawkes, Liberal Conspiracy, Socialist Unity and Tom Harris are but a few of the top twenty-five.
What is surprising are the blogs that have come above me. Given A Very Public Sociologist's leanings and readership the list's leaning is unsurprising and suggests voting owes more to political positions than actual blogging. But I do take bemusement at being voted worse than the following:
90 Melanie Phillips
73 John Redwood's Diary
72 Donal Blaney (by invitation only)
I wonder what I've done to be a bigger hate figure to the hard left than the above!
Still I'm also considered worse than some Labour figures too:
94 Oona King
92 Alex Hilton
87 David Miliband
Being labelled as worse than David Miliband and Oona King by the hard left is a badge I'd wear with pride.
However there are other votes as well and there's one I've only recently heard of. For a while ago A Very Public Sociologist did their own awards and the results are at The UK's 100 Worst Political Blogs. And this very blog has been voted the UK's 71st Worst Political Blog.
However looking at some of the other blogs on the list I feel I'm in okay company. The likes of Iain Dale, Tory Bear, Guido Fawkes, Liberal Conspiracy, Socialist Unity and Tom Harris are but a few of the top twenty-five.
What is surprising are the blogs that have come above me. Given A Very Public Sociologist's leanings and readership the list's leaning is unsurprising and suggests voting owes more to political positions than actual blogging. But I do take bemusement at being voted worse than the following:
90 Melanie Phillips
73 John Redwood's Diary
72 Donal Blaney (by invitation only)
I wonder what I've done to be a bigger hate figure to the hard left than the above!
Still I'm also considered worse than some Labour figures too:
94 Oona King
92 Alex Hilton
87 David Miliband
Being labelled as worse than David Miliband and Oona King by the hard left is a badge I'd wear with pride.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Blog round up
Some interesting posts from the rest of the blogosphere:
Coleview, Covingham & Nythe Conservatives have noted how the Minister of Democracy and his family's electoral registration is in breach of the rules about second homes in Minister of Democracy's family ineligible to vote in Swindon elections
Dizzy Thinks has a sense of proportion about the way some MPs have made totally reasonable claims for their particular constituencies and are still being pilloried form them in This is the problem......
Iain Dale discusses the way criticism of the Telegraph's motives has been silenced in Telegraph Takes Down Nadine's Blog.
Paul Burgin (Mars Hill) discusses the forthcoming reshuffle in What Needs To Be Done With The Cabinet.
Tom Harris (And another thing) warns against kneejerk constitutional changes that have nothing to do with MPs' expenses The worst possible time to consider wider reform.
And since there's more than just MPs' expenses:
Kerron Cross wonders what the departure of the main generator of Liberal Democrat nastiness means in The End Of The Bar Chart Party?
Nábídána.com takes a look at some scientific developments at two rival universities in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil students bid to outdo each other in political science.
Tory Bear in A small victory notes how LGBT Labour are losing both the T-shirt war and the plot.
Glyn Davies (A View from Rural Wales) is Declaring war on Bambi.
Coleview, Covingham & Nythe Conservatives have noted how the Minister of Democracy and his family's electoral registration is in breach of the rules about second homes in Minister of Democracy's family ineligible to vote in Swindon elections
Dizzy Thinks has a sense of proportion about the way some MPs have made totally reasonable claims for their particular constituencies and are still being pilloried form them in This is the problem......
Iain Dale discusses the way criticism of the Telegraph's motives has been silenced in Telegraph Takes Down Nadine's Blog.
Paul Burgin (Mars Hill) discusses the forthcoming reshuffle in What Needs To Be Done With The Cabinet.
Tom Harris (And another thing) warns against kneejerk constitutional changes that have nothing to do with MPs' expenses The worst possible time to consider wider reform.
And since there's more than just MPs' expenses:
Kerron Cross wonders what the departure of the main generator of Liberal Democrat nastiness means in The End Of The Bar Chart Party?
Nábídána.com takes a look at some scientific developments at two rival universities in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil students bid to outdo each other in political science.
Tory Bear in A small victory notes how LGBT Labour are losing both the T-shirt war and the plot.
Glyn Davies (A View from Rural Wales) is Declaring war on Bambi.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The consequences of fancy dress outfits
As seems frustratingly common these days, I was off-line for much of yesterday but heard about these events nonetheless. (For those who have missed the seeming deluge of coverage see ConservativeHome: Three CF activists expelled from party over online boasts about a Madeleine McCann fancy dress outfit.)
First off Matt Lewis is currently a fellow student here at Queen Mary, University of London but I don't know him that well (the curse of these days spending very little time on campus outside one's own department) having only met him on a few occasions. I can't recall ever encountering Richard Lowe at all and think I've only encountered Flick Cox from afar when she was elected to the national executive of the National Union of Students (she stood claiming to be an independent but was actually a member of one of the ruling factions - see In the world of Adam Nazir Ahmed Teladia: NUS NEC elections).
I don't think Matt meant to cause harm or offence and indeed as many others commenting on this have noted there are many other people who've similarly made bad taste comments and actions without having them dragged all over the media or getting back to the victims and their families. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid thing to do and I have no doubt of his depth of horror at the consequences coming back upon him.
One point that has been rather overlooked is the comment (see Tory Bear: Sick):
But I will also be blunt - the reason this became a story and offended the McCann family is because another blogger took it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, executioner and town crier by running the story on his blog. That is also an act that causes offence to people.
First off Matt Lewis is currently a fellow student here at Queen Mary, University of London but I don't know him that well (the curse of these days spending very little time on campus outside one's own department) having only met him on a few occasions. I can't recall ever encountering Richard Lowe at all and think I've only encountered Flick Cox from afar when she was elected to the national executive of the National Union of Students (she stood claiming to be an independent but was actually a member of one of the ruling factions - see In the world of Adam Nazir Ahmed Teladia: NUS NEC elections).
I don't think Matt meant to cause harm or offence and indeed as many others commenting on this have noted there are many other people who've similarly made bad taste comments and actions without having them dragged all over the media or getting back to the victims and their families. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid thing to do and I have no doubt of his depth of horror at the consequences coming back upon him.
One point that has been rather overlooked is the comment (see Tory Bear: Sick):
Im quite glad about that, I would hate to have to end our friendsship when I become and MP because you had pulled a Prince Harry!!! LOL xThat's not the comment of someone being a friend, that's the comment of a scheming (and deluded) careerist.
But I will also be blunt - the reason this became a story and offended the McCann family is because another blogger took it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, executioner and town crier by running the story on his blog. That is also an act that causes offence to people.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
On ideology in youth wings
Tory Bear has recently posted Back to the Future about the lack of ideological battles in Conservative Future elections. And he has a strong point - for as long as I can remember in Conservative Future (since about 2000 - yes I'm showing my age!) virtually all the candidates in elections for the national executive have run campaigns based on what sort of administration they would run if elected and nearly all have had supporters' lists that are ideologically all over the party. The handful who've tried for purity have never got anywhere and even those candidates strongly associated with certain ideological groups in the party have not tried to run on such a line.
Now to a large extent this is because the Conservative Future national executive is an administrative body and so it's utterly irrelevant as to what are someone's opinion on grammar schools, whether or not Conservative MEPs should sit in the European People's Party (although the issue of Conservative Future's affiliation to the European Democrat Students is one that could do with settling) or so forth.
But it's also because a lot in Conservative Future have always been deeply wary of bringing ideology into elections. Many of us have encountered the teenager and twenty-something year-old for whom everything in politics is absolutely back & white with nothing in between, for whom ideas of pragmatism, compromise, electability and so forth are anathema and who often calls for those who don't agree with them to leave the party. Friends in Labour and the Liberal Democrats have confirmed that this is not a feature unique to the right. The idea of ideological based elections brings the danger that the outcome would be a very ideological Conservative Future that would be very off putting to new members, to the detriment of membership and effectiveness. (That problem exists at the moment but it would hardly be resolved by this!) It could also become an embarrassment to the party in general if the youth wing started coming out with absurd policies. Then there's the danger that particular groups in the party would regard the youth wing as a platform to be captured for espousing their own particular policies rather than for benefiting the younger members of the party as a whole.
And what exactly is the point of a party's youth wing espousing political views, which would generally not be those of the membership as a whole or even a national council, but probably those of just those members of the executive controlling decisions and/or accessing the microphone? If it's to influence the party policy there are far better ways to do that - indeed it's better to be enabling individual members and groups to be able to submit their voice rather than have one single voice for all young members. If it's to give the organisation a sense of purpose then it's rather an extreme step to take. And taking it back to the issue of elections, what difference would it make if one candidate is from the One Nation wing of the party, one from the Thatcherite wing and one from the Faith, Flag & Family wing? How would their ability to do the job be in any way affected by this?
(The one point I have seen a few people raise is over the allocation of forty-two places on the Conservative National Convention that are reserved for Conservative Future. How the places should be filled has been a somewhat contentious issue over the years and in one election a chair candidate's supporters asserted that there is a danger of putting forty-two voting places in the wrong hands. But the answer to that must be reform of the Convention places, not hoping for the "right" hands!)
Now to a large extent this is because the Conservative Future national executive is an administrative body and so it's utterly irrelevant as to what are someone's opinion on grammar schools, whether or not Conservative MEPs should sit in the European People's Party (although the issue of Conservative Future's affiliation to the European Democrat Students is one that could do with settling) or so forth.
But it's also because a lot in Conservative Future have always been deeply wary of bringing ideology into elections. Many of us have encountered the teenager and twenty-something year-old for whom everything in politics is absolutely back & white with nothing in between, for whom ideas of pragmatism, compromise, electability and so forth are anathema and who often calls for those who don't agree with them to leave the party. Friends in Labour and the Liberal Democrats have confirmed that this is not a feature unique to the right. The idea of ideological based elections brings the danger that the outcome would be a very ideological Conservative Future that would be very off putting to new members, to the detriment of membership and effectiveness. (That problem exists at the moment but it would hardly be resolved by this!) It could also become an embarrassment to the party in general if the youth wing started coming out with absurd policies. Then there's the danger that particular groups in the party would regard the youth wing as a platform to be captured for espousing their own particular policies rather than for benefiting the younger members of the party as a whole.
And what exactly is the point of a party's youth wing espousing political views, which would generally not be those of the membership as a whole or even a national council, but probably those of just those members of the executive controlling decisions and/or accessing the microphone? If it's to influence the party policy there are far better ways to do that - indeed it's better to be enabling individual members and groups to be able to submit their voice rather than have one single voice for all young members. If it's to give the organisation a sense of purpose then it's rather an extreme step to take. And taking it back to the issue of elections, what difference would it make if one candidate is from the One Nation wing of the party, one from the Thatcherite wing and one from the Faith, Flag & Family wing? How would their ability to do the job be in any way affected by this?
(The one point I have seen a few people raise is over the allocation of forty-two places on the Conservative National Convention that are reserved for Conservative Future. How the places should be filled has been a somewhat contentious issue over the years and in one election a chair candidate's supporters asserted that there is a danger of putting forty-two voting places in the wrong hands. But the answer to that must be reform of the Convention places, not hoping for the "right" hands!)
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Battle of the CF blogs!
A little competition never hurts anyone. Recently the blog Tory Bear was launched, focusing mainly on gossip around Conservative Future. And now a rival has sprung up - the Blue Guerilla. Hopefully this will encourage the appearance of further such blogs and the competition will be a great force for driving up quality. Battle away!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
LinkWithin
