Posts Tagged "Blogging"

Life on Mars Hill (interview)

As part of Paul Burgin’s “Mars Hill” blog, I was interviewed for his series “Twenty Questions to a Fellow Blogger.”

Click here to read it.

The Political Alphabet

A simple little dictionary with the hot topics in politics at the moment, so beginners can look slightly more informed. This could be an updated yearly thing, so enjoy it. If you can think of better ones, please post them in the comments!

A is for… Afghanistan

NATO forces are fighting insurgents in Afghanistan with casualties increasing; each week the Prime Minister announces a few more British troops who have lost their lives.

B is for… Brussels

The Government plans to introduce a “Sovereignty Bill” to require a referendum every time power is moved from Westminster to Brussels. They have broken away from their natural sister parties in the European Parliament to form their own group.

C is for… Cuts

Cuts dominated the election campaign and the Chancellor is pushing for up to 40% budget cuts in government departments, as well as public sector pay and jobs.

D is for… Deficit

The government claims to be dealing with the largest peacetime deficit (ignoring Afghanistan and Iraq) in history, forgetting the massive bailout required to stop economic collapse during the financial crisis.

E is for… Emergency Budget

A manifesto commitment, the Chancellor announced an “Emergency Budget” within 60 days of taking power. It announced cuts and tax hikes in an “80-20” ratio.

F is for… Fisking

A debate technique for internet nerds, whereby one article is ripped apart and argued with point by point, usually producing very long, boring and anal responses.

G is for… Gulf War

The Iraq war remains a controversy; the Conservatives forgot they voted in favour of it, Labour tries to distance itself from it and the Lib Dems can’t criticise it anymore because they’re now in government.

H is for… Harriet Harman

The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party who is now Acting Leader until the end of September, she took over when Gordon Brown suddenly resigned after the election.

I is for… Immigration

Always a subject of debate; from asylum seekers to polish plumbers.

J is for… Johannesburg

Where the World Cup took place.

K is for… Kremlin spies

Russian Spies from the Cold War were caught operating in a small house in the USA, 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down.

L is for… Labour Leadership

Following Gordon Brown’s resignation, the Labour party is now in the process of electing its new leader.

M is for… Milibands

David and Ed Miliband, two brothers, two former cabinet ministers and two leadership contenders.

N is for… NHS

The National Health Service is apparently to be ring fenced from damaging cuts.

O is for… Obama

The American President is under pressure to save the world, and then a massive oil disaster washes onto his shore.

P is for… Petraeus

The general who masterminded the “troop surge” in the Iraq War, he is now in command of the troops in Afghanistan, replacing General McChrystal who was fired for a series of unwelcome remarks.

Q is for… The Queen

This was the first election where it was thought that the Queen might need to intervene. She didn’t though.

R is for… Referendum

The Lib Dems wanted PR, then a referendum on PR, then AV. In the end, they got a referendum on AV. The conservatives plan to campaign for the “No” side and Labour should do likewise.

S is for… Smoking Ban

The Labour government had planned a review of the Smoking Ban five years after it was introduced. This will not happen under the new government.

T is for… Twitter

This was supposed to change the election. All it did was change the columns in the Guardian. A “social networking site” for political obsessives.

U is for… Underdog

During the election, Gordon Brown and the Labour Party tried to present themselves as the “underdog”. It worked for Rocky, after all.

V is for… VAT rise

One of the main features of the Emergency Budget was to raise Value Added Tax to 20%, after the previous government lowered it from 17.5% to 15%

W is for… Website

Please vote for mine in the Total Politics Blog Poll. Click the button on the right or this link here.

X is for… X-factor

Simon Cowell, famous for manufacturing Pop Tarts through TV “talent” shows came out and supported, to everone’s surprise, the Conservative Party.

Y is for… Youtube

YouTube never really took off in politics, after the Tory Party launched “WebCameron” featuring the Conservative leader washing dishes.

Z is for… Zac Goldsmith

The Tory MP who ousted former Lib Dem London Mayoral candidate Susan Kramer, it was published in 2009 that he had “non-domiciled” tax status.

On commence "le blogue"

Bonjour!

Today was the first day “on placement”. Woke at 0530 for the flight from Birmingham to Nice.

I like flying, generally. This flight was not quite so pleasant as I would say almost all the other passengers were British holiday-makers. I got stuck next to a bloody child screaming “I want to sit by the window”. However, I was sitting by the window and didn’t want to move.

What could I possibly do? Sit there and listen to the kid carry on and get angry looks for the rest of the flight? No! I took out a copy of L’Étranger (an obviously French book) and started to read it. I pretended to be French and unable to understand what the kid wants, it also rendered the family to scared and embarrased to try to ask me to move. First victory before I’d even taken off.

Arrived at about 1400 (local time) to be greeted by my, not boss exactly, but the man to whom I answer. I’m incredibly grateful for this, as it got me off on exactly the right foot. Plenty of chatting en francais as I arrived at my appartement to sort out things with the landlady. The flat is excellent; large room etc. I like the housemates too, which is… a plus.

I won’t go on about my days in detail, but I think one lesson for today is that the French supermarkets don’t give you bags. For anyone else worried that they might struggle when they arrive: Not only do I feel that I can get by suitably well in conversation, but they do as well. (I heard them saying so, too!)

Contrary to popular stereotypes, les francais are pretty friendly, but that might just be the 15-or-so Socialists I met today.

I think it’s fairly clear that everything is absolutely sorted; I’m blogging which means I have internet, after all!

A bientot!

PS. I was out for about an hour (with sun cream) and still got midly red. Heh.

Sodagate sorted

A bit of whimsy on what will otherwise be a fairly gloomy (yet sunny) polling day. I’m just about to go off and vote, but now, this:

The day before yesterday, I wrote complaining about how there had been no Cream Soda available in the shops for a week.

Yesterday, I went in to have another go. Well…

Amazing! No Cream Soda for a week, I write a post bemoaning this fact, and the next day, voila!

It was even 2 for 80p as a way of saying sorry.

Coincidence? I think not. Behold the power of the Internets.

Blogging and Twitter

Leaving aside the confusion that I am going to twitter about blogging about twitter, it’s worth looking at my previous post explaining Twitter.

On my birthday (coincidentally), Tom Harris MP wrote a post asking whether “Twitter is more leftie than the blogosphere”. /

I ask this because when I check my Twitter feed, it tends to contain slightly less criticism of the government — in fact, less politics in general.

In fact, it’s almost certain that there is “less politics” due to the fact that on Twitter, the chatter is a lot more inane, “so-and-so is making a cup of tea” or “watching the Apprentice” as opposed to “such-and-such dislikes the third reading of the South West transport bill!”

Blogs are, in contrast, a more personal space. The chances are that like searches for like. Harris concludes that blogs are like dinner parties, while Twitter is like the pub. I’m certainly inclined to agree, based on my previous post.

Though, this should provide an opportunity, as blogs define themselves in the search for an identity. By having a space for “intellectual” (longer) thoughts, and a space for “who cares-ities” (“X is going to the shops!”) the two become more distinct.

The overlap would be the Livejournal; the internet diary. Many people use blogges to talk about their morning toast or their yoga lessons in more depth than the average tweet would allow.

We might even be rid of the “Hi. How are you?” “Hi. Didn’t you read my Twitter from 3 minutes ago?”

A tweet in the hand is worth two on the net

I’m on the blogosphere, I’m on the Facebook, I’m on the Blackberry and now I’m on the Twitter. The Twitter website was established all the way back in 2006, but in recent weeks the Twitterers have come home to roost, along with all the associated awful puns and weak metaphors.

The “deal” with Twitter, for any middle-aged readers who might wish to engage with one of the “young people” we hear so much about, is that it provides a forum in which you can post your least important thoughts, 140 characters at a time. Sceptics will say that Twitter is basically identical to Facebook, but with all the features removed except for the status updates. Instead of online friends whom you’ve never met, you now get ‘followers’.

The concept of followers is interesting; they are not stalkers, but it certainly makes any would-be stalker’s life a lot easier. Find your celebrity of choice, hopefully one that really wants to “engage with the youth” (politicians are probably best for this), follow them on Twitter, and then follow them in real life. If the terrorists get hold of Twitter, the west is doomed.

The reverse is also true, for all the furore over Britain becoming a Big Brother state, people seem to be more than willing to give up their personal information on Facebook. The police no longer need to invest millions in security cameras and CCTV; they just need to get a Twitter account. Fortunately for the libertarians, the only people anywhere near the British government who come close to understanding Twitter are Alastair Campbell and John Prescott, who like to advertise their own blogs rather than tell us when they’re making a cup of tea. Twitter seems perfectly suited for ‘proper news’ items, like when it snowed in Bath earlier this year and the University told us that lectures we cancelled. However, the meaning of news is notoriously flexible.

During President Obama’s State of the Union Address, it was revealed that Members of Congress were tweeting or twittering throughout with important information like “the best seats are reserved for the Senators”. A small number of MPs have tweeted in the middle of Prime Minister’s Questions. Surely, if someone is busy typing on their Smartphone while they are supposed to be listening to something, it means they are not paying attention, and advertising that very fact.

So Twitter has become very popular in media and political circles grasping for any sort of relevance. The problem is not that their ideas and thoughts are too complex, but that they jump on any sort of gimmick that lessens the credibility of institutions in desperate need of authority. Through descending to shorter and more inane chatter, they have confused new with good.   

I’ve often said that the process of blogging is like talking to an empty room. By comparison, Twitter can only be described as talking to a very crowded room, with everyone else talking at the same time, frantic to make their own voices heard.