Oy, what a hectic few weeks I’ve been having. As such, I’ve only just got around to reading Lynne Featherstone’s thoughtful article on Lib Dem blogging and Andy Mayer’s excellent response.

Is the Lib Dem blogosphere too inward looking? Frankly, yes it is and I’m well aware of being a guilty culprit. Jennie Rigg is absolutely correct, at least in my case, to say that too many Lib Dem bloggers use LibDemBlogs as their blog roll. The best I can do by way of a defence is point out that at least we aren’t as bad as the Labour blogosphere, but that isn’t saying very much at all.

Why is this? When I started blogging back in 2003 (ah, Blogger! How I miss thee. Not.), it wasn’t like that at all. In scenes rather reminiscent to the “Dawn of Man” sequence at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lib Dem bloggers would mount dawn raids upon Tory bloggers, Tories would do the same to Labour bloggers, and vice versa. Sometimes we’d even get into conversations with normal people as well. Hubs - or to labour my 2001 analogy still further should I say monoliths? - like LibDemBlogs and ConservativeHome seem to have made us all more insular. Even the Tories lack their crusaders. Iain Dale, Tory blogger par excellence is a commentator not a campaigner.

In this respect, and thankfully in so many other ways, Laurence Boyce is mistaken. Staying on LibDemVoice and firing salvos from there is an exercise in futility - it will ultimately only attract the interest of fellow members and other political obsessives.

I read an article a few years ago talking about the 2004 presidential election, I forget where, which summarised the Democrats’ failure and the Republican’s success as lying in the fact that the Democrats tended to organise in hives (as in bees) like the Daily Kos while the Republicans run in packs (as in wolves). It’s an evocative image that has stayed with me - I even nicked it for an article I wrote a couple of years ago. Talking to Jerome Armstrong a few weeks ago (namecheck, namecheck…) he agreed that was a problem for the Democrats, albeit one which is rectifying itself now. We need to do a bit of dismantling ourselves I feel.

The party’s campaign-themed blogs like Corruption is a Crime, Home Office Watch and Forces Focus are a step in the right direction but as they are written by already busy MPs and their staff they tend to get updated sporadically and tend to be very on message. Neither of these factors do much to invite return traffic or even search engine traffic. What we need is the next step on from that - independent blogs maintained by individuals with a passion for the subject, with occasional contributions from the centre to help it along.

I have to admit my own attempt at doing this a couple of years ago, a blog focusing on intergenerational equity (remember Hands Off Our Future? no? I’m not surprised really), ended up a crashing failure simply because I didn’t have the time to dedicate to it. Yet I’m convinced that a blog on this theme would serve a valuable purpose, both in promoting the issue and helping the party to reach out to people who wouldn’t normally come anywhere near a Lib Dem blog. A quick glance at sites such as HousePriceCrash suggests that there are lots of people out there who feel very strongly about the issue - if only I had managed to maintain my blog given the developments of the last nine months.

It is niches like this that the party ought to be actively seeking out. Finding the activists who are willing to then take a lead on the topic is another story however. As the last few weeks have demonstrated, work pressures often force me underground at the very point at which political campaigning is most needed. During election periods I have to be relatively diplomatic (I said relatively) at a period when I’m sure the party would quite like me to go into rottweiller mode. I’m sure others face the same dilemma.

Fundamentally, the only way to square this circle is for putative campaigner-bloggers to have some degree of self-sufficiency and be in a position where they can afford to take risks. Iain Dale’s popularity came about largely because he spent six months after the Tory leadership election in 2005 doing precious little else. Iain had the contacts and was at a point in his life where that was possible (this isn’t a criticism - quite the opposite - and I hope it doesn’t come off that way). But unless someone starts handing out grants to bloggers, it isn’t something we are all going to be in a position to start doing any time soon.

Is Quaequam Blog! going to become more outward looking and campaign focused? No - this is my home for self-indulgent waffle and for letting of steam after a hard day’s work. It was however the original idea behind The Liberati (hence the silly URI). So many plans, so little time…

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The winners of the 2008 Campaign for Gender Balance blog awards are as follows:

• Best Blog (People’s Choice): Lynne’s Haringey and Westminster Diary
• Best Blog (Judge’s Choice): The People’s Republic of Mortimer
• Best Blog Post: What should MPs look like? (Jo Christie Smith)
• Best Non Lib Dem Blog: Betsan Powys

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Six months ago, I listed the top Lib Dem blogs according to mentions in the “top seven” of Stephen Tall’s weekly Top of the Blogs roundup on Lib Dem Voice. Since we’ve now had a whole year of it, here are the top 20 23 for 2007/8 (numbers in parenthesis are the positions six months ago):

1. (=) Lib Dem Voice - 43 entries (+19)
2. (=) Paul Walter (=) - 36 entries (+17)
3. (+2) James Graham - 32 entries (+19)
4. (+1) Nich Starling - 25 entries (+12)
5. (-2) Duncan Borrowman - 21 entries (+7)
6. (+1) Jonathan Calder - 19 entries (+11)
7. (-4) Stephen Tall - 15 entries (+1)
8. (=) Alex Wilcock - 14 entries (+9)
9. (-1) Linda Jack - 9 entries (+4)
10 = (+7) Jeremy Hargreaves - 8 entries (+6)
10 = (-2) Jonathan Wallace - 8 entries (+3)
12 = (+17) Anders Hanson - 7 entries (+6)
12 = (+2) Mark Valladares - 7 entries (+4)
14 = (new) Jo Angelzarke - 6 entries
14 = (new) Gavin Whenman - 6 entries
16 = (+13) Jonathan Fryer - 5 entries (+4)
16 = (-2) Chris Keating - 5 entries (+2)
16 = (-4) Matt Davies - 5 entries (+1)
19 = (new) Peter Dunphy - 4 entries
19 = (+10) Jock Coates - 4 entries (+3)
19 = (-5) Jonny Wright - 4 entries (+1)
19 = (-5) Rob Fenwick - 4 entries (+1)
19 = (-7) Liberal Review - 4 entries (=)

The top ten has barely changed, but it is interesting to see what is bubbling under. The top climbers over the past 6 months have been Jeremy Hargreaves, Anders Hanson, Jo Angelzarke and Gavin Whenman. Stephen Tall high position has stagnated as he concentrates mainly on Lib Dem Voice these days while Liberal Review, in many ways the precursor to Lib Dem Voice, is barely updated these days. Expect next year’s list to be completely different.

A final point about the Campaign for Gender Balance awards, of which I am a judge (VOTE NOW): 6 of the eight finalists for Best Blog and Best Blog Post don’t make it into the top twenty. Clearly what people read and what people like are not quite the same thing.

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What is Alex Harrowell on? He has taken it upon himself to take me to task for calling Respect-cum-Conservative defector Ahmed Hussain a “socialist jihadist“, describing me as “offensive, stupid, illiberal and anti-democratic, not to mention libellous.” Well, I’ve been called worse.

If I had been shooting a little less from the lip, I would have been more precise in my language and described Hussain as a socialist and an apologist for jihadism, but if this disagreement boiled down to pure semantics, it probably wouldn’t have got this far: the essential difference between a jihadist and one who makes excuses for them is a fine one indeed. Harrowell demands I show my evidence. It isn’t difficult:

So the war in Iraq will continue. But what attitude should the global anti-war movement take towards the fighting? Many activists are wary of backing the insurgents, both because figures such as al-Sadr are Islamists and because of the tactics—suicide bombings and hostage takings—that some groups have used.

But as Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South points out, “There has never been any pretty movement for national liberation or independence.”

During the great Algerian war of independence of 1954-62, liberation fighters waged an urban guerrilla war that frequently targeted civilians.

“What Western progressives forget is that national liberation movements are not asking them mainly for ideological or political support,” says Bello. “What they really want from the outside is international pressure for the withdrawal of an illegitimate occupying power, so that internal forces can have the space to forge a truly national government.”

Let’s be clear here: whatever the rights and wrongs of the Iraqi invasion - and I am certainly of the opinion that we should not have gone in, the effect was to remove a dictator. It quickly became clear that jihadists were seeking to exploit the situation and impose their own bloody version of government on the Iraqis, a system not supported by the vast majority. They aren’t revolutionaries, they aren’t freedom fighters - they are totalitarians. The SWP are also strong supporters of Hizbollah.

As for providing proof that the SWP advocate violent revolutionary struggle, do I really have to spell it out? Apart from both the links supplied above, there is the simple fact that the SWP is a Trotskyist organisation. Trotsky was a believer in revolution. There ain’t no such thing as an unviolent revolution. Is that really such a contestable fact? If the SWP don’t contest it, then why does Harrowell?

And then of course there is the brute fact (pun intended) of the bruises inflicted on my friends by SWPers for wicked crimes such as beating them in a student union election. For too many SWP members and other Trots, the revolution part is distinctly subordinate to the violent part.

Harrowell then outdoes himself:

But it’s worse than that; the very notion that, as Graham says, there is a “difference between the Lib Dem opposition to the war and the Respect opposition” is repellent. We both opposed it because it was wrong and it was stupid. It has however been a consistent tactic of the Right, and of the Government’s pet columnists, to accuse opponents of the war of being pro-terrorist. It’s always been easier to push this at RESPECT because its membership includes the far Left, who are not respectable, and brown people. But push it they would at the Liberals if there were only more of us.

Wow - I’m part of some grand rightwing conspiracy? News to me. I’m sorry, but there was a difference between the Lib Dem position and Respect/Socialist Alliance/SWP’s. They wanted British troops marched up to the Hague for war crimes; we wanted them home and safe. They sidled up in solidarity with Saddam Hussain; we didn’t. Once the war ended and the insurgency began, we lined ourselves up in solidarity with the democratically elected government; they sided with the insurgents. We are under no compulsion to join hands with the SWP in opposition to the “right” - in the vast majority of cases, we are on the opposite side. To accuse me of racism (that’s the clear implication of the “brown people” reference) is deeply offensive and a slur I would ask him to retract.

Not content with hurling every other name under the sun at me, he also has taken to accusing me of McCarthyism. How he is wrong is quite instructive: Joe McCarthy went around accusing everyone he didn’t like of having secret links with communism and plotting against America. The SWP are communists and are actively plotting against the British state - they don’t exactly make a secret of it. It is awfully inconvenient to Harrowell’s thesis then that I am not calling for them to be locked up or otherwise restricted, merely pointing out that which is blindingly obvious.

Valentine’s Day, a business trip on Friday and other stuff today have conspired to prevent me from writing the “15/2/03 - five years on” article I intended to. It is sad that this is the closest I’ve come to commemorating what was a very special day for me. The Liberal Democrats were absolutely right to go on that march. But do we owe the SWP a thing? Not a bit of it.

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I often slag Guido/Paul Staines off on this blog. The truth is, I don’t like the man’s politics which veer wildly between being an apologist for the Conservative Party under the guise of neutrality and total nihilism.

But the truth is, if he didn’t exist we’d need to invent him. His latest post on Tom Watson is a case in point. Utterly shameless, if ever there was a poster child for all that is wrong with that partcular faction of New-Labour-Same-As-The-Old-Labour MPs, it is Comical Tommy.

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There’s been a weird rumbling noise in Islington today and I’ve been trying to work out what it is.

But at last I have the answer. It’s Emily Thornberry grinding her teeth.

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One thing I’ve been pondering about this evening…

I write a lot of sarky, piss-taking posts on this blog. Sometimes I’ll have a rant about something that I’m not being entirely serious about but which lets off a bit of steam.

The thing is though, what often happens is people take me rather too seriously. Worse, I often kind of forget that I was only really being half-serious at the time and set about defending myself as if it was the most important point of principle ever.

So, to try and ameliorate this, should I include some kind of traffic light system to remind both myself and the reader what my state of mind was when I wrote each article? And how could I stop myself from sarcastically mis-labeling certain blog posts in the interests of winding people up? Is this Hell?

I’m reminded of one of my favourite Simpsons moments:

Teen1: Oh, here comes that cannonball guy. He’s cool.
Teen2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Teen1: I don’t even know anymore.

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A few points…

Roger Gale describes the Conway incident as a “witch hunt“. One has to wonder why the Standards and Privileges Committee would do such a thing if that were the case, since if Gale is to believed surely all MPs would be liable for the same treatment. Surely mutual interest would prevent such a witch hunt from ever happening? MPs don’t look like they are in the mood to make something out of nothing at the moment, particularly given the daily grind of “sleaze” churning out of the tabloid press on a daily basis. Plus, if Conway is being persecuted, why the apology? Why doesn’t he stand his ground?

Guido is somewhat more on the money by implying that Cameron is dithering here. We’ve had the admission of guilt from Conway; why does he still have the Tory whip?

Over at Iain Dale’s Diary, Iain makes the perfectly valid point that he is not about to rat on a friend. I sympathise - really I do. But given that Iain has always been very quick to point the finger on funding scandals himself - he not only wrote the book on Labour sleaze, he’s published two editions of it - I hope he will accept some responsibility for his friend’s downfall. The reason the outcry has been so great is that unlike most of the current crop of Labour sleaze stories (but like the Abrahams and cash for peerages incidents), this is a genuine scandal. By over emphasising these, Conway’s fate to some extent has been sealed. You can’t brag about your growing influence with one hand (which I don’t question), while denying you helped create the political weather for this with the other, Iain.

Notwithstanding the fact that I’ve no doubt occasionally crossed the line, I try my best on this blog not to get carried away by ’sleaze’ - not least of all because I happen to think the general Lib Dem attitude to our own recent funding scandal is a mite complacent. We should be wary of enjoying these too much because we end up creating impossible standards that no-one can live by. People like Wendy Alexander, Alan Johnson and yes, possibly even Peter Hain (haven’t made my mind up fully on that one - as cock ups go, this was a pretty extreme case), ought to be able to pay a fine and move on. The idea that ministerial careers should be destroyed for the misreporting of a few hundred quid is absurd.

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As promised earlier, I’ve added a number of plug-ins to my site:

• creative commons license widget - cos I’ve been meaning to add it for ages
• Subscribe To Comments - because it’s so 2008.
• WP-PostRatings - as an experiment to see if anyone actually uses it.

Hmmm… doesn’t look much like an orgy, does it? In my defence I was going to add a couple more but I didn’t find anything I really liked.

Knock yourselves out!

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One of the more annoying trends of the past few months has been the rise of the spamblog. I’m not sure if that is the correct term for them (although I notice at least one other person refer to them as such), but they are those weblogs, apparently entirely bot created which do nothing other than steal/reference other people’s blog posts in the hope of going up the Google ratings.

I don’t know if it is simply that this site has become more popular of late, but I’ve been bombarded with them recently. Where they get annoying is you end up finding copies of your own post (and others) littering search results (see homeophobia as an example).

Obviously I don’t approve any trackbacks I get from these, but anyone know the best way to scupper them in their tracks? Is there a way one can report them to search engines?

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