Lib Dem Blogs

Blogging update...

Jock — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:57:19 +0000

I got a surprising message on Facebook tonight. It said that since I was in the short list for Lib Dem Blog of the Year at LDV would I like to have an opportunity, as they did last year, to interview the dear leader for my blog. It was the first I knew about it, such has been my head buried in Debian linux code trying to get the new version working some time soon state for the past couple of weeks. But I had a root around on LDV and there it is - I am indeed in the short list. So thank you to anyone who suggested me. I always think my readership stats alone preclude me from inclusion amongst the "big boys" - and my paltry Technorati scores testify as much.

Whilst it would be a wonderful experience I am sure to be there in person to see someone collect the award, as in previous years I cannot attend autumn Federal conference. This coming weekend is our arrivals weekend in halls and the main business of conference is in the hectic Freshers' week. And I'm still fighting with my New Big Server late into the night, almost ignoring the world going on around me. Even once I have the software up and running there will be further delay as I want to redesign the blog. Last year's went too far and it is confusing far too many so watch out for a bit more simplicity I hope!

So, just so you know, I had no idea that I might be in any shortlist, or I would have kept up blogging a bit more - there has been a lot to think about in the past few days and even some exciting stuff going on with Community Land Trusts that I would like to comment on, but for now it's back to trying to get Apache and co working properly. read more »

OneHourAhead

Jock — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:27:15 +0000

Yet another I find to my shame that links to me but not me to him. Anyone who is reading Fred Harrison's "Ricardo's Law" , however, certainly deserves a link!

Do I look bovvered? The Blogs are the losers!

Jock — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 01:27:52 +0000

I have to say with a certain smugness that I was out in the pissing rain and blustery icy wind delivering Lib Dem leaflets while our two men in suits were spitting feathers at each other on John Sopel's lunchtime politics show. And reading some of the blog comments on it, especially, though understandably I guess as the "victim" of the briefing document with which Sopel ambushed Huhne, in the Cleggosphere, I was prepared to be confronted with a truly undignified public school spat complete with debaggings and wedgies.

So, having just now watched it, and having already read the document in question as published by the Huhne campaign team, I did think it was a bit of an unedifying spectacle, but really nothing to get so worked up about as to start talking about bringing "the party into disrepute" or "consign him to the backbenches" or even, from someone who has one blog entitled "Chris Almighty" and another called "The Anti-Chris Blog", a comment that electing Chris would see him resign from the party.

Nick is a big boy. He will have to weather a great deal worse if he is leader. Chris is, tonight, a very silly looking boy, he will have to learn from this - though I have to say that for me, on reading the document (far more useful than watching the spat on television) many of the "inconsistencies" set out in it do ring true in the various things I seen written about Nick's position on the relevant issues compared with what he says himself (hence my earlier confusion in the early part of the contest).

The bigger problem for me is that I don't want someone who rules out vouchers, insurance, the break-up of state monopolies or any of these things that Chris criticizes Nick for, and the fact that in his attempts to clarify his position Nick also seems to rule them all out means I have nobody squeezing me in my "comfort zone" in this election. So I am sticking with Chris, because as I have said many times, I believe the future of the party and the country is in adopting an identifiably Liberal political economy and I believe that means having an economist as leader who can instinctively make those arguments when put on the spot.

Personally, and I realise that with this post I am adding, possibly minutely, to this, I reckon it's the Lib Dem blogosphere and their shrill partisan screams bordering on vitriol, who are the real losers in this spat and I am sure the men in suits will have made up with each other very soon. And actually - if they don't make up, neither of them deserve to lead this party!

Peter Stothard: Lib Dem Alexis Rowell "genuinely represents"

Jock — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:08:57 +0000

Alexis Rowell, of the Belsize Lib Dems blog, gets a fabulous write-up from Peter Stothard of the TLS:

A worm's eye for politics

After decades of living in North London, meeting politicians (too many) and writing about politics (too much), I'm beginning to feel for the first time that I'm genuinely represented by one.

No, not Glenda Jackson, the movie-star-turned-axe-face-of-the-old Left and my veteran Member of Parliament here in the Hampstead part of Camden. There is still some way to go before the House of Commons itself has anything for me.

No, not Lord Adonis of Camden Town, the former Andrew Adonis, the closest thing to a natural TLS-reader in the Blair and Brown governments. His choice of title for his appointed place in the Upper House of our legislature, while pleasing, does not make him strictly any representative of mine.

I do, however, have a local Councillor. He is called Alexis Rowell, a Liberal Democrat, an environmental campaigner, a blogger, a man with a wormery in his garden and good advice on electricity suppliers - and, mirabile dictu, he deals with his constituents about what is happening in the streets around us.

He genuinely represents.

Read the rest at The Times - nice one Alexis! read more »