Brexit as identity politics?

Our very favourite Lefty ex-banker economist has had a revelation...

Are we Remainers making a simple mistake about Brexit?

What I mean is that we think of Brexit in consequentialist terms – its effects upon trade, productivity and growth. But many Brexiters instead regard Brexit as an intrinsic good, something desirable in itself in which consequences are of secondary importance.

Well... duh.

I believe that's the sort of phrase that the kids are using these days.

But yes, Chris, that is pretty much correct. Many of us who try to think about such things would prefer that Brexit has as little consequences as possible but, yes, we do view Brexit as a good thing in and of itself. We tend to believe that the European Union should not exist at all but, given that it does, the UK should not be part of it.

From my point of view, this is largely because I want to sack our shitty governments—rather than have the same shit carry on because, actually, our government has no real power to change anything. This is, I'll admit, a very high level view because I simply cannot be arsed to write a detailed response—other than the myriad of posts currently on this blog.

So, yes. Well done.

The height of naivety

The Very British Dude has, in recent months, written some of the best Remain arguments I have seen—they were not convincing enough to make me change my mind, but they have been eloquent enough to make me, at least, consider my premises.

However, his open letter to Junker is—whilst the sentiment is spot-on—I'm afraid to say, incredibly naive and, worse, just plain silly.

If, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland votes as expected to remain in the European Union, you should not take it as an endorsement.

Britain is a great nation, once the hub of the greatest Empire the world has ever seen, a victor at the centre of alliances, in three centuries of conflict, and the mother of Parliaments.
...

We expect the European Union to realise that we on these islands will not ever be part of some 'United States of Europe', and we don't think France, Poland, Italy or Germany, or any other great nation of Europe should be expected to either.

Why am I irresistibly reminded of this chap...?

Oh yes—it's because the Black Knight shouted out a challenge, lost the fight catastrophically, and then remained shouting impotently from the sidelines.

It's fucking pathetic.

We, if forced to choose, will never choose Europe.

Don't be ridiculous, Dude. We are being forced to choose—you do recall that we're having a referendum, right? And if, as you fucking recommend, we choose to Remain then we will, indeed, be choosing Europe.

We expect the European Union to realise that we on these islands will not ever be part of some 'United States of Europe', and we don't think France, Poland, Italy or Germany, or any other great nation of Europe should be expected to either.

The European Union exists to facilitate trade between free peoples, and to solve problems best dealt with at an international level.

Yes. And you know how you can best solve Europe's current problems?—with a sodding United States of Europe!

As I have recently highlighted, you cannot solve the Euro problem without a unified political policy and a central European Treasury.

If you vote Remain, you are voting to become part of a United States of Europe (USE). Yes, Liar Cameron's fabled "renegotiation" might have slowed the pace of the UK's integration into this entity, but that's all it is—a delay.

In general, the polls show that younger people are far more likely to embrace the Remain side. So all that the political Establishment—both our own, and the EU's—have to do is wait another decade or so, and resistance to the UK being part of this USE will be weakened. If they decide to play the long game—something that the EU political Establishment is very good at—and wait for 20 years, then there will be no criticism whatsoever.

This is the last plausible chance, that I can see, to stick two fingers up at this project. If we don't, then we are shackled to this project for as long as it lasts—and the EU elites have shown us that they will do anything (currently politically possible) to realise this USE vision.

In twenty years, if we vote Remain, Britain's youth will be urging them on.

No, I am not a corporation—and the charities should shut up

The thoroughly sound blogger, Dick Puddlecote has been rather kind about your humble Devil, re: the whole Fake Charities thing.

Mr Puddlecote, quite rightly, points out that I did not do it because I was in the pay of some shadowy corporation, conglomerate or think-tank—I funded the whole thing out of my own pocket and my own time (as did the volunteers who helped).

You will hear a lot of bluster from the charities who have been caught with their hands in the nation's till over this; they will try to blame corporations, or perhaps those nasty think tanks and their shadowy funders. But it is incontestable that this egregious abuse of taxes was first discovered by a guy who just enjoyed recreational political writing; was never paid for his work; did it in his spare time; and just knows a wrong 'un when he sees it.

It was a victory for the blogosphere and was a grass roots campaign which has gone from a corner of the internet to the upper echelons of the state, resulting in a rule which is - as we speak - prompting 'charity' meetings up and down the country to formulate plans as to how to keep their noses in the trough.

Quite so.

The charities and their various hangers-on are accusing the government of "silencing free speech".

This is a total fucking lie.

Charities can still say precisely what they want: they just cannot use money—extracted by force from you and me—to do so.

Good.

No—I'm Squander Two!

Squander Two has penned a superb post outlining the reticence (or, rather, politeness) of many non-Lefties on Facebook. Often in the face of considerable provocation from the Lefty "echo chamber".

Some of my friends agree with me about lots of things, and we can have a good old eye-roll together about how people genuinely thought Ed Miliband was Prime Minister material. (No, really, they did.) Some of them agree with me about almost nothing but are perfectly happy to have a good-natured argument with no hurt feelings. And some live in the Lefty Echo Chamber, in which case I do the sensible thing and don't talk about politics, because disagreement confuses and upsets them, and — and this is the crucial bit — they're my friends. I don't particularly want to confuse and upset my friends. As the old proverb says, better to offer another slice of cake than to laugh about Ed Balls. (Though I understand Yvette does both.)

Facebook, Squander Two maintains, should be treated like your living room. However, many people are unable to do so.
But even most of my friends who are willing to have an argument still have one foot in the Lefty Echo Chamber. What else could explain their reaction to the election result? Not just disappointment or upset but sheer uncomprehending bafflement. They have almost no experience of the existence of Tories, yet it turns out loads of people voted for them. Who are these people?

These people are the ones nodding and smiling. You know lots of them — statistically, unless you're in Scotland, it is highly likely that around half your friends voted Tory. Hey, some of your friends probably voted UKIP. Yes, even though you've been calling them "evil stupid Nazis" for years, to their faces. They still did it. They just didn't tell you. Because they knew, with absolute certainty, that you'd be an arsehole about it.

Yes—we know at least one young lady who might fit that bill, eh?

Anyway, the whole thing is long and so damn right. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you read the whole thing...

Last orders at The Devil's Kitchen

As regular readers might have noticed, your humble Devil has been struggling to comment on politics for some time—the last couple of years, really.

A number of factors have contributed to this: the loss of anonymity has, though my choice, has made a difference, of course; as has the fact that there are only so many times that one can write the same thing over and over again.

Further, when your humble Devil started blogging, those of us who were of different political opinions still adhered to certain standards of evidence and honesty: that sense of brotherhood has disappeared with the introduction of the financially-backed party political sites.

This has accompanied the ever-accelerating disappearance of those bloggers whom I considered a daily read: not because I agreed with them, but because they made me think, and they made me laugh.

Most importantly, unlike when The Kitchen first opened, I am actually happy in my personal life—I have a fantastic wife and a job that I love.

And it is this last item that has led to this final announcement: I now spend most of my life involved in my work, building and creating things that make people's lives better.

Shortly, I am to take an enhanced and, possibly (at some point), more public role in the business. This is, I feel, incompatible with maintaining The Kitchen—especially given the way that I feel about politics and political blogging anyway.

As such, I am giving my loyal army—of readers, contributors, enemies, political foils and brothers in arms—notice that, in the next couple of weeks, this blog will be retired. Initially I shall put it behind a login and then, after taking a back-up, I shall (probably) delete it.

The Devil's Kitchen has been running since January 13th 2005: in that time, there have been 6,005 posts; 3,776,324 page loads and 3,089,579 unique visits—with my best day (when I published a post assessing the state of the code released during ClimateGate) amassing 24,598 unique visits in just 24 hours.

I think that I can claim the rather more dubious accolade of coining—and embodying—the word "swearblogging".

I am also pleased that the phrase and concept of "fake charities" has also entered the blogging lexicon—not least through my setting up of the site that enabled people to check whether such organisations take government money. I hope to be able to upgrade and refine that resource soon.

Quite apart from the fact that the catharsis which The Kitchen enabled—and which kept me going through some very dark days—I have also met some incredibly nice people through this blogging lark, many of whom I have had great fun with, and who I hope that I shall continue to see.

However, despite all of this, I have felt for some time that politics is an utterly futile endeavour. For the last few years, I have found that my work has allowed me to make a real difference to people's lives (not least my own) in a way that politics—let alone the libertarian position that I occupy—can never do.

Remember, politicians only ever make your life harder—they never make it better, or easier: you have to do that for yourself. And I have found that this positivity is far more healthy and rewarding than wallowing in the stye of negativity and managed decline that is the political arena.

And so, for all of the reasons above, The Kitchen will close within the next couple of weeks. And for good this time.

I shall maintain my online presence through my portfolio site (and I might even update it occasionally!). I shall even still Tweet occasionally about politics. I am also (for those who are interested) pretty active, experimenting with interesting CSS, over at CodePen.

It is my intention, too, to start up a new blog: this will be concerned with technology, software development, management, the exciting developments in HTML5 and CSS3, and the web in general: those who might find such a thing interesting can drop me a line, and I shall let you know when it's up and running.

Until then, thank you—all of you: readers, writers, friends, enemies, colleagues and acquaintances. I have had so many opportunities that I never would have had without all of you. I have had the chance to meet some of the politicos that I excoriate, and the researchers who I slag off; I have had the chance to influence policy, and to drink enormous quantities of free booze. I have partaken of bad tempered political arguments, and still been stood a round; I have met people, both interesting and articulate, who made me very welcome in London when I moved from Edinburgh.

So, until we meet again, farewell to all my friends and enemies—it's been a blast!

UPDATE: thanks to all of you who have left comments, sent messages, etc. I am particularly delighted that I was able to introduce so many people to libertarianism: since I discovered that philosophy through the blogs of others, I am happy that I have been able to, as it were, pay it forward...

Medical bleg

Can anyone help me to find the total deaths attributed to iatrogenesis in a single, recent year in the UK (preferably 2011)?

Google seems to be remarkably unhelpful, since the first few pages of results give figures for the US, or scenarios for particular conditions—such as CJD or AIDS—or are from highly suspect sources, such as chiropractic websites.

The most common figure that I can find is astonishingly high—can it really be true that doctors kill some 52,000 people a year by being utterly crap?

Oh, and if anyone thinks that I want these figures in order to launch a sustained attack on the medical profession then let me assure you that nothing could be closer to the truth.

So, anyone...?

Great minds, and all that...

Back in December, the wife wrote the following in a short post musing on the Welfare State...

Seriously? No, seriously?

Just cut out the middleman and let rich people sponsor a poor person. There would be less waste in the long run, jobs for council workers (the OKCupids of wealth patronage!), and a powerful social impact.

After all, why give your money to charity when you can give it to your own impecunious client?

... and today, Blue Eyes posts one of his increasingly infrequent missives.

I’ve got an idea.

Instead of running an entitlement-based welfare system where Parliament decides the rules and then makes up taxes to pay for it, how about a sponsorship system. The system should match up contributors and recipients in, say, a local area and provide information for the sponsor. The sponsor would get to see how the people he/she is funding are getting on and the sponsored might be encouraged to persuade the sponsor that he/she is getting value for money. Sponsors might even want to give advice to their mentorees to help them get on in life.

Those wanting to receive money from benefactors should have to provide certain information in return for their money: what is the money going on, how are the children getting on at school, how is the job hunt going?

If all this sounds quite intrusive to you then that is the idea. It’s about time the relatively small number of people who pay for the huge all-encompassing welfare machine got a little bit of influence on it.

Sounds good to me.

One of the biggest problems with the Welfare State is that the recipients truly believe that their money comes to them—not as charity, nor as pay-outs on insurance payments that they have made—but as of right.

Which, of course, partially it is. The idea that one should be ashamed of living off the hard work of others has long gone; similarly, as politicians have sought to bribe ever larger and more biddable swathes of the electorate, the idea that one should first have to pay into the system in order to get anything out of it has become similarly redundant*.

Long-time readers will know that I consider the National Insurance Act of 1911 to be—as viewed over the long term—one of the stupidest and most evil acts ever passed by a British government. (Had it remained as it was intended—that is, buying Friendly Society memberships for those who could absolutely not afford them—then its consequences might have been mitigated.)

As it turns out, that Act simply started the rot.

Because the doling out of subsequent monies to those who have never paid a penny into the system—and which often rewards them for doing the most perverse things, such as having myriad children which they can neither afford nor properly care for—must be some of the wilful, stupidest and downright evil acts in history. Especially, I say again, the bit about encouraging them to have children.

So, as an alternative to simply stopping these payments overnight, perhaps we should consider Blue Eyes's and Bella's proposals...

* Unless, of course, you do actually pay in—in which case you must prove you have done so in order to get a brass farthing of your insurance. Especially if you are freelance.

Chocolate fucking oranges

No, that is not a euphemism but, instead, the subject of a thoroughly Devil-like post written by Dick Puddlecote.

The Mars Bar has long been considered a reliable measure of inflation, but we can now add the Chocolate Orange as a telling indicator of our country's appalling political class.
Ed Miliband has attacked David Cameron for failing to stop the sale of cut-price Chocolate Oranges - something the PM complained about in opposition.

In 2006, Mr Cameron criticised WH Smith for discounting chocolate rather than fruit despite the UK's obesity crisis.
Here we have two walking, talking broom handle politicians exhibiting how extremely wrong British politics has become, for four reasons.

Chocolate Oranges are one of life's little treats. The overwhelming majority of the public like them. Indeed, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't like chocolate.

Yet here we are with two leading politicians arrogantly competing to be the one who appears toughest on making that treat more difficult to enjoy. This isn't a mind-altering drug we're talking about here - legal or otherwise - merely a fucking Chocolate Orange!

Secondly, the hideous mindset of the modern politician is of the opinion that they have the right to interfere in decisions of a business - any business - for even something as trivial as a fucking Chocolate Orange! Again, this isn't instant debilitating, excruciating infection such as e.coli in question; no pressing need for regulation on an environmental health kind of level (though I'd argue it's debatable if even that should be handled by the state).

No. They feel empowered to intervene to the degree of a few arse-wibbling pence, on some absurdly minute chance that someone will be tempted to grab armfuls of them to eat in a hedonistic orgy of gluttony ... and then, presumably, carry on doing so for decades before succumbing to diabetes and dying.

Statisticians would punch you in the face if you suggested they waste their time calculating the risk of death from 30p off a fucking Chocolate Orange from WH Smith's, yet the Prime Minister—let me say that again, the fucking Prime fucking Minister—and the leader of the bastard opposition both consider this subject worthy of creating policy.

Just go and read the whole thing...

A sinner repenteth?

It seems that Jon Worth is having a crisis of faith, engendered by a dose of harsh reality.

What do you do when one of the fundamental things you’ve believed in for years, have spent ages working towards, is actually not anywhere near as desirable as you previously thought?

Why, rethink your position, of course.

The old federalist argument, repeated ad infinitum at Ventotene, drawing on Spinelli’s manifesto, is that the nation state is broken and only supranational democratic structures in Europe (a European federation) can fix it.

This is the essentially the same argument that Nosemonkey has used in my discussions with him (over many years now).

That’s all very well if your systems of representative democracy work OK, but what if they don’t? What if political parties are tired and hollowed out, and beholden to narrow interests and are in awe of the power of the markets? With election turnouts decreasing? With messy multi-party compromises, and leaders ready to ditch the few principles they once had? Why should we expect leadership to be any more enlightened at EU level than is the case nationally just now?

The main problem with this idea is that those who are leading the European Union (and other supranational organisations) are those same people who are elected by this tired, worn-out and ultimately corrupt democracy that Jon has decried above.

Make the EU a representative democracy in the classical sense (government contingent on a majority in parliament, executive proposes legislation that the legislature approves and amends, parties run in elections etc.) tomorrow, and we’re just going to replicate all the disfunction on a continent wide scale.

Actually, what Jon has described there is not "classical democracy"—it is representative democracy. And representative democracy is part of the problem.

Because the problem is disengagement—people don't bother voting because they don't believe that it will make any difference. "They're all the same"; "whoever you vote for the government always gets in"—these sentiments are common-place in the British electorate, at least.

And, as Jon also points out, "the illegitimate technocracy of the past that has lacked citizen involvement and democratic control" is not the answer either: first, because technocratic planners are never as good at planning as they think they are and, second, because people feel even more disenfranchised (and that usually ends with blood in the streets).

My objection—put to both Nosemonkey and Jon (over a pint or two)—have always, actually, been much the same as those raised above, i.e. if nation states' governments are tired and corrupt, how does a supranational government differ? And, of course, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

For what it is worth, I have argued for a long time that national governments are too centralised—hence the electorate's feeling of powerlessness and thus inevitable disengagement.

My argument is that there this centralised model should be replaced by far smaller, more local units of government—with far more power (especially as regards tax-raising) than our local authorities currently have.

The electorate would be able to see the changes that they have voted for—for better or for worse—much more immediately and, as such, would be far more inclined to vote and otherwise engage with the political process.

So, having identified the problems that Jon did, my answer was smaller, more local democracy—not bigger, more remote, supranational governments. And, if those issues that transcend borders are so important—pollution or, if you enjoy that particular scientific perversion, climate change—are so important, then countries can get together to make international treaties (which is more or less how the EU operates anyway).

The difference is that the West is becoming more and more irrelevant in these debates, and increasingly we are hamstrung in these deals by the EU.

Time for a change!

A bit of a surprise, to be honest

I am very happy—given my relative lack of original output this year—to have appear at all in Total Politics 2011 Top Blogs lists.

Your humble Devil has been voted in at number 9 for both Libertarian Blog and Libertarian Blogger.

I have to confess that, in previous years, I bloody well expected to be pretty high. This year, however, I was anticipating not being in there at all and so, ironically, this is the first year that I am really happy to be featured.

As is traditional, I would like to extend a sincere "thank you" to everyone who voted for me and The Kitchen; and, as always, a bigger "thank you" to everyone who continues to read, write and comment here.

I shall endeavour to carry on entertaining you all...

Regards,

DK

The Liberal/Socialist divide...

... is illustrated neatly in this Evening Standard piece on political blogging (found via Guido). [Emphasis mine.]

The right still dominates ... But the left has mounted a fightback thanks to the generous cheque books of the trade unions, which fund sites such as the policy-heavy Left Foot Forward, set up by former Treasury spinner and political heir Will Straw (Jack Straw's son), as well as the irreverent lefty gossip blog Political Scrapbook.

When Ed Miliband was putting together his office after winning the Labour leadership, one of his first appointments was Alex Smith, ex- editor of the union-funded site LabourList, set up in 2008 by the former Labour spin doctor Derek Draper.

We liberals and libertarians write our pieces and, if they are good and people read them, then we might get money from people who willingly advertise with us.

Conversely, those on the Left take fat cheques from vested interests before they even start—and then must ensure that their political paymasters are happy. And, just as in Ed Miliband's case, the political paymasters are all too often the unions.

Interesting, eh?

UPDATE: johnb points out that this is a totally flippant suggestion.

Not sure that's a fair comparison. People on the left like Chris Dillow and I write for the reasons you suggest; meanwhile on the right, the ASI and the TPA are heavily funded by political donors who dictate the direction of content.

Well, yes and no. First, the Standard article does concern itself with the higher-traffic, politically influential end of the blogging spectrum—and the Lefty blogs that said piece mentions fit into that category.

Second, I would class John B as a liberal, rather than a socialist.

Third, the ASI and the TPA are not primarily blogging entities: they are political think-tanks that just happen to run blogs. By comparison, LabourList, Left Foot Forward or Political Scrapbook are primarily blogs—not think-tanks.

Fake Charities once more...

Your humble Devil would like to ask a quick bit of advice regarding FakeCharities.org.

As regular readers will know, it has hopped around a bit—according to server, whim, CMS suitability and time—and I would like to get it settled down. However, it is currently on WordPress (a blogging tool that I am coming to loathe) and I don't think that this is the right medium for this kind of site.

It was the wife who suggested that I should actually convert FakeCharities.org into a wiki—possibly using WikiMedia (the same system that Wikipedia runs on—and run it as a more actively community project.

Could I solicit feedback on that idea—and how many would help out...?

UPDATE: thanks for the feedback. As regards the wiki idea, I would most certainly restrict the contributors. I take the point about not letting it be too "MediaWiki" in its styling: although this is something of a secondary concern, I shall take it into consideration.

The main factor in trying to find the right medium is simply time; neither I nor my original partner in this endeavour has an awful lot of it (far less than when we set the site up originally). As such, it is becoming out of date and thus less valuable as a reliable resource—FakeCharities.org requires lots of contributors to make it work.

I hope that a wiki format might encourage more people to help out.

Total Politics Blog Awards 2011

I see that Total Politics is running the Blog Awards 2011.

Given that your humble Devil's output has been so low over the last year, I can hardly urge you to vote for me—however, I would encourage you to take part since it will be interesting to see how the landscape has changed in the last year or so (quite a bit, I suspect)...

Quote of the day...

... comes from MummyLongLegs on the whole Norwegian atrocity...

Whilst most Governments, most notably the UK, post 9/11, encouraged Islamaphobia and used the resulting fear of Muslims and terrorism in general as a way to terrorise their own people into giving up a lot of their rights whilst accepting legislation that severely limited what rights they had left. Norway did no such thing.

Do go and read the whole article (which I was tempted to quote in full, such is the quality of its blazing common sense).

In the meantime, I am fantastically busy...

More on an EU referendum

Following on from my recent post on why it is not yet time for an EU referendum, James Higham appears to have retracted his previous trenchant view on the matter—referencing Raedwald's similar post and counselling "let's wait".

Times change, the political landscape changes.

DK and I [as part of the Albion Alliance] fell out over this very issue in 2009, at a time when the referendum should have been put. The anti-Out forces were not nearly as well organized and Brown’s mess was fresh in everyone’s minds.

That was the time to do it, not at the end of Cameron’s first term. Three things altered that:

1. Cameron didn’t get his majority;


2. What Radders just described in this post has come about and they are much better organized now.


3. The EU is falling apart and it’s the better strategy to let it now.

This third point is the critical one which tips the balance. If that were not so, then there would still be a cogent case for putting it—an ever-burgeoning juggernaut needs to be stopped somewhere along the line and needs be before it can even ride over piled up bodies of sceptics. However, that does not appear to be the case, the EU appears to have run its course and done its damage, as maybe the deeply cynical global socialists had planned for it to do anyway.

Either way, this is certainly not the time now.

The fact is that those of us who have watched and monitored the colossal amounts of cash being funnelled to pro-EU votes in various countries—not to mention the referendum being re-run in Ireland—knew that the British people simply don't yet understand the sheer scale of the EU's effects on their lives.

Every time that there seems to be some kind of movement against the EU, we see the practice arguments wheeled out: headlines such as "3m jobs 'dependent on the EU'" (lies though they are) are always going to give people pause for thought—and especially at the current time.

But even were we not in recession, these kinds of headlines are likely to turn the current slim rebellion into a vote for remaining within the EU. Things are going to have to get a lot worse before the British public says, "we don't give a fuck. Things are now so bad that we'll take our chances."

That point is slightly nearer than it was. But, then again, perhaps the whole thing will implode before we even need to vote.

In which case, we need to vote for withdrawal far more urgently: this country's reputation would be seriously damaged if it was still part of the EU when it collapses...

A message for the Huffington Post

Via @Charlotte Gore on Twitter, I find this timely rant from sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison. It's called Pay The Writer...



Now, i'm aware that some of what he says about "amateurs ruining it for the rest of us" might apply to bloggers—and we are proud of stealing the bread from the mouths of professional media whores—but his rant about a rich company asking someone to work for free most certainly applies to the Huffington Post.

Yes, as @wallaceme points out, the writers were indeed free agents and they chose to write for the damn thing, but given that it was largely their efforts that built the brand, they might have expected to see some of the cash.

Which is why I have a great deal of sympathy for the lawsuit against the Huffington Post in the US.

Tasini, who wrote more than 250 posts for The Huffington Post on an unpaid basis leading up to the site’s sale, said: “Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern day slaves on Arianna Huffingtons’s plantation”. He said he was suing because “people who create content…have to be compensated” for their work.

The complainant and his lawyers believe that bloggers’ articles helped contribute to approximately a third of the sale value of the site, with about 9,000 people writing for the Huffington Post for free.

I don't necessarily think that these bloggers should win—after all, they signed a contract (I assume)—but I do, nonetheless, have a great deal of sympathy for them. The Huffington Post, after all, has no real assets or brand—other than the content that said bloggers donated.

Still, one can only assume that—even knowing that they won't get a share of any massive fucking payout—people think that the deal is worth it. After all, there appears to be no shortage of people signing up to the UK edition.

Guido welcomes Huffington

Guido has put out something of a challenge to the Huffington Post—due to hit British shores imminently.

Far from being daunted Guido welcomes the competition convinced it will spur us to work harder to break more stories first. She’ll find us a bit tougher than her past rivals. And it won’t be just Guido, in politics she’ll be up against Ashcroft’s growing online political media empire; ConservativeHome, PoliticsHome (a fellow aggregator), ePolitix, Dods, BiteBack, and TotalPolitics. Aside from the billionaire’s stable the NewStatesman’s Staggers and the Spectator’s soon to be ramped-up CoffeeHouse will not cede ground without a fight. Iain Dale’s return with his The Daley posse[*] will give her a run for her money on political comment and he is her match when it comes to grabbing media attention. On the user generated commentary front she is up against the well-established Guardian’s Comment is Free and the newer rival right-of-centre The Commentator.

Of course, having sold the Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million, Arianna Huffington is quite rightly being sued by her writers who have never been paid—let alone seen any of AOL's largesse. For fuck's sake, even Guido pays his minions...

* Yawn.

He's more machine now, than man...

... twisted and evil...

Well, ish.

Thanks for all of the sympathy, o loyal readers: in the end, my dentist—who is very good—managed to fill my front tooth and managed to sort out the right molar with deft use of filling and a titanium pin.

It's back on Monday to sort out the left molar which will be dealt with in similar vein...

Anyway, whilst I am in meandering mode, I would like to bit farewell to two of my favourite and most long-standing blog-reads.

The first actually shut down in April, but I still very much miss that Irish bastard, Twenty Major.

Real life means I’ve got no time to do the blog the way I want to do it anymore and I think it’s better to announce it than let it fade away.

Thank you to all the readers and contributors. I know there’s a nice little community here but maybe it’ll re-emerge somewhere else. If it does, let me know. Thank you to all the interesting, intelligent and decent people who have spent time on here down the years. I’ll miss the chat and the laughs but that’s life.
...

Take it easy, I wish those of you who aren’t total cunts all the very best.

One can only hope that he is, somewhere, still smoking in Irish bars.

The second blog riding off into the sunset—though perhaps not terminally—is that of my friend and all-round good egg, The Englishman.

It has been a busy seven days; I became a Grandfather, resigned from my job, turned fifty and have just been offered a new job that I hadn't applied for. It is only part time and for three months, I turned down the chance of full time as I still have other irons in the fire. But I think it will be really interesting and the workplace is wonderful and fascinating. And there is every chance the contract will be extended.

However I will be a small speck on the cogwheels of State, with Her Majesty and Her Ministers as my ultimate employers and being a loyal and humble servant it is probably only fitting I am no longer rude about their infinite wisdom.

This isn't a "I will never blog again" post because this blog and you, the readers, have given me so much fun and education over the last seven years that it would be hard to draw it to a close. It just marks that there may be changes and unexplained haituses.

Let us hope that he does, indeed, return.

And in any case, o Englishman, I shall see you at the chilli cook-off: that will have to be compensation for not reading your pellets of wisdom every morning...!

A grave concept error

In his own inimitable style, ChickenYoghurt takes issue with Mad Nad Dorries's claim (in an interview with the Sunday Times, and reported at The Nadine Dorries Project*) that the UK has a "socialist elite".

I for one am cockerhoop at this news. Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice! There’s me thinking we toil under the stern gaze of emotionally retarded millionaires and other assorted neo-liberal sociopaths when all the time we’ve been living in a Marxist paradise. At last I can stop bitching about the government and enjoy the utopia I’ve hitherto failed to notice flowering around me.

Ah, well... The trouble is, CY, you've made rather an error here. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not there is a socialist elite in the UK, you have made the schoolboy error of assuming that—if there were—that this elite would have the slightest interest in making your life any better in any way whatso-fucking-ever.

They wouldn't. Just think of the kind of champagne socialists** you know that would make up this so-called elite—do you seriously think that they have any desire to improve the lives of ordinary people?

Tired comparisons they may be but—lest ye be tempted to point out that Brown and Blair were not real socialists—do you think that the elites of Soviet Russia, the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia or Communist China had any interest in the wellbeing of their peoples? I think not.

So it is a grave error to assume that you'd notice any sort of Utopia even if the UK was run by a socialist elite...

* Is there really a need for this site? Is there a blog out there called the Roger Irrelevant Project...?

** I assure you that the fact that both of my examples work for the tax-dodging, hedge-fund investing Scott Trust Ltd is purest coincidence.

Journalism vs. Blogging

Via Ben Goldacre on Twitter, I find this short but quite interesting article on the difference between journalism and blogging.

The article doesn't really point out anything that established denizens of the blogosphere will not already know, but I did like the fact that it condenses the whole argument into this rather neat little infographic.


It is the bottom-up transparency that is so important in blogging, I think: as the medium has become more mature, bloggers have started to become sloppy about linking to data and sources. This is a bad thing, but not entirely unexpected.

In the early days (and yes, I do consider myself to be one of the early UK political bloggers), we linked religiously to sources because we simply did not have the credibility of journalists: not only that, but we had something to prove—that we were happy to be held to account quickly and easily.

Whether that landscape has changed now is an interesting question: I do think that the political blogging landscape has changed in many ways, not least in the fracturing of the "political blogging community" into far more hardened party political lines: I regard this as being something of a pity but, once again, perhaps inevitable.

Anyway, I thought that it was an interesting digression...

UPDATE: since these things obviously go in trends, Gary Andrews has his own discussion of the changes in the blogosphere...

And when blogging was relatively new, it was a mixture of the enthusiasts, who could work blogging into a job, and those who had more time on their hands who led the charge.

Now many of those who led the charge are busier or have made a reasonably good fist of trying to monetise their blog.

Certainly those who blogged for fun – and are probably still leading proponents of blogging – have less time or work on a blog that pays. It’s become more professional, that’s for sure.

So where does this leave the professional amateur, the person who takes pride in their blog but holds down a day job and possibly a relationship, maybe with kids too? There’s only so many evenings you can stay up until the wee hours blogging merrily away.

Increasingly, I suspect, those early waves of professional amateurs have either got a career out of it or got out, bar for the occasional update on a semi-dormant blog (hey, I never said I wasn’t using myself as a case study).

Gary's argument is basically that the old hands either run out of time, or go professional: but, of course, there will be a new generation of exciting new bloggers coming through...