And another thing…

SOME politicians are very protective of their private lives. Others prefer to splash every detail in the hope of garnering some positive PR.

Personally, I’ve tried to find a middle way: although Carolyn is frequently pictured with me, we never allow pictures of our boys to be published anywhere and I don’t even refer to them by their real names on this blog. At the same time, this is a personal blog so inevitably some details of life at Casa Harris emerge from time to time.

But this is as blatant and as cynical an example of shameless politiking as I’ve ever seen. As Guido (hat-tip, by the way) rightly asks, I wonder if the blushing bride knew if the photographic memories of her happy day were going to be used for political propaganda?

No wonder the public hate politicians.

SOME bloggers have been unfairly unkind to the Schools Secretary, it transpires.

Guido mocked Ed Balls when this update appeared in his Twitter feed:

Yes, it’s naff and yes, as Guido points out, the grammar is appalling and not what you’d expect from the man in charge of the nation’s schools.

So it’s a relief that it turns out Ed didn’t post it. Neither did any of the many others who have fallen for this spam scam. Any Twitterer who clicks on the link in the Tweet will find their own feed featuring exactly the same message, purporting to be from them. Except it’s not.

GUIDO is unimpresed by The Guardian’s “monomania” over The News of the World hacking story:

Peter Wilby writes The Biggest Media Story in Years – So Why the Silence? Hmm, possibly because it isn’t news that newspapers hack mobiles and has not been since we listened to Diana’s squidgygate recordings over a decade ago.

Fair enough, I suppose. But if the likes of Guido aren’t concerned that a private company may have hacked into people’s phones specifically in order to reveal their personal details in a newspaper, can we assume that libertarian types throughout the country will adopt the same approach to the so-called “surveillance society”?

Guido’s and Tory-supporting blogs’ relaxed attitude to the alleged activities of The News of the World wouldn’t, by any chance, have anything to do with the role Andy Coulson may or may not have played in the scandal?

And if Alastair Campbell, rather than Coulson, had been editor at the time, can we assume that those claiming this is a “non-story” would still be saying that?

I will be intrigued to observe the intellectual contortions performed by commenters in their efforts to justify opposition to RIPA on the one hand, with being “relaxed” about a private multinational (allegedly) going much, much further in the name of newspaper sales.

GUIDO has launched a campaign to force The Times to halt the time-honoured practice of anonymous leader columns following their indefensible unmasking of blogger Nightjack.

Times blogger, Oliver Kamm — like me, longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Blogging alongside Nightjack — has criticised me for my earlier defence of Nightjack’s anonymity because I didn’t substantiate my claim that "NightJack shouldn’t have been exposed because he had the right to be and remain anonymous."

The point, surely, is that the right to anonymity shouldn’t have to be defended: it’s up to others to prove that the destruction of anonymity is in the public interest. I refuse to believe that that case has yet been made.

However, assuming Oliver is sticking to his guns in justifying The Times‘ campaign against Nightjack, will he be responding postively to Guido’s perfectly sensible and well-argued criticisms?

HERE we go again.

My advertising policy on this site is pretty straightforward:

1. No ads from rival political parties to Labour;

2. Er…

3. That’s it with reagrd to this one.

Someone calling himself “A Colleague” had a bit of a fit yesterday in reaction to an advert promoting Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell’s book The Plan: Twelve Bonkers Solutions to Non-Existent Problems. He left this comment on a previous thread:

Why on earth are you letting Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell to advertise their book on your blog???????

Setting aside the self-indulgence of so many question marks, is this person actually  ”a colleague”? Most colleagues whose opinions I value have either my mobile phone number or my private email address. No-one who hides behind a pseudonym can expect me to take his opinion seriously.

As to the Dan Hannan/Douglas Carswell ad and the one below from 38 Degrees, I place these in the same category as links in my blogroll: Douglas Carswell, Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes, Dizzy Thinks are all included. Some Labour people get annoyed at this. yet, try as I might, I just can’t bring myself to care. This is me paying respect to the free market in a very New Labour kind of way: blogs get high levels of traffic if they’re well-written and interesting, not because they happen to be included on Labour bloggers’ blogrolls.

Just don’t get any ideas from this ad, okay?

LAST year I wrote this post about the savages who were responsible for the terrible death of “Baby P”, now acknowledged to have had a name: Peter.

If you want an example of how out of touch some on the left have become in recent years, you only need to read some of their reactions to my statement that it was okay to hate the “people” who had committed this terrible crime. Hatred is a natural reaction and in the circumstances of Peter’s shameful existence and death, an unavoidable one. Grudgingly, I will accept that they must also have justice, but they don’t need our tolerance or our understanding. I have absolutely no doubt that all three individuals had their standard excuses for their behaviour all rehearsed before their trial: they’d had hard lives themselves, so they had no choice but to torture an innocent child to death, yes?

The sentences handed down were pathetically lenient and said a great deal about how much we value the lives of children today. So I’m glad that the attorney general has chosen to intervene to look again at the sentences. I hope it will mean that their stay in prison will be very much longer than they had expected.

Because prison isn’t just about rehabilitation; it’s also about justice and it’s about punishment. These people have to be punished and society has to be satisfied that the punishment is severe. The very notion that the “lodger” could be out in three years is repugnant. Read Guido’s description of the sadists’ behaviour if you have the stomach for it.

Meanwhile, if you fret that a Labour MP should be following the “tabloid agenda” of stirring up hatred against the killers, I’m sure there are plenty other worthy sites that will discuss how awful it is that society isn’t more understanding of this kind of murderous, psychopathic and unutterably cruel behaviour.

OCCASIONALLY I will write a post which will provoke an almost unanimously hostile reaction. Anything on civil liberties, ID cards or state surveillance will do the trick.

Last year, in response to this post, I received more than 200 comments, the overwhelming majority of which were in sharp disagreement with my own viewpoint. At some point in such a thread, a wag will write something lie: “Well, Tom, you’ve received a kicking from the public on this subject so why don’t you admit that you’re wrong?”

Such comments, I assume, are not meant entirely seriously; no-one believes that comments threads on British political blogs are representative of the wider view of the public (the public’s views of the current expenses scandal being an exception, I admit). If the antipathy and downright hatred of the Labour Party among those who comment on this and other blogs were reflected in the electorate, we would have had difficulty reaching double figures in any opinion poll over the last five years (“Just wait and see, the opinion polls are over-stating your support, Labour always leaves the country in a mess and the Tories have to clear it up, etc…” – Johnny Norfolk).

Not that all such comments can therefore be dismissed. Perfectly valid points can and do emerge, even from the screeching and hyper-ventilation of the libertarians who seem to spend most of their waking lives trawling the blogscape for opportunities to vent their ever-present and ever-growing anger.

Which brings me on to the vexed question of why the British blogscape is so dominated by the Right, including Tories but also libertarians. I recently tried to add to the many theories trying to explain this fact, and suggested that timing had something to do with the fact that Guido and Iain Dale are the two most popular political blogs in the country.

But I’m drawn now to the conclusion that, certainly as far as libertarian readers are concerned, the blogscape offers them an outlet and a range of opinions which the mainstream media have never provided. If you’re “mainstream” Left, Right or Centre in your politics, then the blogscape doesn’t really offer much that isn’t already found in newspapers or TV news. But if you’re a libertarian, the blogscape has become your first port of call.

A RIGHT WING blogger named Oberon Houston reckons he’s unearthed a scoop about financial links between this blog and another right wing blogger, Dizzy Thinks (are you still following me at the back there?).

The gist of the post is that an advertisement occasionally featured here is for a holiday villa in which Dizzy may (or may not) have some financial interest. So, Labour blogger hosts ad from which a Tory blogger may benefit. Whoop de doo, as they say. Hold that front page…

Except that the eagle-eyed Mr Houston seems to have missed a far better (by his standards) story, specifically that I carry four ads on my site, three of which are placed by the MessageSpace advertising agency. And MessageSpace was founded by and is still owned by…? Anyone? No? You at the back…? That’s right, Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes.

Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees…

I WAS called today by an Australian journalist who was researching a piece on political blogging in the UK. He asked a question which has become something of a cliché in blogging circles: why does the right wing dominate the blogosphere?

The received wisdom suggests that it’s because Labour is in government and blogging, by its nature, lends itself to oppositional language. I think that might be partly true, but I don’t think it’s the whole story.

Both Guido and Iain Dale started their blogging efforts (I think) in 2004. This was at a time when Labour activists were undoubtedly feeling a tad discouraged in the aftermath of Iraq and the media had started to fall out of love with Tony Blair’s leadership. Although the Tories were hardly in the ascendancy (Michael Howard was leader, after all), there was clearly an appetite in the party for a discussion about its direction in the period up to, and following, the impending general election, an appetite which, arguably, didn’t exist to the same extent in Labour.

Guido, not being a Tory blogger per se, managed to tap into the “a plague on both their houses” mentality which culminated in a combined Labour/Conservative vote share in 2005 of less than 70 per cent.

And Labour and leftie blogs have been playing catch-up ever since.

Either that or most Labour blogs are just rubbish. You pays your money you takes your choice.

AS IS the custom in these parts, I feel I should offer an update on the visitor numbers for this blog during the last calendar month.

April saw an all-time high of 49,773 visitors, up 7.2 per cent on the previous month. That equates to 84,581 page views by 22,675 absolutely unique visitors.

Still small fry compared to the big boys, but not bad for a blog that’s been up for just over a year. Thanks again to everyone who has paid a visit, and special thanks to those who came back!