If the reports that the BBC will close down 6 Music are true, it is a great shame. Of course, this could be seen coming. The BBC has been utterly weak in almost every respect for the past few years, and it is difficult to escape the notion that it is too big, with too many outlets. Of course, when effectively forced to cut back, it will opt to close down the high quality products, rather than those that are merely popular.

6 Music is the only mainstream radio station where you can regularly hear genuinely experimental and alternative music on a regular basis. It is the only station that confounds expectations and delights in challenging the listener.

The Freak Zone is a jewel in 6 Music’s crown, dedicated to playing esoteric music from today and undiscovered gems from the past. For sure, it is a challenging listen at times — but that is the very point.

Similarly, Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service is truly unique. One of the most eclectic playlists I have ever heard is mixed with ponderings on, for instance, the sad beauty of abandoned Christmas trees.

I have effused before about Adam and Joe, which I think was genuinely the best programme on radio. These are just three of the must-listen radio programmes that 6 Music has brought us.

6 Music should have broadened its horizons

There is simply no commercial alternative. In short, it is precisely the sort of thing that the BBC should be doing.

In fact, I have in the past been critical of 6 Music for not being adventurous enough in the past. The BBC does, after all, already have three other major music radio stations, each of which is dedicated to playing different strands of mainstream music. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that. But this should have provided 6 Music with the opportunity to explore the outer reaches of music more freely.

Instead, 6 Music has ended up being slightly unsure of its role. It has come to attain a dual identity. One is that of a genuinely exploratory musical agenda, for discerning listeners who are passionate about the music they already love, and are itching to discover new music.

The other is that of a mere weakened popular music station with a vague indie bent. This aspect made it like a transition station for listeners who have moved on from Radio 1 but can’t yet bring themselves to listen to Radio 2. Hence the travesty of George Lamb. There are plenty of commercial alternatives for these people to turn to. This is an audience that doesn’t need to be catered for by the BBC.

Instead of trying to gain listeners with gimmicky attempts to cater for the masses, 6 Music should have set its sights higher by increasing its quality. It could be transformed into a station that is genuinely dedicated to music that you won’t find on other radio stations.

And there is no need to stop at music. It could encompass culture as a whole. Why shouldn’t such a station also champion alternative comedy, experimental drama and the like? It could be like a well funded version of Resonance FM.

Instead, the BBC appears to have taken the coward’s option. Instead of setting its sights towards enhancing the station so that it becomes a great hub for alternative and experimental culture, it has weakly chosen to throw in the towel. Instead of realising the potential of 6 Music and promoting it properly, the BBC has left it in a corner to gather cobwebs and eventually die.

The BBC’s disregard for experimental culture

This would be palatable if it weren’t for the fact that experimental music has been increasingly marginalised on the BBC’s other radio stations over the past decade as well. As if the passing of John Peel wasn’t enough of a blow to adventurous music on the BBC, the corporation appears to be determined to dismantle every last piece of its experimental music programming.

A decade ago Radio 1’s evening schedule was brimming with experimental music. But the station’s few remaining programmes dedicated to experimental music have all been shunted to shorter, graveyard time slots. To take just one example, Rob da Bank’s programme is on at the truly insulting 5-7am on a Saturday. Meanwhile, Mary Anne Hobbs’s Breezeblock is on at 2-4am on Thursday morning.

New experimental music has all but disappeared from Radio 3 as well. Since Mixing It was removed from the schedules, all that has remained is Late Junction, which has itself been marginalised in recent years.

In short, the BBC is doing less of the sort of programming it should be making, and replacing it with the sort of thing that ought to be left to its commercial rivals.

Absolute to the rescue?

The Times suggested that Absolute Radio may be interested in buying 6 Music should the BBC decide to close it down. It seems to me as though Clive Dickens was merely making a point about the inefficient way the BBC has run 6 Music.

But the idea that Absolute might acquire 6 Music and keep it alive is an interesting prospect. I have find myself being increasingly impressed with Absolute. I am sure that it has taken inspiration from 6 Music as it tries to re-build itself without the Virgin brand behind it.

Like 6 Music, Absolute thinks of itself as a home for good music (although in practice it just trots out middle-of-the-road dad rock). It mixes this with the use of comedians like Dave Gorman, Frank Skinner and Iain Lee as presenters.

This is the exact model that 6 Music has used throughout its existence. The station was launched by Phill Jupitus, who presented the 6 Music breakfast show for several years. Since then, 6 Music has been home to several comedians.

I find it doubtful that a radio station like 6 Music would flourish as a commercial operation. But if anyone can pull it off, it is Absolute. It would be fabulous.

The BBC has failed to convincingly promote digital radio. The lack of publicity is the real reason why 6 Music has so few listeners. Fewer than 10% of Radio 1 listeners are listening on a digital platform. When 6 Music is only available on digital platforms, it is no wonder it appears to perform so poorly. Only one in five people in the UK have even heard of the station. Hence Adam Buxton’s joke that it is “the secret station”.

Yet, over 54% of Absolute Radio’s listeners (approximately 31 minutes in) outside of London now listen on digital. The BBC, with all its supposed marketing might, has failed to generate anything like this sort of result, despite having shedloads of cash dedicated to the exercise.

The BBC is now weak and ineffective. It has failed digital radio, and it is now failing to commit to the very adventurous programming it is supposed to be dedicated to.

I have a horrible feeling inside me that Labour will win the coming general election. The fear has lingered in the back of my head for a while now. Even when Labour were at their lowest, perhaps 18 months ago or thereabouts, the Conservatives’ poll lead was not a great deal to write home about.

Right now the polls say that the Conservatives are roughly eight points ahead of Labour. It’s not all that tight, but you would expect the Conservatives to be doing better given everything that has gone wrong under Labour’s watch.

It’s been clear for a while that voters dislike Labour, but they can’t bring themselves to be convinced by the Conservatives. As a result, the Conservatives are really just a small disaster away from being just a handful of points ahead. And thanks to the corrupt voting system in operation, even if the Conservatives lead by a handful of points, Labour will still win the election.

It’s a prospect that frightens me, because just imagine what Labour would imagine they could get away with if they could still be in government this summer. But I think it is an increasingly real prospect. 2010 is the new 1992.

This is because somehow, despite being one of the most hated people in the country, Gordon Brown always manages to end up on the good side in any story.

I can probably count the number of people that I know like Gordon Brown on the fingers of… one finger. You would think that if you had to conjure up a nothing story that painted a person of your choice in a bad light, the person you would choose is Gordon Brown. Yet, anyone who tries to do it just messes it up.

This bullying story reminds me very strongly of the story a few months back about a “disrespectful” letter that Gordon Brown sent to Jacqui Janes, the mother of a soldier who died while serving in Afghanistan.

The expectation was that everyone would be outraged by Gordon Brown’s callous disregard for British soldiers’ lives. I am sure Mrs Janes envisaged herself being the hero that bashed the final nail into Labour’s coffin, while The Sun was rubbing its hands with glee at the prospect of “wot wonning it” for the Tories again.

In the event, Mrs Janes and The Sun massively overplayed their hand. Instead of being outraged, peopled ended up just feeling sorry for a man who was trying his best, but was hindered by his notoriously poor handwriting and the decreasing quality of his eyesight.

Now, a genuine story about abuse in the workplace has ended up being all about the way a charity is run. Surely Labour cannot believe their luck in this respect. Christine Pratt, co-founder of the National Bullying Helpline, probably dreamt that she was being some kind of modern-day Nelson Mandela when she publicised information about users of the service that was supposedly confidential. Instead, she has faced criticism for this inability to engage brain before sticking the boot in.

You can only imagine that a child-like head rush goes through people who get an opportunity to criticise Gordon Brown like this. It is a shimmering open goal — a massive bullseye target on the world’s biggest bahookie. It is understandable why someone might get a bit too excited at this prospect.

It is a bit like a child riding a roundabout. The kid thinks it would be really great to ride the roundabout as fast as humanly possible. Not only will it be immense fun, but everyone will think you are a hero for managing to go so fast on the roundabout. Instead, what happens is that you end up being sick on yourself, and looking a bit stupid.

There is still a story about Gordon Brown, but only a little bit. The fact is, the revelations about the Prime Minister’s behaviour are not exactly surprising. Mr Brown’s strange behaviour, temper tantrums, and penchant for being violent towards inanimate objects, have been a fairly open secret for a while now.

The macho, bullying culture has been just about the only consistent thread that has run through New Labour since its inception (that is, after all, why Malcolm Tucker has been such a successful character). If these “revelations” about bullying were truly damaging information, the damage would have been done already.

And in fairness, if you were asked to guess which person in the country gets the most angry in his job, you would probably say the Prime Minister, wouldn’t you? It would be a shock if the manager of your local Tesco bawled at his employees on a regular basis. But you’d think anyone working for the political leader of the country would sign up in the full expectation that tensions might be heightened from time to time.

The key reason why this is playing into Gordon Brown’s hands? It is not despite the fact that he’s hated so much. It’s because he’s hated so much. It’s just not cool to kick a man when he’s down. It is, after all, a bit like bullying.

The season will be the most exciting ever, but the title of the DVD will make it sound like a wet Wednesday

In 2006, Fernando Alonso took his second World Championship in scintillating style that went down to the wire. The title of the official Formula 1 season review DVD was “Once Again”, making it sound like your drunk uncle has just wet himself for the umpteenth time.

In 2007, after a tense season-long battle between McLaren team-mates Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Räikkönen amazed the world by snatching the title from both of them in the final race of the season, overcoming a 17 point deficit with two races to go. The DVD was called “Kimi made it at last”, as though he had just come home late from a heavy night.

In 2008 Lewis Hamilton took the Championship in heart attack-inducing style on the last corner of the last lap of the last race. The DVD was called “Luck does not come into it”, which I still haven’t worked out the meaning of.

And the DVD really sold the 2009 season well by calling it “Not in a hurry…”, as if Jenson Button did not have a record-breaking winning streak at the start of the season.

Even if the Championship showdown is host to the first ever alien visit to this planet and is settled with a massive 200mph laser gun fight involving seventeen drivers from the planet Q’txxp’he, it wouldn’t surprise me if the DVD was given some madly dull title like, “I’d rather be watching paint dry”, “Isn’t Corrie on the other side?”, or “I’d stick with watching lawn bowls if I were you”.

Confectionery diffuser face-off

2009 was the year of the Double Decker diffusers. The 2010 pre-season testing period has seen a similar curiosity surrounding the rear end of F1 cars, with teams being notably coy about showing off their behinds.

The concept has now moved way beyond Double Decker diffusers. Among the new types of diffuser will be Red Bull’s Drifter diffuser, McLaren’s Mars Bar diffuser, Toro Rosso’s Curly Wurly diffuser and USF1’s Snickers diffuser. However, once again, Ross Brawn will find the upper hand when he reveals Mercedes’s Boost diffuser.

FOM will fail to improve television coverage

Although Bernie Ecclestone’s FOM is supposedly covering the world’s most technologically advanced sport, the television pictures will still resemble a smudgy YouTube video. Bernie Ecclestone will insist that there is no need for HD coverage because, “my IT guy told me he swears by his old CRT television”.

Despite the decision to give HD the cold shoulder, FOM will stick with their existing on-screen graphics, which are so small that they are actually bloody impossible to read on any 4:3 display. They may be declaring the start of World War III on those captions for all I know.

Intense McLaren Championship rivalry

The title will come down to the wire in Abu Dhabi, with the main protagonists being McLaren team mates Hamilton and Button.

Towards the end of the race, John Button will think he has the upper hand by unleashing his killer move – undoing the last button on his shirt. Little will he anticipate that Anthony Hamilton will win the Championship by staring even more intensely.

Michael Schumacher will be the world’s most superstitious man

Following on from the revelation that Michael Schumacher has a mad superstition for odd numbers, the German will reveal a litany of hitherto unknown superstitions. Among these will be an insistence that his team mate runs with an inferior set-up because “it makes me feel a bit better about my car”.

He will also reveal that he has a special form of OCD that means he just has to brake-test any drivers that are behind him, and cannot stop himself from driving straight into anyone who has just overtaken him. He also has a strong superstition for getting to choose his own parking space, and will park his Mercedes car in Race Control, where he can literally control the race by tampering with the timing system.

No-one will think to point any of this out, because nothing is allowed to get in the way of Princess Michelle’s Fairy Tale Comeback.

Cosmopolitan Valencia will continue grid boy tradition

Valencia’s tradition of having grid boys in addition to grid girls at the European Grand Prix will continue. Coincidentally, Flavio Briatore will make his F1 comeback at the very same race.

New teams to struggle

New teams will be unable to shake off speculation surrounding their ability to see out the season. While the early focus will be on USF1 and Campos, the spotlight will soon switch to Virgin Racing.

Suspicions will be raised mid-season when the Virgin team mysteriously re-brands with a green livery and makes a formal application to change its name to ‘Zavvi’. A few months later, the team will run out of money and close down, but not before a special fixtures and fittings sale where fans will have the opportunity to buy the screws that once held the car together.

The bearded beggar who appears at races is not homeless

Having made a tactical error by trying to get a drive at Mercedes only for some seven time World Champion or other to get in the way, Nick Heidfeld will begin the 2010 season without a job. He will resort to sleeping on the floor in the paddock and begging.

If you see a suspicious-looking bearded man in the paddock, it is probably Mr Heidfeld, the world’s greatest ever second place finisher. Although he might speak as though he is slightly drunk, he is not homeless and is perfectly harmless.

In a recent episode of The Pod Delusion, Mark Thompson spoke about the good old days when ITV was still a federation of regional television stations. He outlined how, in England and Wales over the past ten or fifteen years, ITV’s regional diversity has given way to a bland umbrella brand.

But not all of the nooks on the ITV network have succumbed to the juggernaut. Four of the ITV regions are still independently owned, and three avoid using the ITV brand. In the Channel Islands, Channel Television still owns the franchise, even though it uses ITV1 branding. But in Northern Ireland, viewers are greeted by idents for UTV. And where I live, in Scotland, the two ITV regions operate as STV.

I can say with authority, given that I live here, that the reality of regional broadcasting on Channel 3 is not quite as rosy as Mark Thompson would like to remember. It certainly is not as quaint and charming as the ITV we remember from our youth — and, incidentally, it was delightful to hear the idents and jingles during Mark’s report.

Sadly, STV is a bit of a basket case. Apparently strapped for cash, for the past year or two it has been embroiled in a dispute with ITV plc that has only served to disadvantage viewers. ITV is trying to gain money that has been allegedly been owed by STV for over ten years. Meanwhile, STV is dropping as many ITV programmes as it can get away with in an apparent attempt to stop owing any more money.

This means that many of the ITV network’s most popular drama programmes have been dropped by STV. This has left Scottish viewers with no options if they want to watch some of the best British commercial television programmes.

Publicly, STV say this is all a brave stance for regional broadcasting in Scotland. That does not really explain why most of the replacements have been cheap imports, films and repeats. As amusing as South Park may be, it is not exactly an adequate replacement for the likes of Kingdom. Incidentally, South Park is seemingly supposed to count as Scottish programming because, in the words of STV director of broadcast services Bobby Hain, it is “mischievous and cheeky… just like the Scottish people.”

Bobby Hain often singles out Al Murray for particular criticism. He reckons that Scots cannot relate to a comedy cockney landlord, forgetting that there is in fact nothing Scots enjoy more than laughing at English stereotypes.

This strategy certainly is not being done for the benefit of the Scottish people. We can tell this because the ratings have largely fallen through the floor. Infamously, STV once ditched Agatha Christie’s Marple in favour of the film Blue Crush — because crap surfing movies set in Hawaii are really Scottish, right? It was a disaster for STV. You could almost have squeezed the viewers into a large football stadium. With just 6% of Scottish television viewers watching it, this made it the least watched of the five main channels in Scotland.

STV have recently broadcast Fitz, the woeful 1990s American remake of Cracker. Presumably they have done this because it is supposed to count as Scottish, despite the fact that it is American. In fact, Fitz more accurately describes what STV viewers go through when they realise that their favourite programme has been replaced by a low budget michty-me, jings, crivvens and help ma boab bag of shite.

Because when STV are showing “regional” programming, it is a parochial embarrassment. One of the programmes it’s pushing most is The Hour. Imagine a cross between The One Show and Live From Studio Five, with a twentieth of the budget and presented from a shed. That barely describes the horror.

In the evenings, STV broadcasts STV Casino. This is the sort of gambling programme I railed against in a previous edition of The Pod Delusion.

More ambitiously, STV sought to find out the Greatest Scot. Among the nominees for the title was John Logie Baird, the inventor of the television. What Logie Baird can’t have foreseen was that his compatriots would be unable to watch anything decent on it.

Soon enough, STV will run out of “Scottish” topics to make programmes about. What next? The History of the Word ‘Outwith‘? Barry Ferguson’s Greatest V-Signs? Susan Boyle’s Ten Favourite Ditches?

Maybe there will be a celebration of the Scots language and / or dialect, with a version of Countdown played in the Scots tongue. Sadly, the only exciting action would be a Buckfast-fuelled brawl surrounding the precise spelling of words like ‘airse’ (‘erse’?) and ‘bawbag’ (‘ba’bag’?).

This new found love for “local” programming really is rich coming from STV. This is a station that, just a few years ago, would do anything to avoid showing locally produced programmes. It transparently sought to meet its quota of regional programmes with cynical late-night repeats of Weir’s Way and extra editions of Scotland Today Interpreted For The Deaf.

This all makes me wonder just what the ‘S’ in STV stands for. Is it ‘Scottish’? Or is it ’stultifying’? ‘Stupid’? ‘Sellotape’? In fact, I think it’s probably ’shite’.

Mark Thompson’s idea is a nice one, but is based on a rose-tinted view rather than the reality we Scots have to live with just now. It is true that something needs to change in order for ITV to survive. But the solution to that is surely obvious when you think about it — they should bring back Blockbusters.

The country lurches back into its usual routine this week. But with the new year comes changes, and a vital part of everyone’s daily life — the radio — will seem very different.

My parents are concerned about what will happen to Radio 2 after the departure of Terry Wogan from breakfast. They were not happy to hear that his replacement will be Chris Evans. My parents originally stopped listening to Radio 1 when Chris Evans took over the Radio 1 breakfast show. (Quite how they tolerated Steve Wright before this is beyond me though.)

I get the feeling that they will stick with Radio 2. Chris Evans is a very different broadcaster to what he was ten or fifteen years ago and has apparently pleased most people with his performances on Radio 2 so far.

While Terry Wogan’s last show was the one that caught all the headlines, the end of two other radio programmes will be far more disruptive to my routine. I was not a listener of Terry Wogan’s, though I don’t suppose I am really part of his target audience.

The end of Adam and Joe

Much bigger news in my world has been the end of Adam and Joe’s programme on BBC 6 Music. They are raising the drawbridge at the Big British Castle for an indefinite period while Joe Cornish focuses on his new career as a film director.

This programme has been a core part of my week for the past two years. It is also unusual because due to its Saturday morning time slot, it has been the only thing that has managed to get me to wake up at a decent hour on a Saturday.

Adam and Joe have an excellent knack of doing a type of humour which is silly but not stupid — a balance that very few manage to strike. This made it ideal listening for the start of the weekend. It was perhaps something to gently lift you out of a mild hangover. The accompanying podcast was also excellent for lifting spirits during your journey into work.

Their gentle humour was mixed with sharp observations on popular culture. Increasingly, towards the end of the programme’s run, listener contributions were a larger part of the programme. Combined with the programme’s elite listening force Black Squadron and the STEPHEN! phenomenon, there was quite a tight-knit community feel to the show.

This was no doubt helped by the fact that it was on BBC 6 Music, jokingly referred to by Adam Buxton as “the secret station”. Even though it was the most popular programme on the station by quite a long way, due to its location in the outer reaches of select DAB sets, Adam and Joe’s was a cosy and understated programme. It is difficult to imagine Adam and Joe’s programme working so well on another, larger radio station.

Adam and Joe’s replacement will be Danny Wallace, who is not quite in the same league. It will leave a huge gap in my Saturday mornings. What else can I listen to? Saturday Live on Radio 4? Sorry, not for me. Jonathan Ross on Radio 2? Possibly. Or will I return to my old ‘default’ radio station, Radio 5 Live, for Danny Baker and Fighting Talk?

Changes at Radio 5 Live

Speaking of Radio 5 Live, that is the source of the other big change to my radio routine. Richard Bacon has vacated the late-night slot to take over from Simon Mayo, who is moving to replace Chris Evans on Drivetime at Radio 2.

I was a fan of Richard Bacon during his first stint on 5 Live in the weekend late-night slot, and he continued to delight when he returned to the station to do weeknights. Given his background, he is surprisingly good at dealing with big issues as well as light-hearted stuff.

He is also unafraid to use humour. It could be so embarrassing (and some would probably say it is), but I think it works well. The interesting bit after 12:30am was entertaining and brave. I can’t think of many other presenters who would get away with completely doing away with news for half an hour every day on Radio 5 Live.

I am greatly regretful that I never managed to get my hands on one of those badges. It was nevertheless an honour and a privilege to listen.

Richard Bacon’s irreverence is what makes him good as a broadcaster, but it’s difficult to see how he can leverage this in his new mid-afternoon slot, one of the most important in 5 Live’s schedule. Most disappointingly, it will be on during the daytime, meaning that I won’t be able to listen to it.

The replacement in the late night slot will be former Daily Sport editor Tony Livesey. I will reserve judgement until I hear the programme. I gather he is actually quite good. But if I don’t take to it, I might take the unusual step of switching to a commercial radio station during weeknights to listen to Iain Lee on Absolute Radio.

Richard Bacon’s move is part of a wider shake-up at Radio 5 Live, which also sees Gabby Logan getting a daily slot. With the day going from the Nicky Campbell Speak You’re Branes hour to Victoria Derbyshire to Gabby Logan, it’s not difficult to see why some people have started to nickname the station Radio 5 Lite.

It’s not quite the quality station I loved just a few years ago. Just now Radio 5 Live seems utterly bereft of ideas, aside from attempting to stealthily change it into a 24/7 Mark Kermode station. At least Up All Night is still good.

If I was being uncharitable, I might suggest that the presenters that remain at the station are the ones who are prepared to make the move to Salford when the station relocates there next year. The logic behind moving a radio station that covers news (most of which happens in London) to Manchester is still beyond me, I have to admit.

On the bright side…

It’s not all bad news on the radio front. In addition to his new daytime Radio 5 Live slot, Richard Bacon has a Saturday afternoon programme on 6 Music. He promises to take some of the jollity of his late night 5 Live show to 6 Music. But who listens to radio at that time? Not me.

I might make space in my Sunday afternoons for 6 Music though. Jarvis Cocker will have a new programme alongside the already-excellent Freak Zone.

But weekend mornings will still be a problem. And I’ll need a new comedy podcast to replace Adam and Joe. Does anyone have any suggestions? (Not Collings and Herrin — I tried it, and it was crap.)

It has been an unusual few weeks in the Scottish political blogosphere. Already, a number of bloggers had apparently lost motivation and were openly wondering if they should continue. Since then, a number of blogs have closed down, apparently due to external pressures.

Firstly, Wardog was closed down after journalists from a number of major newspapers sought to write stories about it. The angle was that the blog was pretty close to the bone and potentially offensive. Was it acceptable behaviour for an employee of a university?

Then, the author of the Universality of Cheese was “outed” as Michael Russell’s office manager. Mark MacLachlan had to close down his blog and quit his job. The added twist to the story was that Michael Russell, an SNP Government minister, has been a major advocate of new media such as blogging within the Scottish Government. It remains to be seen if this scandal has an adverse impact on the admirable aim of using new web technologies in government.

At the weekend, Subrosa opted to close her blog, apparently out of fear that she was going to be “outed” as well. As the weekend passed and the Sunday newspapers were published without event, the blog has since re-opened.

[Update: Please see Subrosa's comment below for a clarification on the information in the above paragraph.]

The author of Advanced Media Watch appears to have decided to keep his blog closed. Meanwhile, even Scotland’s top SNP blogger, Jeff Breslin of SNP Tactical Voting, was also involved in a minor stooshie.

I have seen it written by more than one person that it feels as though the Scottish blogosphere is “under attack”. Maybe under attack is putting it too strongly, but certainly some big giants are peering into this particular goldfish bowl just now.

There have been some interesting articles about the blogosphere by journalists lately. Iain Macwhirter has waded in once again, with a rather sensible analysis. Joan McAlpine also penned this interesting take on Scottish political blogging.

But as far as the scandal goes, it appears as though not all blogs are affected. It is a sub-set of blogs. The common thread is easy to spot. All of the bloggers involved are SNP supporters.

There are two possible theories as to why. One explanation — the one favoured by nationalists — that the “Labour establishment” in the Scottish media has stitched them up.

More likely is the idea that this is an effect of the “cybernat” phenomenon. Some of the bloggers who have been put under the microscope over the past few weeks could not be compared with the cybernats. But some were worse than others, and certainly one or two of them sailed too close to the wind.

Those who sailed the closest had to shut their blogs down. I felt that some of these blogs, in their better moments, were lacking in rigour. In their worst moments… well, the news reports have let you know about that. I should point out that this description by no means applies to all of the blogs that have been caught up in the recent fracas.

There may be a temptation among some to put this down to the fact that bloggers can be anonymous. That was certainly the conclusion of Iain Macwhirter. However, the cybernat phenomenon does not have much to do with anonymity (although that is an aspect of it, and apparently sock puppet accounts are rife).

But the fact is that the person who ran Wardog, the first blog to take a hit, was not anonymous. His name was displayed on his blog, in addition to his occupation and the fact that he was a lecturer! Clearly he was not ashamed of the way he presented his opinions, even if he had to relent when challenged about it. Nor is Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting anonymous (although it is totally unfair to compare his rather minor incident with the closures of the other blogs).

There is no doubt that the ability to be anonymous on the internet is abused by many, including a high proportion of cybernats. But there can be sound reasons for wanting to be anonymous. There may be those whose blogs are innocuous, but who prefer to remain anonymous in case it upsets their employer or someone close to them.

Others may blog anonymously as whistle-blowers of a sort. Think of PC David Copperfield or Civil Serf. A different set may like to blog for entertainment, but prefer to keep their privacy, like Abby Lee / Zoe Margolis or Belle de Jour.

The problem that has hit the Scottish blogosphere in the shape of cybernats is not as a result of anonymity. The problem is the fact that some SNP activists just get too excited for their own good. SNP activists in general are known for being particularly boisterous, excitable and even aggressive. On the internet, some become absolutely feral.

As I have said before, I have absolutely no doubt that the cybernats are a very small minority of SNP activists. It is a tiny proportion who get a bit too excited and don’t properly think through the consequences of their actions. It goes without saying that some of Scotland’s best and most clear-thinking bloggers are SNP supporters.

But the cybernat issue has bubbled under for too long. For a couple of years the phenomenon has been doing the SNP a great deal of damage in terms of its image. Perhaps it was easily dismissed as the hidden nocturnal ramblings of a small few in the comments section of a dying newspaper’s website. Maybe blogging was not mainstream enough for it to concern them.

It’s different when Sunday newspapers start to take notice and write articles about it though. And not just a one-off — a sustained burst targeting multiple blogs.

Now it is said that Alex Salmond has asked SNP activists to shape up and play nicely online. You just wonder why he hasn’t done it before now, when it was too late.

While some seem to believe that the Scottish political blogosphere is “under attack”, and that this can only be a bad thing, the truth is more nuanced than that. This is an overdue weeding-out of the dreg-ends of the gutter of the blogosphere.

Bloggers should take this not as a threat. It is a warning, but also an opportunity. As Will Patterson says:

…we can raise our game, answer the charges with the positive, celebrate the good things we get up to and in so doing, make the critics look like muppets, simply by proving them wrong.

Or, as someone else put it to me, the blogosphere will be “leaner, cleaner and keener” from now on. It is all about bloggers engaging their brains a bit more and becoming a more savvy about what they say and do. Overall, the blogosphere will be stronger in the end.

Other interesting takes

As you expect with a story about blogging, bloggers have been all over it. Here are some of my favourites:

• Bloggers’ dilemma – Go Lassie Go
• Night of the hard drives – SNP Tactical Voting
• Blogging: ex mea sententia – Ideas of Civilisation
• Ghosts of blogs past – J. Arthur MacNumpty

Something I have noticed about the Glasgow North East by-election is amount of innovative online coverage there has been from the media. All Media Scotland has reported on interesting methods of covering the election which have been adopted by three Scottish newspapers.

The Scotsman has invited the candidates from five of the main parties to contribute to its politics blog The Steamie in the run-up to the election. Full credit to The Scotsman for coming up with the idea. They are clearly trying something interesting with The Steamie, having recently invited some of Scotland’s top bloggers to regularly contribute to it.

It is interesting to see how the various candidates are using this platform. Will Patterson is analysing the candidates’ blog posts to see what message they are trying to get across.

I am infact surprised that the candidates feel that regularly contributing lengthy posts to a blog is a useful way to spend the final week of the campaign. Are there that many votes to be won among the readers of The Steamie?

The Daily Record has held its own type of digital hustings in the shape of a podcast. The Record’s political editor, Magnus Gardham, sat five of the candidates round a table to answer questions sent in by the newspaper’s readers.

Interestingly, the Daily Record chose Tommy Sheridan as its fifth candidate, while The Scotsman chose the Greens’ David Doherty. Perhaps the choice reflects the demographics of the newspapers’ readerships, with the Record thinking that its readers will be more interested in what Tommy Sheridan has to say.

Who is right about who the most credible fifth candidate is? It is not easy to tell, particularly when some believe that the BNP may even come third.

Not to be outdone, The Herald has done its own podcast for the by-election, chaired by its political editor Brian Currie. They have opted to feature just the candidates of the four main parties.

Clearly, the candidates feel that engaging with the electorate online in this way is worthwhile. It’s interesting that the media outlets are so interested in pursuing relatively innovative ways to cover the by-election. There seems to be a lot of experimentation among Scottish media outlets as they work out how to survive the current choppy waters. The increasingly common use of blogging and podcasting by Scottish newspapers is certainly to be welcomed.

But it’s interesting that all of this innovative digital activity should surround a by-election taking place in east Glasgow. In a way, you could hardly pick a worse city in which to pursue this sort of strategy. Glasgow is firmly on the wrong side of the digital divide. A study by Ofcom conducted last year found that only 32% of homes in Glasgow had broadband, and that Glaswegians are significantly less likely to own a PC than the average Brit.

No doubt someone is paying attention to these virtual hustings. But it is more likely to be middle-class political geeks than the actual voters of north-east Glasgow.

This is the accompanying article / transcript to my contribution to this week’s edition of The Pod Delusion, a humorous lefty / skeptical podcast. You can listen to the full podcast below.

This year’s party conference season has now finished, and attention turns to the General Election that will held some time between now and June. What that really means is that everyone’s thoughts are turning towards the prospect of the Conservatives being in power.

Many people now seem to be treating a Conservative election win as more-or-less a foregone conclusion. This is despite the fact that they still have slightly underwhelming opinion poll ratings. The Conservatives are not exactly getting an enthusiastic reception. It’s just that the other parties are disliked even more.

Something that the Tories have going for them at the moment is the announcement a couple of weeks ago that The Sun will be endorsing them at the next General Election. Truth be told, I was surprised on the one hand that they hadn’t already announced it. On the other hand, I was surprised at how early they had announced it. After all, it gives them plenty of time to change their minds between now and the election.

The Sun tends to back a winner, even though it is probably more of a case of being a weather vane rather than any sinister string-pulling from Rupert Murdoch. A few people I have spoken to think that it’s out of order for The Sun to be advising its readers how to vote. Maybe so, but the freedom of the press is vital to our democracy and they should be allowed to put it in their paper if they wish.

Some people note that people who buy The Sun are probably not buying it for sober and authoritative political analysis. That is true. But I actually think the Conservatives are a perfect match for The Sun. David Cameron and George Osborne would look great on Page 3. They are, after all, a massive pair of tits.

Putting aside whether a tabloid endorsement is something for an aspiring government to be proud about, what should we make of a potential Conservative government? Some on the left contend that no matter how bad Labour are, the Conservatives will always be worse. I do not quite agree with that.

If you ask me, the one thing scarier than a potential Conservative victory is a potential Labour victory. After all, given the turmoil of the past few years, just imagine what Labour would think if they could get away with it all. They would probably literally think that they could get away with actual murder. The thing is that they probably would get away with a lot — more than the Conservatives would anyway.

It has become common for people to say that Labour and the Conservatives have become similar to each other as far as policy goes. I don’t really agree with that. They are quite similar, but with Labour you get bonus ID cards and biometric anal probes. All-in-all, I doubt that a Conservative government would automatically be worse than another Labour one.

The most disconcerting thing about the Tories is not that they seem particularly nasty, but that they seem pretty vacuous at the moment. It may be a cliché to say that most people don’t know what David Cameron stands for. But you do get the sense that their manifesto will resemble some backs of envelopes and cigarette packets stuck together with Sellotape.

During all the talk recently about televised leaders’ debates, David Cameron seems to be the more eager between him and Gordon Brown to appear. But you wonder quite what he will find to say. With the lack of policies, I can half imagine him responding every time he is asked a question by saying, “that’s what she said!” It will probably make about as much sense.

For a lot of people, the Tories are the enemy because they are posh. Cameron and Osborne are the notable posh figures in Westminster, though Boris Johnson also comes in for a fair bit of stick on this front.

Some Conservative politicians are indeed quite ludicrously posh. For some people, this prevents them from representing the voters of Britain adequately because they lack empathy with the man on the street. But for me, a politician’s background is irrelevant. What matters is their capability for the job.

I have to confess to having a bit of a soft spot for Boris Johnson. I need to watch what I say here. I have been told off before for having an opinion on Boris Johnson because I am not a Londoner, so in fairness it is none of my damn business.

But I did once have the opportunity to vote for Boris Johnson. That was when he attempted to become Rector of Edinburgh University when I was a student a few years ago. He was the early favourite, but an intensely negative campaign from the student politics establishment played heavily on his posh image. This ensured that Boris Johnson not only failed to win the election, but he actually came third out of four candidates.

I should point out that Boris was not my first choice in the election. My preferred option was the former Scotsman editor Magnus Linklater, who finished second.

So who did we get as Rector instead? A man called Mark Ballard. I know what you’re probably thinking: who on earth is Mark Ballard? At the time, he was a Green Member of the Scottish Parliament. However, the general population was not quite so enamoured of him as the student population was and he has since lost his seat in the Scottish Parliament.

I have actually met Mr Ballard a couple of times and I can certainly say that he is a very pleasant chap. But ultimately he is a bit of a nobody, certainly in comparison to somebody like Boris Johnson. I mean, at Edinburgh University we could have had London’s Mayor as our university’s figurehead. As it was, we got someone who was rather worthy, but rather anonymous and a bit dull.

I don’t suppose there is necessarily anything wrong with that. But the mantra of “anyone but the Tories” surely isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

There has been a fair bit of chat in recent weeks about the prospect of a televised leaders’ debate in the run-up to the next general election. This sort of chat always comes up in the run-up to any election, but there appears to be an extra momentum this time round.

It seems as though the promise by Sky News to televise a debate come what may — even if the debate was between tubs of lard — has forced everyone’s hand, broadcasters and political parties alike. It seems as though now it is going to happen, with the involvement of all the major broadcasters. It also appears as though the three main party leaders are on board (albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm).

The end of the issue? Of course not. This is just the beginning of the matter. More details will need to be fleshed out. What format should such a debate take? Will there be a number of separate debates? And what about the role of smaller parties?

I am normally fairly ambivalent about calls for televised political debates. Those politicians who call for such a debate usually do so because they perceive that it would advantage them.

Someone like David Cameron will go for it because he is a confident performer, the momentum is behind him and the media appears to have declared him the winner already. Someone like Gordon Brown will reject it because he does not come across so well on television. This time he has been forced into it, partly because of Sky News’ promise to “empty chair” him if he didn’t, but also because refusing to appear would further the idea that Brown is a coward with poor leadership qualities.

The prospect of a televised political debate fills me with dread rather than excitement. I doubt it does much for democratic accountability. Part of me suspects that vain politicians just crave appearances on the television.

No doubt we will be served up a rather unedifying spectacle, like PMQs on steroids. I predict Punch and Judy politics a-plenty. Most likely, as with Question Time, it will be a platform for the most appalling demagoguery, complete with an audience that will clap like seals at any old nonsense.

Most of all, I think the idea of a leaders’ debate just misses the point. While it is useful to know what the major party leaders think, focusing on leaders too much is damaging to the health of our parliamentary democracy. Once again, there is a clamour to bring to Britain a feature of US politics which is a square peg in a round hole.

Televised debates are highly popular in the USA. But that is because the format is practically ready-made for the US political system. For one, the US system is a Presidential system, meaning that voters actually do elect the country’s leader. The US system is also a truly two-party system, with two Leviathans totally overshadowing any minority candidates. This makes it easy to adopt a one-on-one, head-to-head debating format.

Even though the televised debate is more-or-less a perfect fit for a US Presidential election, the format’s success is a matter for debate. In years gone by it may have provided some election-defining moments. But as I recall, the debates involving Barack Obama and John McCain, and Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, hardly set the world alight.

So what on earth makes anyone think that this gimmick will suit British politics? It seems like just another outcome of politicos’ obsession with America. It seems like the idea of someone who has mistaken his DVD box set of The West Wing for real pornography.

Our Parliamentary system doesn’t — or at least shouldn’t — place so much focus on party leaders. Very few voters will actually have any sort of say on who the Prime Minister is. I will have the option to vote for or against Gordon Brown, but only because I happen to live in his constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. I will have no say whatsoever on David Cameron or Nick Clegg.

And what of the smaller parties? In the UK, broadcasters are required to be impartial in the run-up to an election, meaning that legally broadcasters will find it difficult to lock out the small parties. Even if these other parties have little or no chance of forming the government. Even if most viewers will not be as interested in hearing from these parties.

The most noise is being made by the SNP. They are threatening legal action if an SNP representative is unable to play a part in a televised leaders’ debate.

The SNP may have a point. Even though they have only a handful of MPs, and are only contesting seats in a portion of the UK, they have a lot of support in that portion. They are not a loony fringe party. They are in fact in government in the UK. Viewers north of the border will certainly be interested to hear what the SNP have to say in the run-up to the election.

At the same time, their presence may be a distraction from the real purpose of the debate, which is basically to watch the potential future Prime Ministers partake in a spot of verbal mud-wrestling. It is, after all, a “leaders’ debate”. Despite all his ambition, Alex Salmond is highly unlikely to be the next Prime Minister, as is Angus Robertson.

Yet, what if there is the prospect of a hung Parliament? The collapse in Labour support has not been met with a real surge in support for the Conservatives. With so many parties having moderate levels of support, it is conceivable that a party like the SNP could play a king-maker role.

There is no easy answer. This is the core problem with the idea of a televised debate. It might be good for a simple, true two party system such as the USA’s. But for the UK’s more subtle and diverse politics, it won’t fit quite so well.

This is an accompanying article to my contribution on this week’s episode of The Pod Delusion. You can listen below.

This week, Freeview has had one of its occasional retuning events. As new channels come and old channels go, the channel list becomes increasingly messy until the point where the powers-that-be decide enough is enough and it’s time to bring some organisation to it.

This sort of thing is a necessary evil of the digital era. But I feel sorry for those, particularly older, people who are used to setting up their television once when they buy it, then making do with two and a half channels for the rest of their lives.

A couple of weeks ago in the first episode of The Pod Delusion, James O’Malley spoke about the bonkers-sounding Conspiracy Channel. Sadly, I do not have Sky, so have been unable to sample its delights for myself. I must rely on humble Freeview for my post analogue switch-off telly fix.

Freeview brings a wealth of choice that simply did not exist on analogue terrestrial television. That is of course a good thing, and I personally cannot imagine going back to making do with the five analogue channels. But there is an element of truth to that Fry & Laurie sketch, where a dining Government minister is dumped on by the waiter with a “choice” of cutlery which turns out to be countless plastic coffee stirrers.

At the same time as this week’s big retune, the long-awaited launch of Quest, the new channel from Discovery, has taken place. Its original launch had already been long delayed and finally aborted at the last minute several months ago.

While a channel that promises something resembling quality struggled to get off the ground, there has been no shortage of utter crud getting airtime on Freeview. In fact, I struggled to think of any half-decent channels that had launched recently. So I decided to look it up, and see what changes had been made to Freeview over the previous year.

• 10 September — Smile TV 2 (a mucky Babestation-style channel; closed on 19 March)
• January — Rocks & Co (shopping channel)
• 8 January — SuperCasino (roulette channel)
• 8 January — NetPlay TV (broadcasting shopping programmes or infomercials)
• 15 January — CNN International — 4 hours per day
• 22 January — Dave+1
• 2 February — Russia Today — 2 hours per day
• 3 February — DirectGov (text service)
• 12 March — Partyland
• 1 April — Gems TV — 5 hours per day
• 5 April — CNN increases hours to 7 hours per day, 2 hours of which is SuperCasino
• 1 May — Gems TV closed down
• 13 May — Smile TV 2 relaunched — 5 hours per day
• 14 May — Quest — 14 hours per day — launch aborted!
• 20 May — Virgin 1 goes 24 hours per day
• 20 May — Virgin 1+1 — 12 hours per day
• 23 May — Film4 extends hours
• 1 July — Create & Craft (shopping channel) launches — 5 hours per day
• 4 July — Russia Today gets second slot — 2 hours per day
• 15 July — Big Deal (quiz channel) launches — 7 hours per day
• 27 August — Price-drop tv returns
• 27 August — Smile TV 3
• 27 August — Babestation
• 30 September — Quest launched

So a couple of channels — Film4 and Virgin 1 — have extended their hours. A couple of news channels have been able to find scraps of space here and there. I say news channels, though in the case of Russia Today, propaganda may be a more accurate description. These channels broadcast at quite obscure hours. It is certainly an interesting spin on the concept of “24 hour news”.

Beyond that, the vast majority of new Freeview channels are pure trash. There are two new “+1″ channels, replaying exactly what was broadcast on a channel an hour ago. By my reckoning, there are now at least five such channels on Freeview, which doesn’t seem like the best use of limited bandwidth.

Beyond that, there is a collection of shopping channels, gambling channels, quiz channels and adult channels. Frankly, this is the sort of stuff you expect at the arse end of the darkest nooks of the Sky EPG. I am not quite sure this is what they had in mind when the digital revolution was promised.

The Babestation channels have long been a fixture on Sky. But their presence on Freeview is relatively novel. They are interesting for the fact that it hasn’t taken long for four of them to crop up. It is surprising because their appeal seems rather limited to me.

If you have never seen it (er, not that I’m an expert, of course), basically the format is quite simple. A few glamour models who couldn’t present their way out of a paper bag sit on a couch trying to encourage people to phone in for a mucky chit-chat.

Once someone with more money than sense takes the bait, the microphone is switched off, and some cheap-sounding music is turned up. The women proceeds to talk dirty on the phone — without the viewer being able to hear a word. They sort of wriggle around on the couch in a way that I assume is supposed to look sexy, but it really just makes them look vaguely like they need the toilet.

In short, it is the modern-day equivalent of the dodgy services advertised on business cards left in piss-stained telephone boxes, only with the beady eye of Ofcom overseeing proceedings. There is nothing extreme in the slightest about these channels. You wonder what goes through the mind of people who would sooner pay through the nose to sample such services when you could quite easily find more enticing free porn on the internet.

Up until this week’s retune, the positioning of one of these channels — Partyland — in the channel list was certainly interesting. It was channel number 50, but with no channels occupying numbers 51-69, the next channel up was CBBC. Even though the broadcasting hours do not clash, I can imagine plenty of children just pressing the down button on their remote and coming across a strange new channel promising a party land. It certainly would provide a more eye-popping rite of passage than accidentally stumbling across the frilly knickers section of the Argos catalogue.

It remains to be seen whether these channels remain a long-term fixture on the Freeview platform. One trashy genre which sadly appears to have stood the test of time is quiz channels. These late-night televisual travesties are hypnotically awful. A slightly desperate presenter will appear to engage you in a stare-out competition while goading you into answering questions with non-existent answers.

Even though they still live on, such quiz channels are not quite as prevalent as they used to be. They were a major victim of the collapse in trust that broadcasters faced a couple of years ago. Into the vacuum came the gambling channels.

It’s noted that this sort of programming tends to be on late at night, especially at the weekend. In other words, they are aimed squarely at the post-pub market.

The morals are pretty dubious. The clear idea is to target people whose judgement has been impaired by their alcoholic consumption, goading people into phoning premium rate phone lines when they perhaps shouldn’t. In the case of the gambling channels, it could be said that they intend to capture a particular section of the population that may have problems with addiction.

This is not quite the vision of digital television that was sold to the public. It is funny how most of the extra “choice” that has been brought into our living rooms revolves around extracting large amounts of cash from our wallets.

Continuing my look at 20 Warp albums from Warp’s 20 years. For other articles in this series, please see the table of contents to the right. Albums are presented in randomised order.

Broadcast — The Noise Made by People

This was the first Warp album I ever bought, and it remains a favourite of mine to this day. Broadcast’s music is heavily steeped in 1960s influence, and comparisons with Stereolab are commonplace (and not inaccurate). But they sound anything but derivative.

The Noise Made by People has a dark and slightly creepy aesthetic. Most of the album creeps along at a rather slow pace. Then there are Trish Keenan’s almost robotic vocals. The music itself — largely based on 1960s-style electronic instruments — could almost be transmitted directly from that decade, complete with unsettling background noise.

Put together, this all gives the music a rather otherworldly vibe. It is as though you are listening to a ghostly music that has been trapped in the airwaves since the 1960s and has only just escaped.

Funnily enough, the real life story of the recording of this album is similar to the picture I have just described. It is said that Broadcast struggled with the recording of the album, and it took three years to make. Perhaps this is another reason why it sounds clinical, though it’s all the more captivating for it.

Since The Noise Made by People, Broadcast have reduced in size to become just the core duo of Trish Keenan and James Cargill. In turn, the music has become less dense and more raw, and has lost the otherworldly qualities of their earlier material. Although Broadcast is still a good band, I feel that they were definitely at their peak with this album.

This video for ‘Come On Let’s Go’ captures the aesthetic of the album really well:

Tortoise — Standards

Many feel that Tortoise were at their strongest in the 1990s. I did not discover them until 2001, so maybe I am biased in that sense. But I think that the band was at the height of its creative powers with Standards.

Quite simply, it was one of the most unique-sounding albums I had ever heard and remains one of my favourite listens to this day. The effortless fusion of punchy rock, cutting-edge electronic music, multi-layered drumming and jazz makes this an extraordinarily bold album that captivates you from start to finish.

If ever there was an album that was definitively not just ‘going through the motions’, it is surely Standards — despite its title. This record documents Tortoise standing on the very edge of what is possible with rock music. I find it impossible to become bored of this album. There is so much going on in so many layers.

Each instrument would be fascinating to listen to on its own (this was proved when the rhythm section of Tortoise released an album of drums and little else called Bumps). Each band member is doing his own thing. And yet, everything here makes a perfect fit.

Nothing Tortoise have produced since then has come close to reaching the standard of Standards. But then again, few albums by any bad do.

This is the video for the attention-grabbing album opener, ‘Seneca’:

Seefeel – Succour

I only discovered this album a few years ago — probably over a decade after it was originally released. But I am glad I opted to buy it. The music is from the place where ambient, shoegaze, indie and techno all converge. The allure of Seefeel comes from its mixture of ambient-style drones and textures, techno-influenced minimalist drums and guitars, and the dreamy, processed vocals of singer Sarah Peacock.

Although superficially it feels like a pure techno / IDM album, the use of guitars and live drums was unusual for a Warp release at that time. This is what led Steve Beckett to recently single it out as “the first sacreligious move”.

Musically, Succour is a fabulous success. But if you thought this was the evidence that guitars could happily sit in a techno environment, think again. Apparently due to Mark Clifford’s efforts to push the band in a more electronic direction, the old artistic differences emerged and the band only lasted a few years after the release of Succour.

In a way, I feel as though I have missed out by not experiencing this music when it was first released. It must have been so incredibly exciting, at the cutting edge, when it was released. It would be interesting to hear what this band would come up with today.

Incredibly, Seefeel have recently re-formed. Initially this was for a one-off gig as part of the Warp20 celebrations. But there are now hints that Seefeel have also been in the studio. I can’t wait to hear any results that might come out of this.

Chris Morris — Blue Jam

Chris Morris, as one of Britain’s most influential satirists, probably needs little introduction. But few may immediately associate him with Warp Records. But Warp has been the outlet for a lot of his material, including the CD releases of the radio series On the Hour and his Bafta-winning short film My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117 among other bits and pieces. Warp Films is also backing his current project, Four Lions.

But his first CD on Warp was a compilation of sketches from his experimental radio programme, Blue Jam (which was later turned into the television series Jam). This was a dark comedy, equal parts disturbing and funny. Unusually, the sketches were surrounded by a constant backdrop of ambient music (much of which was originally released on Warp) from the likes of Aphex Twin. Perhaps even more unusually, the show was originally broadcast on Radio 1. It inhabited a late-night slot which fitted with the programme’s surreal, woozy and nightmarish style.

The series contained a mixture of music and comedy; of the surreal and the disturbing; of sketches and monologues. Most of it was a world away from his previous material, though from time to time Morris would drop in one of his infamous interviews. Here, he flummoxes posthumous Diana biographer Andrew Morton.

I’ve been thinking about getting involved in podcasting for a while now. So when I saw a favourite blogger of mine asking for contributors to a new podcast he was setting up, I thought it was the ideal opportunity to dip my toe in the water.

The podcast is the idea of James O’Malley, a fine chap with a jolly good blog. His thinking is to have a number of contributors chipping in to a weekly podcast which will be around 15–20 minutes long. The podcast will be along the lefty / liberal / atheist / skeptical / rationalist lines. Read James O’Malley’s explanation for more.

What was missing was a name for the podcast. A bit difficult to come up with a name for something that only exists in your brain. But with the vague template in mind, I set to work, along with the other contributors, to think of a suitable name.

Suddenly, it came to me. After I had been lying in bed literally unable to sleep for hours, it suddenly came to me: The Pod Delusion. Yes, I know. I’m a genius. Not quite a living legend like James O’Malley though. Nonetheless, the fact that I came up with the excellent name means that The Pod Delusion is definitely my podcast. The fact that I put no effort whatsoever into creating it, producing it or commissioning pieces for it is frankly neither here nor there.

Anyway, I am quite excited about The Pod Delusion. With the stellar line-up of contributors, it seems like it’s going to be ace. If everything goes to plan and this week’s pilot goes down well, you can expect a new episode every Friday. My plan is to publish all transcripts of my contributions, or an accompanying article, on this website as and when each podcast is published.

Here is the first episode of The Pod Delusion. I have just listened to it myself. Since it’s the first ever attempt, it is a tad ramshackular, but that will get better over time. All-in-all, I think it’s a fine listen.

Hopefully sometime soon it will be available over iTunes too. You can follow @poddelusion on Twitter.

My first little piece for The Pod Delusion is about product placement. When I first set about doing it, my intention was to try and make it serious. I had actually been planning to write here about the product placement hoo-ha, but then decided I could kill two birds with one stone by making it my Pod Delusion contribution too.

Unfortunately, I got a little bit carried away with the fact that I was working in an exciting new audio medium. I inserted a few audio jokes which won’t work in writing. From then on, the whole thing became just a collection of bad jokes about product placement, strung together by the flimsiest of wafer-thin serious points.

So, bearing that in mind, here is my contribution to this week’s Pod Delusion.

It was announced last week by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw that product placement will soon be allowed on commercial channels. I suppose there was an inevitability in this. After all, commercial broadcasters finding it harder to sustain themselves through traditional advertising in a multichannel world. Plus, we are living in an era where so many people use PVRs to fast-forward through the adverts anyway.

There has to be some way to fund commercial television. After all, what would we do without ITV? Okay, that’s a bad example. But what would we do without Channel Five? Well okay, but you get my point.

Many worry about the effects that product placement will have on the viewing experience. With product placement, there will be a question mark over the purity of the programmes we watch. Will our programmes be peppered with subliminal advertising that attempt to brainwash us into changing the brand of soap powder that we use?

I’m not so sure that will be such an issue. After all, we are well used to product placements in major films. Television programmes from other countries are filled with product placements already. I am sure that most people are savvy enough to tell what’s going on.

For instance, it can be disconcerting to watch an episode on Neighbours when one of the characters decides to open the fridge. Inexplicably, the fridge is filled from wall to wall with nothing but cans of Sprite! That is obviously a nonsensical scenario. It would have been far more realistic if the fridge was filled from wall to wall with cans of tasty Dr Pepper — “what’s the worst that can happen?”

The odd thing about imported programmes is that due to the stricter laws in the UK, our broadcasters have to blur such product placements out. But this only brings attention to the fact that there is an alien blob floating around on the screen.

Focusing on the blobs on American Idol, for instance, you can clearly see that the judges have large cups on their desk. These cups are predominantly red but with a distinctive white swirl that can only be associated with Coke. Mmm… fresh, ice cold Coke.

The new product placement rules do not affect the BBC. But it would be interesting to consider what it might be like if one day the rules were relaxed for the BBC too. After all, is there anything more ridiculous than the slightly awkward attempts to avoid using brand names during makes on Blue Peter? Referring to “sticky back plastic” may be quaint and traditional, but it is also distracting and sets off a klaxon in your brain that sounds something like: “SELLOTAPE! SELLOTAPE!”

I once saw a Blue Peter make where you had to use a “crisp tube”. What on earth is a crisp tube? Crisps come in packets don’t they? What they were talking about was a pack of Pringles. Given that Pringles are the only make of crisps to be sold in that style of tub, you can more or less guarantee that sales of Pringles went through the roof anyway — all because of the BBC’s massive abuse of power.

Well I think I have said all there is to say about product placement. I think what I will do now is take off my Specsavers glasses and shut down my Asus Eee PC. Then I think I will listen to my Apple iPod, while eating a fresh sandwich from Subway.

Or perhaps I will just go for a piss in my Armitage Shanks toilet.

I see that The Scotsman has again been trying to wring another story out of a politician’s use of Twitter. This time it is Jo Swinson exposing her ignorance about football.

As she was overwhelmed by members of the Tartan Army at a railway station, Ms Swinson got out her BlackBerry, logged on to her Twitter site and wrote: “Have I missed something? What’s the football festivity? Can’t move at Queen Street station for folk in Scotland tops.”

Seven minutes later, Graham Barrie posted: “The Tartan Army v the Dutch Army tonight at Hampden Jo. You really need to get out more ”

Jeff and Mr Eugenides both have good takes on this. I have to agree with them. For some, football is a matter of life and death. The Scotsman’s David Maddox calls the match “do-or-die”. But in truth, it isn’t much more than a slightly tedious playground game.

The Scotland–Netherlands tie wasn’t exactly in my diary, though it is true that I was quite aware of it thanks to my football-loving friends. My own take on the match, as published on Twitter, would probably have got me into more trouble. I wasn’t merely ignorant; I was aware, but sarcastic and dismissive:

Advice to football fans: Scotland won’t win the World Cup, so I wouldn’t concern yourself with it.

I find it difficult to get excited about football at the best of times. My enthusiasm for Scotland internationals is marginally above zilch. In my defence, I was rather put off by the fact that last month I was taken by a friend to the pub to watch what I was told would be a football match but turned out to be a disaster film. Strange.

Really, you could argue that the people who don’t think about football are making the right decision. All that worrying over whether Scotland gets knocked out in this round or that does seem to be a waste of energy. And I can well imagine Jo Swinson has plenty of other things to occupy her time with.

This comes just a few months after Patrick Harvie was at the centre of another Twitter row manufactured by David Maddox. His crime was to discreetly tweet at the dinner table, something which I think many people do.

I don’t get this obsession with politicians having to be identikit robots who all have to be up-to-date on the price of milk, whatever music is in the charts and some tedious sporting exploit. I have written about this phenomenon before, and my views haven’t changed.

The fact is that there are 646 MPs and 129 MSPs. If you took 775 random people, you can be guaranteed to find people who couldn’t give two hoots about football and couldn’t tell you how much a loaf of bread costs. You would certainly find plenty of people who didn’t feel the need to contrive odd opinions about the Arctic Monkeys. Yet we expect all this from our politicians. Why?

On the one hand people criticise politicians for being almost like robots if they are perceived to toe the party line, talk in soundbites or reel off reams of irrelevant statistics. But then if they reveal a bit of their personality by representing part of the variety of society by not fitting a media-constructed template of what a “normal person” is expected to be, they are blasted for being “out of touch”.

I can more easily admire Jo Swinson for her personal choice not to worry about football than any politician who feels the need to pretend they are interested when they are so clearly not. Indeed, Jeff’s comparison with Gordon Brown’s uneasy comments about Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland in Euro 96 reveals that this is one of those issues where you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

While you would expect parliamentarians to have a knowledge of certain things in order to do their job, there’s nothing wrong with them being human when it comes to their personal interests. In cases like this, it is those in the media who seem more out of touch.

I see there has been a frisson of activity over the suggestion that some councils are looking to hold their counts on a Friday rather than the traditional Thursday night / Friday morning when the General Election comes round. The Sunday Times has reported that the BBC believes that up to a quarter of councils are considering making the switch to sociable hours.

The fear is that such a move would ruin general election night, the greatest political television show going. There have been plenty of passionate defences of the show, and the “Save Election Night” campaign has true cross-party support: see Jonathan Isaby of Conservative Home, Labour MP Tom Harris, SNP activist Will Patterson and Liberal Democrat Voice’s Mark Pack.

Without a doubt, it is fun to stay up all night watching power switch hands from one MP to another, and gradually from one government to another. And there is no denying that the television show has brought us some of the most memorable political moments of recent times. Everyone knows what you mean if you mention “the Portillo moment”.

But is it important? Is it even right? The political class treats a general election like a big sporting event. It is our Superbowl, and David Dimbleby is our John Madden. Coverage of politics is heaving with horse racing and other sporting metaphors. Correct me if I’m wrong, but an election is supposed to be about the serious business of government, not an entertaining night in front of the box.

Adam Smith famously wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.” I do think the cross-party support for election night coverage may be to the detriment to what is good for the public.

It is interesting that three of the biggest stories of the past week or so have been about the entertainment side of politics. There is a big debate just now about whether there should be a presidential-style leaders’ debate in the run-up to the election — Sky News is promising to plonk three chairs on a stage and give anyone who doesn’t turn up the “tub of lard” treament. (Of course, all the smaller parties cry, “Why can’t I be on a fourth chair?”) I’m not sure that anyone genuinely thinks such a debate would be a valuable addition to our political discourse, but it will be entertaining so that’s all right then, huh?

Then there is the controversy over the BBC’s decision to invite Nick Griffin onto an edition of Question Time. Chris Dillow summarises Paul Sagar’s point that Question Time is “not a platform for debate but merely a zoo in which soundbites are vomited into an audience who clap like hyperactive seals.”

Now there is this controversy; this fear about the future of election night coverage. Don’t get me wrong. I like a bit of political rough and tumble as much as the next person. And I agree that the votes for a general election should be counted as quickly as possible. There are very valid arguments against moving counts to Fridays, as you will see in the articles I have linked to above.

But the focus on the entertainment value of staying up all night is something that I find a tad distasteful. I am particularly surprised to see this point of view being advocated so strongly by any Liberal Democrats.

That party is quite rightly in favour of reforming the voting system. Most electoral reformers agree that single transferable vote (not to be confused with STV) would be the best (or least-worst) system to adopt. That move would almost certainly put the kibosh on any notion that we will find out the result before breakfast time, but it would still be right.

What is important is that we have a result that is fully reflective of the wishes of the people. In comparison to getting the right result, the speed of finding it out or the entertainment of the televisual spectacle pales into insignificance.

I would rather see a complete end to those sporting analogies I referred to earlier — “first past the post” and “two horse race” being among the most important ones to consign to history. I would happily see the television show “general election night” consigned to history too if need be.

So sacrifice your psephological salivating. Yes, election night can be fun and entertaining. But it would be better for democracy if our democratic institutions operated for the good of the voters, not for the good of politico television viewers.

Last night I was a bit bored so I indulged in a spot of channel surfing to see if there was anything decent on. There usually isn’t. But even with my lowered expectations, my jaw literally dropped when I saw what STV were broadcasting — STV Roulette.

Yes, if you thought dodgy gambling programmes were the preserve of the arse end of the Sky channel list, think again. It is right here on Scotland’s Channel 3 franchise, a public service broadcaster no less. You will be delighted to know that STV plan on broadcasting this tat three days a week, for three hours a day.

Presumably this is part of of STV’s much-hyped strategy of promoting “home produced content”. However, STV Roulette and the STV Casino website are produced by NetPlay TV, whose studios are in London.

In recent times, STV has increasingly pursued a strategy of turning down the opportunity to broadcast some of ITV’s best programmes in favour of showing dodgy local clip shows, American imports and… oh, “home produced content”. But the identity of this “home produced content” remains a mystery to viewers. That is probably because it simply doesn’t exist.

I suppose Fitz — a cheap American import — is supposed to count. Apparently it has some kind of vague connection to Cracker. So the trailer tells us anyway. In fact, “Fitz” turned out to be a description of what STV viewers go through every time they realise that their favourite programme has been ditched in favour of some kind of low budget michty-me, jings, crivens and help ma boab bunch of SHITE.

Oh, and apparenty South Park counts as “home produced content” because, in the words of STV’s Managing Director of Broadcast Services, Bobby Hain, it is “mischievous and cheeky”, just like Scottish people! Huh?!

This new found love for “local” programming really is rich coming from STV too. This is a station that, just a few years ago, would do anything to avoid showing locally produced programmes. It blatantly reached its quota of regional programmes with cynical late-night repeats of Weir’s Way and extra editions of Scotland Today Interpreted For The Deaf. As if the ploy wasn’t blatant enough, these showings were ramped up a bit towards the end of the year as well, presumably because the quota needed filling.

I think a lot of people assumed that STV had already been taken over by ITV plc, which sadly is not the case. Any bosses who think people tune in to watch STV are living in cloud cuckoo land. They press button 3 to watch ITV, and expect to watch ITV programmes. That is because regional television is an anachronism that viewers do not care about. This is why STV’s odd strategy has proved so controversial.

STV’s plan wouldn’t be so laughable if it wasn’t based on the totally bogus premise that anyone actually likes regional variations. As I have written before, regional variations are always rubbish, as this excellent clip from The Armando Iannucci Shows ably explains:

I know plenty of people who have mentioned in passing how upset they are that STV refuse to broadcast their favourite programmes. Among the programmes missed by Scottish viewers are showings of the FA Cup, The Bill, Midsomer Murders, Kingdom… I could go on.

New episodes of Lewis are not broadcast, but repeats are fine. New episodes of Poirot are bumped in favour of repeats of Poirot. If those have run out they will show a series of South Park. Other gaps can be filled with cheaply-sourced American imports, Irish (!) imports or films.

That shows up the policy for what it is. This stunt is nothing to do with locally produced programming. This is no favour to the Scottish viewers. It’s all about money. Or so you would think. Quite how STV intends to increase advertising revenues by showing a load of cheap C-grade crap in place of what the viewers are actually expecting is a mystery to all.

STV Roulette is a prime example of STV’s clueless desperation to make money. It is not as if ITV plc has a better record in this department. A couple of years ago it fell in love with the then-fashionable “quiz television” fad, where late-night viewers would be goaded into phoning a premium rate number to answer a question with no proper answer. ITV even set up an entire channel, ITV Play, dedicated to the genre. That was until the public realised they were being hoodwinked, bad publicity ensued and the whole quiz television industry backfired on itself.

At least ITV have got over the fad however. STV seems not to have noticed that it’s bad form to put on this sort of programming. It apparently has no qualms about dedicating 9 hours per week of its channel towards encouraging late-night (i.e. drunk) viewers to gamble.

Sometimes I wonder if STV’s real strategy is to deliberately drive itself into the ground. That way it wouldn’t have to bother with all of that pesky “catering to the viewers” or “making money” business like other commercial channels. Instead it could rely on subsidies for its eternal existence. Genius.

It is already going cap in hand asking for a £5 million subsidy in return for carrying out one of its obligations as a public service broadcaster. Apparently five mil a “reasonable sum”. I am not sure how many people would agree with that, though I reckon a lot of people would be more receptive to the request if they actually showed any sign of wishing to serve their viewers rather than going on some odd crusade of apparent self-destruction.

Watch STV? I’ll opt out, thanks.

In my previous article, I argued that the problems that are hitting journalism are more to do with the quality of the content than with the fact that it’s difficult to charge for content these days. “Why pay to read Telegraph Digg-bait when you can read BBC churnalism for free?”, I asked.

I am sure plenty of journalists realise this if they stop to think about the situation. The fact that so many professionals blame bloggers for the industry’s ills says it all. Despite journalists’ qualifications, experience and resources, their entire business is supposedly being dismantled by a bunch of hobbyists who spend the odd hour of their spare time opining on the internet.

A few weeks ago I met a journalist at a party and I engaged him in a conversation about the future of his industry. He told me he hates bloggers (whoops! — I kept schtoom). But he told me that in his view the biggest problem was people scooping him on web forums! If the professionals see online discussion forums as not only competing with them but doing better than them, that surely must make them wonder if the product they are asking people to buy simply is not good enough.

Anyone who thinks that bloggers and the mainstream media are competing is wrong. If they are competing, the media simply isn’t doing its job properly. Let us face facts. For the most part, bloggers don’t have the contacts, the resources or the expertise to do, for instance, a big investigative story.

If the media is worried about amateur bloggers, it is a pretty bad reflection on the professionals. Perhaps to distinguish itself, the media should be focussing on those aspects of content production that bloggers cannot do.

The supply of mediocre content is too high. Too much of the same sort of content is as readily available to news junkies as sea water is to beach-goers. In effect, for the past decade or so newspapers have been driving up to the beach with a tankful of sea water, then pumping their water into the sea. Later they started stretching out their hands like beggars wondering, “why won’t these beach-goers pay us for all this seawater we’re providing them?!”

So what is the answer? In my view, less is more. What newspapers need to do is offer something distinctive and different. They should specialise more and differentiate their content from everyone else’s. They need to offer less, but better, content.

Newspapers should forget about reporting all the same hard news as every other outlet is. It is a crowded marketplace so there is no money to be made there. Instead, they should work on more exclusives, investigative reporting, analysis and features.

Actually, there is a problem with that idea, which is that it won’t save all newspapers as we know them at all. It points to a future where many daily newspapers may wither. But weeklies, monthlies and specialist publications are more likely to thrive. It wouldn’t stop the press from having a difficult period of job losses and paper closures. But it would mean those who could get it right would be able to charge for content quite comfortably.

Evidence suggests that this shift may already be happening. Speaking personally, there is not one daily newspaper that I would be happy to pay for. But up until recently I was perfectly happy to pay for the weekly Economist (and in truth, I only stopped because I didn’t have the time to read it). As for specialist publications, I still like to read the monthly F1 Racing if I get the chance.

It may be the same for other people too. Recent evidence seems to suggest that many specialist publications are doing well at the moment, even amid all the turmoil in the press and the worst recession in living memory. According to Malcolm Coles, 216,000 people are perfectly happy to pay £7.75 per month for an online subscription to Which?.

Yesterday I also read about two major news websites relaunching — with less emphasis on news. On the new LA Times website, Hamilton Nolan at Gawker wrote:

Scroll down from the top of page at the new LAT site and you find: Health, Food, Education, Technology, Sports, Blogs, Columns, Opinion, Photos & Video, Summer Hot List, and “Your Scene, Your Comments.” Did you miss the, say, ‘International news’ section? It is way up at the top in tiny tiny type. Below the top fifth or so of the page, there is no “hard news” at all.

As for the new Newsday website… well, just take a look.

Someone still has to do the worthy news stories though. Maybe that can be better left to agencies or major broadcasters. But maybe a simple reduction in the number of newspapers would suffice. Iain Hepburn recently estimated that as many as 17 major media outlets are all aiming at the same audience in Scotland. We make do without 17 major supermarket chains — five or six different ones satisfy most consumers. So do we need more than five or six major news outlets?

A merger here, a takeover there and even the odd shutdown or two might be a good thing. Fewer outlets can have a higher market share, more resources, more of the best journalists — and they’ll produce a better product as a result. Five or six excellent news sources would be much better than 17 so-so ones, which is more or less what we’ve got at the moment. Surely that is what’s needed to make news a viable business going forward.

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to experiment with charging for content has ruffled a few feathers. Fair play to Murdoch for being brave enough to put his head above the parapet. If anyone can take the risk, it’s Murdoch — and the rest of the media will have him to thank if the gamble pays off and it reveals the business model that other outlets can follow. Malcolm Coles certainly makes a fairly good case to suggest that Murdoch can get away with it.

Without doubt, monetising content online has been a very tough nut to crack, so much so that many appear almost to have given up. Indeed, the controversy surrounding Murdoch’s decision shows just how much some people now believe that it is impossible to charge for content.

No doubt the advent of the web has changed the game. It is much more difficult to charge for something that doesn’t physically exist, and something which can very easily be distributed for almost zero cost. This more or less means that, if you want to, you can probably get it for free.

I know of one major national newspaper that found that having a paywall was detrimental to their business because they made more money by removing the paywall and instead displaying Google ads to the extra readers. Anyone who has used Google ads will know that we are talking about pretty low amounts here. It is a real demonstration that a simple subscription model will not work for everyone.

But we know that there are plenty of people who are willing to pay for content. As Malcolm Coles points out, there are countless examples of people paying for music, audiobooks and whatever else, when they could have got it for free. That is because, contrary to what many people assume, most humans have a conscience.

For instance, the pay-what-you-like or “honesty box” model actually seems to work. There is the example popularised by Freakonomics about the bagel man. Radiohead seemed to make it work when they released In Rainbows.

Just last week I heard an interview with a taxi driver from Vermont, USA who invites all of his customers to pay what they like. “Nobody has shortchanged me yet,” he says. Even in cases where cash payment was not forthcoming, payment in the form of CDs was.

The problem is, you won’t be able to charge anyone anything if you only serve up a pile of samey crap. Your product needs to be distinctive. The bagel man wouldn’t have done so well if he was trying to sell pens. Radiohead made it work because they are the best band in the world with a loyal fanbase.

But how many media outlets can offer something so attractive? The problem as I see it is not that you cannot monetise any content. The problem is that the content newspapers are producing just now is not the sort of content they can get away with charging for.

Jeff has suggested that there needs to be a sense of duty to buy newspapers, just like there is a sense of duty to vote. But people should only really pay for something that they value, otherwise inefficiencies will result.

If people still value newspapers, they should be willing to pay — and many still are. Most people would feel guilty otherwise, as the honesty box examples suggest. But the problem is that many people just don’t like newspapers any more, as is evident in the comments on Jeff’s post.

It is not as if there is anything wrong with the physical product, despite the jibe about newspapers being “dead trees”. I can imagine a parallel universe where the newspaper was invented after the internet, where the physical paper would be seen as a luxury item. You don’t have to be connected to the internet. You can fold it up and carry it about with you. You can scribble on it if you want to. You can frame it if you love it enough.

But the problem is with the content. With the advent of new technologies, newspapers have become much less useful to consumers. Once, newspapers were almost the only way to find out about the news. Today they are the slowest of many ways to find out the news.

How many times does a major story break late in the day? That story will be all over the breakfast radio and all over the 24 hour news channels. There will be countless reports about it on the internet, and to add insult to injury the bloggers will have had their say too. But if you want to read it in the newspaper, you will have to wait until tomorrow.

Maybe a major story doesn’t break so late very often. But even in these cases, the chances are that you have had ample chance to hear analysis about the front page stories on the radio or the television the night before. In essence, newspapers now do little more than peddle what is literally yesterday’s news.

Like the music industry, the newspaper industry’s mistake was to fail to adapt. They arrogantly assumed that they could carry on with the same template and tinker round the edges, fumbling around for a business model that would work.

Of course, most newspapers have websites these days. But if anything, that has exacerbated the problem. It has led to phenomena like churnalism, with journalists producing more and more content with fewer and fewer resources. As such, much of newspaper websites’ content is watered-down crap. Worse still, much of it is Digg-bait which has been SEOed to death.

That is the crux of the matter. The media is sullied, and journalism as a profession is held in contempt by much of the general public. No wonder people won’t pay for content — it’s not any good, and there is nothing to distinguish it from free alternatives. Why pay to read Telegraph Digg-bait when you can read BBC churnalism for free?

So is there a solution? Keep an eye out for my next article where I will put forward a few suggestions.

It is notoriously hard to get to grips with the youth. Advertisers hate it. The age group of 15–24 — of which, incidentally, I am still part — is notoriously fickle. They define themselves almost in terms of what they are not rather than what they are.

That is the explanation being given to the counter-intuitive finding by Ofcom that the proportion of 15–24-year-olds using Facebook has decreased in the past year. Facebook as a whole is still growing. But the problem is that it’s now full of parents and teachers, and it would be deeply uncool to be using a website like that.

In the same week, a Nielsen study has shown that teenagers don’t use Twitter. It has been long suspected that they never did use Twitter in large numbers, but now there are figures to prove it.

That came just weeks after a 15-year-old doing work experience made a splash with Morgan Stanley who were trying to get a grip on what the future might look like. Matthew Robson said, among other things, that Twitter is for old people only.

It probably comes a surprise to some. Even Mashable implies it wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t seen the figures. I am sure there are lots of people out there who imagine sites like Facebook and Twitter being full of youths donning virtual hoodies and organising virtual knifings. But young people are not so easy to pin down. The Ofcom report declines to tell us what young people actually are spending their time online doing, although we know for sure that they are online in their droves.

Mine is the first generation to have grown up with the internet. And like every shift in in youth culture, from rock and roll to video games, it gets people thinking about the possible downsides of growing up in a new environment. So they say that the internet gives you a short attention span. Or it dehumanises community life and leads to suicide.

I was recently emailed by a reader and occasional commenter here, Fran Walker. She was curious to know, what with me being a youth and all, if I have a life outside the computer?

As the worry of tinies not being able to interact with other humans, and the problems this may later lead to, is current news, it makes me wonder how you get on, as I regard you as one of the first of the “totally familiar with computers generation”? My son, who is 39 and lives in Taiwan, uses them for specific tasks, dislikes emails, prefers phone calls, and was in the first lot at school when computers were introduced, but he had a computer free childhood before that (say before 12 or 13), whereas, I suspect you had access to your parents’ computer since you can remember?

Like, I suspect, most people my age, I do indeed have a life outside of the computer, although it’s true I spend a lot of time on it. Partly this is because most of my work requires me to use the computer. Then, much of my spare time is consumed by the search for work, which is easiest to do on the internet.

There is also the plain fact that I love being connected to the internet for a whole host of reasons. Most of all, it brings me into contact with so many people I otherwise would not have. And it enables me to contact existing friends easily and comfortably. As Shane Richmond pointed out in his response to Vincent Nichols, the internet “enriches communication, it doesn’t destroy it.”

It is definitely the case that people in my generation are more familiar with computers. When I was young my parents had a BBC Micro, although it was quite old-fashioned even then. As far as I was concerned it was only really good for playing quite rudimentary games, when I could have been playing more sophisticated console games.

We only really got a contemporary computer in the late 1990s, and access to the internet came after that. By that time I was into my teens, so I can definitely remember a pre-internet era. I think for my generation, there were still a lot of people who didn’t have experience with the internet until they were fairly old.

I certainly remember when we started using the internet at school during my standard grades, aged about 15 or 16, there was at least one person in my class who had never used the internet before. Mind you, it’s true that I remember it so vividly because it was so unusual.

People often pose the hypothetical question, “could you survive for a day without the internet?” I recently went away for a short break, and I probably spent longer away from the internet than I have done for years.

Mind you, I expected to still be connected. But thanks to O2’s shaky 3G service it wasn’t to be. That was quite annoying because I wanted to contact people through Twitter. But it wasn’t the end of the world. I had a lot to do anyway, and was focusing on doing the things I wanted to do on my break.

As for voluntarily foregoing access, I think it would be difficult but not impossible. Certainly, one of the first things I do when I get up in the morning is check the internet, and it’s one of the last things I do at night. Would there be any point in not checking? I don’t think so.

A thought experiment like this is not terribly useful. You could try to “survive” a day without the internet, but what would it prove? Could you go for a week without reading your post? Or a month without reading newspapers? I certainly couldn’t survive a day without listening to the radio — I would go round the bend very quickly if I was deprived of it. Is that healthy or unhealthy?

For my generation, having a life outside the computer is no problem. Certainly, I spend a while on the computer. But many people might spend that time watching bad television or getting steaming drunk down the pub, which is much less healthy than spending your time reading Wikipedia.

But — and this is where I start to show that I am at the older end of the “youth” bracket — there is a but. My generation is not the first to grow up having not known a pre-internet world. In fact, I haven’t even had access to the internet for half of my life. So the real people to ask about the worry of an internet-obsessed world would be those who are currently 10 or under, and have never known a pre-internet home or school.

However, I would predict that, like Elvis’s dangerously swinging pelvis, we will come to view as quaint the fact that there was ever any concern.

It was revealed yesterday that Gordon Brown will spend part of his summer doing voluntary work in Kirkcaldy, the town where he grew up which forms the major part of his constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. It is also my home town.

Some uncharitable people have suggested that his job may involve digging holes, something he has done quite enough of as Prime Minister. More cutting might be the observation that voluntary work is the only sort of work you’ll be able to find in Kirkcaldy.

A couple of weeks ago, The Times ran a piece about the economic woes which have hit Kirkcaldy which was a talking point among some of my friends. Aside from apparently inventing the demonym “Kirkcaldians” (I personally prefer “Langtonian”, named after the town’s old nickname, the Lang Toun), I think the article is largely a fair and accurate reflection of the town.

I have written before about the sorry state of the Mercat, the town’s main shopping centre which used to house my former workplace, Woolworths. Over the difficult Christmas period the Mercat went from bad to worse. But it gets just a passing mention in the Times piece, with its mere eight or more empty units.

Apparently there are thirty empty units in the High Street. There is a particularly dire section in the middle of the pedestrianised zone, where three shops in a row — which used to be the Link, Adams and Icon Clothing — now lie empty. What remains has been criticised for exhibiting the characteristics of a clone town (PDF link). Beyond that, particularly in the west end, what isn’t a chain store is most likely a pawn shop or a charity shop.

Perhaps this is not particularly unusual. The death of the High Street has been widely advertised, so this is not a problem unique to Kirkcaldy. The Times article briefly touches on the retail park. It sits on the north-western edge of the town, well away from the centre. But it is currently being expanded, a development which feels like a desperately-needed shot in the arm for Kirkcaldy.

The problem is that it just is not enough. Indeed, the clamour over the few new jobs that are available serve to bring into focus just how dire the situation is. I have lost count of the number of people that I know of applying for the same few jobs.

A new B&Q has opened, although the old one closed. A number of my former colleagues at Woolworths have ended up working there. PC World is another new store at the retail park. But so many people I know applied for jobs there. A friend who got an interview there was told that they had been bombarded with over 700 applications.

If you got rejected by PC World, you could always try applying for a job at the new Toys R Us. The only problem is that they apparently had 3,000 applications. Only a lucky 350 got an interview, with just 40 places going.

An Argos Extra has also opened up. They held an assessment day at the Jobcentre a couple of months ago. I saw it with my own eyes as I walked past it. There were two queues coming out of the Jobcentre, one in each direction. I have been told that the larger of the two queues stretched all the way to the police station, which sits at the opposite end of a street which is the best part of 200 yards long.

The store has been open for just over a week now. The good news on that front is that my friend, who transferred to work there from the existing High Street store, reports that sales have been very encouraging. Whether that is simply down to the excitement of something new opening in Kirkcaldy remains to be seen.

As for the Jobcentre itself, that continues to hire new people, including one of my friends. What they’ll do with the new staff when demand for the Jobecentre’s services is not so strong is unclear. But at the moment that feels like a distant possibility anyway. Whenever I went there I was often told they were short staffed.

In the Times article, there is a quote about the Jobcentre by a man called Tam Collins: “they expect you to stack shelves at Asda.” I got exactly that when I visited the Jobcentre. Going there is a fruitless task which I have now given up.

The Asda is a new store which has opened up in neighbouring Glenrothes. It is probably the most exciting thing in terms of employment to happen in Glenrothes for years. That is another place where a few of my former Woolworths colleagues have ended up. In a way they were lucky — Asda received over 7,000 applications for that one store.

Meanwhile, the town’s largest employer, a call centre called MGt, has recently shed 65 jobs as a result of the closure of Setanta. 65 looks like a small number compared to the amount that are already looking for work. But MGt has provided a lifeline to Kirkcaldy in terms of employment since it set up around a decade ago. Today it has around 1,000 people on its books. I dread to think what Kirkcaldy would be like if it wasn’t for MGt. That even MGt is downsizing is ominous.

But that sums up Kirkcaldy. It lost its way after the industrial decline of the previous fifty years. Now if you want a job in Kirkcaldy you need to either work in a call centre or in the precarious retail sector. And even then, good luck to you. After my previous experience of working in retail, I am avoiding it if at all possible.

Seven months since losing my job at Woolworths, and over a year since I graduated, I still haven’t found a full time job (although I’m lucky to have found bits and pieces of freelance work). I have well and truly hit the buffers, and I am now starting with a blank sheet of paper to decide on my next move.

One of my biggest mistakes was to focus my search too narrowly on a small geographical area. I certainly didn’t bet on finding a job in Kirkcaldy — it was bad enough before and clearly getting worse. But I planned on finding something in the eastern part of the central belt — somewhere within an area encompassing Fife, Dundee, Perth, Stirling or of course Edinburgh. No luck yet. I will have to broaden my search further and hope that something comes up, or hope that I will be able to rely on freelance work in the long term. I wouldn’t like to bet on relying on getting a job at a call centre in Kirkcaldy.

It is sad that Kirkcaldy is like this. This is the town of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics who looked out onto the bustling Firth of Forth, full of trade ships, and was thereby inspired to investigate sources of wealth. Today he would only be inspired to investigate the weed growth in the derelict former workplaces.

Sadder is the role of Gordon Brown. Surely, some people say, if there was one man who could save Kirkcaldy, it would be the Prime Minister and former Chancellor, who grew up here and depends on the residents’ votes. Some are truly furious about it.

Others, as the Times article notes, inexplicably give him and the government the benefit of the doubt. Talking to people, it is genuinely true that there are people in Kirkcaldy who believe that Gordon Brown is a competent leader who has somehow been stitched up. Even for failed leaders, the halo effect is still in evidence.

That is the irony. The people of Kirkcaldy are probably the one set of voters in the country that Gordon Brown can afford to take for granted. Could it be that having the local man as Prime Minister has exacerbated Kirkcaldy’s problems?

It would indeed be harsh to lay the blame wholly at Gordon Brown’s door. Kirkcaldy had problems before, and most of what has happened in the past year can be put down to the global recession.

But the Labour Party is supposed to look after the interests of people who live and work in towns just like Kirkcaldy — a former industrial town that slips ever-further into the mire, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. On the evidence I see with my own eyes, the Labour Party have failed us.

There is a slightly bizarre article today on Online Journalism Blog advocating that newspapers should turn off their RSS feeds and instead push their stories to Twitter (via Cybersoc). Many people have noticed that Twitter has become one of the easiest ways to disseminate content on the internet, leading some to predict the death of RSS.

There are many advantages of using Twitter to spread your message. I have written before about the fact that in some respects Twitter seems to have superseded social bookmarking sites like Delicious. The reason? Twitter has an upper hand in any activity where you want to alert people right away to something you want to share right now.

But this immediacy comes at the expense of its long-term value. Trying to find an old tweet is a nightmare; an impossibility even. You can’t tag tweets — at least without substantially eating into your stringent 140 character limit. And the use of URL shortening services necessitated by Twitter’s character limit comes with its own bucketful of problems.

So should a newspaper completely ditch RSS feeds in favour of Twitter, as Malcolm Coles seems to suggest? Hell no.

His first argument is the strangest of the lot. He points out that many RSS feeds provided by newspapers appear to have few subscribers, and maintains that this is a weakness of RSS.

Despite having virtually no users, the Mail churns out 160 RSS feeds and the Mirror 280. All so a couple of thousand people can look at them in total.

The other papers are just as bad. And while the Guardian has a couple of RSS readers with decent numbers (partly because Google recommends it in its news bundle), it has more feeds than there are people in the UK …

Never heard of the long tail? Having few subscribers to an RSS feed isn’t a weakness. In fact, it plays to the strengths of RSS feeds as the ideal way to disseminate niche content. For me, the problem with newspapers’ approaches to RSS feeds is the complete opposite. As I have written before, they don’t offer enough RSS feeds.

You can scoff at the fact that The Guardian publishes more RSS feeds than there are people living in the UK. But the cost of doing so is pretty small, especially if the feed doesn’t actually have that many takers (because then it uses up less bandwidth). Indeed, as Jon Bounds notes in the comments to the article, in a decent CMS it will take longer (i.e. be more costly) to switch an RSS feed off rather than leave it on.

What potential alternative does a newspaper have if it decides to give up on RSS? Twitter seems to be the big suggestion. Would a Melanie Phillips Twitter account run by the Daily Mail have more than 11 followers on Twitter? Maybe, but the majority of them would probably be robots advertising mucky webcam shows.

For Malcolm Coles, Twitter would be better because you can see which stories are the best by seeing what is retweeted. Retweets are extra good because they promote a newspaper’s content. But people will tweet and retweet about articles they like anyway, whether it comes from an official newspaper Twitter account or not. And to be honest, I could do without my Twitter stream being filled with yet more junky retweets.

According to Malcolm Coles, you can also provide more context in Twitter because “There’s space in 140 characters for newspapers to give some background to stories as well as the headline.” But you can provide the whole article in an RSS feed if you want to, as The Guardian (whose RSS feeds are by far the most popular) has demonstrated. The inability to provide context is in fact Twitter’s greatest weakness. Even a social bookmarking site like Delicious gives you 1,000 characters to play with, not just 140.

It is true that you can have a conversation about stories on Twitter, which you can’t do with RSS feeds. Conversation is practically the raison d’être of Twitter though, so this is not exactly a surprise. All that this underlines is the fact that Twitter and RSS are two very different kinds of tools. One cannot be comfortably substituted for the other.

Malcolm Coles says that the newspapers agree with him because they do not bother to promote their RSS feeds properly. He says that they “have already given up on RSS feeds and no longer actively promote them.”

This ignores the fact that newspapers have never actively promoted RSS feeds. Promotions of RSS feeds haven’t just recently been relegated to the footers. If anything, they have just been promoted there. My last post about newspapers’ RSS feeds outlined my exasperation over the fact that their implementation is sloppy and amateurish, and it is nigh-on impossible to find out if the RSS feed you’re looking for even exists, never mind where it is.

Perhaps, indeed, the newspapers’ failure to properly promote their RSS feeds this is the reason why Melanie Phillips only has eleven subscribers in Google Reader. Maybe Malcolm Coles sees this as a chicken-and-egg scenario, but in this case I definitely know which came first.

The real problem is not that RSS has failed for newspapers. It’s that newspapers have failed at RSS. This is demonstrated by the fact that in the comments, Malcolm Coles ends up relying on the unreliability of the Express’s RSS feeds, rather than any inherent weaknesses in the RSS format itself, in his attempts to support his arguments. If the Express’s RSS feeds are broken and poorly promoted, that’s the Express’s fault, not RSS’s fault.

Dan Thornton in the comments hits the nail on the head:

Personally, if newspapers turned off RSS, I suspect they’d never see me visit their sites again – I use Twitter as a real time stream of information, but my RSS Reader is a library of sources I’ve invested time nad effort in reading regularly and getting to know. One doesn’t replace the other – they co-exist.

Here is the full text of an article written by Grant Thoms for his Tartan Hero blog on 24 November 2007:

Wendy’s in a ’spin’ again

It should have been third time lucky for Wendy Alexander and a head of communications for the Labour Group. First, Brian Lironi left within days of Wendy’s coronation. Then Babyface Marr spectacularly resigned last week after a bout of political Tourette’s Syndrome. Now, the third man, Gavin Yates is in a spin after his blog postings were reported by the Sunday Post and Sunday Herald.

In his blog (which has since been closed down, a fine example of bolting the stable door), he praised Alex Salmond as ‘a politician at the top of his game’ and lauded the SNP Government’s achievements in it’s first 100 days. Now we shall see if this ‘journalist’ will change his tune now Labour is paying for his pipes.

Today, the Tartan Hero stable finds its door bolted firmly shut. A message simply reads: “the blog at tartanhero.blogspot.com has been removed.” His blog posts are now being reported in The Herald.

It seems as though “Tartan Hero” has become the Tartan Feartie, scared of his own views. For the man the SNP were pinning their hopes on for the Glasgow North East by-election has now withdrawn from the contest, apparently afraid that his blog “would return to haunt him”.

We have seen this sort of thing before of course. As Tartan Hero’s post says, one of Wendy Alexander’s spin doctors, Gavin Yates, closed down his blog and deleted it. As I pointed out at the time, if you want to hide your blog then deleting it is pretty futile. You leave traces of yourself all over the place, and deleting your blog only brings attention to the fact that you might have something to hide.

In the case of Gavin Yates, I was still able to access all of his archives which were sitting in my Google Reader account. Anyone can access old RSS feeds in Google Reader as long as they were subscribed to the website while it was still being published.

This week The Herald says that “traces” of the Tartan Hero blog have been retrieved by Mr Thoms’s political opponents. In my Google Reader account I have found a bit more than “traces”. I have access to the full content of 684 of his articles. I think this is a very substantial proportion of his archives.

In the words of Lallands Peat Worrier, he has been “Indygalled“! We can add his name to the list which includes Gavin Yates (whom, ironically, he gloated about), “Indygal” Anne McLaughlin and Kezia Dugdale.

Anne McLaughlin’s blog made the news when she became an MSP. Journalists trawled her archives looking for anything vaguely juicy, and they found a few interesting comments about (and a few photographs of) other politicians, but not much more. After some of the offending content was deleted, and a brief hiatus, she continued blogging and the whole thing blew over.

Kezia Dugdale also took some time off her blog after deciding it was “far too risky a past-time”. I think she got in hot water a couple of times about some of the things she published. Now with a promise that she will “be a bit smarter” with her blogging activities, it remains one of the very best Scottish Labour blogs going.

Tartan Hero was not among my personal favourites (although I guess I should be grateful to him for once rather inexplicably deciding that this was the second best Scottish political blog!). But it was clearly a very popular blog and appeared to attract quite a wide audience. His opinions didn’t do him any harm then.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think there is anything in Tartan Hero’s archives which is worth getting too excited about, which makes the deletion all the more strange in my view. The Herald hints at worries about this views on gay rights and Catholic schools. Jeff (apparently with the scoop!) also pinpointed Catholic schools as a potential issue.

The thing is, Tartan Hero was always had quite a provocative style. The views were not particularly extreme, but they were forthright and strongly expressed.

It seems strange to me that a politician would get cold feet over political views they so vehemently expressed just a year or two ago. It can’t be a surprise that his writing would find itself in the spotlight. Indeed, that was surely the intention.

It is true that in the rough-and-tumble world of party politics, one’s character and history faces a different type of scrutiny, and the game is not often played very fairly. But Grant Thoms is surely an intelligent person who has presumably had his sights set on becoming a Parliamentarian for a while now. None of this can be a surprise to him and he will surely have seen it coming.

So the deletion of his blog does make me scratch my head a bit. Moreover, it looks particularly silly given what he wrote when Gavin Yates deleted his blog.

As I said the last time I tackled this issue, no doubt if someone tried hard enough they’d find plenty of material on my blog to use against me. After all, as a mere 22 23-year-old scamp who has been blogging since 2002, I have left a fairly thorough record of my opinions going back to the age of 16.

It’s not that my opinions as a 16-year-old were particularly invalid or wrong, but a lot of them will have changed. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that I have written something in the past that could be taken out of context and used against me.

I’d like to trust people to be responsible about it, but I wonder if it’s possible. Certainly, it is a sad reflection of the state of politics that astute bloggers feel the need to cover up their writing for fear of it being used against them and thwarting their political careers.

At least Anne McLaughlin and Kezia Dugdale have not been put off for good and have been able to continue blogging in the long run. I wonder if one day soon a modified version of Tartan Hero will return to the blogosphere.

I was interested in this recent article about SNP MSP Kenny Gibson’s comments about Reporting Scotland (via cobaltmale). For him, BBC Scotland’s flagship news programme is too parochial. Apparently the way to fix this would be the creation of a Scottish Six.

It would mean you would have less of the Mrs-McGlumpha’s-cat-caught-up-a-tree-type stories that you sometimes get on Reporting Scotland.

There would be things presented from an international perspective rather than at present, which is still on occasion mind-numbingly parochial in my view – that would be a better way forward.

Before proceeding, I should point out that I am in favour of the Scottish Six. But I do have one problem with the idea.

I don’t follow Kenny Gibson’s logic that by increasing the length of Reporting Scotland, you will have fewer cat-up-a-tree stories. Sure, a Scottish Six would cover all of the important international news and UK-wide news that is salient to Scottish viewers. But then what?

I would guess that on most days, that would fill 40 minutes tops. Don’t forget that a Scottish Six would remove any “Englandandwales”-only stories, which could easily trim five or ten minutes off the Six on many days.

Given that the current Six O’Clock News-and-Reporting Scotland slot is almost an hour long, it seems to me that there would be a lot of time to fill. When you consider that it is followed by the dire One Show, filled with its own type of cat-up-a-tree stories, the problem is accentuated. It’s bad enough having half an hour of dross on prime time BBC One. We don’t want even more.

Maybe it is a prestige thing though. A confidence thing. Part of the nationalist argument is that Scotland has latent abilities that are locked up as a result of its participation in the union. Maybe they also think that a Reporting Scotland with an upgraded “Scottish Six” status will result in the producers and journalists coming up with a better product. Who’s to say that’s not possible?

Perhaps the most lamentable thing about Reporting Scotland is not so much the quality of the programme, which I think is not too bad. The main problem is the fact that I couldn’t honestly tell you that today’s Reporting Scotland was all that different to the programme that existed before devolution. It is still presented as a local news programme; a disposable appendix of the Six.

This adds to the perception that the Scottish media has, counter-intuitively, withered in the devolution era. Faced with more news to report in the form of a devolved Parliament, Scotland’s media has in fact failed to step up to the plate and is by most accounts weaker than it has ever been.

Unlike the newspapers, Reporting Scotland is funded by the license fee. So it doesn’t feel the pinch in quite the same way as commercial outlets. Maybe there is an opportunity for BBC Scotland to fill the gap that is being left by Scotland’s media by going ahead and launching the Scottish Six.

There is still something inside me that doubts that the Scottish Six could successfully fill an hour-long slot. When you watch Reporting Scotland, most days they are already talking about sport (almost always football, and usually just Rangers or Celtic) just ten or fifteen minutes after the programme has started. With more time to fill, we might have to get used to the real cat-up-a-tree stories.

I saw this story on Scotsman.com today about the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee attempting to reach out by using social media. Of course, I am all for the correct use of social media as a sensible and low-cost way for any organisation to communicate with the public and to allow people to get in contact. But there was something about this story that just seemed odd.

HOLYROOD chiefs are to use blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube to make Parliament more accessible to the public, they said today.

People petitioning Parliament will be able to provide videos and photographs.

And Holyrood’s Public Petitions Committee is to have its own blog and Wikipedia page.

It’s the mention of Wikipedia — twice — that tweaked my antenna. How exactly does Parliament intend to “use Wikipedia” to become more accessible to the public? Perhaps they meant using wikis, and got that confused with Wikipedia.

I decided to delve a bit further in case The Scotsman got the wrong end of the stick (which, let us face it, is fairly likely). But the Scottish Parliament’s press release seemed even odder.

As from today blogging, Wikipedia and YouTube will be some of the new social media tools introduced by the Public Petitions Committee as part of its report publication. The report is the result of a year-long inquiry into improving awareness and participation in the public petitions process.

Petitioners will be able to provide videos and photos about their petitions as part of the committee’s new blog page. A podcast, Wikipedia page and dvd about the Parliament’s public petitions system all signal the committee’s commitment in encouraging access to and awareness of the petitions process. The committee also supports the creation of local petitioning systems with local authorities.

I was still confused, so I took a look at the Public Petitions Committee’s report to see what the plans actually were. You can read the details of its plans to use social media under the heading “E-Based” (paragraph 84 onwards).

In paragraph 119 the Public Petitions Committee says: “We are launching, alongside this report, a dedicated Public Petitions Committee Wiki page.” The footnote takes you to this Wikipedia article. This is an article which was already deleted when I checked it early this afternoon, and remains deleted as I write this article.

The Public Petitions Committee’s attempt to use Wikipedia like this completely misunderstands what Wikipedia is for. A page such as the one the Public Petitions Committee tried to create is completely against Wikipedia guidelines. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not some kind of worthy version of Craigslist. They could try reading about What Wikipedia is not, notably that Wikipedia is not a soapbox:

Wikipedia is not a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda and advertising… Therefore, content hosted in Wikipedia is not… [p]ropaganda, advocacy, or recruitment of any kind, commercial, political, religious, or otherwise…

[Content hosted in Wikipedia is not] Self-promotion. It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other, including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you.

An subject is considered worthy of an article on Wikipedia by the bottom-up processes upon which Wikipedia is based. It is not for the Public Petitions Committee to swan in and create a page for itself. Nor can it be the final arbiter on what that article contains. The report somewhat states in somewhat Orwellian fashion:

We are of course mindful of the ability to amend text given the ‘ongoing principle’ under which Wiki pages are created. Our clerks will monitor the page carefully to ensure it remains a factual and authoritative source of information about our public petitions process.

Moreover, Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook or scientific journal:

Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not an instruction manual, guidebook, or textbook. Wikipedia articles should not read like… Internet guides. Wikipedia articles should not exist only to describe the nature, appearance or services a website offers, but should describe the site in an encyclopedic manner, offering detail on a website’s achievements, impact or historical significance…

In paragraph 109, the Public Petitions Committee itself says of its attempts to use social media that it is “not seen as ticking a box which says ‘look, we are doing this because everyone else is!’”. But this Wikipedia stunt has box-ticking written all over it. It has Dad-dancing written all over it.

I’m sure using Wikipedia to publicise the Scottish Parliament’s petitions process seemed like a good suggestion in a meeting room somewhere. But they could have done with having a bit more of an understanding of what Wikipedia actually is before actually proceeding with the idea.

Luckily, the Public Petitions Committee didn’t put all of its eggs in one basket. There will also be a “pod cast”, which currently seems to be a solitary MP3, tucked away at the bottom of the press release. Other than that, there is a promise to link to the Scottish Parliament’s own podcasts. There is no RSS feed and no option to subscribe.

Let’s look it up on the Public Petitions Committee’s new best friend Wikipedia. The article for Podcast is currently illustrated with a massive RSS icon. It says:

A podcast is a series of digital media files, usually either digital audio or video, that is made available for download via web syndication. The syndication aspect of the delivery is what differentiates podcasts from other ways of accessing files, such as simple download or streaming: it means that special client software applications known as podcatchers (such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes or Nullsoft’s Winamp) can automatically identify and retrieve new files in a series when they are made available, by accessing a centrally-maintained web feed that lists all files currently associated with that particular podcast. The files thus automatically downloaded are then stored locally on the user’s computer or other device, for offline use.

I therefore await the launch of some actual podcasts, not just MP3s branded as “pod casts”.

The Public Petitions Committee will also have a “blog page”. That can be found here and, in fairness, it doesn’t look all that bad. It looks like a good way to highlight the work of the Public Petitions Committee.

I think organisations like the Scottish Parliament should be using social media and web technologies more. So the Public Petitions Committee’s steps in this direction are welcome. The blog looks particularly promising.

But engaging with the public is about so much more than tossing around buzzwords like ‘Wikipedia’, ‘YouTube’ and ‘podcasts’. A proper understanding of social media would provide a better service to the public and waste fewer resources.

Continued from yesterday’s article. The Guardian’s New Politics supplement (PDF link) is the basis for this article.

MPs’ pay

I am not averse to MPs being paid a good salary, but I think the current balance is too high. Aditya Chakrabortty says that MPs’ salaries puts them in the top 5% of single earners. Meanwhile, a recent article on the BBC website shows that when you add MPs’ expenses to their salary, an MP’s household earns more than 96% of UK households — assuming the MP’s partner doesn’t work.

This means that fundamentally MPs have little empathy for what the experience of common people are. Given that it is supposed to be the House of Commons, it doesn’t seem quite right.

I’m not sure that a formal link with average earnings would be appropriate. And, as Jenni Russell notes, you wouldn’t want pay to be too low so that particularly able candidates were dissuaded from running. But something a bit more in line with the rest of us would be more ideal, and would probably improve MPs’ image no end too.

Jenni Russell suggests that an MP’s salary should be raised, and allowances cut. There may be something in this, but we wouldn’t want such a system to be unfair to those who live particularly far away from Westminster. That would affect Scotland in particular.

MPs’ hours

Anne Perkins argues that recent reductions in MPs’ hours have reduced the amount of scrutiny government plans receive. She suggests that MPs should therefore have shorter holidays. I’m not so sure. Perhaps we could have the government actually doing less. Given the trail of destruction Labour has left behind, I’d find it difficult to argue against the idea that less government is better than more bad government.

The executive

I completely agree that the Parliament is not strong enough in relation to the government, so I would fully support moves to alter the balance. I am not sure about the detail of some of Martin Kettle’s ideas. Electoral reform would hopefully be enough as it would automatically bring more scrutiny to the government by forcing it to engage more with opposition politicians.

Party whips

David Hencke starts off by saying, “The whips are essential to the running of an efficient political process in the sense that elected governments need to push policies through parliament.” But why should governments be allowed to push policies through parliament? Policies should be accepted because the MPs are convinced that they are the right policies, not because of the arm-twisting tactics of political party elites. The existence of whips is an insult to representative democracy.

Select committees

Michael White’s point is related to the role of party whips, and he notes that committees would be vastly improved if they weren’t so heavily controlled by keeping party rebels out. I also like Michael White’s point about “ministerialitis”.

Political parties

I am not opposed to the concept of political parties. For instance, you can at least be fairly sure that if someone has managed to become a candidate for a major party, they are not a complete loon. You (usually) can’t know that much about an independent. (Any word on who Duncan Robertson is yet?) They also reduce the cost of information for the voters, because you can have a fairly good idea of what a candidate’s broad position is if they are aligned with a particular party.

But I do think that political parties are too strong. Many of the other reforms mentioned above — particularly the power of the party whips, and introducing the right kind of electoral reform — would rein their powers in to the right level.

Party funding

I agree with Seumas Milne that state funding of political parties should not be considered at all. I wouldn’t necessarily agree that political parties’ expenditure should be capped. If they can raise the money, let them spend it. From what I read, it’s not as though political parties’ coffers are exactly overflowing at the moment anyway. Limiting personal donations may be a good idea, and bringing more transparency to more large-scale donations seems sensible.

Communications

Andrew Sparrow’s points about television footage chime with me. The restrictions on TV footage of Parliament do baffle me, particularly the ban on uploading content to YouTube. Proceedings should be seen by as many people as possible, and that means using channels like YouTube.

His idea of allowing journalists to blog from the press gallery is also a good idea which I see no harm in. I also like the idea of providing a press centre for bloggers — though I would say that, wouldn’t I?

MPs’ staff

There is a bit of a pongy whiff about MPs hiring relatives as staff members. In some cases I think it would be sensible though. It does remove the risk that the person you’re hiring isn’t up to the job, because you already know about them. I wouldn’t be in favour of an outright ban.

The press

Ian Aitken’s main point — that the press needs to step up to the plate and scrutinise politicians more — is difficult to disagree with in principle. It’ll be tricky to proceed with though, with the press facing such an uncertain future.

Conclusion

There are lots of interesting ideas for reform floating around at the moment, and I don’t agree with all of them. There are some really tricky issues which have no easy answer, such as House of Lords reform.

I think a careful look at a few big areas could go a long way towards meeting a couple of major goals:

1. Restoring trust in politics
2. Strengthening parliament and backbench MPs in relation to the government

MPs’ pay is obviously a huge issue just now, but the jury is out on exactly how this should be reformed. Some are arguing that MPs should be paid more, but that won’t be a popular option in the current climate.

I certainly think the role of political parties should be seriously considered. There are suggestions about the way they are funded. The role of the party whips is also something which should be seriously looked at.

Most of all, adopting a decent electoral system — preferably Single Transferable Vote — will deal with a lot of the problems facing politics in the UK. Voters would feel that they had more of a say, and Parliament would be strengthened in relation to the government.

The crisis currently facing politics in the UK is massive. Citizens feel detached from the political process and trust in politicians is rock-bottom. It’s been widely noted that this is a perfect opportunity to reform the rotten system.

I only want to briefly cover the main ideas for reform, so I will use The Guardian’s “A New Politics” supplement (PDF link) as the basis for this article. It gives a good overview of the most common suggestions for political reform in the UK.

One thing before I start though. Ten years ago in Scotland, when the Scottish Parliament was set up, there was a lot of talk about what the “new politics” would look like. I think it’s fair to say that most of us have been disappointed with what the political elites came up with.

On with The Guardian’s suggestions.

Written constitution

For a while now, I have been sceptical of the desirability of a written constitution. I’m sceptical about rules in general. After all, it was rules that got us into this expenses mess in the first place. Politician after politician lined up to excuse their behaviour: “it was completely within the rules”. In many cases, their behaviour was in the rules. The overwhelming message to the voters was: screw the morals, I only care about the rules!

Think to yourself, why is murder taboo? It certainly isn’t because murder is against the law. It is because murder is absolutely abhorrent. You don’t need rules to tell you that. So what would a written constitution do? It might give people with dubious morals a set of loopholes they can exploit, with a ready-made excuse for their behaviour.

As for Timothy Garton Ash’s suggestion that every schoolchild should be taught about the importance of such a constitution, can we not leave that sort of cheesy crap to the Americans?

The monarchy

I am no monarchist, and I really wouldn’t mind if the monarchy was abolished. But who really believes that doing away with the Queen would restore trust in politicians? The Queen is probably the one person involved in the government that anyone has a modicum of respect for at the moment.

Electoral reform

As you may guess from my previous post, I have a strong interest in electoral reform. For several years I have felt that the voting system is the most important part of the system to get right.

For me, the First Past the Post voting system is the thing that stinks the most about Westminster. As I pointed out, it is the sort of system that allows a party to gain a thumping majority having gained the votes of just 16% of the population.

It also means the creation of safe seats, the modern equivalent of rotten boroughs, where voters are utterly neglected. Incidentally, there appears to be a correlation between the safeness of an MP’s seat and their likelihood of being implicated in the expenses scandal.

John Harris seems happy to settle for the Additional Member System currently used in the Scottish Parliament. But this system has enough problems to merit its own post. His other suggestion of Alternative Vote Plus is not ideal as it has the same problems as AMS, but with the added “bonus” of being rigged in favour of the larger parties and having a relatively low level of proportionality.

For me, little other than Single Transferable Vote will suffice. STV vastly reduces the number of safe seats and places more power into voters’ hands, and takes it away from the smoke-filled rooms of political parties. I am quite perturbed that John Harris neglected to mention STV at all.

Parliamentary protocol

Here, Hugh Muir seems most concerned with the quaint traditions such as Black Rod and “blather about “honourable” and “right honourable gentlemen”?” As with the monarchy, though, I see little harm in these things, and it really isn’t the issue at hand. I would certainly like to see a less stuffy approach though, and I think the Scottish Parliament has just about got the balance right on this sort of thing.

House of Lords

Jonathan Freedland wants an elected House of Lords above all else. But I think more elections and more elected politicians are the last thing we need. Of course the present system is unacceptable in many ways, but there is no denying that it has saved our skin a number of times by holding the government to account in ways which I doubt an elected House of Lords would ever be able to do.

One possibility would be for people to be appointed for a term at random, like doing jury service (this is also one of The Guardian’s separate sections, so I consider it further below). Perhaps it would be good for Lords to be appointed, but by a wider range of bodies, not just the Prime Minister.

Local government

Simon Jenkins suggests that MPs have a dual role, and they must do a lot of local work in their constituencies which would have been “unheard of 50 years ago”. He suggests that there should be local mayors to relieve MPs of these duties. Again, I would be reluctant to introduce more elected officials. Surely the answer is to strengthen the already-existing local authorities.

The speaker

I have no firm views on how the role should be reformed, but none of Jackie Ashley’s suggestions sound undesirable.

MP numbers

Given some of what I have written above, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I would be in favour of reducing the amount of MPs. 400-odd sounds about right to me. Again, the increased workload of each MP should in fact be absorbed by local government.

Representation

I would not be against attempts to increase, say, the number of female MPs. But stunts such as quotas have no place in a truly meritocratic system. Moreover, it is well known that voters tend to see such initiatives as an insult, and a backlash ensues. This is certainly not one way to restore faith in politics.

Direct democracy

Julian Glover says, “use the jury system as a model”. That is one suggestion for reform of the House of Lords, so I wouldn’t be totally opposed to that idea. I doubt many would be too keen on that idea though, and I don’t think I’d be up for taking five years out of my life either.

Mr Glover seems to think there is something fundamentally wrong with the concept of representative democracy, but I really do not think so. The role of such juries should be limited, and I wouldn’t give them much of a role in the House of Commons.