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 For the man the SNP were pinning their hopes on for the Glasgow North East by-election has now withdrawn from the contest, apparently afraid that his blog “would return to haunt him”.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.

Our second Scotweb2 event takes place tomorrow in Edinburgh. In case you’ve never seen me write about it before, Scotweb2 is a project that I help on to do with web 2.0 initiatives in Scotland. Tomorrow is our second event.

Check out the Scotweb2 in the morning to see how it is progressing.

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.

One thing that really stuck me about the leaflets from Ukip and the BNP for the recent European Parliamentary election was the fact that they were stuffed full of cheesy patriotic symbols — Union Flags, Spitfires, Winston Churchills and so on. Any electorate in the world will have a certain contingent who are enticed by nationalistic rhetoric at the expense of good policies.

In England, Ukip and the BNP have cornered this market pretty well, with the English Democrats also doing a good job of it. One thing that these three parties have in common — aside from their narrow nationalism — is the fact that they are all pretty vile.

Here in Scotland the nationalist vote is completely mopped up by the SNP. We all know that the SNP uses national symbols which appeal to base instincts which may entice certain types of voters. This gets up some people’s noses, including mine.

But the SNP have done a grand job by keeping a lid on the nastier side of nationalism. For this we can be thankful. All though there is, without a doubt, a nastier side to some of their supporters — as we have seen with the Cybernats — you won’t find these types of views coming from the mainstream of the party.

Indeed, the party is at pains to promote a progressive type of nationalism. They embrace civic nationalism. They reject ideas of Scottishness defined in terms of ethnicity. They avoid anti-English approaches. And we can be especially thankful that violent methods do not form part of the nationalist agenda in Scotland.

This is combined with progressive policies, including an enlightened approach to immigration and a positive agenda towards Europe. While in many other parts of the world nationalism may be equated with right-wing or fascist concepts, the SNP combine a nationalist ideology with a broadly centrist agenda.

Whatever the motives of the voters, the SNP’s form of nationalism is a great deal more tolerant — and tolerable — than the forms of nationalism we see from the likes of Ukip, the BNP, the French National Front, the Movement for a Better Hungary, or any number of extreme parties across the world.

Richard Thomson recently described the SNP as being part of “unquestionably the best behaved nationalist movement in the world”. Looking at the European election results and seeing where nationalist votes seem to go, it’s easy to agree with him.

A bit like the UK-wide result, but even more so, the result in Scotland was very static. In fact, in many ways, the outcome was totally predictable, and no seats changed hands.

But that doesn’t mean there weren’t any stories though. Indeed, it was historic because it is the first time the SNP have got the most votes in Scotland in a UK-wide election. And unlike the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary election, it wasn’t a narrow result either.

Indeed, the fact that Labour got the most votes in only three council areas underlines just how much Scotland has fallen out of love with Labour, something that seemed an impossibility just a few years ago. That bodes very well for the SNP in terms of future FPTP elections, which have always acted to keep SNP representation artificially low.

A couple of weeks ago I teased Jeff about recent opinion polls. In the rest of the UK — in a three-party system — Labour was well and truly in the doldrums, fighting for third in the high teens in opinion polls. But in Scotland’s four-party system, Labour were still a comfortable 2nd in the mid-20s.

In the end though, the SNP delivered a comprehensive drubbing to Labour in the European elections. The gap between the SNP and Labour is now over twice as large as the gap between Labour and the Conservatives. And that’s not as a result of how well the Conservatives are doing — their share of the vote went down.

While the UK-wide picture was largely about Labour losing votes and not much else, Scotland’s results were only partly about the Labour collapse. The SNP gained a lot more than Labour lost, so that can be seen as a sign that the Scottish voters are quite happy with the mid-term Scottish Government.

I’m tempted to suggest that the Lib Dems’ drop in support is partly due to the electorate’s perception of their performance in the Scottish Parliament. That would be me projecting my views on the entire electorate. I had gone off the Lib Dems a bit because of their poor performance in the Scottish Parliament, and it was only after investigating each of the parties that I realised they are probably the only party I could bring myself to vote for. If I hadn’t done that, I probably wouldn’t have voted.

The Greens didn’t come close to getting a Scottish seat, which must be massively disappointing for them. A near miss might have been tolerable, but according to the d’Hondt calculator I used, Scotland would have needed nine seats if the Greens were to take one.

Ukip suffered a noticeable dip in an already low level of support. Mind you, last time they were snapping at the Greens’ heels. This year they were far behind. They remain sixth, but are increasingly irrelevant in Scotland.

Meanwhile the BNP gained, but to a quite distant 7th. The BNP had just 2.5% of the vote, compared to a 6.2% share UK-wide. They were 9th in Scotland in 2004, so they have made a bit of a stride in Scotland. But they only gained around 8,000 extra votes. Much of the BNP’s advance can be attributed to the collapse of the SSP and the disappearance of Operation Christian Vote (which entered as part of the Christian People’s Alliance — a move that didn’t do them much good).

Scotland’s socialist titans continue their journey to obscurity. The SSP scraped together just 10,000 votes — six times fewer than the number of votes they got in 2004. Even the Socialist Labour Party, Arthur Scargill’s vanity project, got over twice as many votes as the SSP. The Socialist Labour Party didn’t even bother to enter the last European election. By beating the SSP so comfortably, they have certainly shown just how irrelevant the SSP have become. Those heady days when the SSP had six MSPs feels like so long ago now.

Tommy Sheridan threw his lot in with No2EU, which got even fewer votes. In fact, No2EU got even fewer votes than mystery man Duncan Robertson. That is no mean feat considering I had a struggle finding out anything about Mr Robertson at all prior to the election.

Right at the bottom of the heap was Jury Team, a candidate with which I sympathised a bit. Perhaps it goes to show that, despite the current crisis of confidence in mainstream politics, people still like the principle of party politics rather than taking a risk on an independent candidate.

Despite my lukewarm relationship with football, I was very sad to hear about the death of Dumbarton FC captain Gordon Lennon yesterday. He was killed in a car crash while on a family break.

Just a few weeks ago, in the first football match I had attended in years, I watched him captain Dumbarton in a dominant victory against Elgin City. Gordon Lennon was probably the player that struck me the most as I watched that match. He was a distinctive presence, tall and skilful.

That match, Dumbarton effectively sealed the Division 3 Championship. In the photograph I featured in my article about the match, you can see Gordon Lennon on the very left of the picture. He appeared to be the figurehead of the celebrations.

As my dad noted, he celebrated with his now five month old child, Kai. All thoughts are with Kai, and his partner Kelly.

The circumstances could hardly be more tragic. In addition to recently becoming a father, Gordon Lennon recently completed his studies too. After leading Dumbarton to the Division 3 Championship, he said, “Nothing I have achieved in football even comes close.” Not being so heavily interested in football, I didn’t know him well, but by all accounts he was a thoroughly decent person too. It’s so cruel for this to happen to someone who was so well regarded and had so much to look forward to.

More on Gordon Lennon

• Discussion at Pie and Bovril
• The Ben Lomond Free Press
• A Son of the Rock
• Onebrow
• Down the Wing

Well my week-long voyage of discovery has come to an end. In actual fact, I decided early this week which party I would vote for. I wasn’t sure whether I would actually go along to vote though.

In the end, I decided to go along to the polling station. I fancied a walk and a bit of fresh air. Besides, my parents dropped in to vote on the way to a meal at glamorous Wetherspoons, so I would have gone hungry if I didn’t go with them.

Having reached the polling station without being bumped off, and decided which party I preferred, the costs of voting seemed very small even considering the minuscule benefits. So I went in, queued behind my parents, and cast my vote.

When I first went in, the polling station seemed quite quiet — there was only one person casting her vote. But by the time I left, I had seen at least another four people come in. I was expecting it to be proper tumbleweed stuff, but it seemed steady, even if it was quite slow.

Plus, one of the other voters was someone I recognised as being in my year at school, which perhaps bodes well for the youth turnout. Though to be fair, it is probably more likely to be a totally meaningless coincidence.

Anyway, even if the European Parliamentary election is ostensibly not the most interesting, the week in politics leading up to it has been fascinating. For one thing, I have enjoyed getting stuck into the issues and the parties.

I haven’t really done this sort of blogging for a couple of years at least now, so it felt a bit unnatural. But it was worth experimenting, and it certainly increased my awareness of the salient issues leading into this election. This sharpening of the brain has always been one of my favourite aspects of blogging.

Then there has been this whole issue with the Labour government in Westminster disintegrating in front of the world’s eyes. It would have been perfectly normal for this all to have happened after the election. But for this to happen in the run-up to an election seems incredible. It is an amazing piece of self-flagellation, demonstrating a lack of discipline and self-control. Either that, or things simply became so bad within the government that this actually was the least worst option.

Now the internet is abuzz about what will happen at 2201, when the media can again report freely on politics. It’ll be fascinating to watch this situation unfold.

I have to say, even though I despise their policies, I feel kind of sorry for Labour candidates and activists who had to try and make something out of this mess today. They’ve really been shat on by Gordon Brown’s ineptitude and cabinet in-fighting that is completely beyond the control of the activists on the front line. Makes me glad I’m not a politico.

The other incredible story of the day has been the tale of Ukip voters’ frustration at… wait for it… being unable to unfold a ballot paper properly! Unbelievable. Shows you the class of person that Ukip attracts.

There is a valid point to be made about the order parties or candidates appear on the ballot paper. It’s well known that the SNP exploited the alphabetical system to good effect by temporarily renaming their party “Alex Salmond for First Minister” during the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections, a stunt that possibly explained a lot of the confusion that voters experienced.

In the twenty-first century, you would expect something a bit more sophisticated than alphabetical order. Surely it can’t be difficult to have the parties and candidates displayed in random order, printing an equal number of each iteration of the ballot paper? But with so many things wrong with the political system in this country that no-one in power seems bothered to fix, this is small beer and it’s no wonder this situation has been allowed to unfold.

Anyway, in the end I decided to vote for the Liberal Democrats. This isn’t really a huge surprise. I have voted for them (as my first choice) in every election since I got the vote. It is true that I have become a bit jaded with them recently, but in fairness that is mostly because of their so-so performance in the Scottish Parliament.

Ideologically, they are easily the party I’m closest to. In fact, they are probably more or less the only party I could bring myself to vote for. The deal was sealed when I read their election leaflet, and was impressed by the tone and the positive content about the Lib Dems’ role in Europe.

If I had a second choice, I may well have ended up casting it for Jury Team. Despite my general scepticism about the anti-party rhetoric, I like the main thrust of their message. I was also quite impressed by their number 1 candidate Alan Wallace, who has a blog where the message is quite measured. Today he also added me on Twitter and replied to one of my tweets, so I appreciated the effort to reach me.

Now I just have to wait and find out if I cast a pivotal vote that got the Lib Dems and extra seat. I somehow doubt it. And I have to wait until Sunday to find out. Gah. Just as well something interesting will probably happen tonight anyway then!

A couple of tools have emerged in the run-up to the European elections. They aim to help people decide who they should vote for.

This is nothing new — nowadays every election comes with its own similar tools. They are the cousins of Political Compass and the like. While they may not be totally scientific, they are quite enlightening in their own way — and a bit of fun whatever. So I have taken both tests to see what they say.

EU Profiler

This test doesn’t give you results for all the parties, but the big hitters are there. This has the advantage of also comparing your views with parties right across Europe, not just in Scotland or the UK. The Europe-wide results are interesting in themselves.

But first, here are my results for parties that I can actually vote for. The top party is the Liberal Democrats, which perhaps shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Ideologically, they are the only party I am closely aligned to, and I have always voted for them in the past. I am a 60.3% match. Not terribly high, but higher than the other parties.

Second is the Conservatives with a 58.3% match. The SNP are a 55.2% match, while Ukip edge ahead of the Greens to be my fourth-closest match. Labour slug it out with the BNP to be my least favourites.

If you exclude the importance I attach to issues, Labour actually rise up to 4th place. Perhaps this suggests that I agree with many Labour policies — just not ones that I think are important.

I have a much closer affinity with other political parties outside the UK. My strongest match, by quite a long way, is Sweden’s Pirate Party. This is a recently-formed party which rose up in protest at over-zealous copyright laws. Makes sense I guess.

One striking thing about the Europe-wide results is the fact that three Croatian parties appear in my top five matches! Is there something about Croatia’s politics that would make me swing that way ideologically? Are there just lots of similar parties in Croatia? The three are the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, the Croatian Social Liberal Party and the Croatian People’s Party — Liberal Democrats.

The other parties in the top ten are: Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, People’s Movement Against the EU (Denmark), Estonian Reform Party, Freedom Union — Democratic Union (Czech Republic), Humanist Party (Portugal), Liberal and Centre Union (Lithuania). To be fair, having had a glance at each of these parties, they seem to vary quite a lot, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in them.

Incidentally, the Liberal Democrats are only my 65th strongest match. So in theory, there are 64 other parties across Europe that I would rather vote for. Not very good, is it?

Vote Match

Vote Match gives me very different results. My strongest match is Libertas with a score of 51/54, which seems quite high. (I’ve taken the test three separate times now, and Libertas were the top result each time.) This is despite the fact that I chose Scotland as my region and Libertas aren’t standing in Scotland.

Joint second are the Greens and the SNP with 41. The Lib Dems, the Conservatives and Labour are all joint fourth with 39. Jury Team’s Alan Wallace has 33 and Ukip have 28.

The results page on Vote Match is very comprehensive, with a table of each party’s position on each of the 30 questions. Looking down the table, it does appear as though I agree with Libertas on a lot of issues, and all of the issues that I marked as important. On all the issues I marked as unimportant, I disagreed with Libertas. This has perhaps accentuated their score.

These results just don’t sit right with me though. The list seems wrong. It is especially odd to see the Greens so high up there. Perhaps this is where differences in policies for Holyrood or Westminster and Europe come into play. But I’m taking this result with a pinch of salt.

Political Compass

This isn’t related to the European Parliamentary election, but it is the granddaddy of online political tests, and I think it is a couple of years since I have taken it. So I thought I’d take another look. My result now is:

Economic Left/Right: 1.25

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.82

So I’m — just — on the libertarian right. But I am still more of an economic centrist, though firmly a social libertarian. This is more or less what I expected. A clear trend that I have noticed is a slow drift towards the libertarian right. The last time I took this quiz, two years ago, my economic score was 0.38 — closer to the centre, but still on the right. The social score was a slightly less libertarian -6.10.

The time before my score was 1.00 and -6.21. The time before that, in 2006, it was -0.13 and -5.08.

I still haven’t decided whether or not I will vote. However, I think if I do vote, I know which party I will vote for. I’ll report this evening on my action / inaction.

BNP

Needless to say, the BNP is a pathetic party of mindless xenophobes with moronic policies. Their election leaflet has come in for a ton of criticism too, and rightly so.

My dad picked up on their use of a Spitfire at the very top of the leaflet:

The Spitfire was used in a war against your philosophy, you cretins.

Amusingly enough, the Spitfire pictured on the leaflet was actually used by Polish pilots, not British ones.

On the other side, the following is listed: “TRAFALGAR - THE SOMME - DUNKIRK - D-DAY - THE FALKLANDS”. What is this? Some kind of war-mongering jizzathon?

The leaflet also says you should vote for the BNP: “Because it’s not racist to oppose mass immigration.” Well, maybe it’s not racist. But it is downright moronic and fascistic for these reasons.

There doesn’t appear to be any attempt to tailor this message to a Scottish audience. A paragraph rants about “Lab-Lib-Con” — but there is no mention of the SNP, Scotland’s largest party. And the leaflet contains absolutely no information whatsoever about any of the BNP’s candidates.

Beneath this, is the by now familiar section on “Why We’re All Voting BNP”. You know, the one containing stock photographs which have been used in this way without permission. And the models aren’t even British. The “pensioners” are actually an Italian couple who do not hold the BNP’s views.

Christian Party - Christian Peoples Alliance

I got no leaflet, so I took a quick look at their website. I am not a Christian, so I haven’t spent long looking at the website. Reading their manifestos, their main policies include beginning each meeting of the European Parliament with Christian prayer and enforcing “an EU-wide day of rest” every Sunday.

A bit like the Greens, they also want the economic system to be controlled more, but are vague on how to go about it. Apparently limits will be placed on “complex instruments”. All-in-all, they actually seem very similar to the Greens, but with a God bit in the middle. Not a party for me, but they don’t seem quite as nutty as I first feared.

Duncan Robertson (independent)

It’s a complete mystery. Does anyone know who this person is?

Jury Team

No leaflet again, so I took a look at the website. There is not much there policy-wise apart from a general hatred of party politics. Understandable given recent events, although I am not totally against political parties as I outlined in the previous posts about how to reform politics in the UK.

There is something quite refreshing about Jury Team though, which is that the candidates are apparently totally independent of any kind of party control. Jury Team’s number 1 candidate in Scotland, Alan Wallace, has a blog which is an interesting read. He seems like a measured chap and in the (admittedly rather little) research I have done, there has been nothing that has offended me in the slightest.

There really is very little information policy-wise though. Indeed, Alan Wallace’s blog goes out of its way to point out that it doesn’t really matter what the policies are — what counts is that he will be open and transparent. It’s very well saying that, and I don’t doubt it. But it would be better if there was a little more information on exactly what I might be voting for if I place my cross next to “Jury Team”.

No2EU - Yes to Democracy

Cheese-a-rama. Where have I seen this before? Does anyone really think that the current rise in unemployment has been caused by the EU?

The message from Bob Crow makes No2EU sound a bit like UKIP, but with added socialism thrown in for good measure. Loon-tastic. Like most frustrated socialist parties, they seem to long for a way of life that hasn’t been seen since… well, 1972.

My dad noted that the party’s logo is quite odd. The way it’s written looks like “no²eu”. I wonder what the rationale behind turning the word “to” into a number 2 then the squared symbol is!

Amusingly, this Scottish leaflet invites voters to an “Eve of poll rally — Euston, London”. I’m sure all those out-of-pocket Scottish workers will really easily find the time and money to attend.

A bit of research reveals that No2EU is actually a coalition made up of the following organisations: RMT, Alliance for Green Socialism, the Communist Party of Britain, the Indian Workers’ Association, the Liberal Party, the Socialist Party, Socialist Resistance and Solidarity. Communists? Solidarity? Indeed, Tommy Sheridan is number 2 on the list in Scotland. Yup, that seals the deal. I shan’t be voting for these people.

Socialist Labour Party

We got no leaflet, so I looked at the website. It’s a little bit scary. The design is garish and primitive, and the first words apart from the title are: “Scargill. VOTE SLP JUNE 4TH” That’ll be Arthur Scargill’s vanity party then.

Click on the link and you are told that this is “one of the most important elections since the Second World War.” Eh?

Ukip

This Ukip leaflet has the same sort of naff symbolism as the BNP one, with a huge image of Winston Churchill dominating the front of the leaflet and making an appearance on the other side. “Say no to the European Union”, the leaflet proclaims, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Winston Churchill actually called for a “United States of Europe”. Ho hum.

Ukip provides some information on their candidates. Their qualifications? One is “Scotland’s best-known horse whisperer.” Another is an “experienced geophysicist.” Still, at least it underlines the point that “Ukip candidates are real people, not career politicians!” — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Still, you wouldn’t catch me voting for this lot. In these corruption-aware times, it would be a bit silly to vote for Ukip, who are kings of the art. They also have a track record of telling massive porky pies about the EU.

Scottish Conservatives

This is a pretty substantial leaflet, with lots of copy for you to read. It’s pretty slick. One thing that strikes me is that it avoids the tacky symbolism adopted by the other right-wing Eurosceptic parties. The only sign of nationalism is a rather washed-out Union Flag acting as a background.

Content-wise, it starts with a number of cut-outs of newspaper headlines chronicling Labour’s many disasters — as if we needed reminding. Below that is a picture of Gordon Brown photoshopped to make him Janus-faced, which is disappointingly base.

Policy-wise, the focus is very much on European issues. While I may not agree with all of their policies, I appreciate the effort they have taken to tell us exactly what they have done and plan to do in the European Parliament.

Unfortunately, this focus on Europe goes out of the window during the message from David Cameron and Annabel Goldie. They essentially encourage you to vote to send a message about the Labour government in Westminster. There is no escaping the fact that the European Parliamentary election is a second-order election, and will therefore often be used as a way to “send a message” to the government. But I’d rather the Conservatives wouldn’t encourage people to discard European issues for a European election.

No word on the coalition of charmers they are trying to build up either.

Scottish Greens

We have not heard a peep from the Greens. No leaflet came through the door. So I have taken a look at their website.

The blurbs are full of the sort of stuff you come to expect from Greens. For instance, it attacks “reckless growth”, apparently oblivious to the fact that it is the lack of growth that is hurting everyone so much just now. They attack the economic system, but offer little in the way of alternative ideas, apart from more control and more regulation. And renewable energy.

Among their main plans is a promise to create “hundreds of thousands of jobs”. Good luck with that one. They also advocate mutual financial institutions, glossing over the problems that hit the Dunfermline Building Society.

Scottish Labour

This leaflet is not just tailored for Scotland. It is aimed more narrowly at Fife and Tayside. We learn that Labour has the vote of Kariann and Kenneth from Rosyth, whose are pictured with their son Ryan. Oddly, they all look rather glum. Their quote says:

It’s Gordon Brown’s leadership that will get us through these tough times. Labour is the only party on the side of hard working families, standing up for Scottish people nationally and in Europe.

They’re not doing a very good job of it though, are they? As for “Gordon Brown’s leadership”, I can only imagine that Kariann and Kenneth are by now the laughing stock of Rosyth. There can’t be many towns in Scotland that have been more badly hit by Labour’s disastrous economic policies than Rosyth.

I’ll never forget the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, when Gordon Brown stood in Rosyth banging on about job security — only for 700 jobs to go at Lexmark. According to this page, 1,599 jobs had been lost in Rosyth — around an eighth of the town’s population — between 1997 and 2006. Labour’s economic legacy in Gordon Brown’s patch.

When you open up the leaflet, the first thing it does is play the unionist card, as you would expect from Labour. It’s not that I disagree with the message, but it does seem a bit ham-fisted. It is perhaps a mistake for the rest of this page to focus on Labour’s economic record, which is in tatters.

Page three concedes that “it may seem hard to talk about an upturn now”. It certainly is hard to talk about it while Labour are in charge. There is only a brief mention of what Labour’s MEPs have done, and nothing at all about what they plan to do in the future. The rest focuses on the SNP’s record in the Scottish Government. Above this blurb is a rather unflattering photograph of Gordon Brown and Lindsay Roy, two people who always look uncomfortable in front of a camera. Neither of them look particularly happy, reflecting the mood of the times.

The back page sees the return of Kariann and Kenneth, telling us what they think. They tell us that the SNP “have broken almost all their election promises”, then list all the “wrong decisions for Scotland” the SNP have made. Nothing about European issues.

They are “not voting for the Tories because of the last recession.” Hahahahah! Quite why the relatively benign recession that happened almost twenty years ago matters more than the one that is ruining everyone’s lives today is not entirely clear, although I suppose we have come to expect this sort of logic from Labour supporters. Anyone but the Tories, never mind the facts.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

The Lib Dem message on the front is simple and effective: “Stronger together, poorer apart”, illustrated by a tug-of-war team wearing orange and black. Inside, the copy focuses on “international action” that the Lib Dems help take.

Admirably, the entire leaflet focuses largely on European issues. There is a section at the bottom on why each of the other major parties are so bad. Gordon Brown is pictured shaking hands with George Bush — a bit of a cheap shot. The SNP are bad because a “broken up” Britain would be weaker in Brussels. The Conservatives would also isolate us from Europe. Apparently the Tories “only agree with small fringe parties including UKIP and Sinn Féin.” Ouch! Another low blow.

Despite the cheap shots, this is easily the leaflet that speaks the most to me. I appreciate the focus on European issues, underlining the importance of international action in certain areas — a concept I agree with.

SNP

The SNP are a major party, so there are none of the amusing loon-policies. However, what it does mean is a lot of bland platitudes. “SNP MEPs will always do what’s best for our nation, our families and our communities.” What does this actually tell us? Would any party say they wouldn’t do that?

One thing that differentiates the SNP is the promise to “Campaign for Scotland to be a member of the European Union in its own right” — in other words, independence. Surprise surprise.

Disappointingly, Alex Salmond’s message focuses on what the SNP Scottish Government is doing, rather than what the party plans to do in Europe. The back of the leaflet provides a list of what the SNP is doing to protect Scottish jobs. This feels more like an opportunity to remind us of what the Scottish Government is doing rather than a plea for us to vote SNP in the European Parliamentary election.

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.

It’s a funny time in politics. I have written a couple of times in the past about why I would consider abstaining, or sympathise with those that do. That provoked some interesting discussion.

My degree was in Economics and Politics, and I found that the more I learned about politics, the more jaded with the system I became. Conversations with other people have suggested that I am far from alone in experiencing this. Indeed, it has been one of the central points of the previous discussions here, with James O’Malley offering a contribution that backs the theory up:

I think your experiences of becoming more apathetic with age - essentially more apathetic as you became better informed - are pretty similar for a lot of people. I’ve just finished a degree in International Relations, and as a consequence of learning what a horrible bleak mess the world is, I think we all became cynical about almost anything political.

Events since then have only made me more likely to become apathetic. The credit crunch underlined that what goes on in politics does not matter an iota as much as what happens in the real world of business. Politicians don’t have as much power over the economy as they like to make out, and any influence they do have is probably a negative one.

Now we have the expenses scandal, which in fairness is only surprising in terms of the scale of the problem, not the fact that it existed at all — most people took that as a given. It adds to the impression that the system is inherently rigged against individual voters.

Increasingly, when people ask me how I would vote if there were an election tomorrow, I say that I wouldn’t vote. Making a conscious decision not to vote is not the same as apathy. I still have opinions on issues just as much as I have ever done. But my stance does reflect a more jaded view of party politics.

Next week we will be asked to vote in the elections which people are almost certainly the most apathetic about — European Parliament elections. This will put to the test the idea that I wouldn’t vote. If I were to abstain on Thursday, it would be the first time I have ever turned down the opportunity to vote in a major election. Mind you, I have only had the vote for five years so I haven’t had that many opportunities to turn my nose up (although voters my age are the most likely to).

In the background of recent events, the political elites are now becoming aware of how intense the distrust of political types is among the wider public. As such, there are a number of ideas for how to reform the system floating around just now. As someone who takes an interest in constitutional issues, electoral reform and the like, I think it will be worth investigating them.

I find this an interesting situation. In the wake of a barrage of apathy-inducing news, and in the face of the most stupefyingly boring elections on the face of the planet, can I bring myself to vote? Or, more to the point, can I bring myself not to vote? Will feelings of civic duty trump the temptation to rationally abstain?

Increasingly, as Question Time is broadcast, I find that the conversation on Twitter is dominated by discussions about “#bbcqt“. I have not been able to bring myself to watch that programme for a couple of years. That was another thing that has got me thinking. I wrote:

Can’t work out if I want to totally give up on politics, or if now is a good time to get stuck in again. Everyone on Twitter talking [about] #bbcqt

I got one reply, from Chris Hawes: “Get stuck back in!”

So, is it time to get stuck back in? For the next week or so I am going to go on a voyage of discovery. Okay, that’s just a grand way of saying I’m going to write some posts about politics over the next few days. I will start over the weekend by writing some thoughts on the state of democracy, and looking into some of the ideas for reform.

Later on into next week I will write about the upcoming European elections, taking a look at each of the parties standing in Scotland. There will be an election literature review, and I will be asking questions such as, “Who on earth is this Duncan Robertson fellow and why is he suspiciously invisible on Google?”

Most importantly of all, I hope to find an answer to the big question: Will I vote, and if so who for?

The plans are vague because I haven’t written the posts yet, and I genuinely don’t know what the conclusions will be. My post about the democratic system is something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest for over a year now, but I’ve never managed to bring myself to actually write it. Now seems like a good time to do it.

By way of a taster, here is another of the catalysts to this series of posts. It’s a post by The Devil’s Kitchen: Democracy is not a given good. It comes pretty close to summing up my feelings, but you will learn more about that when I publish the next post.

How much more could George Foulkes possibly miss the point? I am trying to work out what the point of this motor-mouth is. I think it must be to come out every so often and say something so blindingly pig-headed that everyone is temporarily distracted from the fact that the Labour Party is in such trouble.

What George Foulkes doesn’t seem to understand in this video is that being paid taxpayers’ money for doing your job is not the same as being paid taxpayers’ money for doing up your home. One is perfectly normal, while the other is egregious, under-handed and borderline fraudulent.

Incidentally, his maths isn’t too hot either. £92,000 isn’t anything like twice what an MP gets paid (£64,766). It’s not even 1½ times (sans expenses, of course).

As for his claim that journalists “undermine democracy”, I don’t think I’ve heard anything so dangerous outside of a BNP pamphlet in a long time. Journalists in fact do the very opposite. They uphold democracy, and it’s just as well they exist, no matter how much they are paid, because it’s the only way these people are ever held to account.

The BBC can pay its journalists as it sees fit, and it is important for the independence of the BBC that this is the case. Unless you want the BBC to be staffed entirely by work experience kids, that means paying the market rate. Wouldn’t it be good if MPs were paid the market rate? There isn’t any shortage of applicants you know.

It is none of a politician’s business what a journalist gets paid, and it is especially dangerous for one to stick his nose into the BBC’s decisions. I think it is ominous that a politician should take such glee in telling the BBC how it should allocate its resources — and at the same time demand that it stop asking him questions that the viewers want answered. It is indeed this sort of demand that undermines democracy.

I can’t believe the rudeness of George Foulkes, and full credit to Carrie Gracie for just coming right out and revealing her salary. MPs had to have the information about their expenses prised out of their mitts, and now we know why.

Update: According to Iain Dale, George Foulkes earns £110,000 in salary from the taxpayers! Not bad work, and almost three times what a newsreader earns!! (Via Aye we can! at Malc in the Burgh.)

I’m not a terribly big football fan. I used to be interested, but I went right off it early this decade. My theory is that this is down to the fact that the football team I was brought up to support is Dumbarton FC. Despite having been born in Kirkcaldy and lived here almost all my life, since my father is from Dumbarton that is who I was encouraged to support. My dad is a big Dumbarton supporter. That is why his blog, and indeed his book, are called A Son of the Rock.

But despite my dad’s fanaticism, I don’t think supporting Dumbarton was conducive to me becoming a football fan. It’s not easy to support a football team that is based at the opposite end of the country, especially when that team is — to be fair — crap.

There was also the experience of having sat for ages in what must be some of Scotland’s grubbiest football grounds. Most of my matches must have taken place at Dumbarton’s former home of Boghead Park. By the time it was vacated in 2000, it had been Dumbarton’s home ground for 121 years. At the time, it was the longest any senior football club had occupied a ground. It was a shitehole. Nice views though, which I enjoyed from the pitch on the invasion following the last-ever game played there.

I’ve been to Cowdenbeath’s ground a few too many times for my liking too. I once utterly lost the will to live, freezing my bollocks off standing at the railings there. Worst of all though was East Fife’s ground, Bayview Stadium. This place has one stand. This stand sits in the shade. It also directly faces the North Sea. I don’t think I have ever been so cold in my life.

This weekend, I decided on a whim to travel through with my dad to watch Dumbarton play. It must have been my first football match for six or seven years. It was possible for them to win the Division 3 Championship. I thought it would be interesting to watch Dumbarton achieve something, though I have since learned that I apparently watched Dumbarton get promoted before, and I have absolutely no recollection of it.

Saturday’s experience was a reminder of just how far away Dumbarton is. We left the house at 12:30pm, and didn’t return until the back of 8pm. And all we did was watch a football match.

The football wasn’t the sort of standard that would convert me back. Dumbarton were too dominant. Elgin City, bottom of the table, had nothing to play for and they certainly looked like a squad sapped of motivation.

Dumbarton ended up winning 6-0, breaking a couple of records in the process. Derek Carcary put four of them away, becoming the first Dumbarton player to do so since the 1970s. Dumbarton also surpassed their all-time record of not letting any goals in, currently standing at almost 700 minutes.

I watched Dumbarton become Division 3 champions in all but name. The fans and players celebrated, but there was no trophy presentation. East Stirlingshire, just three points behind, still technically have a chance of winning. But with a goal difference, er, difference of 18, it is almost 100% certain that they will not. I felt it was a slightly surreal and empty way for Dumbarton to become champions. Nonetheless, champions they apparently are. It makes them the first team in Scotland to become Champions at four different levels!

Funnily enough, I was almost roped in to watching my local team Raith Rovers last week. In the end it didn’t happen. But congratulations to them as well. This weekend they became Division 2 champions. I didn’t see any dancing in the streets.

For those interested in web 2.0 in Scotland, there will be a second Scotweb2 event this June. Among those attending: digital content marketing firm w00tonomy, Alistair Tibbett from Greener Leith, Iain Henderson from Mydex, Pezholio, Jadu and Learning Pool.

The event will take place on 19 June at the Melting Pot on Rose Street in Edinburgh. For more details and to sign up, click here.

As always, keep an eye on the Scotweb2 blog for all the latest information.

Thanks to Malc for organising yesterday’s bloggers’ meetup. I really enjoyed it — it was good seeing some bloggers again, and meeting some others for the first time.

The most impressive part of the night though was when every blogger’s favourite columnist, Iain Macwhirter, turned up. In the wake of all the criticism he got from bloggers (including me) about his article from a couple of weeks ago, he turned up unannounced and stayed for a couple of pints!

Thankfully, we all managed to withhold our ejaculations for the duration of his visit. I hope he enjoyed the discussion and saw that we aren’t all vicious and constantly attacking one another.

Part one of this article was published yesterday

Further evidence that Iain Macwhirter is struggling to see beyond the model of the media comes from the fact that the blogs he cites as “very good and intelligent” are both offerings from the media. Paul Krugman’s blog is funded by the New York Times while Robert Peston’s is run by the BBC.

Interestingly, the one he criticises — aside from Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes — is by established journalist Alex Massie, whose blog is hosted by The Spectator. (Incidentally, Alex Massie’s evisceration of Iain Macwhirter’s original article is well worth a read.) There is still no sign that Mr Macwhirter will deign to read the output of someone who isn’t sharing his ivory tower.

He also makes the point about bloggers being geeks, citing the fact that a lot of it relies on the dark art of SEO. He says that “there is a science to blogging”. This may be so, certainly for the larger blogs out there. But let’s be clear about this — you don’t need to know SEO to blog. You just have to write. The barriers to entry are incredibly low. I started blogging when I was at school and it was years before I even learnt what SEO was, never mind begin to implement the techniques. It didn’t stop me from blogging. You can learn as you go along. Or you can choose not to, if you wish.

Whatever, it is a hell of a lot more accessible than the media. How do I go about getting a column in a newspaper? The short answer is that I can’t. Want to be a blogger? Sign up to Wordpress.com or Blogger and you’ve already made it.

Where Iain Macwhirter is probably closest to being right is in his point about personal attacks on the blogosphere. It is true that there is rather too much of this. But it usually comes from the same four or five bloggers, and I don’t read any of them.

Sometimes people (including, I confess, me) bemoan the fact that there is still no Scottish Guido Fawkes. But in a way we should be relieved that this brash and divisive model is not replicated in the Scottish political scene.

The Scottish blogosphere is actually a fairly pleasant place, as has been noted by IoC. Will Patterson, in his letter to The Herald, pointed out that you can read about the great blogging that goes on every week on Scottish Roundup.

I like to think that the Roundup has helped foster a friendly atmosphere in the Scottish blogosphere. We do, of course, have our differences. But that is what you expect in a debate. By and large, we are a respectful and friendly bunch. Despite our political differences, I think there is a clear Scottish political blogging community. A fair bunch of us will be attending a meet-up later today. And it always amazes me that even those with the strongest political views can put their differences aside and give rival viewpoints a fair airing when they are invited to edit the Scottish Roundup. Stephen Glenn is a typical example of this.

There is, of course, the phenomenon of the Cybernats, which is a problem. But it’s not a problem with blogging. The truly swivel-eyed will never find a decent platform for themselves on the blogosphere. That is because it is too easy to ignore a bad blogger — you simply don’t read the blog.

Where Cybernattery is a problem is in comments. As I have pointed out a number of times before, the nature of comments is very different to the nature of blogging. I suspect Iain Macwhirter’s impression of blogging comes mainly from the comments to his own pieces, which is a shame because they are no doubt awful. He says, “This has now become institutionalised in the form of the blog, which is an extension of this kind of citizen journalism.” But it is a major mistake to assume that bloggers and commenters are the same people, or even vaguely close relatives.

As Macwhirter himself points out, bloggers want to be read. But as I have noted, it is easy to ignore a blogger by simply not reading. So the truly awful commenters would never succeed as bloggers because they simply will not get read and won’t make any impact.

That is precisely why websites like The Herald, Scotsman.com, Comment is free, the BBC’s Have Your Say, Digg and YouTube suffer from having terrible comments. Because these are huge websites, commenters know they are guaranteed an audience. Unlike a blogger, they don’t have to build an audience by producing quality content. They already have the spotlight they crave so that they can spout out their nonsense. Bloggers produce a higher-quality product because they need to come up with the goods or people will not read. Commenters believe they will have people reading anyway.

That is not, of course, a criticism of all comments. Small and medium-sized blogs generally have great comment sections, and I am lucky to be able to count this blog among the medium-sized blogs that generally have thriving and friendly comments sections. It is the big media sites that attract bad commenters like files on a poop.

To tie all the loose ends together, the point — as everyone agrees — is that the media landscape is changing. Kezia Dugdale has a good overview of what’s going on.

A recent piece in the Sunday Herald suggested that my blogs get the sort of readership that a local newspaper can expect. That was news to me, and it rather sums up just how different the world of the media is becoming. While the blogosphere grows and grows, the likes of The Scotsman and The Herald are struggling to scrape together enough coppers to fund next week’s editions.

This makes the way the media approaches the web all-important. Johnston Press’s decision to rip the perfectly adequate Scotsman.com to shreds and implement their own shaky template has effectively put a nail in their own coffin. Traffic has halved since they took over. The Herald’s web presence has always been dire, and signs for the future are not good.

Given this state of affairs, the relationship between blogging and the media will become ever-more important. Everyone in this arena is still feeling their way around in an uncertain new world, and everyone will make mistakes along the way. The media could be helped significantly if their most high-profile commentators had a modicum of awareness of what the real strengths of blogging actually are.

There was much hand-wringing among bloggers a couple of weeks ago in the wake of an article about blogging written by Iain Macwhirter. I didn’t take much notice of it at the time. After all, it is not exactly surprising that an established media figure would take a swipe at blogging. And if there is one thing less surprising than that, it is the reaction of bloggers to such a piece. I’ve seen it too many times to get very worked up about the whole thing.

Bloggers raised their eyebrows over Iain Macwhirter’s decision to resort to lines such as, “Bloggers don’t write, they ejaculate.” The controversy deepened when he decided to launch into ad hominem attacks on a couple of prominent bloggers.

But it seems as though I was wise (albeit accidentally) to sit back and spectate (though I acknowledge the irony in the fact that I have now taken the bait). Because it turns out that Iain Macwhirter was pulling a stunt of sorts. It was all a demonstration of how the structure of the blogosphere encourages personal attacks and controversialism. It turns out that Will P was sort of right in his hunch (or hope) that it was all a joke. I have to say, well played Mr Macwhirter. The experiment certainly worked.

So let us strip away the personal attacks and the controversial language, taking as read that Iain Macwhirter doesn’t really mean it. It is worth considering his points.

The original article was prompted by the controversy surrounding emails sent between Damian McBride and Derek Draper. To me it seems odd to launch into a critique of blogging on the back of this. Damian McBride is not a blogger. He is (was) a political aide.

Derek Draper was a blogger, but only for a period of about four months. He has a great deal more experience working for Labour, as he has done on and off for the best part of twenty years. Labour List has been widely derided as a ham-fisted attempt to contrive the shape of Labour’s presence on the blogosphere. It was a failure because it came across as inauthentic and insincere — a top-down approach to a bottom-down medium.

Quite why the focus should be on the fact that this dirty work was done for a blog beats me. McBride and Draper are figures of the political establishment. Their behaviour doesn’t reflect badly on blogging. It reflects badly on politics.

In fairness, though, Iain Macwhirter is also critical of Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale. I am often frustrated with the way the media often focuses on these two blogs whenever it examines blogging. I’m not a particular fan of either blog, and I do not regularly read them.

It is no surprise that the media focuses on them though. They are probably the two blogs that adhere most closely to the model built by the media: hungry for scoops, greedy for a scalp, anxious to have more readers, tempted to sensationalise, trading on gossip.

Iain Dale can probably be comfortably described as a member of the political establishment. Paul Staines too, though probably to a lesser extent. He is also unashamed to admit that he models his blog on tabloid values.

This is all fine and well. It has its place, even if it is not personally my cup of tea. But it is a bit irritating that the media constantly focuses on these big blogs written by those with political connections. If I want to read a sensationalist view from inside the Westminster bubble, I can pick up any tabloid — or, indeed, broadsheet — newspaper. The unique selling point of blogging is not to be found in the likes of Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes.

The true beauty of blogging is the fact that it gives the little person a say, and provides a platform for niche interests. You don’t need to shift hundreds of thousands of copies or generate hundreds of thousands of uniques for your content to matter. You can be writing to a dozen people and it will add something to the world. The economics of newspapers meant that this couldn’t happen in the past.

Failing to understand this is the mistake Iain Macwhirter makes when he assesses the blogosphere. The value doesn’t just come from big numbers, and the brash approach that this necessitates. Most of the aspects of blogging that Mr Macwhirter bemoans are actually just failings of of big blogs. Even then, big blogs are close to being like mainstream media outlets. Nowadays there is less of a clear dividing line between the media and the citizens. It is more like a continuum.

As such, the failings of big blogs are actually quite similar to the failings of major media outlets. He says “nothing on the web can be longer than a couple of hundred words”, which is a bit strange because most posts on this blog are around 1,000 words long and I don’t have many problems with that. Check out two of the best blogs in Scotland, J Arthur Macnumpty and Ideas of Civilisation. There is not a 200 word long post to be found.

It is the broadcast media that has merrily ushered in the era of the soundbite — out of fear that viewers or listeners will switch off. Bloggers have a relative freedom to gas on for as long as they want. While television stations stake their entire existence on having massive audience figures, bloggers (with the exception of a very lucky few) will not go out of business if people stop visiting. We do it for the love of it, not because we have to make our living out of it. As Yousuf points out:

The vast majority of bloggers, and 100% of Scottish bloggers, do so as a hobby and not as a primary source of income. This means that increased readership is pleasant and ego-boosting but not necessary for survival so we can write what we wish to. If anything it is the mainstream press who are beholden to being cheap and sensationalist.

Mr Macwhirter goes on to say that “immediacy is everything on the blog, and it is a medium which positively discourages reflection and any kind of serious thought.” But it is the mainstream media that cultivated the 24 hour news culture as much as thirty years ago. Moreover, unlike a 24 hour news channel, a blogger doesn’t have to keep on churning out content 24 hours a day.

As readers of this blog are no doubt aware, I am perfectly content to surface every couple of weeks, write a couple of in-depth posts and disappear for a bit again. Many other bloggers are like this. That’s because, unlike the mainstream media, bloggers don’t have an obligation to react immediately. We are quite comfortable with reflection, because in this medium you can do it at whichever pace you want. If only the media had that freedom.

He continues: “Blogging is all about traffic and and achieving critical mass.” As if the media would be able to continue if it didn’t have any traffic. On the contrary, it is bloggers who can can afford to have fewer eyeballs. If people stop buying newspapers, the newspaper goes out of business. If people stop reading blogs… nothing happens.

Blogging is not just about numbers. To believe that it is would be simply to project the motivations of the media onto blogging. The value that people get out of blogging is much more subtle than that.

Part two of this article will be published tomorrow

Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I took a trip into Kirkcaldy’s main shopping centre, the Mercat. I’m very familiar with the first set of shops that meet you from the entrance. I passed them all many, many times on my way to work at the late, great Woolworths.

This opening corridor is a very strange looking place now. The entrance to Woolworths lies at the end of the corridor, facing the entrance to the Mercat. It is the first thing you see as you enter. This alone makes the shopping centre feel dark and desolate. Instead of a bustling Woolies, there is now a large grey shutter, unflinchingly shut.

What is now striking about this section of the Mercat is the fact that so many other shops have shut since Woolies closed down. In fact, when you look at it, there is barely a shop between the entrance of the Mercat and Woolworths that hasn’t been badly affected by the recession.

At the entrance, on the left, is The Officers Club. This briefly went into administration just before Christmas. But a number of stores were saved, including Kirkcaldy’s. This is actually one of the few success stories of the Mercat’s recent past.

Opposite The Officers Club is The Works. This has been in the Mercat for a while. The only problem is, it used to occupy a much larger unit with two floors. The new Works is probably a third of the size. It occupies the slot that was vacated by Bookworld a couple of years ago.

The old home of The Works was filled over Christmas by Calendar Club, a makeshift shop that was only there for a couple of months. Today the unit lies empty.

Next to it lies the former home of Internacionale. This has become empty since Christmas. Presumably they have moved into the Mk One unit at the other end of the shopping centre.

Further along, we come to Passion for Perfume. This is another chain which unravelled in the run-up to Christmas. Today, it’s just another grey shutter left permanently down.

Opposite lies an empty space which is presumably a unit which has been vacant for as long as I can remember. This is next door to Card Factory which has also recently closed down. the Original Shoe Company, a JJB Sports subsidiary which was recently put into administration. Now the only thing on display there is the windolene smeared all over the entrance.

At the top of the corridor, next to the former Woolies unit lies the entrance to an actual JJB Sports. Ironically, this is actually a relatively new shop. It fills a unit that had been empty for a while. It was extensively renovated to accommodate JJB Sports. The shop itself is upstairs, residing directly above Woolworths. I reckon around 18 months was spent building just above our shop (and they were quite noisy about it at times too).

Then, mere days after JJB opened, rumours about its seriously poor health surfaced. I think it, just about, remains open. But I hear it is absolutely dead. I am not surprised given than you are presented with nothing but an escalator when you go through the entrance.

I have heard that JJB were actually reluctant to move in. I am told that the Mercat paid for all of the renovation work themselves. If that is true, they must really be kicking themselves. Not only did they build it for a shop that has been on its knees ever since it opened, they could now take their pick from about half a dozen empty units.

This is a stroke of bad luck really. Once you turn the corner past Woolies, the situation is not quite so bad. But the impression you get as you walk through the entrance is that the Mercat is half dead. Almost every store along the way has been affected by the credit crunch, the only exceptions being Greggs and HMV.

It may put people off proceeding further than Woolies. The whole place feels so dark and empty now. Instead of bright shop lights, you are presented with shutter after shutter. The contrast to twelve months ago could hardly be greater.

(With apologies to dad, from whom I nicked this post’s title.)

As part of my never-ending quest to find something resembling employment, I recently spent a bit of time shadowing at the Scottish Government. It was a great experience, and reassuring to see that there are people there who really properly get it.

It was interesting to see how they are preparing to enter the web 2.0 world, particularly how to mitigate against the potential pitfalls of the openness that web 2.0 entails. Understandably, it’s tentative steps, but the Scottish Government won’t be far behind the rest of the world when it comes to adopting new forms of communication.

The Culture Minister Michael Russell is blogging throughout Scotland Week. As far as I know, this is the first time a Scottish Government minister has set up a blog in an official capacity (excluding the dabblings as part of the National Conversation).

It’s no surprise that Michael Russell would be the first. Apparently he’s quite interested in this stuff. He used to have a blog, and one of his YouTube videos is the most popular the Scottish Government has uploaded.

It will be interesting to see if this experiment leads to more.

We have all accidentally visited the wrong website at some point. Recently I was talking about my blog to someone. They went to visit it, but instead of typing in this blog’s address, doctorvee.co.uk, they made the mistake of visiting this website. It is owned by a certain “Mr DeeJay Doctor V€€”.

When I first bought the domain name for this blog, I considered buying the .com address. But I decided it was too expensive. I preferred doctorvee.net, but that was just as expensive as a .com address. In the end, a .co.uk address gives me a half-decent domain name for a pretty cheap price.

A while back I saw that someone had bought doctorvee.com. Perhaps egotistically, I suspected they had bought it in order to sell it to me for a sky-high price. Turns out it was this DJ bloke. I doubt anyone actually confuses me with him, but it was slightly disconcerting when I discovered that someone was using “my” moniker.

This is a pitfall of modern communications. There are far too many top-level domains floating about the place. I could have hoovered up .com, .net and whatever else. But there doesn’t seem to be much point when just buying a .co.uk does the job for a cheap price.

I’ve just got to come to terms with the fact that I’m not the only doctorvee in the world. On some popular websites — notably Skype, eBay and YouTube — the username ‘doctorvee’ had been taken before I got round to it. I originally stuck with ‘doctorvee’ as a result of a frantic search for an email address that wasn’t being used by anyone else. Of course, all the sensible ones had been taken.

Now that ‘doctorvee’ is, as it were, my brand, I sometimes feel the need to sign up to any web service that is invented just so that I can have doctorvee, just in case I need to use it. I bought duncanstephen.co.uk just so that I could have it. I’ve had it for over two years now, and only recently have I found something vaguely useful to do with it (basically I use it as a place to beg people to give me something resembling a job).

Recently I had to visit the websites of all the local councils in Scotland. In most cases it’s easy enough. Just Google the area and most of the time the first result will be what you’re looking for.

Not always though. There were a couple of near misses. For instance, searches for both Orkney and Shetland took me to tourism websites for those areas. I suppose that is understandable enough. More people are probably interested in tourist information than local government information for those areas. Even so, the council websites were not so far down the page on Google.

Try finding the website for the local authority in the Outer Hebrides though. Before reading on, try it. As I write, a Google search for ‘Outer Hebrides’ will not help you find it. I gave up after the fifth page.

It is a bit of an anomaly. For local government purposes, the group of islands is officially known as Na h-Eileanan Siar, but good luck finding someone south-west of Mallaig who actually calls it that. The official name change only came into effect from 1997.

The area is also well-known as the Western Isles, and funnily while Googling ‘Outer Hebrides’ will get you nowhere, ‘Western Isles’ will do the job no problem without you having to resort to typing in Gaelic.

The domain name is cne-siar.gov.uk. CNE-Siar being short for ‘Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’. But despite having a Gaelic web address, you are presented with a home page written in English, with little Gaelic to be seen.

Indeed, as far as I can tell, the amount of Gaelic content on the entire website is completely dwarfed by the amount of content in English. Even in the Gaelic homepage, almost all of the navigational links are in English, and to pages written in English.

I am sure that residents of the Outer Hebrides are all very aware of the name of their local authority. So in that sense you might wonder why it’s an issue. But what about people who don’t live there and don’t have the modicum of Gaelic required to remember the website address? The blurb on the home page is clearly aimed at the potential visitor to the Outer Hebrides, but thanks to its web address it can’t reach out to them as well as it might.

The name change happened in 1997. I wonder if today the name change would be less likely to happen because of SEO concerns, even with all the attempts to keep Gaelic alive.

The case of a language barrier is almost understandable though. I still struggle to understand why Clackmannanshire Council did not decide on an address such as clackmannanshire.gov.uk or even clacks.gov.uk. Instead, it is clacksweb.org.uk. It’s not even a .gov.uk address. What’s that all about?!

Once I phoned Fife Council and the guy on the other end told me to go to fifedirect.com to find all the information I needed. Aside from the dreadful customer service (what if I didn’t have easy access to the internet? Might that have been why I was phoning?), it was just plain wrong. fifedirect.com is occupied by a squatter. Perhaps he meant fifedirect.gov.uk.

It would be wrong to imagine this is a problem affecting government only. In the mid- to late-1990s, when many businesses were taking their first tentative steps onto the web, marketing departments ran amok, getting in the way of common sense. Instead of publicising a simple web address like [brand-name].com, web addresses were sometimes centred on the contemporary marketing campaign.

For instance, Boots spent years trying to encourage people to visit wellbeing.com. How are any customers supposed to remember that? Today, it redirects to boots.com. Much better.

To this day, B&Q’s web address is diy.com. I’m sure they’re very proud of the fact that they own diy.com, but does it not dilute the brand? Absurdly, B&Q’s website does not even mention the term ‘DIY’, except in reference to ‘diy.com’. Sensibly, bandq.co.uk redirects to diy.com, but bandq.com takes you nowhere.

All-in-all, what a minefield. There can be few things more important when setting up the website than getting a decent address for it. But it is surprisingly common for a decent website to be let down by a bad web address.

This week I helped out Peter John Meiklem on a story for the Sunday Herald about the future of journalism. Amid all the job losses in the Scottish media, the piece looks at whether bloggers can step up to the plate and begin to supplant traditional media outlets.

My view has long been that blogging is best consumed as a complement to professional journalism, as you’ll see if you read the piece. But of coruse there are other views out there, which the article also represents.

There are a few points I thought I’d mention, just to expand on or clarify a few points. It’s worth remembering what we mean when we talk about web stats. It’s a thorny area, and there isn’t really a good way to accurately estimate how many unique visitors a website has. I tend to look at visits rather than unique visitors because I think it’s more unambiguous.

I was a bit vague on the telephone about how many visitors this blog gets. I knew that all of my blogs put together get over 10,000 visits per month (this is the number I keep in my head because it’s nice and round, and it’s also sufficiently large to sound relatively impressive). In this case, it’s bad luck that the number of unique visitors to this blog in the month in question was 8,465. Not quite the >10,000 mentioned in the article, though if you throw in the numbers for my F1 blog vee8 it nudges above 10,000 unique visitors.

Apparently 10,000 per month is a similar readership to many local newspapers. I don’t know if this refers to the circulation of the hard copy or the figures for a local paper’s website.

Certain bloggers, who regularly post indulgent stat pr0n posts, get quite excited about how many visitors they get. But it’s worth remembering just how meaningless most visits actually are. Okay, this blog gets roughly 10,000 visitors a month. But it would be pure delusion to believe that there are 10,000 people out there who just can’t wait to read what I have to say.

Only an eighth of those visitors came here directly (i.e. on purpose). Over two-thirds of the visitors to this blog come from search engines. Of these, 94% have never come across this blog before. And 86% of search engine visitors to this blog look at one page and leave, spending on average a paltry 40 seconds here. They will probably never come back again, no doubt having failed to find what they were looking for. All-in-all, only 13% of this blog’s readers are returning for a second visit. Kudos to the 1% who have visited 100 times or more.

Of course, as always, these statistics come with all sorts of health warnings. Then there is the fact that many people are able to read blogs without ever having to visit, thanks to the magic of RSS. For what it’s worth, according to Feedburner, 270 people are subscribed to this blog.

Partly because of all the problems of getting accurate figures, I don’t get as hung up on stats as I used to. I like to know where traffic is coming from if someone has linked to this blog, but the numbers don’t excite me as much any more.

It’s come a long way though. I remember when I started out blogging, I used to be a bit freaked out when I saw the blog had had 60 visits in a day. That must have meant that I had (accidentally) said something too controversial or someone had ripped me to shreds and linked to it. Given that I was so young when I started blogging, they were probably right to do so. Eventually, getting 60 a day was the norm. Now 300 a day is a disappointment.

In the piece I am quoted as saying, “The average age of a blogger is around 40.” I don’t think that’s quite what I said (and I certainly didn’t intend to say that). I think the average age of the readers of political blogs is 40. My impression — it’s just a guess — is that the bloggers themselves are generally younger than that. But the point about blogging is that it can be — and is — done by people from all sorts of backgrounds. The eclecticism of the blogosphere is, of course, one of its biggest attractions.

As for the idea that the average reader of a political blog is aged 40, this is something I heard or read a long time ago and the source is long lost. I do like to pluck it out from time to time though to illustrate that blogging is not just a young person’s game. A quick search has yielded this study (PDF) which found that the median age of a political blog reader in the USA in 2006 was 49.

Another thing I wanted to mention was that the piece says that Guido Fawkes broke the story about North Lanarkshire Council’s head of communications job. In fact, my post about it was published about an hour before Guido’s, though I understand if more people came to learn about it through Guido. It’s also true that Gudio went a lot further, by actually naming the people involved, which I was reluctant to do.

Anyway, it’s great to have been quoted so much in the Sunday Herald this morning. I don’t mean to come across as sniping — inaccuracies are always bound to creep in, and you certainly couldn’t say that bloggers are much less error-prone.

One of the great things about having a blog though is that it allows me to clarify a couple of things which I said when I was working from the top of my head. That is one area where the blogosphere definitely has the upper hand over traditional media. On an open blog, some pedant like me will soon be along to point out the mistakes in the comments section. But the newspaper will never be corrected.

Almost three years ago I was on a walk with my family near Bridge of Earn. Along the way I saw a dead swan. I took a photograph of it. I don’t know why I decided to take a photograph of it. I guess it was just something interesting. It wasn’t too long after the H5N1 scare in Cellardyke, so that made it seem a bit more noteworthy too.

I uploaded the photograph to Flickr and forgot about it. But in September I got an email asking for permission to use the photograph in a film, Red Riding 1974. I said yes, and it was broadcast today. I didn’t even realise it was on (I don’t really watch television at all these days), and I only found out by chance when I entered another room and asked what they were watching.

And there it is. Blink and you miss it. I also spotted it in a shot of a big noticeboard that had lots of other photographs and clippings on it, so it might have been used a couple of other times and I haven’t spotted it (I wasn’t watching properly).

It’s not life-changing in the slightest, and I didn’t get paid a penny for it, but it is still rather cool. It’s yet another example of the unexpected opportunities my activities on the internet have brought. If you look at my Flickr stream, you will no doubt quickly come to the conclusion that my photography is not much good. But now it’s ended up on Channel 4.

Here is the original: