Blogs

Anthony Barnett (London,OK):  There is a great post by Sunny Hundal here - it's his reflections on his blog nation event. The larger problem, the way the left adds up to much less than the sum of its parts, when it comes to influence. You can count in civil society NGOs here as well. Will progressive blogland make this worse... or not?

Matt Wardman (Wardman Wire): This is the second in the lastest series of Blogpower Roundups, and this is my roundup of some of the current live issues around Civil Liberties.

While there are differences between bloggers on some questions at the edge on just what comes under Civil Liberties, there's usually a strong consensus around the right to self-expression, and that restriction of topics that we can write about or the excessive monitoring of online activity are BAD things.
Heather Yaxley has reflected on the whole theme of Defending Blogs.
In this roundup, I've covered recent Blogpower posts, and highlighted a number of other posts that I have come across. As it is a thematic roundup, I am going back several weeks.

Colin Campbell's comment about extra speed cameras in South Australia prompted me to do some digging into just how many speed cameras we have now in the UK. The answer: one hell of a lot - perhaps 7,000-10,000 plus all those installed in cars and on motorcyles.

By my count there are 75 links in this post. Enjoy.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Iain Dale is compiling his annual Guide to Political Blogging to be published in September and wants your votes for the Top Ten Political Blogs in the UK. To vote simply email your top ten (ranked from 1 to 10) to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com with Top 10 in the subject line. The deadline for submitting your Top 10 is Friday August 15th. You can also leave your Top 10 in the Comments on Iain's blog here.

Matt Wardman (Wardman Wire): Miss Wagstaff is reporting that the Welsh blogger, and Welsh Assembly Government employee, Christopher Glamorganshire, is going to an Industrial Tribunal after being sacked for blogging during the autumn of 2007. The tribunal is today.

The greatest value that I can add to this is an English perspective, and one from involvement in the debate that lead to the development of a set of Principles for Online Participation for Civil Servants. These are my initial thoughts about a significant cultural divide between "us" and "them".

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): It's one of those moments when the peculiarities and contradictions of our current system are truly brought home. A group of peers have started a House of Lords blog which they're calling "Lords of the Blog". It will feature regular contributions from nine peers on the business of the House and their activities in and around the chamber. It is being organised by the Hansard Society with the aim "to help educate, raise awareness and engage with the public on a range of issues relating to the role and business of the House of Lords." They seem to be mostly crossbench or Lib-Dem peers with Lipsey for Labour and Norton for the Tories.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The great Sunny Hundal of Pickled Politics has just emailed to say he has "teased" me in his latest CiF post. It's called "Bloggers of the Left Unite!". I hope we don't. "Unite", that is. Such an obligation will demand a correct line etc, etc. Sunny is preparing the ground for a new initiative, that I will warmly support when it is suitably launched on Guy Fawks night. Now, by way of early stimulation no doubt, he suggests I was wrong to ask some time back why Britain's rightwing blogland is so much more lively than the left's. Wrong, because, he says,

Jon Bright (London, OK): OurKingdom finds itself slightly chuffed to be featured in Iain Dale's round up of the UK's best and brightest political blogs. Dale's list, voted for by readers of his own blog, identifies 500 UK poliblogs as worth a read. The stats are relatively predictable: fourteen of the top twenty blogs lean towards the right and only five of the five hundred can claim a genuinely large readership (I'm sure you can guess which ones) - i.e. one that is in five figures per day. But the UK's political blogosphere is growing - Dale says he knew of only 600 political blogs last year, comapred to 1200 this year. And, perhaps more importantly, the mainstream press is waking up to the idea - Nick Robinson, Ben Brogan, the Spectator's Coffee House - all are growing in importance as the big names behind them pay them more attention. Dale himself is at the top of the tree, of course.

James Graham (London, Quaequam): I'm not sure that simply exhorting individual Lib-Dems to write for OurKingdom is going to get us anywhere, which is what Anthony seemed to be calling for in his post on Ming. Perhaps he should consider a short - baiting - piece on Lib Dem Voice. The response I got from my articles last week on the policy paper was almost nil. There's a more fundamental problem which even I struggle to get my head around.

Jon Bright (London, OK): The Witanagemot Club's 2007 blog awards have been announced, with a few medals for OurKingdom - we finished 3rd in the Best Group Blog category (behind Samizdata and A Tangled Web), 2nd in the Best New Blog category (behind the Spectator's Coffee House), and 1st in the Best Constitutional Reform Blog category. Our parent site openDemocracy also won Best Foreign Affairs Blog. Full results here (opens pdf).