November Statporn
Visits are up on last month with 411 visits and 253 absolute unique visitors.
I’m switching from the top referring sites model to just top referring blogs now. For last month these were:
- Letters from a Tory
- Iain Dale
- Tom Harris
- The Young Conservative
- Tory Bear
- Modernity
- Ministry of Truth
- Tom Elliott
- Harry’s Place
- The Commune
Support Alex Hilton
This goes beyond being a party political issue, and is a rather more important question of freedom of speech as it relates to blogging. Most blogs, this one included, do not pre-moderate comments. Alex Hilton, from all appearances, acted in good faith in the matter. What is happening to him could happen to anyone. Details below, and more can also be found over at David Osler’s blog.
I can’t tell you too much about the case because I don’t want to annoy the court. But this is what I am comfortable telling you.
1. An active Labourhome user wrote a piece about the past of a Labour member who had defected to Respect. That person has since joined the Conservative Party.
2. The Labourhome user is also being sued by this particular Tory, who is a litigant in person and has no lawyer.
3. The offended person contact me about the piece, which I immediately deleted. I offered the front and centre spot on Labourhome to the offended person for their right of reply or to write something else of their own choice. My offer was declined.
4. Because of my actions, my lawyer says I have an absolute defence under Section One of the Defamation Act. I also have other defence strategies available, one of which is the possibility that the article was not defamatory, thought this is still being explored.
5. Because the complainant is a litigant in person, this case has been more complicated than normal and I have actually received a total of four writs before it got tidied up into one action. This is partly why this defence is so expensive.
6. Despite the likelihood that I will probably win this case, I do not have a strong prospect of recouping my costs, at least in a reasonable timescale. I don’t have the five-figure sum the complainant wants as a settlement.I would be very very grateful if readers would consider donating any sum towards my legal costs. I built Labourhome two and a half years ago as an open forum for Labour supporters because I believed it was needed. I’m in court because of the freedom of this forum and I can tell you the whole situation is pretty depressing.
If you want to contribute, you can do so here.
Sphere: Related ContentTumbleblogging
I’ve set up a mini-blog on Tumblr that incorporates my Twitter feed, this blog’s RSS, and the occasional jotting down of ideas, links, photos and so on. It’s probably not to everyone’s taste, but it might find a use for itself.
You can find it at http://benjamingray.tumblr.com/
Sphere: Related ContentBlogging Type Analysis
Thanks to Typealyzer:
Sphere: Related ContentINTP - The Thinkers
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.
Well Duh Polly
According to Dizzy, Polly Toynbee thinks that all Tory Blogs are all funded by Tories.
Tell us something we don’t know Polly. My blog costs money to run. I pay for it with my money. I am a Tory. Therefore my blog is paid for by a Tory. What, you expected my blog to be funded by the Labour party?
In all honesty though, why on earth shouldn’t Tory bloggers be paid? She has made millions from her writing. She has no right to complain about others being paid for their writings.
If there is actually a Tory fund to pay bloggers, could they please let me know as I could do with a bit more money what with the recession and so on.
Sphere: Related Content#100
Having decided to take a break from writing this blog to focus on writing my final year essays, I also noticed that I was one off a hundred posts. Such a position seems a rather good one to start assessing where I have got in blogging.
This blog started six months ago off the back of a desire to get back into the swing of politics after being drafted into an NUS delegation by a friend in my student’s union. My gradual involvement in student politics had brought me to become increasingly annoyed at the tribal hostility to any form of conservatism. The complete disconnection between the expectations and reality of what a conservative was became a point of intrigue. Intelligent and passionate people were completely unable to understand how an apparently intelligent person such as myself (more fool them) could hold right-wing opinions. I set this up, after several other abortive attempts at starting specialist blogs, to hone my writing skills and articulate a conservative viewpoint to try and dispel the myth held by some that there is an automatic correlation between conservatism and stupidity.
In that ensuing period of around seven months, this blog has written 46,077 words and had 2,812 views. It has had 38 comments, a few links and 1,541 spam comments deleted. My writing has taken me to several events throughout the realm of politics, had me invited to numerous events, and even got me dragged over to the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Birmingham. I even had an article linked to on ConservativeHome. If anyone reading this is considering starting a blog, I urge them to do so.
Given that I am going to be noticeable by my absence in the next few weeks, I’d still like to retain some engagement with this blog.
First, if you want to guest write for this blog, please let me know either in the comments section or through the “Contact” tab and I’ll set you up with something to write.
Second, I would like to get some feedback. This can be on anything surrounding the blog, but I would particularly appreciate comments on the following:
- What do you think of my writing style? What could be done to improve it?
- What articles have you liked?
- What articles didn’t you like?
- What should I do more of?
- Are there any (general) topics you would like me to cover that I haven’t done previously?
- How do you like the design of the blog?
I would also like to gauge your opinions as to what I might expand into doing. For a while I have considered the following:
- Live coverage;
- Open threads;
- Book reviews;
- Videos;
- Regular weekly spots along the lines of a cartoon, video or guest post.
Is there any demand for this?
Finally, I am considering having a bash at making some submissions to the Orwell Prize for Political Blogging. I would really appreciate it if you could suggest what posts I have written that would be worth submitting. More information about the criteria can be discovered by visiting the link.
See you in a few weeks’ time. I’ll be checking this blog for comments and might put up a few posts every now and again.
Sphere: Related ContentTechnological Progress
Hat-tip: Wardman Wire
Sphere: Related ContentI Agree with Luke Akehurst
A title I never expected to write, proving once again that politics makes for interesting bedfellows. I was going to write something similar on Hazel Blears’ comments, but it seems he beat me to it.
Sphere: Related ContentUsually I agree with Hazel Blears but I’m not sure I do when it comes to her comments yesterday on blogging:
“We are witnessing a dangerous corrosion in our political culture… Perhaps because of the nature of the technology, there is a tendency for political blogs to have a ‘Samizdat’ style. The most popular blogs are rightwing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes. Perhaps this is simply anti-establishment. Blogs have only existed under a Labour government. Perhaps if there was a Tory government, all the leading blogs would be left-of-centre?” But mostly, political blogs are written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.” Until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.”
I think this rather misses the point. If politicians didn’t misbehave, Guido wouldn’t have anything to write about. He reflects public cynicism about the political class - largely self-inflicted by politicos who have behaved badly - rather than generating it. People read Guido in large numbers because he breaks stories which mainstream journalists or their editors are too risk-averse to run with, and because it is an entertaining, funny read. Blaming Guido for cynicism about politics sounds like the MacMillan era Tories blaming That Was the Week That Was and Private Eye for public disrespect post-Profumo.
Guido’s personal attacks on the PM are deeply unpleasant - and for Labour supporters like me actually reinforce our sympathy and loyalty to the man - and his commenters are often from the loopier fringes of the right, but his own politics aren’t nihilistic, as far as I can work out he is a libertarian, which is a legitimate philosophy to hold even if I disagree with it.
The vast majority of blogs are not “written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians” - mainly they are written by people who are part of the political system or politicians themselves. Unfortunately, the majority of this majority of blogs are painfully dull so no one reads them, whereas Guido at least entertains and informs his audience so people do read him.
The irony is that Hazel’s forthright opinions would actually make her a brilliant blogger who people would want to read and comment on.
October Statporn
Wordpress Stats:487 Visits
Google Analytics
Visits: 360
Absolute Unique Visits: 222
No idea how two rather divergent sets of statistics came out. A downturn in readers this month as a result of last month having a slight conference bubble. As other commitments crept in, limiting my ability to publish regularly, and my posts got longer and more academic, some readers will have left. My writing on issues outside that on my RSS reader has also led to a drop in readers. Still, the articles in the new “religion” category seems to have drawn in some new readers.
This month I got predominantly new visitors over returning ones. This may be because my feed is managed through feedburner, which registers an average of 13 hits per day.
Top referrers this month were:
- Facebook (+2)
- Letters from a Tory (-1)
- Tom Harris (New)
- Iain Dale (-2)
- Total Politics (new)
- The Young Conservative (New)
- The Commune (New)
- Alexandra Swann (New)
- Hotair.com (-9)
- John Redwood (New)
- Recess Monkey (New)
- Broken Britain (New)
Direct hits remained the top source of traffic.
Sphere: Related ContentFrank Field Has a Blog
You can find it here. Thankfully I have a separate blogroll for MPs, otherwise I’d be torn as to whether I classified it “Right”, “Left” or “Non-aligned”.
