Commentariat

Lib Dem Voice had an interesting conversation under the title What should political bloggers be trying to achieve?, where Brian Coleman was used as an example of a search term that had been targeted by the Lib Dems in Google. This was the relevant bit of the conversation about Brian Coleman AM, the London Assembly Member for Barnet (the Lib Dems think he is a bit thin up top) and Camden.

The story is that Brian Coleman was the one who had a go at Lynne Featherstone for calling the Fire Brigade when her boiler made a funny noise, and the Lib Dems don’t like him as a result.

I thought I’d have a test on Google to see how we get on competing for a term such as “Brian Coleman” with the Liberal Democrat blogs on their top rated story for Brian Coleman: “Brian Coleman AM and his taxi bills”

(Click on the title to read the whole article)

Feedback from Jeecamp
* Met a couple of people making a modest living from thei websites.
* Include your list of recent articles below the comments box - the people who get that far are exactly the ones who will be interested in reading more.
* “I came here to find a business model”. “If you find one, [...]

Skelliwag has recently published an excellent article about the bad bits and the good bits about running a popular blog.
I have used he subheads and made a couple of comments on my opinions. It is something I will use as a checklist for the future.
I have taken Skellie’s points and made comments
The unique challenges
1. Lots [...]

Iain Dale posted last weekend that the Conservative Party were planning to launch a big new group blog.

This post is the first of several reflecting on blog strategy for political parties, using the new Conservative project as a thought experiment. In this first article I look at the pros and cons of launching a single group blog, and whether a more diverse strategy may be a better option as a way of encouraging multiple conversation points between the Conservatives and the public.

This morning the Farming Today programme on BBC Radio 4 was about the disastrous 2008 harvest - possibly the worst for 20 years - and the effect it is having on farmers in the UK.

At present, one week into September, perhaps a third of the harvest has not yet been brought in, and already plans for 2009 are being changed as a result.

This segment of the programme is about 10 minutes - you will need to click through.

Cartoon: Gaping Void

A cracking Blogpower roundup by Ian from Question That over at Blogpower:

As the saying goes, if it weren’t for the weather the British would be left with nothing to talk about. This is seldom more apparent than when the skies are grey and going outside leaves you soaking wet. Guthrum raises the subject of flood defences, while more prosaically Liz regrets going out without a coat.

Fortunately the saying isn’t entirely true, or this would be a short roundup indeed. There is political polemic from a British libertarian perspective this week from The Last Ditch: Stop trying to make an omelette with a JCB! Until we stop imploring the state to ‘do something’, QUANGOs will never be uprooted (Pub Philosopher). Also on a related note, here is The Tin Drummer on why people with nothing to hide can still have everything to fear.

British party politics: Parliament may be on holiday, but the partisan bloggers are not. Norfolk Blogger finds some common ground between the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. Mike Ion imagines giving this speech to the upcoming Labour conference. Andrew Allison makes a Tory pitch for UKIP supporters. Cornish Democrat takes a Toynbee-esque line on ‘fuel poverty’ with the help of a press release from the Celtic League.

Read it all.

I’m just hearing a report that a disk of personal data of prison service STAFF has been lost as well as that of prisoners …

… a year ago.

Ye gods.

More later, I expect, from everyone.

I just wrote my first article for Labour Home, which has gone straight to the top of the Front Page. It’s a good job I’m not hostile.

There has been some conversation about where Labour Home should go next. These are my reflections.

A fantastic spot from Bishop Alan Wilson on the Sarah Palin puff-tape:

Listening to the soundtrack, I realised it came from the 70’s TV series Dallas!

How did all the politicos miss that?

Perhaps they didn’t and I missed them not missing it.

Click through for the video.

I picked this up from the BBC iPM programme:

You’ve probably read the flurry of press coverage the followed our earlier blog post and the subsequent article in BBC News Online. To recap, exam board AQA removed a poem, Education for Leisure, from a GCSE anthology because of concerns over knife crime.

It’s good to see iPM breaking some stories.

A poem has been removed from the material examined by an examining board because of the content of the poem. That raises concerns:

• Is it the role of an Exam Board to make “content” decisions?
• Do they have to justify themselves?
• Is the poem actually a problem?
• What are the criteria for these decisions, and are they done consistently?

On Wednesday someone at a Drug Clinic called Vista Bay copied an image from this blog, and just linked it inline in their webpage.

That article received 250 Diggs (which is a lot), and the image (30k) has been downloaded from my server 23,518 times so far in the LAST 48 HOURS. That is the small matter of 700Mb of bandwidth - not that far off an entire day’s normal traffic for this blog.

In moderation I wouldn’t be doing anything about it … but 700Mb of bandwidth, and from a decent sized organisation that should know better? I’m not letting that go.

I reckon they owe the blog a few advert-impressions, so I did a switch on the image.

Fairly brief this week, but with a couple of important reports.

Press: SSG Bankruptcy Application was in Bad Faith

A report from The Bookseller states that the application for Bankruptcy in the Southern Division of the Texas Court in Houston. They have been in contact with Randy Williams, the Trustee in Bankruptcy :

“The Chapter 7 bankruptcy filed by Christian bookseller St Stephen the Great was dismissed because the case was filed “in bad faith”, according to a court official.

Courtroom minutes show that the case was dismissed “with prejudice” during a hearing at Houston Bankruptcy Court last Thursday.

The ruling has a number of restrictions on it, including a set period when Mark and Phil Brewer, who run the chain, cannot submit another bankruptcy filing in the US. Randy W Williams, trustee for the Chapter 7 case, told The Bookseller that “the motion to dismiss was granted with prejud-ice and the judge found that the filing of the case was in bad faith”.

“Bad faith means in this case that it was done for a wrong or improper purpose,” he said.
In June, Williams filed a motion to dismiss it, claiming “on its face, there is nothing to liquidate and nothing available to fund an in-vestigation in the UK”.

The brothers told suppliers in June that SSG had filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. The court later converted this to Chapter 7, leaving the retailer in liquidation.

Mark Brewer told The Bookseller last week that he did not have enough money to file for bankruptcy in the United Kingdom.

He was unavailable for comment this week.”

This is one step further than I reported last week, when it was only clear that the application had been “dismissed with prejudice” .

As I documented last week, this has a lot of implications.

I’m taking the site down for an hour for the last major piece of maintenance work.

It should be back by 7pm GMT.

I’m becoming more and more impressed by the photography the BBC are using for the “feature” space on the Front Page of their new website design.

Here is one set of the four tabs visible yesterday on the BBC Website.

Click through for the set of four and my comments.

A cartoon from Gaping Void

This post is a straightforward list of blogs and websites posting about the saga surrounding the (mis) management of the SPCK bookshop chain by J mark and Philip Brewer, and all the

The focus is moving from the threats made against cartoonist Dave Walker by Mark Brewer to force him to take down his reporting, to keeping strong scrutiny focussed on the original SPCK issue.

This list is primarily about the SPCK/SSG “affair”.

If you would like to be added to it, please email me at mattwardman at gmail dot com using the subject line “SPCK/SSG Monitor” with the complete webaddress of the article you have posted, and who you are. Or make a comment here.

If you are able to cut and post the list into a post of your own - just once, we can collectively make sure that the matter gains more visibility. I will maintain an HTML source code file.

Details will be added here, starting soon.

Service may be interrupted without warning.

Enjoy it while you can.

Service may be interrupted without warning.

Emjoy it while you can.

One of the interesting ways that Google seems to work is that new websites (or new articles for that matter) have a “period in the sun” to see if they will become heavily linked; they then vanish and may come back to prominence later.

One corollary of that, and of the way the internet works, is that most traffic to blogs usually comes through two routes:

a) Brand new articles.
b) Old archived articles.

In the case of the Wardman Wire, perhaps 75-80% of our traffic comes via the archives, rather than via either the Magazine Front Page or the Traditional Blog version.

A cartoon from Indexed.

<diary column>

The esteemed Mr Graham, yesterday, in “The Day I Killed British Journalism”

UPDATE: That journalism.co.uk (*) website has (as of 11.30pm on 2 September) generated one hit for this website. Not exactly a hub of activity then!

The esteemed Mr Graham’s “popular incoming links widget” today:

Dead journalists cannot visit websites, it seems…

</diary column>

“The former England batsman, Graeme Hick, has announced that he will retire at the end of the summer to take up a coaching post at Malvern College.”

A Century of Centuries:

(click on the title for more)

This is a story Paul Canning asked me to highlight about demonstrations at the Republican National Convention.

I have to admit that this one went completely under my radar, and I completely missed it - I thought the Convention had basically closed down for the day, and would have thought the demonstrators and police would do the same. Apparently not!

From Paul:

You may not have read this - because no UK MSM is covering it, including the Guardian (typical coverage by the Times) - but protesters at the Republican convention are being preemptively raided with automatic weapons shoved in their and their children’s faces. Just like Genoa with a bit less physical violence.

Read it all.

(I’ve noticed coverage in the Mail too yesterday, and the BBC today.)

A cartoon from Indexed.