Commentariat

It is a little over a month since Cease and Desist notices were sent to a series of bloggers.

I want to look back on what has been achieved - in both concrete terms and “soft” terms.

You can get up to speed by reading my “Introductory Guide“, or the list of people posting in support, or even the Press Room:

Dave Walker is a cartoonist who runs a popular website, which includes the blogs We Blog Cartoons, Cartoon Church and The Cartoon Blog.

On the morning of July 22nd 2008 he received a cease and desist letter threatening legal action unless he removed 75 posts from his Cartoon Church blog by lunchtime - i.e., half a day’s notice.

These 75 posts had reported the developing situation over a 2 year period in a UK book chain called SPCK, which had been taken over by a company run by Mark Brewer. Dave Walker’s was the main published source reporting the situation, asking questions about the management of the chain, and highlighting the treatment of the employees.

So, what has happened?

What happened to your email … (click through)

Cartoon: Wellington Grey

I am doing an upgrade of Wordpress, so you may see some interesting changes while I am doing the process.

Cartoon: Gaping Void

Is over at Amused Cynicism.

The roundup is a compendium of last week’s outstanding posts in the British Blogosphere.

A quick post to say that I am continuing to find the odd glitch with the new template on the blog - especially in numbered and bulleted lists.

The Web Elves are working on it.

This is Simon Sarmiento’s fourth Guest Column on the Wardman Wire, while David Keen is on holiday from the blog.

This week looks at American politics, and in particular at the Saddleback Forum - a debate hosted by one of the USA’s Evangelical Megachurches. And he explains why he will be taking on the role of Fat Controller of St Albans in mid-September.

Continuing the experiment with Viral Videos…

Is we is? Or is we ain’t?

Click through for the full size version.

A cartoon from ASBO Jesus.

The Carpet baggers aiming to turn sporting success into party political advantage have started already, and the ex-Sports Minister Richard Caborn MP is first out of the blocks with an article over at Labour Home.

This is annoying - a commenter on Political Betting had the right attitude with a comment that the best way for the Labour Government to benefit from the Olympic success is to keep quiet and bask in the reflected glory.

Instead, Mr Caborn has stuck his oar in, got a lot of things wrong and ended up looking rather silly - as well as being an opportunist out to exploit Olympic success in the course of grubby politics.

The fact that he is posting at Labour Home is interesting - there’s an interesting debate to be had about how the relationships between official parties and grassroots websites will evolve - across all parties.

But for now, a little light rebuttal over afternoon coffee beckons.

Even in the 21st Century, some people manage to make 1010 and 1101 equal 5.

Click through on the title for the full size version.

Cartoon: Wellington Grey

This is a bit old, but I’ve only just found it - being a Mac-o-Sceptic, I usually ignore the hype for a few months before taking a real look.

I am updating the theme of the blog view of the site, so things may be a bit changeable for a couple of hours.

You can read headlines and excerpts undisturbed in the Magazine View.

Independent Video Journalist Arrested

Brian Conley is an independent video journalist who usually works for Alive in Baghdad, who was working as part of a team with New York artist James Powderly. From the Committee to Protect Bloggers:

Brian Conley, was arrested at 3:00 a.m. Tuesday in Beijing. Brian, the founder of the Alive in Baghdad video news project, as well as an employee of the Hub, was documenting the activities of New York artist James Powderly, who uses lasers. In this case, it looks as he was planning a Tibet-themed event at the Olympics.

Four other arrestees are also bloggers: Jeffrey Rae, Michael Liss, Jeff Goldin and Tom Grant.

This needs to be written about. Boing Boing has more.

There’s a blog redesign coming later on. In the meantime click on the title for today’s cartoon.

Cartoon: Wellington Grey

I’m making a few changes to the blog and I’d appreciate feedback in the comments.

• I’ve added a “Video Box” to both the Magazine and the Blog Versions of the site. These are currently running sponsored videos, but mayalso include news and other videos.
• Later on this evening I will be revising the header section of the blog to remove the Google “links”, and revise the links section below the banner to give Quick Links to currently live “post series”. The idea - just at it is with having a magazine front end - is to make it easier to find substantial articles that have gone off the front page.

One problem I have noticed is that when (on the blog view) the small player expands, and it doesn’t seem to be shrinking back to the small size afterwards all the time.

Thanks for your help.

Our MPs are often criticized for not having an appreciation of the younger members of society, and in particular of the sexual habits and attitudes of more recent times.

It strikes me that, with the impending banning of family members from working for MPs, and a consequent influx of young and impressionable researchers and secretaries into a family-free work environment, this particular problem may soon be going to get fixed.

Cartoon: GapingVoid.com

At the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, a promise was made that demonstrations would be allowed to go ahead without hindrance.

This has not happened, as shown by this report from Channel 4 News.

Cartoon: Wellington Grey

This is getting tedious, and slightly annoying.

Early in July I had a little go at Joy Lo Dico for suggesting that differences of 1 or 2% between website “unique user” statistics of national newspapers were of significance, when in reality any differences of less than 5% or maybe even 10% in Unique Users are smaller than the likely amount of noise on the figure.

Last weekend we had a repeat of exactly the same embarrassing mistake in exactly the same place - the Media Column of the Independent on Sunday.

In this case we had a case of major statistics abuse in an article about the superb satirical website the Daily Mash by Professor Tim Luckhurst.

(Illustration Credit: Wellington Grey)

The New York Times has an interactive map of Olympic Medal History, which is really very nifty, however…

The real reason why they don’t have a loo on the Starship Enterprise.

Cartoon: Wellington Grey

The Party Conference Season is almost upon us, as the Messagespace adverts have been reminding us for the last fortnight or so until I wanted to clip one as an illustration for this post.

This year I am trying to set up some good coverage on the Wardman Wire from as many conferences as possible, including some of the smaller parties.

If you are planning to attend, and may be interested in doing a conference diary - please drop me an email on mattwardman at gmail dot com.

I won’t be covering the BNP conference.

I’ve held this over from last Friday. Last week we had some more people posting the SPCK case, and also the Trustees who resigned from the Society of Saint Stephen the Great in October 2007.

Follow these links to get up to speed quickly:

• Quick Intro for Press - effectively a FAQ.
• Introductory Guide to the Dave Walker Case

Cartoon: Wellington Grey