Commentariat

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

This week’s Britblog Roundup has gone down market and is over at Brassneck on the Telegraph website, and it’s come out this week at roughly the right time for once..

Today Brassneck joins the BritBlog Roundup network. It’s my first go at it, so Roundup veterans, please be patient if I confound your expections (in a bad way, that is).

It may seem strange to have a big-media blog joining the network. Have a look at Mick Fealty’s post last week “On the importance of engagement in blogging…” to understand the thinking; it is all about convergence and training journalists and the big media to pick up on the conversational aspects of blogging, in addition to the “promotional” and “informality” aspects they have already embraced.

Rebecca Adlington has won two gold medals in swimming at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and put Mansfield back on the map. This blog is based near Mansfield, which used to be a centre of coal production where the local industry played an heroic role in resisting the UK National Miners’ Strike in 1984.

For a contrast I thought that this morning I’d introduce you to a few of our more “artistic” local heroes.

So who’s winning the biggest prize in the World?

Bronze medal for Britain. Ouch.

Cartoon:Wellington Grey

This is Simon Sarmiento’s third Guest Column on the Wardman Wire, while David Keen is on holiday from the blog. This week Simon looks back at how the press was managed at the Lambeth Conference, and reflects on the difficulty of undermining press stereotypes when reporters are kept at a distance.

Becky Adlington from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire has won a second Gold Medal.

Adlington, who is 19 and who won gold in the 400m freestyle a few days ago, finished 2.12 seconds quicker than the previous world record.

Rebecca Adlington’s time was 8:14.10; the previous World Record figure was set in 1989, the year when she was born.

The previous Olympic Games record was also shattered by more than 5 seconds.

A cartoon from ASBO Jesus.

Mike Rouse sets out his view on the decision to build the new Number 10 Downing Street website on Wordpress.

Cartoon: Wellington Grey

I need to reset my account at the Blogflux Blogstopsites directory, but I am not having any success.

This is to prove my identity with respect to the email sent yesterday.

All Blogstopsites Users

You need to update your HTML code for the service, as they are moving it to Blogflux servers. This applies to a number of UK Political Blogs.

The Olympic movement stands for Peace,
but it’s all Greek to some people.

The best posts in the British blogosphere have been rounded up by Mr Eugenides this week.

Featured posts include this Sino-Sceptic Beau Bo D’Or cartoon and a report on the 437 BBC personnel visiting Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, which compares with 300 British Competitors and “several” politicians and their retinue. Oh - and 39 policemen.

Policy Exchange have called one wrong and are proposing (to give a - slightly - bald summary) that the North should be closed down and that we should all go and live with Inspector Morse in Oxford or in Polly Toynbee’s capacious attic in London somewhere:

“The key recommendations from the report are to increase the size of London by allowing landowners the right to convert industrial land into residential land in areas of above average employment; expand Oxford and Cambridge dramatically”

The assertion about Northern and Western decline is probably 25 years too late, anyway (Leeds, Manchester, Cardiff anyone?); some of the resurgence is even based on real businesses as well as moving public subsidies out of London (I’m not even going near the Barnett Formula in this post).

In Wales, for one, public sector legal advice business is booming:

…we have already been informed that this blog is being monitored hourly by a large Cardiff legal firm on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.

I already welcomed all Legal Eagles, so I’m happy to welcome a large Cardiff Legal Firm who have been visiting here as well.

One Million people on Terrorist-Watch in the USA.

There are one million on the USA Terorist Watch List.

One million was also the USA prison population in 1990. It became 2 million in 2002.

Meanwhile, back in Blighty

One million was the number on the UK Police’s DNA Database in March 2003 was 2 million. By 2005 that figure was 5.5 million - 1 in 20 people.

Perversely, our Home Office seem to view that as a matter for pride. We have a Bigger Brother than anybody else, and should pat them on the head for a job well done. Hmmm.

The UK’s database is the largest of any country: 5.2% of the UK population is on the database compared with 0.5% in the USA. The database has expanded significantly over the last five years. By the end of 2005 over 3.4 million DNA profiles were held on the database – the profiles of the majority of the known active offender population.