Commentariat

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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)

The most succinct word association for the Commentariat I have come across:

back-channel media.

A Freudian slip with more than a grain of truth.

A cartoon from ASBO Jesus.

Continuing his retirement thoughts, Mr Galloway wondered about becoming a wise old statesman in the House of Lords. Maybe he couldn’t afford to be one under the current government, and it wasn’t quite his scene.

Inspired by Friday Lolcats meme.

Cartoon: Gaping Void

This is an experimental site to help you monitor what the various members of the “Commentariat” are saying easily.
The aim of the site is to see how far the highly expensive paid for services for monitoring and analysing “comment” can be put together without charging any significant money.
Background
A few days ago I wrote about [...]

…interview leggy supermodels…but from the tone of his blog you’d think Jon Craig had taken this afternoon’s encounter with Naomi Campbell in his stride. Perhaps it was the fact that she was able to stand face to face with our…

Wardman Wire
Natalie Bennett, Philobiblon:
http://philobiblon.co.uk/
Cabalamat, Amused Cynicism:
http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/
Jonathan Calder, Liberal England:
http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/
Chameleon, Redemption Blues:
http://www.redemptionblues.com/
Mr Eugenides:
http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/
Jackart, A Very British Dude:
http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/
Susanne Lamido, Suz Blog:
http://susannelamido.blogspot.com/
Matt Wardman, The Wardman Wire:
http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/

There’s been a distinct whiff of the final stages of the Book of Revelations around Westminster this week, with the Gord forced to make expensive concessions to ensure the success of the Finance Bill, widespread criticism over the comrades’ campaigning tactics in Crewe and Nantwitch, and an outbreak of bitchslapping between a Cabinet Minister and a newly ennobled Awkward Squad member. In other news, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill continues its interminable Parliamentary progress as “Mad” Nad Dorries accidentally causes a hands-across-the-water alliance between bloggers from the feminist movement, the libertarian right, the museli knitting liberals, and the Labour left. And adding a touch of farce to the proceedings was Caroline Flint who learned - like Jacqui Smith before her, albeit in a different context - that it’s best to keep one’s assets under wraps at all times, and we all got treated to faaaaaaar more information than we ever wanted to about the horizontal jogging antics of the Blairs. That’s right folks, prepare to scrub your mind’s eye. With BLEACH.

On Monday Sky News’ website will host a live online debate between the main parties’ candidates for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Tamsin Dunwoody (Labour), Elizabeth Shenton (Lib Dem) and Edward Timpson (Conservative) will join host Martin Stanford at 9am…

A cartoon from Indexed.

I’m not a journalistic pessimist. Overall, I think the massive expansion of the media is a good thing. I also believe that truthfulness has a way of continuing to assert itself, if we are serious in attending to it. But that takes some hard work, and in the meantime there can be little doubt that modern reporting and commentary is frequently tempted to put passion well ahead of precision. A couple of recent items concerning religion might serve as an example.

Ben Brogan sets out Labour’s four point plan for recovery on his must-read blog. Step one is to put the 10p thing behind them, step two to get past the memoirs, step three to do better than expected (having set…

There is one statistic that really hammers home how expensive the 10p U-turn is. About £2bn of the £2.7bn in compensation is going to those who had already won from the 2007 Budget. Officials insist this was the only simple and quick solution. But there was another way that was cheaper and more comprehensive.
Ian Mulheirn, [...]

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday Back from Moscow on Sunday night, I thought it was time to deal with some of the points made on this weblog while I’ve been away. I’ll take them more or…

Cartoon: Gaping Void

A “friend of Brown” in the Times: “If we lose Crewe then I think a few of us will be telling him to think about quitting,” a former minister and friend of Mr Brown told The Times. An insider to The Times on why the mini budget now: “The political dynamic changed after the locals,” said one figure closely involved. Peter Riddell on the mini-budget: So the Treasury will have to raise a very large amount next year. This means either higher taxes or lower spending since higher borrowing cannot be continued. The public finances are not in a healthy…

Yesterday I had a look at Monitoring the Commentariat for free. Iain Dale has translated that as:

“Matt Wardman thinks he can put Editorial Intelligence out of business.”

Now there’s another challenge. In the spirit of enquiry and to encourage enterprise (!) I thought I’d do a quick minute rundown of Editorial Intelligence’s services and a few of their potential free competitors.

Yesterday I had a look at Monitoring the Commentariat for free. Iain Dale has translated that as:

“Matt Wardman thinks he can put Editorial Intelligence out of business.”

Now there’s another challenge. In the spirit of enquiry and to encourage enterprise (!) I thought I’d do a quick minute rundown of Editorial Intelligence’s services and a few of their potential free competitors.

David Cameron seems to have absorbed the advice I gave the party leaders last week and given an interview to the Crewe blog. This excellent blog has joined my morning trawl through my favourite sites on the internet. I look…

Before I forget, I wanted to pick up a point made by John Prescott in The Sunday Times this weekend. Prescott acted as intermediary between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair and doubtless found it very wearing. I quite understand why…

Iain Dale understandably scoffs at Sunny Hundal for Hundal’s Pickled Politics post that, as Iain puts it: rails against two of Boris’s ethnic appointments because they are … whisper it, Conservatives, presumably betraying his steroetype that all ethnic minorities must…

Cartoon: Gaping Void

I missed what sounds like an epic Ed Balls briefing this afternoon. Nick Robinson has done a great summary on his blog, but the interesting bit now appears to be what the Schools Secretary said about “what can be done…

Yesterday I said in passing that I thought that it may now be possible to deliver much of the value added by subscription services designed to help organisations “get to grips” with the published commentary relatively easily - based on the insight that the supply of news and comment is no longer an expensive commodity. I have had a go myself today, and this article is to introduce the results.