Ooooh, Doughnuts!

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TL,DR* summary: I talk about the Labour blogging breakfast hoo-ha, marvel at my own power, and say what I would have said if i’d gone to the meeting instead of  catching up with  work.

I spent much of this week  moaning softly to myself and using the “I’m about to die, but I’m being verry, verry brave about it” half whisper /half croak that I employ whenever I am poorly sick, whatever the precise malady.

As a result, yesterday and today were fairly busy days at work.

Which meant I didn’t get to do two things blog related. The first was the Welfare post in response to the Bickerstaffe Record and the estimable Don Paskini. Sorry chaps.I shall try to return to work related activity soonest.

The second thing I didn’t get to do was go to the Labour Bloggers gathering this morning. When I read the British political blogs after finishing work, going Christmas shopping and spending the evening watching  the Al Franken/Norm Coleman senate recount on theuptake.org, (which is wonderful, brilliant stuff), I discovered that this breakfast meeting had metamorphosed into a conclave of the mighty, as intrigued posts by Iain Dale, Guido and Harry Phibbs indicate.

Still, I got invited, which proves I am reet important, and that when I speak, you mere mortals must tremble and obey. After all, what force on earth could be more puissant than a convocation of Labour tech nerds and soi-distant advisers?

I tell you, If I had been there, the concentration of incisive political analysis would have been so high the earth would have split asunder, a political hellmouth opening beneath our astonished feet, spilling out rhetorical warriors from the realm of the dead and all would look in wonder as Fox, Pitt, Disraeli and Gladstone disputed with rapiers of pure wit before the gawping denizens of Victoria Street.

Sorry. Got a bit carried away there. I blame the Night Nurse.

Alternatively,  I’d have sat in the meeting listening to people with useful things to say, while trying to think of a question that would be provocative, pithy and make me look like I really know a lot about t’internet, while trying to calculate exactly how greedy it would look to have a second doughnut.

Given my lifetime performance in meetings, I recommend the latter option to gambling types.

All of which is by way of saying that

a) I think it’s a dammed good thing that the Labour party is reaching out to bloggers and Derek Draper deserves thanks for looking at tech issues while seemingly taking the brunt for all Labour’s failing on right wing blogs.

b) I would be delighted to go in future.

c) I hope Derek is going to launch a blog as Iain suggests, because I suspect he’d be good at it. For those who think this is impossible, I think he’d be good because he’s connected, he’s politically focused, he’s good at getting attention and he has an uncanny knack of riling up Guido’s comment spanners. They said Huffington Post would be teh suck too, and it isn’t.   (Full Disclosure, I’ve met Derek… ooooh.. once.  Mind you, I’ve met Luke Akehurst lots of times and went to university with Theo Blackwell. It’s a cabal, I tell you, A cabal)

d) Whoever gave the details of the meeting to Guido is a muppet.  Not because it matters that the meeting is public, but because what possible good purpose would giving it to him serve? It’s  just bad manners.

e) Most importantly., if I had gone, the pithy contribution I’d have made would have been about the irresitible rise of citizen journalism. From Talkingpointsmemo to fivethirtyeight and  theuptake, the sites I’ve been most impressed with recently have been nerdovision – detailed, intelligent, issue based commentary that exposes corruption, bad faith and hypocrisy as carefully as they discuss recount strategies, electoral projections and the return of depression economics. Usually they’re more informative, accurate and up to date than the mainstream media.

It’s this – what I’m tempted to call “anti-Guido-isation” of politics which I find most impressive.  Nate Silver, Baseball statistician, Josh Marshall,  then an obscure journalist, and Mike McIntee at TV producer now at the Uptake provide world class political coverage and analysis based on their previous expertise, but applied in an entirely new way.

There are possible equivalents emerging here (Boriswatch, Tory Troll and Dave Hill spring to mind in London) but we’ve got a long way to go before we can match that enthusiasm, passion and expertise. It’s that politically slanted “amateur” reporting that I’m most excited by, more than I am by the sort of blogging commentary I do.

It’s easy to spout off. It’s harder to find out. I’d love to see a British left of centre equivalent of any of those sites.

So what am I going to do about it? Get a Mogulus account, for one thing.  get better at video editing for another. and try to do some actual reporting, not just commentary for a third.

You should too.

* TL,DR = too long, didn’t read.  A frequent response by teh kidz on internet forums to overly verbose posts. Not as rude as DIAGF or as job preservingly useful as NSFW, but pretty good nonetheless.

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