Sunny ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ Hundal is organising a follow-up to 2008’s successful ‘Blog Nation’ event. Details over at Liberal Conspiracy, but Sunny asks what we’d like to discuss; below the fold, then, are some thoughts.
In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.
The Westminster Skeptics in the Pub gathered last night in a different pub, the Old Monk, for a different type of event- a discussion on ‘what difference does political blogging really make?’
The evening focussed around a couple of questions; what is the relationship between traditional journalism and blogging, and is it sustainable; and what influence do blogs actually have? The event certainly attracted a diverse crowd, many of whom were new to Skeptics in the Pub, which is to be welcomed, and BBC Parliament were there to record proceedings for posterity.
A writeup follows below, but I will start with some general comments.
Although I enjoyed listening to Nick Cohen, Mick Fealty and Sunny Hundall, I’m afraid that I found Jonathan Isaby to be unremarkable; he seems to be a better writer than he is a speaker, although I suspect that he was restricted, for one reason or another, in what he could say.
On way home from #sitp polital blogging. Learned that Guido serious about nothing but Guido. Narcisist not journailist.
Being something of a political nerd, it’s no surprise that I blog a bit, and I’ve heard all the points that were made at the event before. It comes down to the funding model for blogging vs volunteerism and whether blogging complements or replaces traditional journalism. Different people have different views. This is not a simple case of the jury still being out, but something more fundamental.
There is no such thing as blogging.
There isn’t even any such thing as political blogging. As we know, there are blogs that concern themselves with everything under the Sun and a little bit more mixing of sometimes siloed conversations would be good. Political blogging could certainly benefit from a healthy dose of skepticism.
However, to group even all political blogs together makes as much sense as saying that the Financial Times, the Daily Sport, the New Statesman and the Downing Street Years should be grouped together because they’re all printed on paper.
There are, within the political realm, blogs that range from the single issue to the generalist, from the ultra-local to the global. They aim to inform, provoke and proselytise. If we look at the question – what difference does political blogging really make – we can’t just look at the Westminster bubble or even just national politics. We have to look with much more detail and much finer granularity to gauge the differences between UK-wide, London, Northern Irish and so on blogging. I am convinced that the distinctive blogospheres in London, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are to do with the devolution of powers to those regions and that further regional blogging will only take off in concert with devolution of powers from Westminster regarding England.
Equally, a blog like the excellent Jack of Kent, focussing on legal matters, is only tangentially part of the main political blogosphere when it should, IMHO, be required reading. Ditto Ben Goldacre and various others.
Moreover, other social media, particularly Twitter, act as a force multiplier so that a given story or action can be replicated by many people with ease and speed.
Anyway, vesti la giubba; a writeup follows beneath the fold.
It’s been a familiar line, on whose veracity I will not comment, that while the right-of-centre was merrily blogging away, the left-of-centre blogosphere was somewhat flaccid. Part of the reason for this, so the trope goes, was that Labour was in power. The Tories stole a march because they could freely open fire at teh evil ZaNuLab while the left were stuck being subservient toadies or, for a slightly more considered view, because there was not much point sticking it to the Tories and a lot of Labour-aligned people were fed up with the party.
Well, the times they are a-changing. The statements made by Mr Cameron et al are no longer the posturing of an opposition, but the positions of a government in waiting. This gives broadly Labour-aligned blogs something to bite into – ‘our teeth are in the real meat’ – and means the Tories are becoming more self-regarding.
We have Liberal Conspiracy, which is now part of the scenery, but a few other progressive blogs covering the breadth of politics have appeared – Next Left, Left Foot Forward, LabourList – while there is a storm brewing on the Tory-aligned blogosphere regarding Europe.
That last point reflects a debate going on in the parliamentary party (my suspicion is that there is not a similar debate in the voluntary party but I stand ready to be corrected). The Labour-aligned blogosphere isn’t quite there yet, although I suspect some of the running made by blogs on the Tories’ fellow members of the ECR in general and one or two characters in particular will be picked up nationally.
The prophecy was that, once out of power, Labour blogging would really take off. It would appear that it’s starting to do so; whether this is a knell for the Labour government or a tool to keep us in government, I don’t know. It is, however, overdue.
Attacking the man in such a personal way, and not at all professionally, took journalism to a new low and eroded what respect is left within society for politicians. It moved us one step further along the road of a society concerned more with image and gossip than substance and fact. It was a very significant and sad moment.
It’s one thing for guttersnipes like Paul Staines and the bloggertarians to harp on about the subject of Brown’s mental health; quite another for a reputable journalist to ask a question based on nothing more than innuendo.
Remember this story in The Sun from earlier in the year?
Fears grew last night that hate-filled Islamic extremists are drawing up a “hit list” of Britain’s leading Jews – bringing the Middle East conflict terrifyingly close to home.
TV’s The Apprentice boss Sir Alan Sugar and Amy Winehouse record producer Mark Ronson are among prominent names discussed on a fanatics’ website. Labour Peer and pal of Tony Blair Lord Levy, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Princess Diana’s divorce lawyer Anthony Julius are also understood to be potential targets.
Tim’s reward? To be smeared, to have his mental health impugned, to be accused of being a paedophile, lied about, vilified, stalked, and finally his home address made public on the internet. He has had to involve the police. The harassment continues. Those in a real position to help him put an end to this have, disgracefully and unforgivably, refused to do so.
I’m proud to know Tim well and know something of what he’s been through in the last few months. And all for calling someone on their dangerous bullshit. He deserves much better for doing what a far better resourced press and media should have been doing themselves. He deserves full credit and any damage to his reputation restored.
To those who have helped do this to him or stood by and done nothing by allowing petty disputes get in the way of doing the right thing: it won’t be forgotten. This isn’t a game or an inter-blog spat – this is about a person’s safety and well-being and that of his family. The behaviour of some of the prominent Tories involved in all this is gut-churning.
Political wonks will be familiar, at the bottom of every piece of election literature (including stickers and t-shirts), with an imprint along the lines of
Printed and promoted by Anne Agent on behalf of Can D’Date, both of 29 Acacia Avenue, Dandytown.
I believe that’s a requirement under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act 2000 (PPERA). I know various candidates who, during election time, carry a similar imprint on their blog. I have two questions; is there a similar requirement for tweets and, if so, what would it look like
The Secretary of State may, after consulting the Commission, by regulations make provision for and in connection with the imposition of requirements as to the inclusion in material falling within subsection (1)(b) of the following details, namely—
(a) the name and address of the promoter of the material; and
(b) the name and address of any person on behalf of whom the material is being published (and who is not the promoter).
A simple solution would be to allow political parties to set up a website (with a short url!). It could then, in a similar way to sites like bit.ly. You could have li.uk/aaa for an imprint from a Labour candidate, who happened to be assigned ‘aaa’. Whaddya think, Mark?
Paul ‘Guido Fawkes’ Staines says that Gordon Brown may be taking an anti-depressant of the MAOI class; apparently the story is doing the rounds of the Westminster village. The article goes to show what a little shit Paul Staines is.
Begin brief rant
Mental illness is not a lot of fun. It’s also poorly understood by a lot of people. Staines has decided to make taking medication for depression be ‘pill-popping’ and to make the pills seem riven with side-effects. This pisses me off mightily, mostly because when I was first prescribed an anti-depressant, it scared the hell out of me and I wandered around with it in my pocket for three days before plucking up the courage to take the damn thing. Instead of ignoring what is by any standards a non-story, Staines uses it as a convenient stick with which to beat a political opponent, irrespective of its veracity or the broader effects of his way of discussing mental illness.
End brief rant
Firstly the science.
According to Dr Staines, MAOIs
are very rarely prescribed since the arrival of Prozac derivatives, used only sparingly when dealing with severely depressed patients.
ORLY?
newer MAOIs such as selegiline and moclobemide provide a safer alternative and are now sometimes used as first-line therapy
Thankyou, twelve seconds on Wikipedia. I’m not going to prescription advice from Staines. He’s not a doctor and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’ll check in the BNF when I’m back at home.
Secondly, the history.
When Kjell Magne Bondevik was suffering a depressive episode, he took three weeks leave to recuperate. Norway did not fall apart. Anne Enger Lahnstein became acting PM while he was away, and then everything went back to normal with perhaps a slightly better understanding of depression. There is a former PM of the UK who also suffered from depressive episodes – one Winston Churchill. The memo appears not to have reached Staines – depression can be managed effectively. Having depression doesn’t mean you can’t do your job.
Thirdly, the morality.
He has the audacity to use his ‘Is Brown Bonkers?’ image. Depression is an evil disease, but to describe someone suffering from it as ‘bonkers’ is not just crude, it’s flat wrong and makes life just a little bit harder for sufferers. Staines describes Brown’s use of antidepressants as ‘alleged’. It’s not a crime.
I was under the impression that private health matters generally stayed private. Funnily enough, I don’t consider Paul Staines innuendo enough of a reason to change that. If Brown is suffering from depression, I hope he improves soon. I hope no-one gives Staines the time of day when he tries to portray Brown as dangerously unstable.
I’ve spent a very pleasant evening in the company of the Sceptics in the Pub London, where the speaker was Dr. Aubrey de Gray, Chief Scientific Officer with the SENS Foundation. In brief, de Gray (Wikipedia article) set out the work of the SENS foundation which, as I understand it, looks at ageing as a disease which it then sets out to cure as a problem of regenerative medicine. While that is the primary aim, it has the effect, if successful, of increasing both quality and quantity of life; that is to say, making something approaching immortality not only possible but desirable.
De Gray set out a paradigm whereby metabolism causes damage, and damage then causes pathology. In this model, gerontology attempts to intervene in the first step – problematic because of the great complexity of metabolism – and geriatrics intervenes in the first step – problematic because damage has already caused pathology and is at best palliative. He sought to reverse accumulated damage before it became pathological.
Initially, this would allow for an extension of the useful human lifespan by perhaps thirty years. Once that first step was accomplished, refinements in technique would allow, excepting being hit by cars and so on, to continue for arbitrarily long periods, through the possibility of increasingly eficacious treatments before the eficacy of repeated cycles of previous treatments lost eficacy.
You can get a flavour of his speech from this TED talk.
Broadly, I would raise three problems with de Gray’s plan.
Firstly, the scientific. I can’t assess his science, but a number of people there raised fairly substantial problems with his paradigm and with the conclusions he drew from it. That is probably one for the peer reviewed papers.
Secondly, the technological. The very long, four-figure lifespans suggested depended not just on continuing improvements in the (speculative) set of technologies, bit that those improvements happened faster than people died because of a loss of eficacy as described above. The examples de Gray cited in support of his position were the motor car and the aeroplane. Unfortunately for him, the equally plausible alternative of the jet pack was raised: theoretically possible, desirable even, and can be turned into a prototype that can fly for half a minute, but can’t be turned into a production model (because the amount of fuel that can be loaded onto a human is finite and less than what’s needed for useful flight). Another example would be power from nuclear fusion, which has been ten years away for fifty years. It is a prediction based on little more than fiat.
Thirdly, the socio-economic. In answer to a question from yours truly about the cost of the treatments, de Gray was quick to observe, thousand-year life spans would have major effects on world society, meaning that we could throw much of traditional economics out of the window. If we do that, though, we throw political economy out of the window. Thus, de Gray’s assetion that the state would pay for its citizens to have these treatments is distinctly problematic as the state, as we know it, would not necessarily sill exist. Even if we accept that the state still exists in a recognisable form and that it makes economic sense for states to pay for these treatments, it does not follow that they will pay for them. As de Gray thought equality was a major issue, it’s worth going into at slightly greater length.
The basis from which de Grey works is that regenerative medicine is medicine like any other, albeit with remarkable effects. As we know from the current debate in the US, there are plenty of people who see taking money from them to pay for the healthcare of others as morally wrong. There are also plenty of countries that would like to provide comprehensive healthcare, but cannot afford it. De Grey provided no explanation of how we would roll out this treatment when we cannot at the moment give people with economic potential very cheap drugs – say, hydration salts for diarrhea – that would have similar economic benefits to the de Grey treatments but at vastly lower costs per dose. From the point of view of the state, it doesn’t matter whether a day’s work is done by a thirty-year-old or a three hundred and thirty-year-old. Given that states do not have to provide pensions or old age healthcare now, and that the mechanism by which they will be convinced to do so is absent, it seems as reasonable to conclude that arbitrarily long lives will remain the province of the wealthy as to conclude that we will enter this brave, new world. A nightmare scenario would be lots of people having access to these treatments but not making the necessary lifestyle changes. If we kept dropping kids every twenty or thirty years over a thousand year life, we’d very quickly overpopulate the planet.
I hope that de Gray’s science is more thorough than his statecraft.
Of course, if de Gray is right, I look forward to seeing you at the February 2317 meeting of Sceptics in the Pub London – assuming someone hasn’t already booked the room.
Neil Williams (blog, Twitter) has drafted a template strategy for Government departments wanting to use Twitter; find it on the Cabinet Office’s Digital Engagement Blog or on Neil’s website as a PDF. It’s a good document – you have to bear in mind that this is for civil servants – and could be a good starting point for anyone with a brand to manage. It’s worth reading and I do hope that various people in HMG take it on board, particularly how useful it is as a conversational tool – I’ve had questions answered by MoD over Twitter in a matter of a couple of minutes and replied to a few things from Paul Drayson, Tom Watson and others.
I really like a particular idea that Neil has – departments live twittering their own press conferences and so on. That would be a real ‘value-added’.
A little while ago, I put all the regional and departmental RSS feeds that the COI’s News Distribution Service provide onto Twitter. The full list is here; I’m really pleased that Neil has listed me as an unofficial aggregator of government content, and more than a little flattered.