Another thing about the blogosphere....

...it's great for this kind of thing, where Iain Dale live blogs Prime Minister's Question time. No editor would allow this kind of stuff out into the wires but it's exactly the kind of thing that's needed to plug the gap for those of us who cannot get to a radio or a television.

Nace 1 inan. Kep up teh god wrok!

We are the mysterons, we know that you can hear us

I was listening to BBC Radio 5 Live the other day, shortly after the Home Secretary announced that payments made to victims of state imprisonment were to be reduced. There was a brief attempt at analysis of the new policy where the presenter asked why the reporter thought Clarke was introducing his new policy. The reply was, basically, no idea, perhaps there's some political gain in it or some such. I was not convinced, the presenter was not convinced and the reporter was not convinced but that was basically all that was on offer.

Cut to the blogosphere. Within a short period of reflection and keyboard clattering the general consensus, as highlighted in this excellent article in The Times by Tim Worstall and also on this blog, was that this new measure is an attempt at pre-empting future claims by those that fall foul of badly thought out government legislation helped by the lack of the checks and balances that good law making requires and that this government seems unable or unwilling to sponsor.

And that, I think, is one of the best features of the blogosphere. Not many of us may actually be front line reporters or news generators but on analysis there's no doubt that the blogosphere serves its purpose, often very well indeed.

The days of being able to pull the hoodie over the eyes of the critical public are numbered and the traditional tactics used by the various nasty pieces of work that eventually infest all governments are becoming less and less effective.

Next week, Clarke announces Internet word tax and blogging certification based on ID card membership and submission of all material for inclusion in public protection state databases.

Ooo look

A Peter Hitchens blog (via Lance Dragon).

One for the blogroll.

The English Parliament sits where is has been since the days of Simon de Montfort- at Westminster.

And we could easily get it back from EU control if we stopped chasing silly English nationalist mirages and concentrated on re-establishing Britain our country.

Delinked for confusing the British parliament with a non-existent English parliament and confusing a desire for equality with silly mirages. Honestly, there can be no way, no sane or reasonable argument that the parliament that sits at Westminster is anything but a British parliament considering the current way that it functions.

Hitchens accuses supporters of an English parliament of being posessed by silly nationalist mirages and in the next breath proposes a British nationalist agenda about wrestling back control from another larger Union. Simply astonishing.

I have to say that it is a delink born from some considerable disappointment.

The one after the previous one

Guido and the Monkey are to put up another podcast tonight over at Guido and the Monkey. I didn't hear the first one that attracted so much attention in the blogosphere but I intend to catch this one. As far as I'm concerned MP's are fair game. They've had their chance and blown it on more occasions that I can be bothered to remember. Give it to them Guido and Monkey boy. Give it to them.

Interview

I've been interviewed by Gareth over at the Campaign for An English Parliament blog.

Arrrr, to the boardroom! Quick!

I don't pretend to understand Blog Shares but I do wonder why Gareth is attempting what looks like a hostile takeover. He owns 60% already.

Bah! Now Wonko has bought up the remaining shares. I suppose I should issue more.

New blog on the block

No idea who this new blogger is but he goes under the name of The Gun Guy.

ARRSE!

I seem to be getting a lot of hits from the British Army Rumour Service, or ARRSE as they are more, erm, affectionaly known. Incoming from their forums. If any of you ARRSE’s (please don’t kill me) out there know why drop me a line. My ears are burning.

Come join the party

This man should join this club.

Now if we can only get DumbJon to finally crack.

Village life

If you don’t read JonnyB’s Private Secret Diary you are missing out. Read this followed by this if you don’t believe me.

Britblog Roundup

Lots of bloggy goodness again at the Britblog Roundup.

How many of these, how many of those

Hmmm, someone's been busy adding me to all kinds of blog tracking technologies that require forms to be filled in, accounts to be created or ownership to be taken before they start doing their business. Come on, own up, who is it?

Britblog roundup number 26

Tim Worstall's Britblog roundup is up. Lots of blog goodness.

TTFN

Like I said earlier we are away for a couple of weeks. Normal service will resume after that, except with a tan.

Another Grand Tour

We are about to go on another one of our grand tours. This one will take us across the channel to the mainland of Europe where, I understand, they speak different languages but use the same currency as each other . Fantastically quaint.

Like our previous tours there will be pictures taken (this time with my spanking new Nikon D70) but, unfortunately for you (trust me on this one), it is unlikely that these pictures will be available for your viewing pleasure. The reason is that this particular grand tour is to be a hedonistic one in as much as sight seeing and exploration will not even be on the menu. Instead I will be spending time in a rather large private dwelling with a very handy pool along with two extremely fine fillies. In almost unbearable heat.

There will be clothes, but not many.

Blogging will probably continue today and tomorrow and then there will be a pause.

My secret blog

It’s an odd feeling having friends that know I have a blog but who don’t know where it is. The tactics they have used over the past few weeks to try and find out the location of the blog have been a marvel to behold. Entertaining even, but ultimately lacking in the kind of sophistication required for success.

I, on the other hand, have been playing a marvellous game. ”Oh yes, I wrote about that a couple of days ago. No, I won’t tell you where it is but let us just assume that the very argument you are putting forward today has already been debunked as the ravings of a drunk soaked popinjay. No, we’re out of gin.”

One of my friends has started up his own blog in response which I have visited daily but to which I will not link. No point in giving away clues that easily and, perhaps, that is the very reason it was started. Pffft, saw that one coming.

I don’t know why I feel this peculiar need for secrecy but I do. It’s such an acute state of mind that I would seriously consider scrapping the blog and its contents were I to be “found out”.

Analyse that.

Another new blog

Here is another new blog that I'm going to keep an eye on.

This web blog has been set up as an information resource and discussion area (please be polite in the comments) to help organise resistance to the restrictions on peaceful democratic demonstrations and protests, which have been enacted by law, in a wide Designated Area around Parliament Square in London.

The Last Ditch

Here's a new one for the blogroll - The Last Ditch by Tom Paine, a Brit in Moscow, who started this particular blog up in March this year. Take a look.

He is like the red weed....crawling, crawling

Next day, the dawn was a brilliant, fiery red and I wandered through the weird and lurid landscape of another planet, for the vegetation that gives Mars its red appearance had taken root on earth. As man had succumbed to the Martians, so our land now succumbed to the red weed.

Wherever there was a stream the red weed clung and grew with frightening voraciousness, its claw-like fronds choking the movement of the water. And then it began to creep like a slimy red animal across the land covering field and ditch and tree and hedgerow with living scarlet feelers, crawling, crawling.

Dear readers,

On this day, 29th June 2005, I do declare that The England Project is a Tim Worstall free zone. By that I mean that Tim will not, under any circumstances, write an article for The England Project and have it published on The England Project.

I feel that this action is necessary to prevent the Tim Worstall Internet authorship virus from spreading any further.

Tim Worstall writes:

You forgot the Globalization Institute!

Where will it end.........

He's going to Canada you know

Gareth, who blogs furiously for the CEP blog, now has his own personal blog at Little Man in a Toque.

Hello, yes

I'm still here. Many thanks to the kind people who have mailed their concern and a special thanks to reader Andrew (no Blair’s thought police tried but I sent them away) and Athelstan from the Cross of St. George blog who came round to see if everything was ok. How he got past the heavily armed attack dogs I have no idea.

I've been on a break from blogging during the election season because I've been suffering from a peculiar illness which I've dubbed political toxicity. The symptoms are a feeling of utter frustration, ranting fits, frothing at the mouth and a tendency to take up every pastime or bad habit that the political elite and their self interested minority pressure groups have said is bad for me out of sheer bloody mindedness. Man what a ride.

So today is election day and all the pundits I have been trying to ignore are saying it’s to be another Labour landslide of one degree or another. That’s another five years of the bull in the china shop. Sure the electorate might be feeling comfortable now but eventually old Mr. and Mrs. Consequence are going to come round for a visit and the electorate are going to have to serve tea out of an EU approved plastic cup. The shame.

See you on the other side.

His new blog has landed

Well, the blogosphere’s accidental spaceman is back on his new blog In Actual Fact. He's an Englishman living in Germany; you may have heard of him. Anyhow, one for the blogroll.

Blegging

Tim Worstall asks:

Folks, I really, really need your help. I mean reeeeally. No, I don’t want any of your money, that isn’t what this is about. I want 90 seconds of your time. Is that possible?

Why not pop over to his place and lend him a hand?

Britblog roundup number 4

Tim's BritBlog roundup is up here.

BritBlog Roundup 2

Tim Worstall's BritBlog Roundup is up. Lot's of shared bloggy goodness with a blighty flavour for your pleasure.

Blogospheric pointy stick frenzy

It seems like everyone is pointing to this blog tittled Little man, what now?. It's like a pointing stick frenzy in the bloggosphere at the moment so over I went and what did I see but a picture of a man who is far from little. On the front page. A fine juxtaposition which further exaggerates the littleness of the title. I like that in a blog.

Laban Tall is pondering the meaning of the blog's title and Ted, one of the blog's three authors, has given us a clue:

For those pondering the reason for our name. I can only tell you that the symbology and hidden meanings behind the blog title, pseudonyms, posts and what not - actually point to the precise location of the holy grail, and are nothing to do with Hans Fallada novels, or songs by The Smiths.

The Holy Grail. Heh, I've already got'a one, but on the blogroll it goes nevertheless.

The Boy has a gig

Scott "The Boy" Burgess of Daily Ablution fame has got himself a weekend gig over at Vodkapundit, a US based blog of some repute. US readers are in for a treat as Scott continues to work away with his keyboard at the foundations of the UK press.

Scott reminds me (and please don't take this the wrong way Scott) of the dog that, when the paper is delivered, runs up to the letter box and grabs it with his teeth, shaking his head savagely from side to side as bits of paper fly all over the entrance hall. With all the snarling and the chewing. Intellectually speaking of course.

I'm usually the one to side with the underdog but in this case the poodle like UK press are on their own and I'm backing the rottweiler.

Guido's new home

Guido has moved to www.order-order.com so update your blogroll why don't you.

It's not The Times, I mean it says so in very big letters

I wish some bloggers would refrain from calling the New York Times The Times. It isn’t. You can tell the New York Times from the real deal by the huge New York Times banner at the top of the New York Times website. Look:

NEW YORK Times

I think that needed to be said.

Peggy Noonan in the OpinionJournal

Via Lileks we read this OpinionJournal piece by Peggy Noonan. It praises the American blogosphere and I say why not? They've certainly been game to get up and at the mainstream media in the past year or so or, more accurately, up and at a number of difficulties some of the American MSM have been having with facts and other issues loosely related to facts. Like lies.

It is my opinion that the MSM and the blogosphere are similar in the truth/lie/spin marketplace in as much as all of it goes on in both. The one difference in this marketplace that I am sure of is that, in the blogosphere, one bloggers truth/lie/spin is material for another bloggers (or many other bloggers) blogging. Indeed, this hunger for sport and the speed of publication is what makes the blogosphere credible, if anything does. Some of that does go on in the MSM but not enough to make a difference. Not enough to drive the MSM forward.

Noonan makes a number of observations which I think deserve repeating (read copy and pasting). Firstly on having a thick skin:

I have seen friends savaged by blogs and winced for them--but, well, too bad. I've been attacked. Too bad. If you can't take it, you shouldn't be thinking aloud for a living.

It's certainly true, but I would go further in as much as I think some newspaper hacks simply shouldn't be thinking out aloud, full stop. Many of them contribute to the intellectual ill-health of the nation and, given that it seems the current voluntary option has failed, we need legislation to prevent their infections from spreading. Many journalists practice sexual perfidy and have taken whores as partners.

Noonan does make a mistake in her article when she says:

Bloggers are certainly not as rough as the splenetic pamphleteers of the 18th and 19th centuries, who amused themselves accusing Thomas Jefferson of sexual perfidy and Andrew Jackson of having married a whore.

However, one can forgive her this as the bloggosphere is simply too big to take in all at once so some characteristics are going to be missed.

Lastly is Noonan's closing paragraph which I hope will never come true. It's too chilling to contemplate:

Finally, someday in America the next big bad thing is going to happen, and lines are going to go down, and darkness is going to descend, and the instant communication we now enjoy is going to be compromised. People in one part of the country are going to wonder how people in another part are doing. Little by little lines are going to come up, and people are going to log on, and they're going to get the best, most comprehensive, and ultimately, just because it's there, most heartening information from . . . some lone blogger out there. And then another. They're going to do some big work down the road.

Neil, gone? But where?

Neil A[rmstrong], from German for Beginners has vanished, or is vanishing. His web log is not responding at the moment, which may be intentional, because he has bid us his farewell:

Last night on the phone, my mother, who has obviously been playing with her new computer, mentioned "this blowging thing you go on about....". She didn't say anything specific about this blog, but that was, for me, the final warning after a series of "incidents". I've taken the blog offline, I enjoy this blogging malarky, want to carry on, but I want to do it better and that (for me) means a bit more anonymously. I will (knowledge of PHP and MySQL permitting) start a new blog, it won't be called German For Beginners (which will slice 90% off my "visitors from google" tally), and it will be under some kind of pen name in no way related to the Apollo program.

He leaves us with a challenge:

No, I'm not linking to it from here, however, I'm sure regular readers will find it eventually. Yes you will, you're mostly smart and clever.

I fear that he overestimates us. If any readers do eventually stumble upon his new blog please be sure to let me know.

I’ve been to www.iwalkedonthemoon.com but there’s nothing there.

Welcome, your Majesty

Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry reveals The Law West of Ealing Broadway. There, I am sure, is a perfectly unique sentence.

The latter link will take you to a promising looking blog penned by a magistrate.

Liberty Cadre

Liberty Cadre, a new blog on liberty and libertarianism. You may remember the writers from such blogs as Dodgeblogium.

Real URL is www.libertycadre.net.

Away, away

We will be on another one of our Grand Tours over the next few days so there will be little or no blogging until we return.

To all readers of The England Project

Hey, merry Christmas.

They've vanished him!

Or perhaps that's too reactionary. Stephen Pollard's blog has vanished. Wiped clean. Erased. Vanished!

He's either been nailed by Mad Dog or is experiencing blogging difficulties.

Anyone hear him on Radio 5 live this morning? I reached journeys end before they got to his spot.

He has returned.

Also, some people seem to be giving him a hard time for talking about and plugging his book. Bad show if you ask me. The man wrote a frigging book and it looks like one that is turning out to be quite well thumbed. Writing a book is hard work and, frankly, if I had ever managed to complete one rather than falling after a few pages of tat, you'd never hear the end of it.

Sheesh, some people never stop talking about their jobs, or the product of their jobs, and Stephen has every right to do the same with his book.

Cripes! Mad Dog has quit:

David Blunkett has quit as home secretary after an e-mail emerged showing a visa application for his ex-lover's nanny had been fast tracked.

Mr Blunkett said he had done nothing wrong because the visa had been processed by the "system".

But he said questions about his integrity had been damaging the government.

First European weblog awards

More weblog awards. This time they're the First European Weblog Awards which does have a Best UK blog category if you are interested in nominating someone.

Please, theenglandproject.net does not recognise the legitimacy of Europe as a land mass* or as a political idea; do not nominate me. Not even for a joke as I will request withdrawal from the whole shooting match. Also I am tired of the bleating**. Oh so very tired.

Via What you can get away with.

* Not necessarily true.

** The characteristic cry of a goat or sheep.

Oh, the humanity

Voting would indicate that this web log is being murdered. Murdered I tell you!

Something about Dwarves

Mr. British Spin is blogging over at the Honourable Fiend.

I thank you all

Well, what can I say? It’s a great honour to be nominated in the best UK blog category of the 2004 WebLog Awards. To see The England Project listed along side the other excellent nominations just fills me with pride and, I might add, makes me feel very important indeed.

I would like to thank my parents (who have no idea that this site exists), my friends (who also have no idea) and my manager (who I am married to). I would also like to thank those who have nominated me. The cheque, as they say, is in the post (so don’t expect to see it any time soon).

I would also like to pledge my support to all the other UK bloggers who are working so hard behind enemy lines right now. You know who you are. In spite of great danger to themselves they continue to bait the authorities by pointing out the total lack of ability of our political masters, their sexual perversions and their total misunderestimation of how highly we value freedom. A great big tally ho to you all.

I’d like to take this opportunity to recite an enhanced version of The Path that brought me to The England Project, a path that has taken the best part of three years. There have been tears, oh yes. But also joy. And the boredom, oh the boredom.

THE PATH

From the Front Rank,
To the Solent.

From the Solent,
To the Samizdat.

From the Samizdat,
To the Edge.

Then Across the Atlantic,
To Lileks.

And back again,
For The England Project.

I thank you all.

Hippo birdie to me

What can I say? It's been a year. Traditionally I should close the blog down, but not this time.

I'd like to thank my family, my agent and the voices in my head.

I'd also like to thank all you bloggers out there who have proven how so very sexy you are by linking to me.

I love you all.

Today's special is freshwater ostrich

Tim points to a waiter blog and suggests that we check it out. It's called Waiter Rant and the content is excellent; this bit is about a waiter called Carl:

Erudite and able to converse about a wide range of topics, I found he was a pleasure to talk to: a welcome change from the coarser discourse usually found in the back of the house. Yet there was sadness th[at] clung to him like tobacco smoke. Divorced, childless, living alone in a small apartment in a downscale neighborhood, he had the air of a man who accepted that his moment in life had come and gone.

One for the blogroll.

EngBlog!

The guys over at The Campaign For an English Parliament are blogging. This blog represents a dissenting voice to the third and final point on the triangle of doom, a triangle showing the three biggest issues of crisis facing the modern English nation.

1. EUropean rule.
2. No English Parliament.
3. The Guardian.

Update you bookmarks, if you will.

Dismal

In light of the not unsurprising revelation that The Voice of the Future blog is a respectable 54% evil it comes as a deflating disappointment to me that The England Project is rated:

Leadership battle soon to follow.

As seen on TV

I’m finding this whole CBS memo thing fascinating. Not just because of the likelihood that they are forgeries and not because a media hack was outed by the blogosphere in the time it takes to skin a rat but because blogs are being given a high profile in the US papers, on the radio and on the TV. Big media are handing out URL’s to people like they were sweets*.

An alternative news source to big media? Who knew?

* Candy.

Descending

I don’t quite know how to express what I’m feeling this morning. Listening to the radio on my drive in to work was almost more than I could stand and I have that feeling that I normally get just before I turn off the radio and stop watching and reading the news for a month or so. I am descending again.

I think that this morning is particularly bad because of the news from Russia which has set my empathy and foreboding dials to eleven.

What to do? What to do?

I guess I should just try to resist the urge to tune out.

Needs oil

I have noticed something odd with blogspot based blogs recently. Many of them seem to be stuck. For instance last week the House of Dumb seemed to stop updating on Tuesday June 15th only to start again on Wednesday the following week. No big deal, you might think, but magically the Wednesday update included some never previously seen Sunday June 20th postings.

Something similar is happening with the plastic gangster. Posting seemed to stop last Thursday only to start again this Tuesday with some Monday postings.

Like I said. Stuck. Or at least sticking a bit.

Going underground

I will be working undercover until Tuesday 4th May so no further blogging until then. Unlike the last time I was away carrier pigeons cannot be used to contact me. Urgent messages can instead be sent on channel Delta-Delta-Niner-Niner-Zero. Codename - StarCom.

Now hear this

The England Project is currently on manoeuvres. There will be no posting until the 13th April at the earliest. Urgent mail can be sent by carrier pigeon.

Missing connection

Here’s a question. How many of us UK bloggers do you think follow up a post on bad government with a letter to their MP, the Home Office or some such?

How many encourage their readers to do so?

Just asking.

An Englishman's appeal

Tim, over at An Englishman's Castle is appealing for sponsors for a charity run/walk he is thinking of doing in aid of the Opportunity Centre based in Devizes, Tim's local town. It looks like a good cause and I have already hit his paypal donation button (on his sidebar, titled Make a Donation). If you want to help simply click the button and you will be taken to Tim's An Englishman's Walk paypal page.

So, the blogosphere - what is it good for? Go ahead, you know you want to.

Lileks

Honestly, do you think that he's an evil genius? He takes us from speaker plugs to double action clicking pens and the whole thing is totally fascinating.

Super new look

The England Project Blog now has a super new look. If it's not appearing correctly for you (eg you still get the dark blue background) try doing a hard refresh (ctrl-F5 in IE) to force a reload.

Why the change? I found the old one a little too dark and depressing. This one still depresses me but hey, it's lighter. Enjoy.

Think Different

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

This just in from the coast

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, VC, AFC, CBE, BSc, MOT, VD Scab and Bar, RAF (Retd.) is missing in action. Unsubstantiated reports have placed him in a public house some distance from the front. We trust in God that this is the case.

Early reports on his location were wrong. He was at his mum's house.

ConfigSys.boy

.....is back after an extended leave of absence.

We have a bonfire every day

The Bonfire of the Vanities is up over at Wizbang. You could go there, or you could stay here where each post has a built in Bonfire all of its own. It's your choice.

Downsize fad hits blog world

Oh no, diamond geezer has gone tabloid. Still, it saves all that folding of the screen and the glass splinters.

He says there will be no dumbing down but I could have sworn that his URL use to be hydrocarbonboy.blogspot.com.

The grand unified theory of the blogosphere

If Michele really wants to make progress with the grand unified theory of the blogosphere she needs to give up on the Newtonian model and ask herself what string theory says about it. It’s not about stars and planets it’s about multiple dimensions, graviton particles and wormholes.