Hanging around

The first in what I hope will be a regular series of sketches on LabourList from Labour's answer to Quentin Letts, Sadie Smith... and I've nicked the picture because I like it. How great would it be to abseil down Big Ben? You would just have to do the hanging off the big hand thing though, while you were at it, wouldn't you?

Satan gave me a taco

Just been alerted by Blackburn Labour via Twitter that Stuart Bruce has blogged saying that either Tom Harris or my good self should be in charge of Labour's online strategy. He says I have "one of the best set of blog house rules I’ve seen – My blog = My rules!" Indeed.

The more eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted that I've introduced a new one recently: "Thirdly: I might just randomly delete comments from certain people because I'm getting thoroughly fed up with them and want them to go away and annoy someone else for a while. You know who you are." Have a look at the latest comments from Dave H (on 'Get the Message') and Cato (on 'A Professional Pirate') if you want to get an idea of what would make me wearily reach into my pocket for a yellow card. I am still not entirely sure whether Dave H is joking or not.

As for Stuart's suggestion, I'm not sure the analogy between the Conservatives having Jeremy Hunt MP in charge of online strategy and therefore Labour needing a political steer from an MP is quite right. The Tories' presence on the web is led by Iain Dale, Conservative Home and Guido Fawkes: all laughably described by Tim Montgomerie in yesterday's Guardian as 'Centre Right' blogs. None of them are in-house journals, and none of them are 'master-minded' by Jeremy Hunt. (Much as I love the idea of discovering that Guido is just a puppet in his hands!)

I think LabourList can and should be salvaged (though under a new name because the old one was frankly rather dull), and blogging MPs should play a role in deciding its future, as well as people like Alastair Campbell, Hopi Sen, Sadie Smith and other established Labour bloggers in my 'If you're bored with me' list. The site needs to be significantly whittled down, with a lot less immediate content coming through. There are too many contributors at the moment and some of them should be making their name by commenting on posts rather than writing their own pieces. Why surrender the comments sections to the trolls?

And it needs more gossip - not smears, but genuine political gossip, the stuff of diary columns. (By which I mean the way diary columns used to be before the blogs took over). People who want lengthy policy analysis have plenty of places they can go to on the web. If you want to read think-tank pieces from policy wonks, well, they've already got their own sites.

LabourList (NewLabourList?) should be informative, pithy and above all, fun. And no, that's not a job application. Although I will volunteer to draft the rules if they want me to. Our blog = our rules!

Beneath the valley of the underdog

According to the Mirror's opinion column today:

"This blogosphere is largely populated by the cretinous, infantile forums of abuse dressed up as argument - pompous prigs of all political persuasions passing themselves off as intellectuals. But the power of these small-minded attention seekers has seduced the real political world into thinking they actually matter. They don't."

Well, I admit... I kind of know what they're talking about. But there's a risk that events of the past days could lead Labour to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and decide that the territority of the blogosphere is too dangerous for 'mainstream' politics. Which would be a shame. I think LabourList needs to be salvaged, whether under its current name or not, I'm not sure. I think it has its faults. I confess, it's not on my 'must read' list, although I do always at least skim through the LunchtimeList email.

I think one of its problems is that, quite frankly, there are too many contributors. I know the idea is that it should be an open forum, and anyone who wants to post, can do so. I appreciate the good intentions behind this, but the trouble is, it means the site ends up with no coherent identity, no personality. Multiple contributors can work; Blackburn Labour is a good example, but there they've taken care to personalise each contributor and there is an overall 'feel' to the site, which is lacking on LabourList. The other problem of course with so many contributions is that you end up not being able to see the wood for the trees; I end up simply clicking on articles by people I already know (OK, I read the ones by Douglas, so I can tell him I have) and the less well-known contributors don't get a look in.

I have some ideas as to how it can be reformed, but I suspect there will be lots of talk about this over the next few weeks so I'm keeping my ideas to myself for now.

Postscript: Have a look at Hopi's take on this too. Note that I make it into his 'comedy' section of blogs to be encouraged.

Jeremy Kyle Fan Club

I've finally got round to blogging for Labour List, on my Ten Minute Rule Bill. (Protection of Privacy of Children in the media).

Trolls

LabourList officially launched yesterday with a blogger's breakfast; I was intending to go, but then had to be somewhere else. Having had my doubts about the site when it took its first tentative steps into the blogosphere, I think it's now starting to come together. I will get around to posting on there one day, but I think it's a particular useful tool for MPs who don't have their own blogs, but have one specific issue where they want to get their views into the public domain (e.g. Andy Slaughter and Heathrow).

As expected the trolls have been busy on the LabourList site. They also seem to be in a particularly obnoxious mood on here at the moment - it's not that I've not been getting comments, I've just been pressing 'Reject' rather a lot. (And thanks BB for the last one; I'm sure you can understand why I'm not posting it).

Derek Draper is, naturally, the main target and has been forced to set up his own personal blog to defend himself against libellious attacks - http://derekdrapersblog.blogspot.com/. I particularly like Luke Akehurst's piece on this, and his comment that he has never met anyone like Guido or his 'useful idiots' in real life. Neither have I.

Is it because they maintain a veneer of normality in real life and, like the modern-day equivalent of 'poison pen' letter writers in Agatha Christie books vent all their spleen under the cowardly cloak of anonymity? Or maybe they just never leave home?

Sunny South Kensington*

Fabians conference this afternoon - well, all day, but popped into Westminster office to pick up some stuff and got sidetracked, so only made the afternoon session. First person I bumped into was Derek Draper, he of Labourlist (recent) fame. Have agreed to do a post pretty soon. And when I had a bit of a moan about the comments, he advised me that there are in fact six ways to look at the comments, seven if you include 'with trash' - and he is quite right, there are, so no-one can really complain.

Had a bit of a chat with people outside the child poverty session - Ed Balls and spads; Kate Green from CPAG; and Chuka Umunna, the Streatham PPC, who was chairing it. We can expect the Child Poverty Bill soon, which will give us an opportunity to review just what our child poverty objectives are. The main target has been to halve and then abolish relative poverty - i.e. children in households on less than 60% of median income - but if the recession bites, then the job could be done without anyone actually being better off (i.e. because high unemployment would bring down the median). I've argued for a while that we need to reframe the debate (and was saying that before the current economic downturn, for other reasons). Looking forward to the discussions we'll have on Bill committee, assuming I can get onto it - memo to self, be nice to the DCSF whip. Or is it DWP?

I was torn between the child poverty session and the international development one, but obviously wanted to see the boss in action, so opted for the latter. Discussion about the link between diaspora communities here, and making the case for development, but didn't really get off the ground - i.e. not many points of dissent. Then went for coffee with Douglas and his new spads, Richard and Stephen, to discuss Monday's meeting with MPs on Gaza, and various other things which I am not allowed to mention. He's doing Fiona Bruce on BBC1 at some point between 9am and 10am tomorrow. Followed by Boris Johnson.

Walked back with Douglas to the tube - everyone around him oblivious to the fact that the guy in jeans and trainers topping up his Oyster card was a Cabinet Minister. Then bumped into Sam, Alistair Darling's spad, on his way back to HM Treasury. (This was 5pm on a Saturday. That's what he does these days). There's a lot of stuff on Labourlist about the Fabians conference, and they were Twittering from there too (@thefabians).

* That's where it was. It's a Donovan song. It wasn't sunny, it was cold.

LabourList launches

You've probably already read elsewhere - in today's Mail, in today's Observer, and on other blogs about the Labour blogsite, LabourList, which is officially launched tomorrow. So, first impressions?

Likes: the media round-up; Charlie Whelan's piece on Cameron on Marr (useful link to transcript); the idea of Lunchtime Lists; some of the contributors (tho' that will depend what they're going to say and how they're going to say it - keep it short would be my suggestion), and the rapidly-taken decision to weed out the trolls right from the start. ("In order to ensure an insightful, engaging debate we will also place other comments judged to be grossly unintelligent or obtuse or trolls in our trash can.") No doubt this will be met by the usual fake outrage from the libertarians, but it's our site, not theirs.

Dislikes: confusing comments (end up having to read backwards, but even then they're pretty difficult to follow); appearance of usual trolls in comments section (but see above). And if they really want me to give it a plug, you'd think they could find space for just one more name in their A list. (I attempted one of those smiley faces then, but no... still can't bring myself to do it).