Friday 28 November 2008

A reminder

No-one reads the long comments. Once you're onto your third paragraph, you are almost certainly talking to yourself. I am saying this in a bid to be helpful and to free you up to do something useful with your lives instead.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thus spake a professional ;-)

timbone said...

Spooky stuff, I have just put a long comment on. I find it very hard to be succinct, as a colleague in the teaching profession once said, (yep, I have been one of those as well), "why say it in a sentence when you can say it in a paragraph"

John Pickworth said...

"No-one reads the long comments. Once you're onto your third paragraph, you are almost certainly talking to yourself".

Many people DO read long comments and are generally appreciative of the extra effort put into them. If you find the blogging platform too long-winded, perhaps you should open a simple chat room instead Kerry?

Still, your ungrateful attitude explains why you remain disconnected from what the little guy is thinking. Unless of course, the poster happens to be a bit simple and struggles to write more than a line or two... then again, I expect these people are your core voters so I can see why you'd want to encourage a less erudite commentary!

Third paragraph. And a good place to ask the voters of Bristol (now that Kerry has stopped reading) to question if this person is a suitable legislator? Have you seen these weighty documents the MPs are SUPPOSED to read in their ENTIRETY before voting to enact them?

To be honest, I'm quite shocked and more than a little insulted!

Perhaps you should give up Kerry? Wouldn't your prefer a job as a traffic warden instead? Its easy, all you do is note the registration, time and place... saves all that long tiresome reading 'n' stuff that MPs are paid to do.

Steven_L said...

Something more useful? You mean like hit the town in a vain attempt to reflate your economic botch job?

No thanks Kerry, I'm staying in with a crate of Becks (33p a bottle down at Eastville Tesco if you buy 2 crates) and saving!

Anonymous said...

Fair point, well made, so short post.

I recently suggested the government debt was out of control and you'd struggle to raise the money on the markets. You seemed dubious.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f56403b0-bcab-11dd-af5a-0000779fd18c.html

Have to end the post now as I am deafened by the noise of turkeys coming home to roost. You're bust.

LWTU said...

I take it I'm not supposed to read your blog entries containing more than three paragraphs either then?

There is no difference between the text on a blog entry and the text in the comments, one is no more important than the other. If you disregard the comments so offhandedly, you're blogging with a wooden tongue.

"The French call it la langue de bois, the "wooden tongue." It's the language of officialdom; of politics, power and propaganda. It's usually spoken by someone whose job is to speak, but whose real mission is to end speech."

force12 said...

Piss off you sanctimonious cow.

Is that brief enough?

Anonymous said...

If I may fellow contributors....

We may disagree with the MP but we should perhaps remind ourselves that one of the disadvantages of being a gentleman is that one is that one is occasionally obliged to behave like one. And thus ad hominen attacks, particularly on a lady, are not acceptable.

The Grime Reaper said...

I'll just carry on them.

Ruth Kelly's plaything said...

Succinct is always better, I agree. However, there are some cases which are ill-served by compression. A brief look at your blogs suggests that you agree, Kerry: one of eight paras, one of 17 and a blockbuster of 21, all written by you.

Perhaps you comment from the p.o.v. of a member of the soundbite generation? Some of us can actually get through whole chapters unaided by moving lips, or entire books even (provided, in my case, it's not by Proust).

The Grime Reaper said...

I don't get paid......

I'll just carry on then.....

Old Holborn said...

The Civil servant who leaked the "bad news" us proles are not allowed to know has been taken to a secret location by the Home Office.

Pure Stalinist, n'est pas?

I wonder if he'll be found, like David Kelly, cold and dead.

Bristol Dave said...

I wonder if he'll be found, like David Kelly, cold and dead.

Fiver says you're right, though we may not hear about it.

Old Holborn said...

I'm trying to get his name so I can get my QC to approach a Judge for a habeus Corpus writ to protect him from Jackboot Jacqui.

God help him.

Kerry said...

I was merely passing on what people who read my blog tell me - they don't bother with the long comments. (I have to read them, if for no other reason than the fact I'm the only person moderating this site). Was probably over-generalising having just had to wade through nearly 100 of them in one go. Longer comments can be interesting/ useful if they are developing an argument, but some are just lists, and have already appeared on other people's blogs.

As for your comment, JP, I am quite capable of reading the equivalent of War and Peace in work-related docs every week, and probably do. But blogging is blogging. It should be about an exchange of views, not a series of monologues.

The recent long posts, by the way, were just cut and paste jobs, from speeches/ articles - there to reference past statements, not new blog posts as such (i.e. to show I'd already said such things in the past).

Kerry said...

PS Got a nice email from a pensioner this week, who'd been at the Pensioners Convention event I spoke at last Saturday. He said he'd checked out my blog, and was 'amazed at the abuse you put up with'. I kind of work on the basis that nasty comments say more about the person who post them than they do about me.

Old Holborn said...

I don't think I've ever abused you have I?


You Stasi cow ;)

John Pickworth said...

Kerry wrote:

As for your comment, JP, I am quite capable of reading the equivalent of War and Peace in work-related docs every week, and probably do. But blogging is blogging. It should be about an exchange of views, not a series of monologues.

Fair enough, pleased to hear you're reading all the small print at work. No seriously, I am.

As for the blogging aspect - and respecting that it IS your blog - I'm still slightly disappointed that you are asking (okay, suggesting) that contributors curtail their comments to please those who don't themselves contibute. Is that not a sure fire way to lose both writers and readers?

To be honest, I'm not sure what you want here?

As one of those who tend to 'long post', I make it a point to express my view fully. Brevity might be nice for those who wish to gauge simply if you're for or against something, but blogging ain't polling...

As for monologues, I don't see much evidence of those here? I always try to initiate debate, ask questions and reply to those asked by others. I see the same admirable actions in other people's contributions too.

Lists? Mmmm not sure if I've seen any of those... the closest comment to a list might be one of my recent contributions where I was demonstrating point-by-point that the previous commenter's position was flawed. My apologies if that was a less than riveting read for others but in that particular case it was in direct response to another poster's challenge.

Anonymous said...

Being an okkard sort, I felt motivated to go through some long comments. It's not a happy picture, is it? But then Britain isn't a happy place. Social division is worsening every day. Too many divergent world-views, conflicting moralities and ethics tearing the country apart.

You can fret about children reading your blog, but the real world's a whole lot uglier, for sure. I wouldn't bring a child into this nightmare of broken Britain.

The dogs in the street know that the selfish, the greedy and the irresponsible (rich or poor)get the best deal in this country now. They run the place after all.

Government apologists will always try to dismiss such concerns as being just from "moaning Minnies ... talking Britain down", but really, modern Britain just isn't working and never will.

Katabasis said...

"And thus ad hominen attacks, particularly on a lady, are not acceptable."

Right. Because us dumb brute men can bring our 80% upper body strength advantage to bear via the internet.

And Kerry, being a woman, has to be "protected". From what, and by whom? You?

Anonymous said...

"And Kerry, being a woman, has to be "protected". From what, and by whom? You?"

Sir, those of us who consider our selves to be gentlemen do not attack ladies. This MP is no exception to that rule in my book however much you may disagree with her.

Those of us who consider ourselves to be rational counter arguments with logic rather than making personal attacks.

I don't believe I need to protect the MP, she is more than capable of holding her own in debate. Personal attacks are just tacky.