Hey, remember the UK Independence Party, or UKIP as they’re also known? You must remember them – they have a lurid yellow and purple pound symbol logo and have been the replacement joke-party for the Monster Raving Loony Party in recent elections. Every election cycle, they come up with a load of ludicrous joke policies, stand against the main parties, get barely a handful of votes and then lose their deposits.
Of course, there are some people who just don’t seem to get the joke, and for some unfathomable reason, treat them as an almost legitimate political party – including the leadership themselves. It would be fair to say that they have a bit of an image problem – David Cameron, of all people, said that they’re “fruitcakes, loonies and closet-racists“. Its difficult to find evidence to the contrary.
This said, I really can’t see why they have an image problem when someone who cites the Farage Youth as their homepage posts the following comment on my blog:
“Dear fuckhead,
You’re a big fat unfunny cunt and I hope you get AIDs and die.
Not only that, but being as your parents are massive whores I also hope they get infected with some horrific STD, maybe syphilis.
Your blog is so bad I believe it has given me cancer. You manage to give new meaning to the phrase ‘fat uniformed student twat’, a F.U.S.T if you will.
What a massive gaping cunt you are.”
Clearly UKIP’s hopes for the future are bright if they’ve got powerful young minds like this supporting them. It almost makes me worry what the “everyone left of far-right” opposition are going to do in the future if they’ve only got massive, gaping cunts like me supporting them. I mean, aside from ignore them as a political insignificance and pay attention to them only for a little light relief.
Being a blogger, I sit on the periphery of the media village. Whilst I still toil away, churning out a few hundred words here, a stupid video there, I’m still one of the normal proles because I lack three key ingredients of being a proper media personality: credibility, popularity, and respect. This doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t fall into the lazy journalistic trap of filling up the end of the last couple of weeks of the year with a look back at what happened. So, er, here’s look back at my 2007.
Yes, this is the most self-indulgent video ever made. And yes, I did spend time making a musical montage consisting of clips of me. That’s how egocentric I am.
My blogging has been pretty light lately, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. I’d love to be able to give a definitive excuse, like “the dog ate it”, or “I’ve been really busy working”- but I think its fairly obvious that I’m workshy and dogless. I guess it is because I’ve been stuck in a routine, doing normal boring things that have happened without anything notable happening – or when things vaguely have, I’ve worried about the focus of the blog.
Every time I post a tale about something I’ve been doing, I worry that people who are for my, er, political insight aren’t going to care – and what if I want to write about politics? Will the people who are after drivel or stupid videos care? I know you’re all very fickle people, and in all likelihood, get distracted by other, more exciting things, before you think about scrolling down to see what’s below.
This blog entry is quickly turning into the first type of blog entry: things I’ve been doing lately. Here are the things I’ve been doing:
Krisha Consciousness Society
Don’t worry, I haven’t gone all theist – it hasn’t been God telling me to refrain from blogging. A couple of weeks ago I received e-mails promoting a debate at the university KC society: “Does God exist? If so, prove it!” – something that seemed to pander directly to my interests. “This will be an easy win”, I thought.
I spent the afternoon watching videos of Christopher Hitchens on Youtube, making myself angry and spoiling for an argument. I then drove 15 miles looking for this particular argument. I arrived at the building and got to the room the argument debate was to be held in, only to find the lights switched off and with no indication that the debate existed at all. It was annoying – as only hours earlier I’d read an e-mail from the society telling me the debate existed, and that seemed like a credible source as it was from the voice of the debate organisers, but there was absolutely no observable evidence suggesting that the debate did in fact exist. A bit like God, really.
“They’re not going to get much peace and love from me if they’re not going to turn up to their own debate”, I thought. I did make a point of going into the darkened room and declaring that there is no evidence that God exists though, and because I was the only person in there, won by default.
Today is the 30th September. The last day of summer, more or less. Tomorrow is the start of my first week back at university (er, not that I have any lectures until Wednesday). I had an incredible summer and managed to do an awful lot, so here is my summer in numbers (aka: some statistics generated between two moderately arbitrary dates: June 1st and September 30th):
I was also down in London for the big Prime Ministerial changeover day. I saw Tony Blair leave Downing Street for the last time, and Gordon Brown leave the Treasury on the way to Buckingham Palace.
Memories!
Internet friends met: 20 or so
My other website had a big meet-up, and it was one of the most amazing days ever. I met around twenty people I’d only ever known via the internet before and they were all wonderful, excellent people.
Memories!
(Public transport) Memories!
Money spent on non-Paris holiday rail travel: £226.35
I knew, er, logging my train tickets would come in useful someday. I’ve used the trains quite a bit this summer. This explains where all of those savings I used to have have gone. This massive amount of money is why I feel comfortable getting all self-righteous about rail travel.
Earlier this summer I thought it’d be wise to try and learn the trumpet to take on a friend in a stupid bet. Unfortunately, I’ve since lost my enthusiasm for the instrument, after it turned out that its really hard.
I haven’t written about this for a while, but I’m still tracking my Coke intake. Over the summer I had 498 Cokes – or on average, 4.08 a day. Which is, er, rather a lot. The average (calculated by records beginning in early 2005) has gone from 3.131 to 3.252 – and this summer’s coke intake accounts for about 15.8% of Coke consumed since records began.
271 one of them were Coca Cola, 3 Diet Cokes, 52 Coke Zeroes, 119 Pepsi, and 45 Pepsi Max.
There is still officially “little to no purpose” for this data existing.
(French Coke) Memories!
Blog Entries: 121
That averages one post every 1.008 days. And every single one is pure gold. Cough.
If you include this one then its averaging exactly one a day.
Tory blogger Iain Dale is a clever man. In a clever and calculated move to promote his new book about political blogging, he’s compiled a list of the 500 best UK political blogs. His thinking is pretty transparent: “People who like political blogs read political blogs, so if I write a book about political blogs and get political blogs to link to it by massaging the egos of 500 political bloggers, people who buy books about political blogs will come to my political blog and buy my book about political blogs”.
I’m not complaining though, as incredibly, I’ve ended up at number 251. I’m pleased with that – especially since that’s only one place behind Jeffrey Archer, of all people.
What does this mean? It means that my political opinions are the 251st most valid in the entire country. If the government needs the 251st best expert to consult on, say, foreign policy, they know where to turn (ie: towards me).
When they decide what to do about Burma, if the first 250 plans don’t work, they could listen to me instead.
That Iain Dale is a clever man though. I’m really tempted to buy his book now, even if it would indirectly be funding a Tory candidate, just so I can carry it everywhere with me, and try and slip this fact into conversation as much as possible, before producing the book as proof.
“Hello ladies, I’m the 251st best political blogger in the UK” is a pretty good chat-up line, I reckon. Maybe I should try it some time? (And video the results for Youtube, voxpop style, obviously.)
I got back home from Paris a couple of hours ago. You can look forward to hearing a lot about it. To give a brief spoiler: it was excellent. Every day we left the hotel at 11am and didn’t get back until after 3am… perhaps this explains why the blogging in real time plan didn’t really materialise after the first day.
If you’re reading via RSS, now would be a good time to click in to see what I’m talking about.
There’s no major changes besides what you can see – they’re entirely superficial. I’ve basically bolted on a Batmobile-style fin, put some neons underneath and added some of those hubcaps that make it look like the wheels are still spinning when the car is stationary. Underneath all of the plastic tat its still a Fiat Punto inside.
I’ve arranged everything into neat boxes to satisfy my obsessive-compulsive ordering desires. I’ve also boosted up the font-size of posts – although this is mainly for selfish reasons. I run a 19″ monitor at 1280×1024 that’s set quite far back on my desk, so it makes easier for me to see. I quite like the bigger font as it makes me feel more important. Like I’m shouting my opinions at you and you’re being forced to listen.
What do you think? Why not post a comment and tell me – that would also be useful to check whether comments are still working. If anything isn’t, drop me an e-mail on the address above.
So no one died – there weren’t even any explosions, in fact, no bombs were actually found. It was just some arsehole being an arsehole.
Terrorism is really irritating – not just because of the inconveniences when using airports or feeling a bit nervous every time you’re at a major landmark, but because when you’re a newspaper columnist and have to write to stuff to deadlines, its really irritating when you’ve written a cracking column, only to have to scrap it because someone got a little bit too irritated that they couldn’t return goods without a receipt or whatever.
For this week’s column, I was planning to re-work this blog entry. I was quite pleased with it – it’s almost like I’m a satirist or something. Unfortunately, this latest Tesco thing has rendered this tremendously out of date. Accusing the NHS of supporting terrorism is like so last week – especially as it looks like the doctors who were arrested didn’t necessarily do it.
Post any ideas for something I could write about in the comments – it’ll be like brainstorming and working as a team, only I’ll take all of the credit for the end product and forget about you little people when I’m a big-shot columnist.
I’ve had an exciting idea for a new recurring feature on my blog: links to other blogs! How revolutionary!
I’m going to tell you all about the other blogs that I read – the theory being that if you too start regularly reading them, you’ll be gradually moulded into sort of clone of me. And wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone spent about a quarter of their day, every day, racing to reach “zero new posts” on Google Reader? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone was more like me? I mean, aside from all of the horrible genetic side effects that similar genes breeding can create. So here are some of the political blogs I read:
Foreign Policy: Passport is really good. That’s my review: “really good”. Its a bit like reading the news but with all of the boring and tedious local stories taken out. And by “local” I mean “national”. This is all about countries who hate other countries, and things like that. One of the best bits is that every day they’ll post a “Morning brief” that gives you the gist of all of the important international stories. It does get a bit right-wing at times though, as the writers don’t seem to be big fans of state intervention in the economy.
Guido Fawkes is the blogger who all of the politicians hate. A lot of the time he tends to have tomorrow’s news today. Which is exciting when you’re cripplingly addicted to political news like myself. Some people don’t really like him though, because a lot of the time he’s to the political blogging world what astrology is to the rational world: wildly inaccurate bollocks. Apparently. He’s also a bit of a right winger, although does seem to attack of all of the parties in a fairly “fair and balanced” way.
Iain Dale is a Tory blogger. Boo. But if you can ignore all of the awful Tory stuff, some of things he has to say are quite interesting. He tends to do quite a bit of “gossip”, like the aforementioned Guido does. Which is fun.
Recess Monkey is another blog that tries to do the Westminster gossip thing. Its written by a Labour guy, so, er, I suppose that provides some balance to Iain Dale. A couple of months ago he prematurely announced Thatcher’s death – so premature in fact, that she’s not even dead yet. Which, er, undermined his credibility a little. And it was irritating how I sat up later than I normally would waiting for the news to break on TV. Which it didn’t. Because she’s still alive.
Yeah, despite complaining about celebrity culture in the past and exaggerating my surprise every time ITV wheel out another gimmicky talent show, the world of politics is just like the world of celebrities really. Fuck foundation hospitals: what I really care about is whether Prezza is having another affair or not. I’m awful, really.
Daily Mail Watch, despite being essentially a one-trick pony has a surprising amount of mileage in it. Its just the Daily Mail and Express front page every day. The best bit is the comments. On “good” days when the Express has Princess Diana on the front and the Mail has “Asylum seekers cause house prices to fall”, it re-affirms my faith in humanity as other people think it’s absurd too. On “bad” days, when hell freezes over and the papers maybe cover something reasonable, its still fun to see the more dedicated commentators try to pick holes in the front page that day: “A serif font! How backwards and old fashioned! Typical Daily Mail!”.
Simon Howard always offers some nice political commentary – he reminds me of me if I were training to do something worthwhile in life and wrote about more worthy topics than Doctor Who.
Likewise, Doctorvee’s blog is good too. I always enjoy reading his take on Scottish politics, as you don’t get much of that down here. He also has interesting stuff on blogging and techy stuff like that too. But that’s not political, so that doesn’t technically count in my completely arbitrary list.
Speak You’re Branes is excellent. Some poor person actually bothers to read the idiot opinions of the general public on the BBC News site, and highlights the particularly stupid ones for us.
So yeah, there’s some of my favourite political blogs. Honourable mentions also go to: Beau Bo D’or, Bloggerheads, Harry’s Place, Duck News (is this still going?), the BBC’s Magazine Monitor, oh, and UKIP@Home is always enjoyable, because UKIP are rubbish. They lose points though for their purple and yellow formatting being retained in the RSS feed – making it impossible to read in Google Reader.
Next time: best media blogs? Something like that? Yeah? We’ll see. Maybe.
Now, I don’t claim to be an expert on this blogging business – I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and I think I’ve more or less picked it up as I’ve gone along. And I dare-say I’ve had some limited success. As far as I can tell, if you want to be a blogger you only need:
Somewhere on the internet that you can call your blog
Some ill-conceived opinions
I know that I’ve got the first one – and that’s fairly consistent. I pay the hosting company some money each month and they sort that out. The trouble is, that the second thing on the list – the opinions – are somewhat variable. And it’s really irritating.
There are some days, when I’ll have so much to say that I’ll post two or three times and it’ll all be A-material (well, maybe) – but there are other times, like the last few days for instance, when I’m just devoid of inspiration. You’d think that someone like me (ie: a self important nobody on the internet) would have a few things to say about that Olympic logo everyone’s talking about or whatever. But I don’t really have anything to add to the debate other than “yeah, it’s a bit shit”. I can’t even turn it into a thinly veiled attack on anyone.
I do have sort of a plan to try and combat a lack of inspiration of what to write about – I’ve got a file on my computer called “blog ideas”, containing, er, ideas for things I could write about in the future. The trouble is, they’re all pretty rubbish ideas. Here are some samples which will never make it into fully fledged blog entries:
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Rupert Murdoch is apparently trying to buy the Wall Street Journal – why is he going to all of the hassle of having big business meetings and tonnes of negotiations over it? Can’t he just go to a newsagents and pay the $1 cover price like the rest of us?
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I think ‘txt spk’ says a lot about someone – specifically that they’re a fkn cnt.
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Villains don’t help themselves by hinting the gist of their devious plan at the hero. For example, ‘The Wire’ in the Coronation episode of Doctor Who says to the Doctor “You’ll be glued to the screen“. Which is, er, what happened.
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Pol Pot’s name was “Mr Pot”.
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At university, there are usually a number of people hanging around the student union giving out flyers – sometimes you can’t walk past them without being harassed to take one. Other times, however, I walk past and they ignore me – clearly judging me and deeming me not worthy to deserve a free drink at RnB night at some sort of nightclub.
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The Eurovision bloc-voting dilemma that plagues the internet annually after every Eurovision Song Contest could be resolved by mimicking the make-up of the US Congress. Have it weight so that 50% of the points are weighted relative to the population of the country, and the other 50% are an equal number allocated by each state. There you go, there’s a solution to a problem nobody cares about.
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Dsylexic vampires are weakened by gaelic
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Car radiators cool… where as house radiators warm. Hmm!
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Yeah, I’m not really sure where I’m going with these “micro-ideas”. Maybe this is why I should use Twitter or something?
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