Intermission

I'm taking a seasonable break from regular blogging for a little while. Back soon-ish.

Big Bad Mikey sings Goodbye-ee

(Warning: this is an internal Newham thing) Big Bad Mikey who posted as "I love Newham Labour Group" (or something like that) sings "Goodbye-ee to blogging" alongside his old partner in crime Newham Tory miniture. 

They will be sadly missed. How can we now show how completely useless the Tory opposition is in Newham?

I am of course, as always, a completely innocent man in all this.

UPDATE: within a few hours of this post "Big Bad Mikey" decided to change his mind (no surprise there) and reopen his blog! Hooray - we can now continue to demonstrate how completely useless all the opposition (trots and tories) are in Newham.  He claims that he is a reformed character and will not swear or attack people personally.

Yeah...he's already pretending to be the very thick and stupid illiterate anon who makes obscene comments.  Great stuff. Carry on "Big Bad Mikey" Please don't ever change! 

(I'll be thinking of a suitable "welcome back" post for the near future:)

John's Labour blog 200,000 visitors

Last night according to Site meter I had my 200,000 visitor to this blog since Feb 22 2007.

I posted this in December 2008 when it was 50,000 "The readership is tiny compared to some other blogs but as long as I enjoy posting I will keep it up.

I admit that I do indulge myself from time to time. Some think I am being divisive, others think that I pull too many punches.

But there is room in the “bloggersphere” for a centre left Labour movement blog that offers critical support to the Party and commentates at times vigorously on trade union, political and economic issues. This is my aim anyway....The message of course should remain more important than the medium".

Thank you for visiting.

The thoughts of Chairman John...on Blogging

Mary Honeyball MEP has posted the video of her fringe at Labour Party conference 2010.  You can see my contribution on some of the perils of blogging and a possible potential political benefit here.

The other speakers were Mark Ferguson (Labourlist), Jessica Asato and Kerry McCarthy MP (her video not yet posted).

The fringe I thought was an excellent conference event.  Well done to Mary and her team for putting it on.

(The Guilty Newham 4 - they know who they are will now have an opportunity to understand just what they have missed out on - LOL :)

Giovanni's Lavoro Blog

Blogger has included a "Stats" counter facility since May 2010. 

To my surprise (see screen print right) it would appear that "John's Labour Blog" is somewhat popular in Italy!

While this blog had most readers in the UK (29,545 pages views) second apparently is Italy with 11,606 page views.  Beating the United States into third place with 9,860.

Not entirely sure for the reason for this and suspect some sort of tracking error by blogger?

But anyway "ciao" to any Italian comrades:)

Blogging for Labour: How social media can drive a wedge into the Coalition.

Hope those of you who are going to this years Labour Party conference will come to this fringe on the Monday evening.

"Blogging for Labour: How social media can drive a wedge into the Coalition". 

I think that anyone going to conference and reading this blog - will be somewhat interested!

Mary Honeyball MEP will chair and the panelists are Jessica Asato; Alex Smith Labour list, Tom Harris MP and moi.

Monday 27 September 18:00 - 19.30. Manchester Central - Charter 1.

UPDATE: see report of the actual fringe here

Spamalot

Don't worry I am not about to review the musical but this morning on my blogger email there were 11 spam anon comments waiting to be "approved". 

So I have set up "word verification" for any future comments.

It is a little bit of a nuisance but only take a minute or so (if sober - this may also reduce the alcohol or drug induced rants I receive from time to time).

There was also this morning a couple of the normal idiotic comments which I have approved and look forward to responding when I get a mo:)

Total Politics Blog Poll 2010

I’ve just emailed my current top ten blogs to the “Total Politics” annual blog “Beauty Parade”. Total Politics impartiality is obviously somewhat dubious since it is owned and run by Tories (with a supposedly “neutral” board overseeing) but it is the political website of choice for many serious politicians.

Thankfully - you are not allowed to post on who you have selected since I am sure that it I will leave some blogging folk I have left out - just a little bit miffed at me for doing so.

Needless to say one cherry short of a Schwarzwalderkirschtorte was not one of the 10:)

You have until 31 July to take part.

BTW - This is the list I compiled in 2008 (but never got round to sending). It has changed since.

(picture of the demonstrators outside the Miss World competition in London 1970. Some of them later broke into the event and threw floor bombs at host, Bob Hope and the contestants . I use to work with one of the protesters in the 1980's, Jake Prescott, who in 1970 dressed up for the first time in his life in a dinner suit in order to get into the venue. Jake then later went off to make other type of bombs).

I am Seismic Shock

Check out Modernity blog here on the campaign against the mistaken involvement of the Police in an attempt by some very stupid people to shut up blogger “Seismic Shock”.

While I can understand that the Police felt that they had to investigate the complaints made against “Seismatic Shock” they should have completed their investigations and told all parties that there was clearly no case to answer.

Which I suspect they did not and instead tried to appease both parties.

I do think that the CPS need to issue some guidance to Police on such issues or if this is not possible then we need to update the law to take into account the phenomenon of New Media and in particular “blogging”. The Police have more than enough to do without getting involved in such essential silliness.

Dave, Alex and I can also definably claim to say “We have been in Seismic Shock for nearly 3 years”. The law is a banana on several fronts with regard to these matters IMO.

IMO – In My Opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. Who cares what I think? Surely if something is really offensive there must be real evidence of intent, significant harm and gross inaccuracy.  Any response by the "authorities" must also be proportional.

Graham's UNISON blog

Welcome to Graham Smith the Chair of UNISON National Young members Forum and Scottish Young members Committee and his new blog. "Thoughts and views from a young member's perceptive"

I met Graham for the first time here. I was well impressed with his enthusiasm, energy and commitment.

(Which reminds me that I must post more on that excellent course).

Check out his post here on the scourge of Youth Unemployment.

My 1000th Post - How time flies when you enjoy yourself.

A bloggers life

Hat tip thingy Harry’s Place – from the xkcd.com.

Disclaimer
This cartoon is of course a work of artistic fiction and bears no intentional resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead. Any such apparent similarities are purely co-incidental.

Labour Bloggers Beer & Sandwiches at TUC

I am just back from a very good evening out. First stop tonight was a seminar on trade unions and blogging, organised by the TUC. I had been beforehand at an interesting meeting in the UNISON Headquarters on Pensions and Capital Markets (which I hope to post upon). I had got the TUC event timings wrong so I arrived late for the seminar and missed most of the speakers.

It was aimed at TUC affiliated union's communication and policy officers. It was very well attended (about 25 people). I had missed the presentations by Tom P (Labour and Capital) and Paul Evans (Never Trust a Hippy). I came in during the middle of Richard Murphy's (Tax Research UK) talk about his blog. Some useful points he made was that you should always make posts very short. You need to recognise that there is a different writing style with blogs compared to traditional journalism or report writing. He also recommended that that you make links and post comments on sites that you find things interesting to support them, since with blogging you can feel isolated at times.

The excellent informal TUC blog Touchstone was discussed and explained. There was a general recognition that blogging helped you keep your edge, it made you think about your views and what are your politics. “I don’t know how I think until I write it down”. Labourstart blogger Eric Lee was there as well and he made a fair point that there was a lot of rubbish blog's out there and we must not get forget other media mediums (and that not enough time to ask questions at this workshop!).

Afterward we went off to the TUC Christmas Communications and Media party. I met up with Paul Smith again, the deputy Labour leader of Islington Council Labour group who does IT work for unions. The event was a busy and buzzing with media people. We did note that many newspapers and media groups did not have any “industrial correspondents” anymore. News regarding trade union issues is often presented along with “business news” and usually portrayed unions in a poor and negative light.

Picture is of Tom, Paul, me and John W (Johninnit). We couldn’t find Richard.

Afterwards some of us had a beer or three at a local hostelry and put the world finally to rights.

Bartering Blogging

The other day I got this offer via email offering to place a link for John’s Labour blog on www.free-football.tv in exchange for me placing a link for this site on my blog.

From: David Webb
To: johndotmdotgrayatntlworlddotcom
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 6:08 AM
Subject: Link Exchange

I saw your website http://grayee.blogspot.com/ and have a simple proposal for link exchange. Your link will be placed on a related pr4 page inside our links section. Our homepage is currently pr5 (expected to be pr6). The site has huge traffic with an average of 240,000 unique visitors per month.
My link details are: Url: http://www.free-football.tv Title: free live footy Description: Tune in to watch live football online on your pc with instant access payments.

Should you decide to place our link, please reply to this email id with your own link details. We will add your link within 48 hours of receiving your email, exempting weekends.
I await your favorable response.

RegardsWebmaster
www.free-football.tv

Now, I don’t take adverts (see “Buy a Blogger”) but I am curious about how this works. I emailed the site to see if they would mind if I blogged on this issue. I got this reply back.

Hi John,
Thanks for the email.Yeah your proposal would be great. Let me know when you make the post so I can have a read.
RegardsWebmaster
www.free-football.tv

Is such “bartering” a way forward for blogs or is such requests just unwanted “spam”.

Of course the fact that I wouldn’t watch football even if it was free...