A Week is a Long Time in Political Blogging

It was about this time last week that I was sat with the three (that I know of) LYS bloggers* and decided to encourage them all, now that their exams are out of the way to take up their keyboards once more.



Well the results have been good. First out of the blocks was Callum Leslie, who managed to post about a non-political subject close to my heart, football, on the same that that Lionel posted about my feelings on the same subject, though from opposite ends of the financial spectrum. Then last night he posted about the Tories' strange reaction to John Bercow being elected speaker.



Next up was LYS President Ruaraidh Dobson who first accused me of badgering him, then finally got around to writing up his take on the demo outside the General Assembly in support of Scott Rennie. Then got into a debate about youth and that while there are good eggs (present company included) there are times when they do need to be shown up for their actions not defended for the sake of it.



Next we had Kieran Leach who used the words 'getting on hs case' and 'forcing' to describe me to encourage him to blog again, before also giving his side of the Scott Rennie demo. Although he did mention a favourite pastime of ours talking about policy over a pint. He then took up the secondary part of Callum's Tory post to look at the BNP from a Josh Lyman angle. I was actually quite chuffed that Wordpress chose me with a possibly related Josh Lyman post. Then a little geeky post about travels done entirely from his laptop.

I'm glad that all three have returned to blogging after a little friendly encouragement, despite what they wrote. The three of them all have found their voice online in their blogs, yet each are inherently liberal. It shows how diverse the blogosphere is as well as you only need to write when you can.

People often ask me when do I find the time to blog. The answer is it there, often redundant time doing nothing else. Now that I have the laptop I often blog on the way to work having geared up my brain by watching the morning news, or failing that a glance in the morning paper. But there is so much out there that can spark you off. Once it does it may need writing up.

Being seen as the premier Scottish Lib Dem blogger some people think they could never do what I do. You know what I wouldn't want them to, I'd want them to do what they do. Just like these three and many others there are different ways to tell the same story to express the same thoughts even. As for the time commitment as Ruaraidh and Callum would both acknowledge I didn't ask them about their blogs in earnest until after exams and the Euro campaign were out of the way, heck even my blogging took a slight dip during the campaign, there is no easy way to type while climbing tenements.

I'm not saying it is necessarily easy to put thoughts down on an empty screen but it is a lot easier than many people expect, I guess those who are good at it make it look easy, when sadly it's not. Sometimes I just fill the page for the sake of doing it, knowing that something will evetually come. There are many unpublished drafts that have never seen the light of day littering my pages.

There are a lot of good young Liberal Democrat bloggers out there, the three I've chosen to highlight here are merely ones that I can actively encourage when we keep meeting up in the Scottish party. I'd encourage other bloggers to keep encouraging each other it can be a lonely old business sat at yor keyboard but every little bit of encouragement sure helps.

I suppose now I really had better get on to writing some of the guest posts I have been promising people after writing all this.


*Yeah I also know James Harrison is a vlogger.