What Mark Thompson is After

Mark Thompson has just posted a rather timely reminder that there are only TWO days left to vote for your favourite blogs of 2010 in the Total Politics Best Blogs Poll 2010. Having just starting reading my copy of the magazine this morning. I had too good a time at Wagamama last night to start when I got in, I'd say very worth while.

The poll is run by Total Politics (backed by ) and for the second year running it is also being co-promoted/sponsored by Liberal Democrat Voice and LabourList.

A quick reminder or instruction as to the rules folks:

1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and ranks them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

Mark says it would be rather spiffing if you voted for him, I say go ahead just as long as the following mathematical formula applies

Number beside Mark Reckons > Number beside Stephen's Liberal Journal (as per rule 2 above)

ie 2 Mark Reckons > 1 Stephen's Liberal Journal (simples - just remember to include at least another 3)

See having been working hard in the campaign trail I know that the higher the preference the better, preferably number one. I'm sure Mark would concur.

Are Lib Dem Voice Readers Headline Whores?

I called on Queen Caron of the house of Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism on Friday night. When I called at the Royal residence I said that I thought, correctly it turns out, that this would make it into the top seven of this week's Lib Dem Voice Golden Dozen. It is not in my opinion my best blog entry of the week, I'd say instead that these two about the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Magrahi are far better pieces of blogging, and indeed got a far broader (geographical and political spectrum) selection of readers.

I was looking at my google analytics for the week and taking into account the Dale effect of a Daley Dozen mention the number five Lib Dem post on outlinks is not even my most popular read of the week. The former of the two al-Magrahi posts is, prior to Scottish Round Up and Golden Dozen Sunday night distortion. It's not just both Caron and Andrew wrote excellent takes on different aspects* of the biggest world-wide story of the week, yet it is my correction of that young blogger from Pendle that makes the Dozen because it used his name.

LDV readers may mock those of the Daily Fail, yet they are still dragged into the sensationalist headlines rather than the real meaty stories. Now I know that many LDV users, especially my fellow bloggers, link to my blog entries by other means so I know a lot of you did find the al-Magarhi stories. But maybe it is the casual user of Lib Dem Blogs that causes this trend. Looking at the recent Golden Ton I can think of many well written Lib Dem blog postings that are more worthy of being there, although there are many of the Dozen that are worthy.

Of course the Lib Dem Voice Best Blogpost of the Year is one category where even a one off piece of sensationally good writing can be rewarded. Many of us, even if we are being mentioned by the odd individuals as the best blog, are considering the Blog of the Year to be down to three serious contenders, which may mean the Pachyderm packs his trunk without the award again, but the Blogpost award is far harder to predict and I suspect to judge. Will it be one of those read heavily at the time, maybe it will be a nominated entry into the Dozen or maybe it won't even have been featured at all?

There are times that the statistician in me is upset that a good, well crafted post doesn't get the coverage I think it deserves, whereas by some quirk of fate, linkage or random pick up something soars to the heavens in hits. But I'll keep writing the way I do, it's clearly upset a few people this year from the lack of repeat votes for the Total Politics Poll of Blogs, where my relative ranking shocked a number of people including Her Majesty Queen Caron. But as Andrew said, 'Stephen didn't tout for votes and his daily readership is enormous, which is a way better result for him.'

Having a large readership often means you don't blog it safe, you take on the big issues, indeed the other big bloggers, head on, you're bound to upset people along the way. With an election year that is only bound to continue after all policy will be getting written about and I know I'm going to be challenging the other parties more not less, taking the debate in directions they may not want exposed, but that is what debate is all about. Besides after all you can only please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time but not all of the people all of the time.

I'm personally looking forward to a year of keeping up the quality, keeping up the debate, keeping up challenging ideas not just of the other parties, but illiberal thoughts from fellow liberals. How often or how long I can get to it when the election gets closer is something I've yet to see, but I will not duck out for political expediency of that dear reader you can be assured.

*Caron and I taking international abuse for our opinions.

Fraser MacPherson Top Lib Dem and Top Scottish Councillor Blogger

Total politics have released the top 30 councillor's blogs and I'd like to congratulate my Lib Dem colleague Fraser MacPherson for coming in at number 16.

This makes his top Lib Dem ahead of Brain Robson, Anders Hanson and the councillor for my old ward from University days Mary Reid at 28, 28 and 30 respectively.

He is also if my reckoning is right top Scottish Councillor Blog ahead of Andrew Burns at 19 and Ewan Aitkens* at 21. So no right wing councillor blog for us north of the Border in the

So well done to one the the Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism team on doing do well in the Councillor's list on the Total Politics Poll. In total alongside the 4 Lib Dems there are 9 Labour, 14 Conservative, 2 Plaid Cymru and 1 non-alligned counillors making up the top 30.

Personally I do think it is shame that there are no SNP councillors in that list, but then I can't think out of all the plethora of SNP blogs that there is a councillor amongst them.

*Labour man Ewan is listed as Conservative on the list whoops. Correction has been sent off to Mr Dale.

It's worse than we though Jim

It may be the time of the new version of Star Trek at cinemas and IMAX theatres near you. But the cry of this Scot is not aimed at James Tiberius Kirk but James Gordon Brown.

Earlier today I was saying that the Prime Minister was attempting a last ditch throw of the dice in bring Lib Dems into a new cabinet. However, the news is getting worse when he looks at the latest ICM poll. Not since 1987 have Labour been in third place in a nation opinion poll. But with the Tories on 40%, the Lib Dems are on 25% and Labour on 22% in respect to how people would vote in the next general election

A lot of this is down to another question asked in the poll on the issue of MP's expenses. Some 54% think that Labour are most damaged, 13% think the Tories (despite having some of the most bourgeois sounding claims) and 2% the Lib Dems. However, worryingly 25% think that all the three main parties are equally as damaged. Which is either an indication of the way the Telegraph have gone about reporting this or my bias in looking at some of the claims. I do think and have been told by others that the former is more likely the case.

It may well be that we are looking at the death knell of new Labour. It may even be that they may be about to head into a wilderness similar to that which the Liberals drifted into in the 20s. Across Edinburgh and I went from the shore to the south today in campaigning the physical evidence of the party in power was very thin (indeed to me invisible) on the ground and this is the weekend before an election.

There are also rumours of all sorts of ructions within the Labour party across Lothian obviously that is all I am personally aware of. Activists are not active (Kezia excepted). Some MPs I've heard are being cold shouldered by their CLP. I have not seen a single Labour poster up anywhere and I have been in 5 Labour held seats today.

Labour could well be in freefall and I don't know what will happen if Gordon pulls the rip chord or even if he will pull it. There may very well not be a soft landing, although at the moment it doesn't not look like it will be as bad at the Canadian Conservatives in 1993 but things continue to get worse and Gordon goes full term without pulling that rip chord who knows what would happen.

Smeargate Hits Gordon Where It Matters: In the Polls

Image from ConservativeHome

The Sunday Telegraph is going to run an ICM poll which shows Labour down 3% on 26, 17% behind the Tories on 43% though that in itself means that they are down 1%. However, in the first poll post smeargate the Lib Dems we are up 3%. Maybe as Stephen Tall speculated earlier this week the decision to stay away from directly commenting on this but keeping on the wider arc of cleaning up Government and fighting for civil liberties has seen some initial benefit. While Labour get drawn into the mire and the Tories appeared like spoilt kids demanding an apology.

Image from ConservativeHome

Elsewhere in the Mail on Sunday BPIX show Labour are down 8%. The Lib Dem figures are not yet known but it looks likes another gain for Nick and the team.

However, even on these figure the gross unfairness of our corrent electoral system shows it heads as even with the Lib Dems only 5% behind Labour in popular vote does not equate to the same result in the seats at Westmister just as it didn't at the time the SDP/Liberal Alliance peaked in the polls.

No Gay Sex We're British

Well at least that's what 24% of them think according to the latest opinion poll in today's Observer, as they want it made illegal. Also 40% want to reverse the equalisation of the age of consent legislation brought in for same sex relationships. With over 56% thinking that same sex couples should not be able to adopt.

At the end of the article is one key statement that men are more likely than women to hold a negative view towards homosexuality. The more liberal men also tend to be ABC1 in terms of social status and the bigger homophobes the C2DE groups. Whether this is genuine fear (of the unknown or personal effect), peer pressure or mere ignorance is the question that really needs to be asked and addressed.

It is probably not surprising therefore that despite Paul Elliot the former Celtic, Chelsea and Aston Villa player saying that he knows a dozen gay men playing football at the top level none are openly out. The average fan on the sidelines is more likely to be classes as C2DE. No professional player has been openly out since the sad demise of Justin Fashanu.

What has James Graham Got Against Linlithgow Loch.

James Graham has set up a Facebook group against big pictures in people's headers, citing my blog as one of his examples. Harping on about bandwidth etc, any other blogger writers will know that this pic unlike those in your posts do not have the size adjustment facilities as easily accessible.

Well I've found where I stored the pic and now am asking what should I do. So I've set up a new poll to ask you my readers what should I do about it.

Update: James has offered a peace offering which the blog is trying on for size, along with the colour changes to make the header readable again against different backgrounds.

BTW the results of my last poll on why Barack Obama used the phrase lipstick on a pig are in. You said he used it because:

It was about policy 50%
It was sexism 16%
It was a phrase that lipstick on a pitbull prompted from his subconscious 8%
Who cares they both use is as does a lot of the American media 25%

What do you think?

OK my post on the statement "Lipstick on a pig" which has been used by both Presidential candidates has caused a little bit of a stir so I've set up a poll to gauge public opinion. I can see four reasons why it may be used. With my current readership spanning both sides of the pond results may well be interesting. First up the context:

"John McCain says he's about change too, and so I guess his whole angle
is,'Watch out George Bush -- except for economic policy, health care policy,
tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics --
we're really going to shake things up in Washington.'

"That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing
something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but
it's still a pig. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called
change, it's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough of the same
old thing."

First up is as stated here the context in which Barak Obama used the phrase was purely about McCain's change being an ineffective cover up to Bush's policies for the last eight years.

Next having seen the full statement you could side with the Republican camp who say "Obama was referring to Gov. Sarah Palin. It's obviously disrespectful and offensive.Who has been talking about lipstick lately? It was obvious."

Thirdly it's like that last song you hear in the morning before getting into work, you know the one, that one you can't get out of your heard no matter how bad it is. But somehow later on you can't help humming along of making some oblique reference to it.

Finally while a google search for Lipstick on a pig brings up 490,000 searches try adding Iraq and you get 190,000 searches alone. The phrase has been used by many American commentators on many different issues, including both Presidential candidates in the past on more than one occasion. Therefore while not as common as goggling it is an idiom in both Barack Obama and John McCain. John Edwards used it similarly to Obama to talk down Bushes job creation strategy in 2004 and Dick Cheney also used it that year.

So over to you, you decide.