SOCIALIST UNITY

Over the years I have regularly been interviewed by radio and TV as representative of some political campaign or another, but this morning was the first time I have been interviewed simply for being a “political blogger”. This reminded me of the rather amusing conceit of that self-promoting fool, Iain Dale, who recently wrote:

Over the last few years, Right-of-centre blogs such as my own (Iain Dale’s Diary), Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome, Dizzy Thinks, Nadine Dorries MP, Donal Blaney, Devil’s Kitchen and John Redwood’s Diary have come into their own. Several are now read by more than 100,000 individuals every month.
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Bloggers like me, Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome and Guido Fawkes have become part of the media punditry circuit. But on the Left-of-centre, tumbleweed still blows around the blogosphere.

Ahh, I am so pleased to have finally joined the ranks of the media pundity circuit (or should that be circus?)

The occasion was the vote last night by Swindon Borough Council to remove speed cameras, and become the first town in the country to opt out of the national speed cameras consortium.

The BBC had picked up my blog posts about this, not from www.socialistunity.com , but from the occasional Swindon based blog that I write, Swindon Roundabouts.

This has made me feel slightly guilty as I have neglected the Swindon Roundabouts project for some months, even though it is really quite easy to maintain just by cross-posting the Wiltshire related articles from Socialist Unity.

There is actually considerable potential for local blogs to fill a gap, because regional newspapers are all too often rather inadequate, not through any fault of the journalists, but through conservative editorial policies that prefer to manufacture a consensus and avoid controversy. The reduced staffing and deskilling at regional titles is of course also responsible for there being less hard news.