So here’s the problem: several political discussion sites, like Lib Dem Voice, have a problem with anonymous postings by people who are not in fact who they claim to be. Agents provocateurs from other parties, for example, can and do use either an ‘anonymous’ label or a pseudonym to kick debates off in a particular direction for their own purposes.

Whenever the debate gets particularly bad, a moderator of the site will threaten to reveal the IP addresses of those who have posted - effectively removing their anonymity, by revealing the unique address of the computer which posted the comment. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my original intentions with this blog, which seems over time to have slipped a bit, was not to let it be dominated only by politics.

So I’d like to extend a warm welcome to the two people who have been directed here over the last couple of days from typing into Google “Sue Lawley leather”, and also the separate person who got here from the search term “kirsty young tits”.

I hope you found something here that gave you what you wanted (though I don’t think it’s very likely!).

Over the summer I was thinking about getting myself an iPod nano (one of the old slim ones, before it got a bigger screen in the most recent re-launch, making it look far less cool).

But then I realised the only reason I really wanted it was because it looked cool - and that since I hate headphones it would only really be any use with some speakers attached.

And then I realised there was a far better solution: my phone (Nokia 6233) has some perfectly good speakers built in to it, it’s very small and portable, and once a colleague had pointed out that I could get a 2Gb card for it for under a tenner on Amazon, I was away.

So as a result in various bits of travelling I’ve been doing over the summer I’ve been able to listen anywhere to entire albums, symphonies, you name it, all from my phone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hurrah! It seems that I am apparently now officially the 47th best Liberal Democrat blog! I am so chuffed!

The rankings for Iain Dale’s 2007 guide to political blogging have been done by ‘a panel of Lib Dem bloggers’ and that’s where they’ve put me - at least ahead of most (but perhaps not quite all) the non-blogs which are either not really blogs at all, or only updated once a month.

But I am not going to rest on my laurels. I have set my sights even higher for the future. Next year I am aiming to be 46th best!

I’ve wondered online before about the potential for politics, on online facilities like Second Life. I’ve now found, through the website of German Green MP Anna Lührmann what seems to be an official space for German politics on Second Life - very like a virtual version of the public noticeboard stands that are a feature of elections in some continental European countries, though not here in the UK.

I’m quite a novice myself in using Second Life, but if anyone knows anything similar for UK politics on SL, then I’d be very interested to know about it.

It has been wisely said that actually learning how to use SL is one of the main obstacles to its expansion, and my computer also seems to struggle somewhat to keep up - I think I read somewhere that the average SL avatar (character) uses the same amount of electricity a year as a Mexican citizen…

Amidst all the talk about how the internet is transforming political campaigning in the USA, with the UK soon to follow, Japan has gone in the opposite direction, preventing any online campaigning during the election campaign for its upper house. It is illegal to create a new webpage, or update an existing webpage, while the election campaign is on!

Heavens, it seems to be even more restrictive on campaigning than the rules for a Lib Dem internal selection contest!

It appears this is more the result of campaigning rules which haven’t been updated since the advent of the internet rather than a deliberate decision to ban it - but it is ironic given how advanced internet campaigning is in Japan. I haven’t heard, for example, of any UK politicians who have yet set up a presence in Second Life (though would be very interested to hear if anyone knows different).

Good luck to Japanese campaigners, who it seems have to campaign not only without the help of the internet, but also under rules which (any Lib Dem campaigners reading this should make sure you are sitting down at this point) only allow you to deliver one leaflet to just 3% of your electorate!

Apple announced a couple of months ago that they were delaying (again) the launch of the latest version of their operating system OS X, to be called Leopard, until October. (Its former slot of the exciting new Apple release for the first half of 2007 seems to have been given over to the iPhone, though that also won’t be available in Britain until at least the autumn).

Their latest preview of Leopard seems to show that they have used the delay to put some more into it - but if they were delaying until they feel they have enough new developments to justify a major new release, while that’s an improvement I think they still have a way to go yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

This blog is my space, and at present all comments posted here are moderated.

However I would normally expect to approve all comments posted, and have not rejected any of the 30 or so posted so far, including some which have directly attacked me or said that I have made unfounded or wrong statements.

In particular I will not normally refuse to approve a comment simply because it disagrees with me.

However I would probably not approve comments which I believe to be libellous, discriminatory, purely abusive or similarly unacceptable. I may also refuse to approve comments which I find extremely annoying. Yes, this is subjective, and if you don’t like it you can find another blog to read.

Spam comments are in general generously dealt with automatically by Akismet.

However in general the strong presumption remains to approve all comments, even where they take a strongly divergent view from me.