Me on Sky News

I was back doing my regular slot on Sky News last week - first time in ages but then doing a Masters at Law, in the evening, whilst working full time does rather get in the way of everything, including blogging!

On SkyNew.Com in a couple of hours

Yes, I nearly forgot to mention. I am doing my more or less monthly slot on SkyNews.Com this evening looking at the 'hot' stories from the web today.

In fact, I'd better go as the car will be waiting for me and I don't want to be late!! I'm in enough trouble as it is, as I double booked it with a School Governors meeting...

Hmmmm.

For a few days, or maybe it has even been weeks, I've noticed that my side bar has been dropping to the bottom of my blog below all my posts. This is rubbish!! Does anybody know how I could possibly fix this?

Update: OK, it's miraculously back! Just a minute after posting!

I think it may have something to do with the formatting of my blog posts - particularly when I send them in by email....hmmmmm.

Any thoughts would be most welcome!

On the telly again tonight...

Just a quick note, to let you know that I am on Sky.com News tonight, at the new time of 7pm going through the top internet stories of the day!

My best bits for tons more fun!

Alex Wilcox is continuing to go up in my estimation, especially as today he has had a great idea about helping us all decide on our nominations for best blog postings, without which could so easily turn into the last good posting I remember reading.

He has asked bloggers to brazen out the blushes and come up with their own favourite postings from their own blogs and thereby helping us all to nominate from a position of knowledge rather than an online version of pin the tail on the donkey.

So here you go, here are what I consider my best bits:

I'm starting with What should MPs look like? On account of the fact that I am still excessively proud of this post and particularly that is won the CFGB best blog posting award back in March. I don't know whether a posting having already won an award get disqualified but I offer you up what the judging panel liked! And it made me realise just how much I could grin in one evening!

A few weeks later, I posed the question What sort of people do we want to be our candidates? This started quite an adult debate and certainly provided some food for thought. I do like postings that are more than polemics and actually get people thinking and talking and so I was quite pleased with this one. I've never made it on volume into the Lib Dem Voice Golden Dozen but this one got picked up in the five you might like to read slot.

Calling all men who don't like violence was me trying to publicise the problem of domestic violence, a topic that comes up far less than many but will effect 1 in 4 women at some point in their lifetime and so I guess it affects us all (given that most of know more than 4 women). I was also trying to set out some solutions via the White Ribbon Campaign. A rather sad comments thread, I think. This post also took part in the Carnival of Feminists.

Then I got wound up by a pretty inane comment piece in CiF about the increasing use of the word gay by the younger people on the planet and I asked Worrying about homophobia in schools? Don't be so gay. If memory services me correctly this got picked up in Liberal Conspiracy's Casting the Net.

Next comes Why Boris Johnson is a really, really bad idea, which a followed up with a few more posts on the topic and got me on Sky.Com News for the first time. I feel doomed to do a regular 'I told you so' post for the next 4 years.

On to US politics; this is the first time I have been remotely interested in US primaries but boy, was it primary season to watch! I think the diversity of candidates and choices was fantastic and just because the presidential candidates are in place there's no need to throw the idea of a female VP out with Hillary because Hillary isn't the only woman in the Democratic Party.

This one really depresses me, but I am concerned that we are getting a bit too complacent when it comes to getting enough female parliamentary candidates elected. Plenty of well meaning activity doesn't always lead to the right outcomes and the Electoral Reform Society suggests that there's no real chance at electing more women into parliament at the next election. An intense discussion between me, the Yorkshire gob and MattGB ensued, albeit some while after I posted the original post.

As you have probably guessed, I am a female political blogger and proud of it. Blogging is something that you grow into and now that I've been doing it for around 18 months, I can see it is just something that you have to plug away at. The rewards that might make you feel slightly less like a vanity publisher are going to be sometime in the future. However, every now and then there is a cry wondering why there is so little gender balance in Lib Dem Bloggers (much better since the CFGB Blogging Awards but still only 20% of Lib Dem bloggers are female). Well, that's because we've been looking for female political bloggers in the wrong place. This post isn't so much about a cogently argued notion (are any of them?) but more about me trying to leverage the network aspect of the web. I picked this up from a number of female bloggers and passed in on, including the BBC's iPM website who thought it might make an interesting story for their Saturday afternoon radio programme. Liberal Conspiracy also picked it up on their Casting the Net series.

And lastly, a bit more internal party organisation stuff in my piece on The Bones Commission which I had been trying not to write for some time but in the end my exasperation at the whole thing overcame my ability to resist criticising my favourite Lib Dem leader's communication skills!!!

And this was the cut down version of this post!!!

This week's must read links

I have another four must read links on topics that I haven’t written on but have got me exercised enough to leave a comment or tow!!

First, is James Graham’s posting on internal Lib Dem organisation: Nick Clegg: COG now that I have your attention; so, OK I did right on this but only after James and a whole load of other people started. As someone who implements transformational change for a living, I can’t bear watching it go horribly wrong…

Then, for a little bit of light relief I commend you to, if you haven’t been there already, the A-Z of right wing on-line commenting, which is very, very funny. I have to admit I very rarely go to the Daily Mail and the Have Your Say message boards because by the time I’ve read down about 5 of the comments I have a retort in mind that is longer than the original posting, plus unhealthy stress levels. However, there are plenty of right wing trolls trying to wind up us progressive liberals on CiF!! (Nope, still can’t bring myself to use the label lefty, on myself).

Sticking with Liberal Conspiracy, Penny Red went uber-radical on the subject of parental rights or control in Where have all the real Dads gone to?. Perhaps she will disagree with my categorisation but whilst I agree her in that that I find it hard to find much sympathy for all these emasculated men when they have all the power and most of the money on the planet, I’m not sure that I agree with her feminist utopia, in this case. I do support her right to have a radical view though!

My indulgence link for this week is the Carnival of Feminists, which I think is vital reading for everyone, who thinks that now that women are officially equal, there’s no need for feminism! And it is the latest Carnival of Feminists that led me on to this article about the Queen Bee Syndrome; do you believe that women are not exactly sisterly when it comes to the career ladder and men are more supportive to their female subordinates? Or not?




Sky.com News

I will be on Sky.Com News this evening at 7.30pm, looking at the top stories on the net of the day. It will also available online.

And I promise neither to look like Shirley Temple nor say ‘Hello’ like Margaret Thatcher. Like I did last time.





Sky.Com News next Friday

Just a quick note to tell you that I'm going to be on Sky.com News again next Friday 8th August talking to Martin Stanford about the top web stories of the day!


It's possible I may mention it again, sometime in the next week

BBC picks up on the NYT Blogher fiasco

The BBC's iPM programme has picked up on the furore taking place on the net about NYT putting an article about the Blogher conference in the fashion and style part of the paper. Everyone from the Huffington Post to the BBC is now on the case! Hooray!

Wha'ts more, the NYT have been dealing with the complaints in a particularly gauche manner.

And why am I telling you about this again? Because it 'twas me that wrote into the iPM programme to tell them about the indignation springing up all over the blogosphere!

BBC's iPM programme on Saturday evenings is a spin off from the PM programme and picks up on stories from its listeners and bloggers writing in to alert them. Jennifer Tracey the reporter who picked up the story has blogged about it, and if you think it's one that should b followed up then please go and add your comments and thoughts about how women's blogging is treated by the mainstream media.

Women blog more than men but it seems are still relegated to the ghetto of the fashion pages when it comes to talking about it; why is that?

Watch this space..

...no, this space, where I've asked the BBC's iPM to look into the gender gap in political blogging and why women's blogging events are relegated to the fashion pages of the New York times.

The original NYT article is here, and ensuing furore can be found here, here, here and here.

We're looking for female political bloggers in the wrong place...

..because when the New York Times writes about women and blogging they put it in the Style and Fashion section, not business or politics!!!!!!!!

Hat Tip to The F-Word, who tipped Every Dot Connects, who picked up the 'story' from The Brand Box.

As Every Dot Connects says:

"Well, hello! Yes, there’s a glass ceiling. And instead of addressing the question, the New York Times editors are part of the problem. A story about men who blog, especially if they had built the kind of powerhouse network the BlogHer folks have, would have run in the business or technology section of the newspaper. But women’s accomplishments in the blogosphere are celebrated in Fashion and Style"

FFS etc, etc, etc

Iain Dale, Liberal Conspiracy, a dodgy list by Wikio and, oh, my top 10 political blogs!

There’s been an enormous hoo ha over at Liberal Conspiracy whether to join in Iain Dale’s, or rather Total Politics’ list of the Top 100 Political Blogs.

There is an argument that goes along the lines of:

‘Iain Dale is consistently rude about the quality of left/progressive blogging (not possible to describe myself as left wing, oh no) and often moans about them without linking to them. He should not be encouraged in his self appointed role of King of blogging. And he’s a Tory and people who like blogs like Iain Dale’s, will like and vote for blogs like Iain Dale’s’ and won’t vote for progressive blogs and then Iain Dale will just tell us all that left/progressive blogs are boring.’

I, on the other hand, come form the following point of view:

‘Well, he’s the only one giving me a change to vote for my top 10 political blogs and if I don’t vote (for what will not, on the whole, be right wing blogs) then non-Tory blogs will get even less of a look in.

Just in passing, a very bizarre thing came to light in this discussion. Sunny suggested that I look at Wikio for an up to date top 100 blog list. Well, I nearly fell of my chair when I saw that I was rated 86^th!! Ha! How ridiculous!

The scoring is on the basis of how many times you are linked to (as apposed to how many times people click through or read you) and different websites are given different weightings. For example, a link from the BBC will have a higher rating than a link say from…me! And this is where I see the problem being. As, Sky News have linked to me quite a few times, as I occasionally do a bit of telly for them and last week the PM Blog on the BBC website linked to me, for a totally non political reason.

Still, I suppose by adding a qualitative element to their scoring they are at least trying to avoid just going for the most popular as by page clicks, but even at my most optimistic (you know, as sort of: who could want more, than a glass half full, it’s perfect!!) could I consider my blog and influential to have any thing in common. However much I may want that to be so.

So, to my top 10 Political Blogs, on the basis that I can’t vote for myself (although I notice that some people have):

You can find out how to vote and all the rules here

Neil Stockley (Quelle surprise! But do I go out with him because I think his blog is great, or think his blog is great because I go out with him? Ha!)
Quaequam Blog
Liberal Conspiracy
Lib Dem Voice
Alix Mortimer
The Yorkshire Gob
Lynne Featherstone MP
London: Mayor & More
Millenium Elephant
Dib Lemming

It was hard, actually, to choose. I would rather have a Top 20!! But there is a pretty good mix of established, individual, group, male, female and elephants! I would have put Liberal Mafia up there but he’s on an invite only blog now..boo hoo!

Update: The more observant of you will notice that the list had changed a bit - I hadn't realised that Dave Hill's absolutely great London: Mayor & More blog was up on the Total Politics website. once I found out, I couldn't leave it out so I'm afraid the most entertaining Tom Harris had to go instead. Anyway, I'm sure they're'll be plenty of Labour voters voting for him, so it won't materially effect his positioning.

Waiting

So, it looks like the blogosphere is calling it for Boris. How very depressing! All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not Labour...because not only have they lost the country, it looks like they've lost London. Not just unfortunate but rather careless, wouldn't you say?

So, I'm here, at the Sky News studio dropped off a little early by the car and just trying to contemplate what a potential Tory resurgence will feel like, because make no mistake if Boris wins tonight like everybody thinks he will it is far more significant for the Tories than a Livingstone win would have been for Labour. The last time the Tories put Labour out of power was in 1979. I remember it well because it was also the day I lost my red mickey mouse watch.

Still, it could have been worse as we, yes, we the Lib Dems did a lot better than expected; as I write we've got 29 extra councillors and depending on who you ask we have maintained or increased our vote share. Not bad and probably quite irritating for the other two parties who would probably have wanted to squeeze us out of existence. Well, they didn't! Ha! And we've got back Sheffield!

London Debate Unplugged on Sky News

The last and largest hustings for London Mayor the London Debate Unplugged will be broadcast by Sky News on Monday evening. It will of course include the three front runners: Ken, Boris and our very own Brian Paddick.

Much more importantly though, I will be taking part in the 'unplugged' part of the programme, as part of a panel of expert bloggers. I will be joined by Iain Dale and Alex Hilton aka Recess Monkey. The first part of the programme at 7.30pm will take part both on line and be broadcast on Sky News, then the debate will start and we'll be online during the add breaks to give our insight. Then for an hour after the debate finishes there'll be a big discussion programme, online, where the three 'experts' will be joined by both members of the various campaign teams and the audience.

I'm off to town this afternoon to buy a new outfit; as I have discovered in the last 24 hours that I have nothing suitable to wear for a trip to Sky News. Honest, it's not an excuse for a shop at all.

The Carnival of Feminists

The 55th Carnival of Feminists is up on Penny Red right now (time seems to run faster over there), with my posting from yesterday on domestic violence as part of the carnival.

For those of you who dismiss feminism as man bashing then have a read of this blog, from the carnival.

Blog Awards: Chuffed of Crystal Palace!

I am naturally quite a smiley person but I think on Saturday night I took grinning to new widths when I heard my name being announced as the winner of the Campaign for Gender Balance Best Blog Post and had the, unique in my life time, experience of being presented with a little trophy cup!!

Other winners, as those who have been following these things know already, were People’s Choice Best Lib Dem Blog winner, Lynne Featherstone, Judge’s Choice Best Lib Dem Blog Alix Mortimer and Best non Lib Dem blog Betsan Powys.

Now, back to the cup…I have never, ever received a cup for anything in my entire life, ever before!!! I was tempted later on that evening to take this gorgeous little cup down with me for dinner at the Malmaison, but thought that sort of behaviour was more reminiscent of a six year old rather than a thirty six year old and not Malmaisonish at all. Still, I did sleep with it on my bedside table, so loath was I to let it out of my sight!!

The recognition for the blog post, was quite nice to receive too, no sorry, it was very nice, sublime, in fact, and I am dead chuffed. I was particularly interested to hear in the Lib Dem Voice podcast published last night, some of the comments that were made by the judges about my post; it was very handy to have the feedback about accessibility and also the good use of photos. I was obviously present when these comments were first made but my attempts at looking serene while waiting to hear the result meant that processing any other words but my own name was beyond me.

I am very pleased that it was a post on a topic so close to my heart and one that was acknowledged as controversial. I am going to take Mary Reid’s advice and let Johanna Sumuvuori MP know that meeting her led to me writing this post and that led to an award!

Meeting up with the other bloggers was great, if a little surreal as we all felt we knew each other already. I was also particularly pleased to see that the audience had plenty of men in it. I don’t want to live in a ‘women only’ blogging ghetto; I even caught sight of a certain fluffy elephant!

If you haven’t listened to it so far, do listen to Alix’s acceptance speech on the LDV podcast. It is natural for many liberals, I think, to question the need for a separate Campaign for Gender Balance Blog Awards, however as Alix pointed out, although some of us may have all the confidence we need to start blogging, others, whose voices are just as important, may need more encouragement. If nothing else, these awards have made the most confident conscious of that fact that not everybody has that attribute, which may be an invisible barrier to them getting their voice heard. Why is that a gender issue? Well, you just have to look at the outcome: the still relatively few numbers of lib dem women bloggers compared to male ones. It is not that women don’t have anything to say, they are just worried that nobody will want to listen.

Throughout the whole process, from having one of my blog posts nominated, to getting short listed and of course to winning a category, I have been tremendously encouraged. I hope that the posting that won can hold its own amongst both men and women as a good blog post but I am sure over the last few months I have become more confident in defining my own blogging voice that is unashamedly female, feminine and womanly as well as liberal and democratic!

Campaign for Gender Balance Blog Awards & James' Meme

James very kindly asked me to complete his meme just before the Christmas Holidays; I'm back, so here is my answer, now updated with favourite non Lib Dem female bloggers!!!

Favourite Blogs:

Urgh…there’s just too many that I like. But here’s my three!

Charlotte Gore: I am deeply interested in her chosen topic of political narrative and love the fact that she blogs to engage in good natured discussion and not just to bark her opinions at the world; quite a skill! She has excellent insight and judgment and isn’t scared to leap from the logical to the intuitive and back again!

Blunt & Disorderly: A bit intermittent with the posts but I really like the fact that she’s clear that feminism isn’t a dirty word and she blogs on some really interesting topics which are not picked up elsewhere on the Lib Dem blogosphere. She’s tipped me off on some very interesting articles which have got me thinking and blogging and for that I am very grateful.

Lynne Featherstone: We share an interest in home affairs and the horrors of the DNA database but one thing I’ve always enjoyed about Lynne’s blog is how it demystifies the process of being an MP and is a great role model to women thinking that formal politics isn’t for women!

Best Blog Posting:

Jo Anglezarke with this for understanding that to open a debate rather than giving a lecture makes the blogosphere such a great place to be!

Alix Mortimer, has many, many good posts to choose from but this one was a particularly fun and imaginative!! But then, maybe I am just really boring too……

Linda Jack has many postings of this type and I am glad that she keeps banging on about it.

Favourite non lib Dem Female Bloggers

Pandemian, Dulwich Mum (just how tongue in cheek, I don't know...I suspect not at all!!) and of course, Philobiblon, who write about all sorts of interesting things and is also the founder of the Carnival of Feminists (which is a feminst equivilant of Britblog Round Up) and is fantastic, but not technically a blog so can't be nominated.

Women I’d like to see blog but don’t:

My good friend Lindsey Brummitt, because she’s smart and witty but doesn’t believe me when I tell her!

If Mariella Frostrup has a blog then I’m unaware of it but I really enjoy her insights on Openbook.

I’m not sure if this is allowed but I would have loved it is Linda Smith would have written a fantastic blog! And she was a humanist!

I will update with non Lib Dem female bloggers that I like…there’s far, far too many to choose from!

Women Bloggers: not weaker, just different...

Jonathan from Liberal England is worried that women’s blogging awards will just serve to position women as the weaker sex. But, is offering a platform for an underrepresented group to get increased profile really such a minefield? Are women Lib Dem bloggers (and beyond) really so in danger of being patronised and undermined? Surely, the good female bloggers such as Alix or Charlotte, to name just a couple, don’t need a special award…surely they can compete in the full blown Booker of Lib Dem Blog awards?

I think Jonathan is worrying unnecessarily; I think it’s a great idea and I don’t feel in the slightest bit patronised or undermined. The Lib Dem blogosphere, at least, is very male in terms of gender and in terms of sex. It can be a pretty macho, testosterone fuelled place in terms of those writing. It’s hard to know what the readership is in terms of sex but I would guess that it mirrors the proportions of those who write.

This means, inevitably, even with the best will in the world, the subjects that get written about most are the priorities of those men writing from a male perspective. This is not to say that many, many of the things that are written about don’t interest women readers, they do. However, some subjects are not written about as much or prioritised as much.

It’s one of the reasons that I started writing my own blog; there were things that were interesting to me that rarely got mentioned on Lib Dem blogs and still not get the attention I would like them to have. Now some of that may be down to the quality or frequency of my writing but I think some of it is definitely that often I will choose ‘feminist’ topics to blog on.

What I do notice, from Lib Dem Voice’s weekly round up of blogs is that the posts that get the highest number of hits are usually focussing either on Westminster gossip or internal party politics.

Jennie , is quite right when she points out that the blogosphere is full of women bloggers and that their blogs tend not to be so overtly or acutely political. And I would say that was a fair reflection of many women’s approach to life…politics is part of it but not everything. Jonathan also references the excellent Philobiblon who not only hosts the Brit Blog Round Up but is also the founder of Carnival of Feminists which is proscribed reading for me, even if I don’t agree with every contributor!

However, it seems to me that there is a space for political female bloggers in the Lib Dem Blogosphere but it’s not currently very big. If we need these awards to elbow our way into higher profile, particularly with women who perhaps don’t read any of our blogs at the moment then I think they are a good thing!

Right, I’m off to Selfridges for the last time before Christmas…I wouldn’t be blogging now but for the fact that I broke my computer a week ago and a suddenly opportunity came by to access my blog and post something, rather than just read and comment on others! Who knows when I will be back; no doubt when my Sony comes back from laptop hospital after Christmas but maybe, hopefully before!