The business of political blogging

Above: Tom Watson, the UK's first blogging MP. Lance Knoble who I met for the first time interviewed him a few weeks back. (I didn't think his site very interesting then.) Be both agreed that he was brave to start one. After all, and Tom brought this out several time, he could rant about something, and a few months or years down the line, people could say. "Oy! You said this then, now your saying the other." Well, that's blogging for you. I've changed my opinions several times, we're fickle people bloggers, just like everybody else. Though I guess MPs aren't like everybody else. Like I said, I'd been bannned from taking pix, "anywhere in the building," so I felt pretty rebelious taking this, surreptitious picture. Later, I saw a few others taking more blatent pix. Obviously, they hadn't been previously told off. Some of the things that were mentioned: about the MPs constituants and the blogging MPs readers. Readers in Toronto (Canada) aren't going to get the geezer re-elected in West Bromwich (UK). apparently, some one reading Tom's blog had become policitised about picking up litter, then politicised about a million other things that he would rant about some geeky geezer mentioned wikis a few others liked the statement, "if blogs are the answer, what is the question." social capital, participation, legitimacy were terms that the political business people thought were important. nobody discussed class and the digital divide, which surely is important to Labour blogging MPs.

The meeting itself, wasn't too exciting. I hadn't been to such a debate before. So maybe they aren't. As Lance said: "Truth to tell, the fact of the event was far more significant than anything actually said on the evening. An important discussion was started, and for Britain at least weblogs emerged from a slightly weird, fringe activity into a kind of political limelight." I was trying desperately to think of an earth shattering question to liven up the debate, but I think many people did ask such questions, and surely they were earth shattering to them, but my mind wasn't so much on the job, the questions or statements were not very new. Most of the stuff flowing aboout my brain was about the rise of RSS, 35 million AOL bloggers, how popular writing, and thinking has become and will become, for everybody and anybody, anyhow. To hear the word blogging in the House of Parliament was surprising enough, thank you.

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