Thursday, November 06, 2008

That Hazel Blears Speech

Last week Hazel Blears said this in an answer on the Total Politics Daily Politico questionnaire...
Which blogs do you love or hate?

I leave reading blogs to my special advisers! I’m told Luke Akehurst’s is good. Plus Hopi Sen. It’s a shame that LabourHome never really found its voice. There’s a definite gap in the market for a left-wing Iain Dale.

And yet a week later she makes a full blown speech on political disengagement, citing how those awful right wing blogs are contributing to it by being, well, just plain corrosive and negative. She seems to judge all 1,600 blogs by what she imagines Guido's blog to be like. Let's look at her actual words, because it's important to see what she actually said, rather than what some think she said. Her speech was not all about blogging, even though that section got all the headlines - which is interesting in itself, and an indication of who the media think is making the political weather.

And I would single out the rise of the commentariat as especially note-worthy. It is within living memory that journalists’ names started to appear in newspapers; before then, no name was attached to articles. And in recent years commentary has taken over from investigation or news reporting, to the point where commentators are viewed by some as every bit as important as elected politicians, with views as valid as Cabinet Ministers. And if you can wield influence and even power, without ever standing for office or being held to account by an electorate, it further undermines our democracy.

The commentariat operates without scrutiny or redress. They cannot be held to account for their views, even when they perform the most athletic and acrobatic of flip-flops in the space of a few weeks. I can understand when commentators disagree with each other; it’s when they disagree with themselves we should worry.

There will always be a role for political commentary, providing perspective, illumination and explanation. But editors need to do more to disentangle it from news reporting, and to allow elected politicians the same kind of space and prominent for comment as people who have never stood for office.

This brings me to the role of political bloggers. Perhaps because of the nature of the technology, there is a tendency for political blogs to have a ‘Samizdat’ style. The most popular blogs are right-wing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes. Perhaps this is simply anti-establishment. Blogs have only existed under a Labour Government. Perhaps if there was a Tory Government, all the leading blogs would be left-of-centre?

There are some informative and entertaining political blogs, including those written by elected councillors. But mostly, political blogs are written by people with a disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.

Unless and until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.


Well, we're with her on the Commentariat. If Jackie Ashley and Polly Toynbee read those words they probably winced in embarrassment.

Some have had a go at me for not being aggressive enough with Hazel Blears on PM yesterday. Well, I agree with her up to a point on the issue of positivity. I do think it is easier to blog against rather than for. And I think I also fall into the trap on occasion of doing this. However, to say all blogs are negative and fail to come up with positive ideas and conversation is fatuous. Quite how she would know when she admits she doesn't read blogs is at the very least rather odd. She seems to think all blogs are like Guido's. The fact of the matter is that bad news is news and good news is advertising. Newspapers operate under that maxim and are never happier than when they have a scandal to write about. Why should the new media be any different? Guido makes no secret of the fact that he has a mission to root out political wrongdoing. That is his niche. Mine is different. So is Alex Hilton's. So is Tim Montgomerie's.

It is very dangerous to indulge in gross generalisations, as Professor Jean Seaton found out on Woman's Hour this morning. She was trying to assert that women were in some way a superior species of blogger as they didn't concentrate on gossip and were more interested in issues. The truth of it is that some are, some aren't. Some men are, some men aren't. If you'd like to listen to the discussion I had with Professor Seaton and Jane Garvey click HERE. It's about 6 mins 30 secs in and lasts ten minutes.

I'm not sure I have anything else to say which others haven't said before me, but I do urge you to read Alix Mortimer's take on Hazel Blears's speech. It's a great rant! Apologies it has taken me so long to get around to writing this. The last two days have been very busy at work.

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

is there going to be a glenrothes live blog on this bloody thing?

Anonymous said...

She did not 'make' a speech - she just read what some oik had written for her to recite.

She is just doing as she is told - labour have decided they need to neuter the internet - makes you wonder how they square that with cheering Obama on ...

You have to wonder don't you as we see labour luvvies and lefties swooning over Obama ... then they look to their own leader. Wonder what they are thinking?

At the time of typing BTW - I have just heard Stephen Pound MP saying, on SKY, he thinks retail sales are holding up !!
Is he daft or does he think we are thick?

Anonymous said...

BBC, 11:40 - rumours are that Labour will win at Glenrothes.

If true I am not surprised

Anonymous said...

Sorry if this is a repeat as I got an error message when posting --

But BBC at 11.40 are projecting a Labour win at Glenrothes.
Newsnight - earlier - were presuming an SNP win.

If so I cannot help but say I am not surprised. I think this financial crisis has dealt a bodyblow to SNP.

BTW - having just spent two days in Glasgow walking up Saltmarket over the Clyde, past pubs open at 8.45 in the morning with sallow faced men drinking lager and, where ever you look, waking past wizened shambling shell suited figures (figures in a desolate ruined landscape) ---- I cannot for the life of me think why anyone would want to vote for either Labour or SNP. Their stewardship has - is - ruining Scotland. eting it awy like a cancer destroys a helpless body.

Bill Quango MP said...

trevorsden said...Stephen Pound MP saying, on SKY, he thinks retail sales are holding up !!

Unbelievable! what an arse head. retail sales are falling off the cliff. Maybe he just looks at the friendly Tesco/Sainsbury ones which are holding up quite well thanks to that boost from more expensive food prices.
John Lewis the middle of the road bell weather retailer fell 9.6% last month. If a big and successful operator like Lewis are struggling then how are Pound's local corner shop and launderette and bookshop doing?
No wonder these gimps want to shut down the internet. Then they can say white is black, up is down, no more boom and bust and no one will correct them.
We do the retail analysis stats on our blog at least once a month and they have been near universally down since June last year and really sliding since July this year..

Maybe he should nip down the high street and get a book on "economic data and how to read it."
Page 1. ALWAYS HOLD THE GRAPH THE RIGHT WAY UP..

He could get it from WHSmiths...While they are still there.

Anonymous said...

Just listened to your women's hour appearance iain and prof jane seaton was absolutely awful. talk of charging into a debate without a bloody clue. you put up a good voice of reason against her bizarre and ill-informed generalisations. i cringed as she struggled to name a blog she reads regularly towards the end. why do they let these people on the radio?

Wrinkled Weasel said...

"And if you can wield influence and even power, without ever standing for office or being held to account by an electorate, it further undermines our democracy"

Just like Emily Davison, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, Martin Luther King,Nelson Mandela. Just to name a few who have wielded power without standing for office.

A few on this blog have been ecstatic about the election of Barak Obama. A little over two hundered years ago this country was at war with America.

Bloggers of the period got together and had this to say about British Democracy:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it......

Hazel Blears is a most dangerous woman in a most dangerous Government.

The only solution is the overthrow of that Government by fair means or foul, if necessary by civil disobedience and insurrection because if we stand still and do nothing our liberty, everything we hold dear is at stake.

You may say we have elections every four years.

We do, but the public has been lied to. They cannot vote intelligently on the basis of lies, deceit and obfuscation. That is the democracy of Zanu PF.

Change, to use a popular word, comes from individuals. It comes from people who wont go to the back of the bus. Change comes from people who will starve themselves to death for a cause they believe in. Change comes from people who don't believe what they are fed from the ruling classes.

If we allow Blears and her colleagues to follow the logic of this manifesto, which is what it is, I won't be able to write this in ten years time.

Brummie Alice said...

Aren't the anti-Blears reactions somewhat underlining her point?!

Leg-iron said...

Aren't the anti-Blears reactions somewhat underlining her point?!

Only if her point is that criticism of cabinet ministers is not allowed, because cabinet ministers' views are the only valid ones.

Should we just nod and accept every new restriction? Should we shut up and know our places?

Democracy or free speech. That's the choice she's offering. An interesting paradox, don't you think?

Anonymous said...

"And if you can wield influence and even power, without ever standing for office or being held to account by an electorate, it further undermines our democracy"

So what does she think the eu is doing?

Bernard said...

"Labour.... will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair."

And she wants us to stop commenting on this?

Cinnamon Marine said...

I just listened to the Women's Hour segment and Professor Seaton turned me off from the beginning with her assertion of what women are interested in. I do not appreciate being lumped into a box that says because I have two x chromosomes my interests are therefore childcare and maternity issues. As a woman who is 100% certain I never want to have a child I really don't give a damn about maternity issues - and I'm far from the only one out there.

Sabretache said...

"I do urge you to read Alix Mortimer's take on Hazel Blears's speech. It's a great rant!"

Yep it's a great rant, and here's another - even better: From the sublime to the Ridiculous

"....the walking, talking, Labour-vote destroying robot which is Hazel Blears. Hazel Blears deciding to talk about political disengagement is a little like getting David Irving to talk about the problem of Holocaust denial"

Quite

Pablothehat said...

"And yet a week later she makes a full blown speech on political disengagement"

Absolute twaddle!

I have always been something of a natural cynic when it comes to the machinations of the political world, but since becoming a blogger I have taken more interest in politics not less, so what form of disengagement is she implying?

"Unless and until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture"

Just what does she mean by 'adds value' anyway?
Who is she to judge which blogs have value and which don't?
I am just so glad that I do not recognise Hazel's opinion since she never reads blogs, how can she formulate one?
As was commented by trevorsden, she just read what some oik had written for her to recite, so they are not her options then are they?

"And if you can wield influence and even power, without ever standing for office or being held to account by an electorate, it further undermines our democracy."

No, an independent media, in all it's forms, watching and scrutinising the actions and policies made by those who govern by the will of the people (yeh right!) is an asset to democracy not a subversive, corrosive influence.

Roger Thornhill said...

If a man tried to say what Prof Seaton said (swapping gender) it would be condemned as outrageously sexist and prejudiced.

Normal fayre for "Womans Hour", then.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for t'link, Iain. Haven't had this many hits since I used the words "puppy" and "arse" in the same post.

Anonymous said...

“...Iain provides loyal readers with details of all his daily radio gigs, including one today with Radio Kent.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/nov/06/hazelblears-blogging

A political commenter is teasing you, Iain. As ever, he’s so full of himself it’s hard to say if it’s outright sneering or simply part of the normal rough-and-tumble.

Just remember the one act that might save Alistair Campbell from hell: punching him.

(W/V= madsepe. Are these really randomly generated? I increasingly wonder if they're some kind of etymological ink-blot test)

Andrew Scadding said...

When politicians attack bloggers its hard not to feel they are simply jealous. Blogging is - or ought to be - like Hyde Park Corner: you can say what you like (that's freedom of speech) but nobody has to listen. You live or die on merit, we read you because we want to. Blears feels we ought to listen to her and her ilk, and we don't, for the most part. No doubt it is hurtful to feel that we are more interested in what you have to say than it what she has to say, but that's politics. Ironically, almost no-one would have heard about her musings had you, Guido and a few others not taken them up. That should hurt her more.

Jonny Mac said...

"Unless and until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices..."

This is such a monumentally stupid thing to say, I don't know where to start. In what way does blogging - free, anyone can do it - not "allow new and disparate voices", for Chrissakes? That is PRECISELY what blogging does do!

Anonymous said...

I don't get where she's coming from, other then having the arsehole that she gets called out on a regular basis on line.

The other thing is, she should look at the states and look what NetRoots did, sites like Daily Kos lead the revival of the Democrats, and making them appeal to people and empowering them in making the Obama drive actually happen.

She's running scared, and it's sad.

Anonymous said...

m/s blears might wish to reflect that perhaps, just perhaps, the preponderance of unsympathetic blogs might be because it is difficult to defend the indefensable with any conviction

Anonymous said...

Guido's blog is anarchic, and sometimes nasty, but it's still a breath of fresh air.

Give me him rather than the supine BBC any day.

Roger Thornhill said...

sash: "She's running scared, and it's sad."

Only in the "sad act" kinda sad, not the "oh dear. How sad. Never mind"* kind of sad.



* Sgt Major Shut-Up.

King Athelstan said...

Pay no attention to the nasty men, saying all those beastly things.

Unknown said...

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/iabblog/archive/2008/11/07/does-our-communities-minister-really-understand-communities.aspx

Anonymous said...

Word verification = billys
!!!!
Silly billys as in Blears/Seaton bints, and I say that most sincerely folks as a woman myself.

kg-b said...

Professor Seaton’s patronising assumption (voiced on Woman's Hour) that I am only interested in reading blogs about breast feeding and other ‘female' issues has directly led to me to post a comment in an attempt to increase your male/female ratio.
As a fan of the show, I thought you provided a different perspective and hope you will go on again. But please make sure they get someone in who can give you more of a run for your money. Even the presenter was on your side.