Da Fink's New Blog Surges Ahead
According to industry data, The Times' Comment Central had more traffic than Guido last month. Guido takes consolation from the fact that Danny and his team may now have the most popular British political commentary blog, but Guido's blog is still the most popular in Britain. US traffic boosts Da Fink's numbers - as do his occasional (see above) forays into political humour.Guido has been telling Iain Dale for months that our blogospheric ascendancy could not last, but it must be demoralising for all those earnest leftie bloggers that the new popular blog is once again from the right. The idea that it is merely because oppositionism is populist strikes Guido as muddle-headed. If that were true the LibDems would surely have a top-ranked blogger.
Part of the reason is that the editorial is superior, ConservativeHome and Comment Central are both tightly edited and on the ball, Iain has more newsworthy gossip than say Recess Monkey. Both Iain and the Monkey are wannabee MPs loyal to their party, but Recess' humour is hampered by a lack of attention to the mainstream news agenda and the constraints of having to be politically correct.
Has anyone got a convincing explanation as to why Britain's four most popular political blogs come from a Cameroonie sympathiser, a libertarian, a Thatcherite and a Christian conservative?
137 comments:
Because the opposition can take risks; all incumbents are primarily concerned with covering their (and their party's) asses. Those in power are historically humourless and have a vested interest in perpetrating the conventional wisdom.
Now what do I win?
Sounds like the beginning of some joke. Is it because Britain is now a place lacking a sense of humour, as well as a sense of principle (from a self-styled Cameroonie angry at the increasing level of political correctness destroying industry, sense and humour.)
Mrextravagant is correct (not in the political sense) - I think the conservative blogs are funnier, generally more intellectually coherent and appear (from the comments) to have a wide range of readers so you get drawn in to the topic. A lot of Labour blogetary reminds me of the chipmunks on the Labour back benches who jump up during PMQs to inquire, with bright little eyes and a deadly sincereity only seen inside a turban, "whether the prime minister would allow the house to acknowledge his glorious achievements in raising the dead in (substitute name of constituency untroubled by closing hospitals, failing schools etc).
Laughter is not only the best medicine, for many of us it may be all we have left once Pat the H finishes with the NHS.
It's a time of great change, people are rejecting the established parties, we want to read the truth, a lot of us that read Guido or Iain Dale are not naturally from the right. Guido strikes quite a few populist chords that people feel right across the spectrum, he articulates a lot of my ageing hippy/greenie/anarchist disgust for the system. Or maybe none of us know what the fuck we are anymore :-)
It is, Guido, a question of rhetoric. The success of the rightish British blogs is based on the same rhetoric as that of American right wing shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh. The first point is that both blogging and radio chat form themselves naturally into a free, generally extreme form of expression. The second point is that the left's rhetoric has been inhibited by a variety of self-imposed restraints - broadly those known as 'politically correctness', but also by certain, as it were, theological dogmas such as the need to blame America for everything and to insist that America can only do evil. PC and dogmatism have progressively tightened the gag on the rhetoric of the left so that, in effect, they can say less and less about more and more. The right, in contrast, has not really acquired any such fixed dogmas. It is more pluralist. The reason for this is the left's dogmatism and package of prejudices combined with an 'if you're not for us, you're against us' mindset. This restricts entry to the left club and excludes anybody who might dissent too readily from the prevailing orthodoxy. This results in the right being defined not positively but negatively as 'not left' - both by the left and the right - and, therefore, it becomes a loose coalition of variously dissident voices. These derive their energy from the easy shockability of the dogmatic left and from their freedom to say anything about anything without being damned for heresy. This is, of course, very entertaining. Hence your success.
It's probably because Labour bloggers are ashamed to put their name out there in cyberspace. After all, imagine publicly associating yourself with Tony Blair, George Bush, John Prescott, Geoff Hoon, Lord Levy, Geoffrey Robinson, Dick Cheney, David Blunkett, Peter Mandelson, Lord Drayon, Alastair Campbell, Donald Rumsfeld, Hazel Blears or the rabble of cuckold backbenchers. You'd be a laughing stock and pariah.
Because there are a lot of people who mistakenly feel disenfranchised and seek easy answers to life's ills.
It should be fucking obvious that those with a grievance are more likely to air their feelings whether it be a blog, online vote etc so that includes the Tories who can't stand not having their hands on the reins of government.
B;ogs from the perceived right are more popular for a number of reasons, forst and foremost, IMO, is because the left and Labour supporters are, simply, deluded; who talks the most pbvious utter shite? Look at monkey fucker and the shite he spouts, most will turn on then turn off.
Then we have the simple fact that most people in this country are Consewrvative, maybe withg a small c, and Christian and what is said on these blogs is aggreeable to them.
The silent majority are listening, and this is what tosser Cameron needs to realise and stop trying to out-Bliar Bliar, and silent majority look at blogs and listen to them too.
Same reason why the circulation of the New Labour-hating Daily Mail is going through the roof while Blair/Brownite rags like the Mirror and the Guardian are losing thousands of readers every week.
But Guido, if you enfrced your supposed rule on only allowing tittle tattle, jokes, and wit you figures would nose dive.
I've always thought the irony of your site is that, for traffic figures, you need the mongs you claim to despise.
Just a thought.
could it be that their success is due to enormous resources and the brand name "the times" and all that free advertising?
You knock up your blog in a dank cellar on your own apart from a baby and a large breasted eastern european nanny. A far greater achievement
Simple - right-wing people are more intelligent. Intelligence is required for humor. People read blogs for humor.
People from the right wing believe they as individuals are better than average and can do better by not giving too much away. People from the left-wing believe they are less than average and can do better by taking from better off people.
P.S. Today I also discovered that HALF of ALL PEOPLE are BELOW AVERAGE!! No matter what I measured intelligence, weight, height, age, speed or anything. HALF OF ALL PEOPLE ARE SUB-NORMAL. It's incredible I don't why nobody has spotted it before.
I have also dicovered that when I tried to skew the bottom end of the bell curve more people fell below the median. When New Labour tried to eliminate child poverty more children became poor. If that's not a good reason to take more taxes I don't know what is.
Because, not being in power, with all the responsibility that comes with it, you have more time on your hands. WWhich fails to explain why Lib Dem blogs aren't the most read in the blogosphere, I'll grant you...
Oi, Appleyard! You're not writing for The Times now, you know.
Good post though and I agree largely with the above. Successful blogs need to be funny and lefties, like women and Germans aint funny.
(1) Left humour is ponderous and earnest at the best of times (cf Rory Bremner), not conducive to rapid-fire blogging. The Hitch of the Left does not exist.
(2) Political humour tends to be "oppositionist" (cf TW3), hence cyclical.
(3) The current state of the cycle is that the (UK) Left is utterly, utterly demoralised. Fuck ’em.
Lefties (including Lib Dems) do not understand or want freedom especially freedom of speech and opinion.
You only have to see how all of their friends at the BBC, Mirror, Guardian, Equal Opportunities Commission, unions etc react if someone from the right says something (in their eyes)controversial.
The Left would love to shut down sites like this and I bet they have tried to think of ways of doing it.
The Left remember are only a ideological smidgeon away from the Communism/Fascism after all.
Because it reminds us that even with the best education money can buy, one can still end up with the writing style of a the sexually repressed offspring of Zoe Williams and Peter Hitchens?
Sorry, bebopper, just the way it comes out.
Because we like listening for the sounds of Care in the Community in Action?
I think what Bryan is painfully trying to say is "The British love to take the piss out of their politicians."
When Cameron is PM, and things start to turn to shit, left wing bloggers will start to come out of the woodwork. Its always easier to attack than defend, particularly for the left.
Erm, because you post pictures of the young girls you've been stalking with your camera, and most Cameroonie sympthasisers, libertarians, Thatherite and Christian conservatives like that kind of thing?
I'm on the right track here, aren't I?
hamer - I think Guido is asking why the other sites are more popular than his, not the other way round.
Don't worry, it's eye of a needle stuff, or navel-gazing, I'm not sure which.
Oh, I thought the "libertarian" bit was self-referential.
Anon, not what I was trying to say at all. Read again.
Because it's easier to talk about the lowest (not necessarily) common denominator on the right, than the complex intelligence on the left.
Bryan. Wade through that again - no chance. I had to hold myself down the last time.
It's easier to heckle and criticise than it is to act. Of course, that doesn't explain why our essentially right wing government is being criticised from the right more than the left.
Ah- the irony of seeing the phrase 'more intellectually coherent' while looking at shotgun 'waving' and thinking of the aggregate number of f-words and c-words in the last week.
Topped only by the irony of Guido's article trying to discombobulate us from the main message here - that he is no longer the top blogging dog. Hmmmm
Yes, socialists are usually humourless gits and yes an opposition can take more risks, but there's something else to this, I think.
Deep down, lefties are collectivist in nature. Instinctively they distruct anything that smacks of individualism.
Since blogging is largely an individual thing (it's certainly seen as such) most of them simply cannot bring themselves to get into it. And that applies to those on the left who could, quite possibly, be good at it.
With more right siders/libertarians than lefties getting into blogging, the pool of telent is bigger and hence more likely to produce the medium's leasing lights.
It's simple numbers really.
Being PC is having a tottal lack of a sense of humour almost by definition.
Right wing radio chat shows and by association blog sites are always more popular then left wing ones. Always will be and it makes no difference who is running the government at the time. This is the case because the people are generaly far more right wing then the main political partys that represent them, for very obvious reasons.
Big government and politicians go together like great footballers and big wages. Only great statesmen like Thatcher and Churchill sometimes break this golden rule.
Statemen are becoming as rare as rocking horse shit and the people would not now reconise one if he/she was standing on their foot.
This a result of 60 years of post war state educations success in acheiving its authoritarian socialist aims.
The state, which ever party is running it, controlls the MSM and the BBC in particular. The BBC not really neading direct control because it is a national state institution anyway. Indead it can not even exsist without a large authoritarian state to protect it from the real free market capitalist world in which most of the British people still inhabit.
Libertarianism runs to the very heart of what it is to be British.
It is what we are as a nation, but it also gives most politicians their darkest nighmares. This is why it is the most media discredited and marginalised "ism" there is. It is also why individual liberty is the most in nead of the glorious freedom the internet now gives us all.
Right wing blogs are popular because everyone likes a good laugh and atm you have the best of both worlds - a knackered right-wing government, a really knackered right-wing non-opposition completely devoid of ideas and chinless wonders like Ian Dale bitching and whining like he matters. Who needs to find 'the tosser within' when you have bloggers?
Recess Monkey has never mentioned cash-for-honours. It is surreal.
Some of the Lib Dem blogs are okay, one or two are relatively funny. Can't think of many good Labour ones, the Cllr. Bob one is okay.
iain dale censors many anti maude rants and I know he's done it to one or two others thus I find myself visiting it less.
this blog is for free speech,warts and all.God bless it.Comment moderation is for pansies.
Because it's easier to whinge about difficult issues than actually do anything about them - hence "The Market" becomes a solution, ad nauseam, for everything.
Without wishing to denigrate Comment Central, might it be a sort of first date - dead tree media addicts arriving bemused and blinking onto the sunlit uplands of the blogosphere, first port of call (natch) a dead tree funded blog. Wait till their growing confidence allows them to head for the hurly burly of the chez Guido, ye'll be top of the compost heap again, mark my words.
Tell you what though: I always know when Guido namechecks The Kitchen as I get deluged with visitors. When Da Fink namechecked me, I had to be told by the Briff...
DK
Devil's
Like others I had a look at your blog , wtf are all those "diversity" adverts about?
I do hope it was an Ironic joke. If thats really you in the photo you do look suspiciously "diverse"
God only knows what your father must think.
It's obvious Guido. Right-wingers are narrow minded bigots who never bother to read anything which might challenge their opinions. Lefties, on the other hand, are interested to know what the right is saying. S'why I'm here, y'see?
This means that right wing blogs will always get more hits. Simple really.
*runs for cover*
Also, right-wingers constantly use ridiculously broad generalisations. Us lefties never do that...
I claim my £5 and shiny troll badge.
a Cameroonie sympathiser, a libertarian, a Thatcherite and a Christian conservative?
Didn't know you were a Cameroonie sympathiser Guido !
"Convincing explanation.." My daughter's thesis will be ready in 2008, 75,000 words."
In meantime
Lefty blogs are predictable, humourless, earnest and boring. Lefty bloggers often a) low iq b)poor education c) benefits/low earnings in dead end state jobs d) unsatisfactory sex lives all of which makes them envious and chippy.
On the other hand......for a revival of spirits partake of GF,DK Mr E , Ranting G and many others for some red in tooth and claw humour, cruel and often intelligent comment not available in dead tree press. Its all in the genes you see. Trust me I am a doctor(now struck off).
The Squirrel & The Grasshopper, (REST OF THE WORLD VERSION)
The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long building and improving his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The
grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter the squirrel is warm and well fed. The
grasshopper is hungry and in the cold.
THE END
The Squirrel & The Grasshopper, (THE BRITISH VERSION)
The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long building and improving his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The
grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the Summer away. Come winter the squirrel is warm and well fed. A social
worker finds the shivering grasshopper, calls a press conference and demands to know why the squirrel should be allowed to be warm and well
fed while others less fortunate, like the grasshopper, are cold and starving.
The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper with cuts to a video of the squirrel in his comfortable warm home
with a table laden with food. The British press informs people that they should be ashamed that in country of such wealth, this poor
grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty. The Labour party, Greenpeace, Animal Rights and newly formed The Grasshopper
Council of GB demonstrate in front of the squirrel's house.The BBC, interrupting a cultural festival special live from Notting Hill with
breaking news, broadcasts a multi cultural choir singing "We shall overcome". Ken Livingstone rants in an interview with Trevor McDonald
that the squirrel has gotten rich off the backs of the grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the squirrel to make him pay
his "fair share" and increases the charge for squirrels to enter inner London.
In response to pressure from the media, the government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive
to the beginning of summer. The squirrel's taxes are reassessed. He is taken to court and fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as
builders for the work he was doing on his home and an additional fine for contempt when he told the court the grasshopper did not want to
work.
The grasshopper is provided with a council house, financial aid to furnish it and an account with a local taxi firm to ensure he can
be socially mobile. The squirrel's food is seized and re-distributed to the more needy members of society, in this case the grasshopper.
Without enough money to buy more food, to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the squirrel has to downsize and start
building a new home. The local authority takes over his old home and utilizes it as a temporary home for asylum seeking cats who had
hijacked a plane to get to Britain as they had to share their country of origin with mice. On arrival they tried to blow up the airport
because of Britain's apparent love for dogs.
The cats had been arrested for the international offence of hijacking and attempted bombing but were immediately released because the
police fed them pilchards instead of salmon whilst in custody. Initial moves to then return them to their own country were abandoned
because it was feared they may face death by mice. The cats devise and start a scam to obtain money from peoples credit cards.
A Panorama special shows the grasshopper finishing up the last of the squirrel's food, though spring is still months away, while the
council house he is in crumbles around him because he hasn't bothered to maintain the house. He is shown to be taking drugs. Inadequate
government funding is blamed for the grasshoppers "illness". The cats seek recompense in the British courts for their treatment since
arrival in UK.
The grasshopper gets arrested for stabbing an old dog during a burglary to get money for his drugs habit. He is imprisoned but released
immediately because he has been in custody for a few weeks. He is placed in the supervisory care of the probation service to monitor him.
Within a few weeks he has killed a guinea pig in a botched robbery.
A commission of enquiry that will eventually cost 10,000,000 pounds and state the obvious is set up.
Additional money is put into funding a drug rehabilitation scheme for grasshoppers and legal aid for lawyers representing asylum seekers is
increased. The asylum seeking cats are praised by the government for enriching Britain's multicultural diversity and dogs are criticized
by the government for failing to befriend the cats.
The grasshopper dies of a drug overdose. The usual sections of press blame it on the failings of the government to address the root causes
of despair arising from social inequity and his traumatic experience in prison. They call for the resignation of a minister.
The cats are paid a million pounds each because their rights were infringed when the government failed to inform them there were mice in
the UK.
The squirrel, the dogs and the victims of the hijacking, the bombing, the burglaries and robberies have to pay an additional percentage on
their credit cards to cover losses, their taxes are increased to pay for law and order and they are told that they will have to work beyond
65 because of a shortfall in government funds.
THE END
Labour supporters don't blog because they are too preoccupied spending their unemployment benefits at the bookies or watching daytime TV.
The left doesn't blog cos' the state and the BBC have already spoken for them, thank you.
This is appalling. What a load of self-indulgent navel-gazing this post is. Traffic reports on blogs? Massaging the figures to take out US hits so you can say "I'm still top in Britain?"
What were you doing in the States, Guido? Attending a convention for bores and self-puffery?
But for what its worth, the answer is bleedin' obvious - the left has no sense of humour. Mark Steel - QED
Lefties, including Greens (the new socialists) are control freaks who believe they know better than you and me, how to spend your money and my money, and that it is their right to order us around in all sorts of other ways. Such an arrogant view of the world and one's importance in it does not exactly breed humility. Or humour.
This becomes an especially difficult position to hold to when it is increasingly obvious that this belief does not stand to up the evidence: for example, just at look how vast swathes of extra money poured into socialist health and education systems have delivered absolutely nothing worth while.
The flaws in the lefty world-view are numerous and well-known so I will not repeat them here now. But as more and more they rise to a crescendo, the prospect of humorous, amusing blogs from the increasingly beleaguered, battered, self-important nonentities who continue to hold to this fantasy, becomes increasingly remote.
----
Which leads to the obvious question: why is Windmill Dave rushing to cosy up to these control-freak losers as fast as he can? Has no-one explained to him the difference between taking the central ground and capitulating to the enemy? Or the difference between emulating a successful government (as Labour promised to do in the run up to 1887) and emulation a failed government, as Cameron is clearing trying to do now?
Is it his Inner Tosser, maybe?
remittance man 'Instinctively they distruct anything that smacks of individualism.'
'the pool of telent is bigger and hence more likely to produce the medium's leasing lights'
need we say any more ?
What about Mark 'as used on Nelson Mandela' Thomas ? and as for the crap
'allbloodytaken' produced earlier, well probably ok for him if he was brought up middle class as he was the squirrel that had the nuts saved up for him. If he had been born a 'grasshopper' on a council estate he might have a different view..
'allbloodytaken' why don't you piss off and join the BNP - if you lie down with dogs, you get fleas, and I don't bloody want them.
guido I am new to the blogging world. hence forgive my inorance but may i ask under which would you classify yourself if you had to choose between the four choices (in red) you mentioned?
Rightwing, libertarian or "non-left" blogs have been more successful in digging up stories, as Guido has done on the cash-for-honours issue. Plus, with Labour in office, there is a natural tendency for the right to use media like blogs or whatever to bash the establishment. The establishment is now leftwing.
It will be interesting to see how the dynamics change if David Cameron becomes PM. I guess if he turns out to be the statist, nannying twat that libertarians like me fear, then there will be plenty for us followers of Milton Friedman to write about for many years to come.
Generally the more right wing blogs are better written and more thoughtful. Perhaps this is because those from the left (Libdems & Labour) that write intelligently are in gainful employment at the BBC. Imaginbe how powerful the left bloggers would be in aalternative universe where Iain Dale was a BBC TV Commentator and we had Andrew Marr's Diary while we started the day with Guido hosting the Today programme while John Humphrys penned Humpy.
I started reading these blogs and watching 18 Doughty Street not long ago and I have been amazed at the standard. In the general left wing tenor of the left wing main stream media such voices are sundued and so have no alternative but to flourish in blogs.
p.s. sorry for awful grammar and spelling - should have previewed before published!
jonathan..
if my assessment of cameron is correct.. he is actually more of a proper tory than he projects himself to be in order to get elected.. however as long he sticks to the "right" principles once elected I will have no complaints.. at least not major ones.. and guido please answer that question from my previous comment.. am well interested in what your answer shall be??
(continuation from previous comment).. since I am unsure as to what your exact political standing is?
Tejus - that's what the left thought about Blair - that he was just saying stuff to get elected and would then let the nutters loose on government. The first thing he said in office (and quite right too) was that they had been elected as New Labour and would govern as New Labour. Given DC's fixation with shadowing his mentor in every possible way, expect a similar sort of statement when he makes it into government. "We were elected as a pile of dozy etonian pseudo-greeny nanny state-ish second raters and we will govern as a pile of dozy etonian pseudo-greeny nanny state-ish second raters"
'anonymous' said.. "...and as for the crap 'allbloodytaken' produced earlier, well probably ok for him if he was brought up middle class as he was the squirrel that had the nuts saved up for him. If he had been born a 'grasshopper' on a council estate he might have a different view..
Well mate for your information I was brought up on a council estate and my dad was a pipe fitter and my mum a factory worker. But being a nasty evil little bastard I managed to snide my way into a dreadful and disgusting grammar school and from there I even went to a university. Not a posh one mind. I then went on to work all the bastard hours God gave only to find I have sod all thanks to being over taxed at every turn. So fuck you and yours 'anonymous'. As you see you can take the boy outta the streets but you can't take the streets outta the boy. Ok you pompous wanker?
What a nasty bit of blogging from Allbloodytaken.This just goes to show that the conservative party is right to only be interested in the upper middle class,the professional class and the old money class.Pompous pip squeaks without a private or public school education are far too uncouth to walk the paths of David Camerons Party.It clearly seems to me that it is right to exclude rough and ready steet fighting,foul mouthed Housing Benefit and Tax Credit Scrounging Council Estate Wannabees in the new Tory Party.
It does help to be gentle ,shallow lipped,tight trousered or not a a bit skirt Homosexual or Lesbian but you dont get many of these from Council Estates.
ALLBLOODYTAKEN ! Dave will take the boy out of the boy and make him a faggot and put him on the streets--The new Tories like boys off the streets, in other words,whether or not they cum from Council Ghettos or Palaces.
.. because - unlike leftie blogs - they are telling the truth as it is known without spin, and because by nature the Brits as a whole are conservative with a small c. Of course, it could just be they are properly educated and can spell, and don't insist on being PC all the time.
Tmmdi: "... when [Windmill Dave*] makes it into government..."
The thing is, he won't. His honeymoon is well-nigh over and whatever the polls may say today, the public relief when Brown replaces Blair will give our Gordon his chance to go for a snap election with a good majority for Labour. Just wait and see if I'm right.
The Eton Tosser is not a sort of Tory Blair. He's a Tory Kinnock. His role in life will not be to win power himself but should be to make that possible for his successor. The trouble is that at the moment he's acheiving the exact opposite.
----
*Wondering what to get our Dear Leader for Christmas? Here is the perfect choice: a propeller beanie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie
It's because people are getting fed up of being bossed around and having their money stolen by the state and then wasted.
Oh, and Blair's a cunt.
Allbloodytaken. That story of the dogs and cats and mice was one of the best things I have ever read! I notice that you seem to have brought the wrath of the left on you for it. Wonder why this is? Is it because in that wonderful little diatribe you copared several things that have happened in this country recently to the animal kingdom, making them seem ever more pathetic than they actually were.
By the way, wonder how those afghani terrorist hijackers are getting on here nowadays? Wouldn't want them sleeping on the streets like those squaddies are as reported on ITN a few weeks ago.
Come on you lefty bastards! Its been 9 years of your power and the country has gone to hell. THAT'S WHY THIS SITE IS POPULAR!!!!
"We must be whiter than white" Remember that? Scumbag apologists the lot of you!
all bloody taken..
I believe that you are wrong to say that we are not interested in you council estate types.. we most definetly are.. maybe you are the exception to the rule having tried to get job, stop being a burden on the state and so on, but still when you speak one can see that the slum upbringing is hard to remove from your words.. however we are most definitely interested in you chavs (though i give you some credit for trying to get away from your kin) because the chavs represent everything we do not want our future generations to be like.. i see how education standards have gone down under the labour now and before thatcher if people like yourself managed to get into respectable grammar schools.. most of your kin
happen to be one of the unemployed chavs whose love for the present govt arises from your desire to smoke, drink and have kids at the states expense.. if you are like one of them despite your supposed education (i find it hard to believe that educated chavs actually exist)..its alright because one can understand why no one would want to employ a person such as yourself.. afterall one of the prerequisites to get a job is to make sure you dont steal the money from the tills to go have a pint.. but dont worry go back to watchin wtever u chavs watch and continue to make a burden of yourself to the state... im sorry if have been a bit rude but the only thing i dislike more than socialism is the council estate types though min you occasionaly some turn out alright and those are miraculous events one must celebrate..
tmmdi..
i believe the good school of eton teaches one the fundamentals due to which their parents were able to afford the fees in the first place.. and even if cameron pursues a minor agenda of that whole greenery thing its alright as long he he ensures that investment stops fleeing the country.. merely pray that he does the "right" thing..
Guido..
Am aware that you are very busy person judging by the popularity your blog.. but still await your reply.. As Alexander Pope once said "Hope springs eternal......"
apologise for the numerous spelling and grammatical errors.. but those socialist types tend to bring out the worst in me...
New Labour own the biggest blog in Britain. It's called the BBC.
The left are too busy being in power to waste time looking at blogs.
But the real tragedy is that these so-called conservative voices are anything but.
And it is very amusing that Brian Appleyard - the last person to write intelligently about the finest conservative thinker alive, Roger Scruton (possibly the only one for which the term is not an oxymoron) - should be seen on here.
It is because Peter Hitchens does not have his own blog to report his drug-adled, sexual perverse and highly dangerous behaviours. If he did all of you would be lost.
Also do any of you right wing guys "just love Ayn Rand"? (And geek spoke to geek and the problems of the world were solved)
dust2dust..
roger scruton happens to be one of my professors at university.. and your claim of the left being too busy to read blogs is obviously incorrect for you yourself a leftist from what I gather are here reading the blog.. This is what I love about leftists and socialist.. You guys take the meaning of the word stupidity to a new zenith..
roger scruton happens to be one of my professors at university.. and your claim of the left being too busy to read blogs is obviously incorrect for you yourself a leftist from what I gather are here reading the blog.. This is what I love about leftists and socialist.. You guys take the meaning of the word stupidity to a new zenith..
Poor old Roger.
In a sane world, he would have got that chair at Cambridge, and not had to put up with the quality of student exemplified by that little Tejus tosser here. I mean, I know it is a private university but surely the ability to read must be a minimum requirement?
dust2dust...
perhaps you may choose to clarify his view; for as I understand his very name signifies something which has been discarded to the very place it came from.. ofcourse people must poesses the ability to read but who can be blamed for not understanding incomphrensible rubbish designed to amuse oneself rather than make reasoned argument.. afterall everyone has an opinion but it is that of those who choose to justify their opinion with concrete fact, which is respected..
and may i clarify myself that he is currently a member of the buckingham university staff and that though I have met him, I amyet to take a class with him; but that shall be soon done when I start a new subject in January and then maybe I shall learn more.. afterall I claim to know anything.. and then I would like to know how one would disregard the opinions of man held in such high esteem even by the disgraceful left.. so till then I shall take your slur lightly, but be assured that the wait will not be too distant.. and perhaps you may care to gather your molecules of dust and make a reasoned argument..
Back in the 60's the left captured control of the music industry. It set the criteria for what was cool. I could say Dylan good and ????? bad but so complete was its influence there are no ?????'s to remember. Nobody sang in favour of Vietnam or the value of law and order.
In due course the film industry and the theatre fell to their campaign.
By the 80's the left had completed its revolution. Much of publishing lay in its hands. Broadcasting was captured ground and with it the most popular form of news dissemination. The final prize was comedy. 'Alternative' comedy became the main stream and even what could be regarded as humorous became strictly controlled. Few ideas or institutions can withstand sustained and unopposed ridicule.
When Orwell wrote 1984 he missed the point. It wasn't Big Brother who had the power it was Winston Smith. If you control information and can influence opinion you don't need to rule. You just tell the rulers what to do.
Tony Blair's NuLabour is the final expression of this principle. A government run from the leader page of the Guardian and the studio of the Today program.
The answer to Guido's question, is that the new electronic media has bypassed the left's gatekeepers . It's not just blogs. Look at the most popular uploads on UTube. Very few PC offerings there. Who would have thought that despite DoughtySt's frankly ramshackle production standards it'd be regularly attracting 50,000+ viewers? That the BNP would have the most popular party website?
People are at last able to access opinion platforms that speak to THEIR concerns and more often than not those concerns are very different from what they've been told they should be.
Tejus Ramakrishnan said...
all bloody taken..
I believe that you are wrong to say that we are not interested in you council estate types.. we most definetly are.. maybe you are the exception to the rule having tried to get job, stop being a burden on the state and so on, but still when you speak one can see that the slum upbringing is hard to remove from your words..
Thankyou so much for your interest in me and the 'likes' of me you condescending ponce. As a working tax payer of long standing who has been married for 30 years with three children and who owns his own home by DINT OF HARD WORK I can assure you that I am heartened to know that there are total arseholes like you around so willing to keep us working class oiks where we belong. When I went to grammar school (all those years ago) I met and mingled with a great many kids from well off middle class families who as they grew older took on 'left wing' views which they were able to do due to their oh so comfortable life styles. All the 'left' care about is keeping people down so as to justify their own pointless existence and pointless views. How you seem to work out I am a 'socialist' is beyond me. None of the so called 'main' political parties appeal to me at present. Bliar and his crew are well past their sell by date; Cameron is a Bliar clone; Ming C is not even worth considering. And no the BNP has no appeal for me. Hopefully though a new Maggie Thatcher will appear on the horizon... :)
all bloody taken..
after your clarification that you would like a new maggie thatcher makes think your an all right chap.. kind of.. and did not mean to be condescending mate.. was just hoping you would see how it is hard for someone to symphatise with the council estate types when one can see the general image that the chavs portray of themselves to the world at large.. and i fear the age of the cambridge socialist is thing of the past..
all bloody taken..
also I must add I must say that I respect your ability to retort with an argument without taking things too personally.. will enjoy debating with you even if I may not neccessarily agree with your opinions..
Tejus Ramakrishnan : are you for real..? Surely not... LOL...
all bloody taken..
if you look at my blog you will understand that though a 'right' conservative I am, my philosophy is rather intricate and complex.. so yes, I am for real.. Oh and choose to percieve the thatcher comment how I wished to.. So yes again, I am for real
The answer has been said already in this huge and odd ragbag of comments: it's to do with who is in power now. If Dave Cameron ever gets into Downing St then standby to see lefty blogs go forth and multipy- and I don't mean 'fuck off'- in the same way that rightwing ones have. Mind you, Guido is so popular, I reckon, not because of his rightwingery per se but because of his anarchistic nose-twisting and arse kicking. He is the nearest we have to an online tabloid Private Eye.
Tejus Ramakrishnan, YOU ARE A TOTAL CUNT!
I wonder if you will misinterpret that comment too.
anonymous..
Cheers M8.. As churchill or someone once said.. you know your doing something right, when people start disliking you.. so its alright..
Tejus, you are doing nothing right.
It isn't just that you are wrong - that is incidental - you don't even begin to understand what thinking consists in.
I really do hope that is not your real name, because not only are the words twat, cunt, and tosser now forever linked to your name, but so is the evidence that they are so decisively defining of your qualities.
You'd better start pulling some posts, mate.
I used to go out drinking with Roger Scruton in the eighties, myself, Peter Hitchens, Barbera Amiel and little Bennie Netanyahu would form a foursome to hit Stringfellows after warming up in the Whitehall pubs! After a few pints of Old Roger - Mr S. would perform his amazing "how many marbles can I fit in my foreskin routine?" whilst Babs blew smoke rings from her fanny! Great days!
The picture illustrating this from the Comment Central site is of course a rip off from a Private Eye cartoon of the late 1980s which had a picture of Mrs ("I pity da fool") T with similar caption - noting that the holder did not wish to receive a visit from Thatch if hospitalised in a disaster (after Lockerbie, Pipe Alpha, herald of Free Enterprise, Kings Cross, &c). I belive this led to much suscription cancelling.
Perhaps guido could add Comment Central to any plagiarist of the year contest.
anonymous..
at least I am willing to stand by my convicitions.. whatever they may be.. while you choose to hide behind the veil of anonymity.. also if you have as much intellect as you would like us do to believe you poesses, why don't you write a blog where your opinions could be judged by what you write.. merely visiting guidos blog and writing your opinions without a name is not exactly a hard thing is it.. So maybe you should let others judge you based on what you write in the same manner that you are delivering your convictions upon others..
mutley the dog
remember how I used to do the "penny derby" hopping from table to table and then dropping a penny into a pint glass from between my clenched buttocks?
Great days indeed.
"Tejus Ramakrishnan"? I could never do anagrams. Did you really mean "zenith" (12.05 am)?
Sambo his real name is
"Tedious ramalamadingdong"
(hat tip nemania)
Blair's Diana tribute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjKweo_t1kU&NR
sambo..
your right.. I meant nadir.. not zenith
hitchens..
come on.. stop taking the old man comment so seriously.. On a more serious note I may not agree with your opinions but nonetheless I respect most of what you say (albeit not when you are taking the piss.. lol).. so stop taking things so seriously.. itz all in good spirit..
"Has anyone got a convincing explanation as to why Britain's four most popular political blogs come from a Cameroonie sympathiser, a libertarian, a Thatcherite and a Christian conservative?"
Yes. Internet users are wankers. [I know, I know]
93 posts and i'm still none the wiser.
"remember how I used to do the "penny derby" hopping from table to table and then dropping a penny into a pint glass from between my clenched buttocks?
Great days indeed"
Hi Peter Hitchens - I had half forgotten that particular trick! I think it was Sir Ivan Lawrence QC - who was locked in an arm wrestling competition with Woodrow Wyatt (the timekeeper none other than old Perry Worsthorne!) -who christened the game. I believe that was when we first met Guido - working as a Bus-Boy at Stringfellows, he probably still has the scars from the infamous pemguin/bottle challenge!
And occasionaly Her Majesty the Queen mother would join us at the coach and horses for a gin and tonic and a game of shove ha'penny before getting on the old joanna and knocking out knees up mother brown.
There never was a better bus boy than guido ,george melly always used to thrust £20 into guidos Y fronts if he "teabaged " him.
Remember that time the late David Napley was caught felching Fruity Metcalfe in the gents at tramp?
"Remember that time the late David Napley was caught felching Fruity Metcalfe in the gents at tramp?"
Like yesterday! Whatever happened the photos?, I think I recall that the young shit Normy Tebbit got hold of them and used them in some kind of blackmail thingy? Otherwise no accounting how it got into the cabinet unless he was porking the great she Crocodile. Guido was always up for teabagging but I think even he drew the line at Neil the nazi Hamilton - who married that horse who won the 68 national, when we all threw up one after another in Fruitys Topper!