A Most Peculiar Triumph 99


According to the ebuzzing (formerly wikio) rankings, this is the third most influential political blog in the UK – and the fifth most influential blog of any kind. It beats, hands down, the heavily funded ConservativeHome and Labourlist propaganda operations.

Of the two political blogs ahead of it, Guido Fawkes has permanent paid staff, whereas Liberal Conspiracy is a collective of 32 high profile ultra politically correct guardianistas; many of whom are paid by mainstream media.

Yet this blog has total funding of precisely nil and is only me, an ageing and disillusioned man sickened by the growing gap between rich and poor, the domination of mainstream political parties by corporate interests, and the continual promotion of aggressive war.

This blog does everything wrong. There are frequent gaps between posts, sometimes of weeks on end, because I get too depressed at instances of the callous disregard of the powerful for ordinary people.

I do not tweet, except that the start of each blog entry automatically gets tweeted, which someone set up for me.

This is an SNP supporting blog based in Ramsgate, Kent, written by a manic depressive sacked diplomat of eclectic views, whose guiding lights are the deeply unfashionable John Stuart Mill and William Hazlitt, whose favourite book was written by Michael Foot, and who is still metaphorically on his knees begging forgiveness for advising people to put Nick Clegg into government.

This blog, like all the other top blogs, could make substantial money from advertising, but is the only one not to carry advertising because it does not desire money.

It is webhosted for free, and kept running by a team of techies and moderators who do it for free also, not because they support a party or policy line or everything I say, but because they like the blog. It has the most free, well nigh anarchic moderation policy of any major blog. You can say what you like, including being very critical of me. Racism is pretty well the only red line. Opposing voices are very welcome.

I don’t do political correctness.

Even more heretically, this blog succeeds despite the fact the ebuzzing rankings show the majority of its posts are about international relations. Not only is it interested in foreigners, it tends to concentrate on Africa, Central Asia and other places the mainstream media scarcely believe exist. This blog succeeds so well because the mainstream media leaves unmet an active desire for information by very large numbers of people who are not as stupid as they think.

I have been lucky to have led a fascinating and varied life and as a result not only have a large number of high level contacts who would be the envy of any journalist, but am prepared to publish facts that mainstream political discourse finds uncomfortable.

To give just a few examples, this blog made public that Adam Werritty and Liam Fox had eight meetings with Matthew Gould, now British Ambassador to Israel, not the two reported in Gus O’Donnell’s whitewash “report”. At least two included Mossad, and the purpose throughout was to coordinate on the ramping up of official support for an attack on Iran.

This blog made public the deal whereby the US obtained Arab League support for the attack on Libya in return for US support for the Saudi invasion of Bahrain.

This blog revealed Lord Taylor of Blackburn’s role as bagman for New Labour, and for Jack Straw personally, in collecting from the defence industries, and BAE in particular.

This blog revealed the dirty deal between the British government and the Karimov regime to resume arms supplies and military training in return for logistic support for Afghanistan.

You would be surprised by how many people actually embedded in the establishment, including Members of Parliament and very senior mainstream media journalists, have told me they regularly read this blog to see what is really happening. it is an antidote to the model of single propaganda narrative that now characterises mainstream media.

The stratospheric rise of this blog up the industry rankings is not actually caused by a sudden increase in popularity. That popularity has been there for years. But at last it is being measured.

The old wikio rankings measured the number of links from other blogs; in the case of political blogs, only from other political blogs. So clusters of New Labour, Tory and Lib Dem blogs, by constantly linking to each other, could collectively drive themselves up the rankings.

But over 70% of incoming links to this blog are from outside the UK; they did not count for anything at all in the rankings. Nor did the frequent links to this blog from the sites of major newspapers and broadcast companies in the UK and around the globe.

Ebuzzing now has abandoned the old wikio algorithm in favour of a much wider measurement, which draws on more reference sources, including twitter and newspaper sites. The result reflects much more the actual readership and influence of a blog than did the old wikio rankings:

More than 2 million sources are catalogued and analysed. The semantic content ranking is performed automatically. Blog and article popularity are calculated using our algorithm, which takes into account content shares and recommendations on Twitter, Facebook and the primary content exchange platforms.

I think it is hilarious that the huge wedges of cash put by Lord Ashcroft or Unite into the Tory and New War Criminal blogging propaganda arms cannot see off this old chap with his ancient laptop.

The internet remains a great leveller, and that remains reason to hope.


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99 thoughts on “A Most Peculiar Triumph

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  • Julian

    I endorse all the positive things that have been said about Craig, the mods, and the lovely commenters (or commentators – actually you can be both; sheesh, and I thought I was a pedant :-))

    I also think this site is good because Craig has a sense of humour, and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

    However, I have noticed that internet success brings trolls,and I hope we can ignore them, and also be civil with each other, however much people may disagree. Trolls are the white noise of the internet and hamper communication, which is their main function.

    atb

    Julian

  • John Goss

    Uccello, that’s a great poem you quote from, Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy. Not wishing to perpetuate the conspiracy theory ad infinitum but if you read Paul Foot’s biography Red Shelley there is a clear attempt by the British security services to either kill Shelley or frighten the living daylights out of him in Wales, if I recall correctly. It makes you wonder if they succeeded in Italy.

    The hypocrisy of Oxford University in sending Shelley down and then erecting a naked statue to his memory stretches my comprehension to its limit.

  • Mary

    We will have to watch out! The ConDems are pushing this bill through and are debating it at the moment. Another lawyers’ paradise in the making.

    Summary of the Bill
    The aim of the Bill is to reform the law of defamation to ensure that a fair balance is struck between the right to freedom of expression and the protection of reputation. The Bill makes a number of substantive changes to the law of defamation, but is not designed to codify the law into a single statute.

    Key areas

    includes a requirement for claimants to show that they have suffered serious harm before suing for defamation
    removes the current presumption in favour of a jury trial
    introduces a defence of “responsible publication on matters of public interest”
    provides increased protection to operators of websites that host user-generated content, providing they comply with the procedure to enable the complainant to resolve disputes directly with the author of the material concerned
    introduces new statutory defences of truth and honest opinion to replace the common law defences of justification. and fair comment.

    http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/defamation.html

    Comment
    Internet trolls targeted in new bill to tackle defamation online
    Websites will get greater protection from being sued if they help identify people
    posting defamatory messages under new plans
    Press Association
    guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 June 2012 08.04 BST

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jun/12/internet-trolls-bill-defamation-online

  • Uccello

    Cheers John Goss, it was brought to my attention recently when I was wandering around a museum memorial to Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar, India, scene of British massacre of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, requesting that the collective punishment the British were meting out to all Indian men for the accosting of a British lady one night, (all men had to crawl on their bellies down that particular roads with Privates dishing out indiscriminate whippings) be ended. It said that Gandhi used to recite large chunks of it to Indian massed gatherings.

    Just been teaching it to my A-Level kids who loved it and have a healthy distrust of establishment lies. There is hope yet, we just have to guide the youth on a more enlightened tolerant path!

    Keep doing what you’re doing.

    Uccello

  • Gregor

    ‘There are frequent gaps between posts, sometimes of weeks on end, because I get too depressed at instances of the callous disregard of the powerful for ordinary people. ‘

    Still, many of us are very grateful for your work!

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