Depressingly predictable:Euro MPs are preparing to vote on proposals for European Union regulation of blogs with the aim of countering a "dangerous" and unregulated blogosphere. Marianne Mikko, an Estonian centre-left MEP, is concerned that growing numbers of blogs are being used by individuals with "malicious intentions or hidden agendas". "We do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source," she said. This saga has been rumbling on for a few months now, and I don't really have all that much to add on the subject, beyond hurling a hearty "fuck you" in the general direction of Marianne Mikko and anyone she happens to be standing next to at...

Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new, all-singing, all-dancing Sitemeter is actually a complete piece of...

There have been a couple of posts in recent weeks about Gordon Brown’s mental state; most notably from Tom Paine and Guido Fawkes, and subsequently commented on by myself here. These were followed a couple of days later by this rather po-faced criticism at Pickled Politics, in which Sunny Hundal ascribed the "Gordon is bonkers" meme to "malicious right wingers", who are apparently much quicker to resort to character assassination than their equivalents on the left.To anyone who has been paying any kind of attention whatsoever to the tactics employed by New Labour this past decade - without question the most dishonest government in modern British history - the idea that the Right has a monopoly on playing dirty is so transparently ludicrous as to be unworthy of further comment. Apart...

Sorry, this is all navel-gazing stuff. But since I mentioned it already, I should probably point out that the results are up. If this happened on the train I would probably be complaining quite vociferously. As it is, I lie between the Brian Taylor and Calum Cashley in Iain Dale’s top 40 Scottish political blogs, as voted for by readers. More to the point, this list is definitive proof that this blog is the second best non-aligned non-MSM Scottish political blog (behind Ideas of Civilisation). I always knew it. (Any way to make the result sound more impressive, huh?) Overall this blog is 16th, which is a dramatic fall of fourteen places from my previous position in this list. Still, I got off lightly. The person who was number 1 in that previous poll is nowhere to be seen in the top...

Beaten to the punch by an MP - a Labour MP at that, gah! - but very chuffed with second spot in Iain Dale's latest list, of the top 40 Scottish blogs as voted for by his readers and others - over 1,100 votes in total. These polls can be, and have been, criticised, and there's no doubt that if the vote had been run elsewhere it might have produced a different result. Nonetheless, it does open up a range of new blogs for the casual reader and reminds me that my own blogroll is hopelessly out of date, which I will address ASAP.Tom's blog is a worthy winner. It is that most rare of birds; a readable, entertaining and honest blog by a politician (and a minister to boot). I heartily recommend it.So thanks for voting and do check out some of the other splendid blogs on the list:1 Tom Harris MP2...

Careful who you criticise. Last time it was the odious Alisher Usmanov: this time, so far as we can tell, a Sheffield-based "academic" whose website links to the Neo-Nazi David Duke. Apparently she doesn't like people pointing this out. Harry's Place is, at time of writing this (7:45pm on Tuesday), down: taken off line after legal threats. Here's the story in their own words, before the site was taken offline: Don’t panic if we disappear briefly…By Brett on Admin Harry’s Place may be removed (or rather have it’s DNS disabled) after a ‘complaint’ to the company that our domain name is registered with. We assume after threats were made on the weekend that this ‘complaint’ originates from Jenna Delich or her supporters. Though we have not yet seen the complaint submitted, we...

if anyone feels like strolling down - especially if you are good-looking, sexually available and undiscerning - then feel free...Using your blog to try and get laid. Is this a new...

...and suitably refreshed after a fortnight in the sun. Many, many thanks to my three guest bloggers who kept the ship from hitting the rocks in my absence - pints are undoubtedly owed. While I have been away, the Witanagemot blog awards were announced. All blogging awards are, of course, glorified circle-jerks, but when you are the centre of a circle-jerk it is rude not to acknowledge the efforts of your fellow jerkers (jerkees?).So many thanks for the categories in which this blog was recognised, not least as "Best Scottish Political Blog" and "Blogger Most Deserving of a Book Deal". I wait by the phone with bated breath. In the meantime, I direct you to the Scottish blogging roundup, which contains some proper Scottish political blogs and is well worth a few minutes of your...

Sombre news:An Australian woman - reputed to be the world's oldest internet blogger - has died at the age of 108, officials say.Olive Riley had posted more than 70 entries about her life since she began her blog in February 2007. She shared her thoughts on modern life and experiences of living through the entire 20th Century, including two world wars and the Great Depression.With her passing, the world's oldest blogger now lives in...

As you may have noticed, there has been a subtle change in my blog banner; my rather amateurish design is currently being tweaked by DK to look just a little more professional. His rates are very reasonable and I recommend his services to all.This may pave the way to a more general redesign in a few months' time; the current look creaks a little round the edges and relies on a plethora of jury-rigged solutions and patches cobbled together by someone (ie me) who knows nothing of such technical matters; with the result that, by this stage, my blog template looks like a badly packed kebab.If and when a redesign is in the offing, I will be sure to ask you all for feedback on how to improve the site - short of deleting it altogether,...

Here.

Another one of these damnable memes. Trixy wants to see a photo of my messy computer desk. So here it is, complete with hilariously old monitor (to be replaced, when funds permit, with something snazzy and state-of-the-art). I briefly considered scattering Wittgenstein and Hayek volumes casually across the foreground, but it turns out I only have the pop-up versions.In an attempt to strangle this one at birth, I will refrain from passing it...

In a spirit of reciprocity, may I direct you to Politics Home which was launched yesterday amid much fanfare. From the blurb:Headed up by one of the founding members of the BBC News website, Nick Assinder, and with the additional editorial direction of Andrew Rawnsley, Tim Montgomerie, Martin Bright and Freddie Sayers, the PoliticsHome index acts as an intelligent filter, picking out everything that is newsworthy, provoking controversy or of long term significance and presenting it in a logical and user-friendly way.The project is initiated and funded by Stephan Shakespeare, founder and CIO of YouGov PLC.PoliticsHome treats the world of politics with the same seriousness financial news agencies treat the financial markets: minute by minute, hour by hour. There is an hourly tracker of the...

Jackie Ashley:I am speaking impressionistically, not scientifically: but has not the rise of the internet coincided with a rise of the men's magazine culture? Blogworld is the future, and it will not be resisted; but at this stage in its development, it seems dominated by rightwing male individualists and libertarians.Ashley is broadly correct - even if the phrase "I am speaking impressionistically, not scientifically" does sound uncannily like a euphemism for "I am making this shit up as I go along" from where I'm standing. This lack of diversity is regrettable; it's thoroughly unhealthy that the blogosphere is dominated by rightwing male individualists and libertarians. So come on; let's have more rightwing female individualists and libertarians in there too. You know, for...

I don't normally puff websites and products as a result of emails from PR people, but since this new site has been kind enough to mention me, it seems churlish not to return the favour. Like DK, I find myself on the list of "most influential blogs" on Wikio, a new news and blogs aggregator site. The list seems rather idiosyncratic - as fabulous as I undoubtedly am, this blog is certainly not one of the 10 most "influential" blogs in the country - and there are some notable omissions. Nonetheless, it does appear that there is some method at work in the rankings:The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. These links are dynamic, which means that they are backlinks or links found within articles.Blogrolls are not taken...

I’m sure it’s normal, a matter of days before a piece of me goes on sale in bookshops, to fall prey to the jitters. So far, those who have read “petite” all said complimentary things. Admittedly these were people who were supposed to be on my side - agent, publisher, friends, family - but [...]...

This is a blog post about blogging. For the silent majority to whom such matters are [rightly] deadly dull, I give you the surfing cat from Peru instead.Once again, blog wars threaten to break out; the long-running dispute between Tim Ireland and Guido Fawkes has now seen legal threats issued for the first time (or at least the first time of which I am aware). I try to stay out of such things, but this is worth a brief comment.I hope the gentlemen in question will forgive me for suggesting that the specifics of the dispute are fairly arcane; should you wish, you can get a fuller description of the ins and outs here. (I provide a link to Tim’s blog alone in the absence of any reference to the matter on Guido’s.) Suffice it to say that Guido has taken exception to allegations made...

Iain Dale's taking a lot of flak today for not only refusing to comment on the Derek Conway story, but - honestly, but in my view unnecessarily - putting up a post drawing attention to the fact.No blogger is under any obligation to post on anything, and that's doubly true of bloggers who, as in Iain's case, happen to be friends of politicians who find themselves in a spot of bother. I have friends who are actively involved in politics, in all the three major parties - four, if you count the Lib Dems - and I wouldn't go after them if they were in this situation, whatever side they were on. What sort of friendship, indeed, would that be? Those members of opposing political parties who are enjoying Iain's obvious discomfort should, in the interests of full disclosure, provide a link on their...

Back, refreshed and ready for another year calling people cunts for no discernible reason. I trust everyone had a happy New Year and I wish you the best for 2008 in whatever personal or professional spheres your hopes chiefly rest.2007 closed with, among other things, criticism from some quarters of sweary "bloggertarians" for being simplistic, incoherent, negativist, unread (in the sense of unlettered, rather than unvisited), childish and misanthropic. Some of these criticisms are well off the mark; others have more than a degree of truth to them. For the sake of time and space, but mostly because intra-blogging spats are cripplingly tedious for everyone else, I am happy to plead guilty to all of the above characterisations and move on. I try to leaven the abuse here with the odd more...

Charlie Brooker:Last week I mentioned my burgeoning Facebook obsession in print. This was my first mistake. By the end of the day I had received several hundred "friend requests", mainly from students so desperate to escape the tedium of revision they'd idly befriend literally anyone, including me. Probably out of pity. With excellent timing, just as Justin and Tim write compelling blog posts explaining why they are cutting ties with the ghastly social disease that is Facebook, there is a Readers of Mr Eugenides Facebook group now available.If you are reading this you are welcome to join up. A natty button now sits atop the right-hand sidebar which will whisk you to the group URL, or of course you can just search for groups with "Eugenides" in the title - there aren't that many.What's the...

Everyone knows that while Messrs Dale and Fawkes may have Britain's most popular blogs, they're certainly not the best ones out there. No, that accolade falls to a fearless iconoclast named Neil Clark, whose website last week finally gained some long-overdue recognition by being named the Best UK Blog in the prestigious 2007 Weblog Awards.Neil has his critics - some say, for example, that his pro-Milosevic fetish ("a man whose worst crime was to carry on being socialist") is pathetic at best and sinister at worst. Others contend that he is a genocide denier who believes that the Srebenica massacre was basically a Western fabrication (an accusation memorably rebutted by Mr Clark with the phrase "I am not 'an apologist for genocide'- no genocide occurred". Still others suggest that his...

As the government’s favourite policeman fights for his job in the face of mounting pressure to quit (as a New Labour placeman to his fingertips, it’s entirely typical that he insists on hanging on by them), the Telegraph fills some space on its website with an off-the-peg "have your say" page which asks, "Do you trust the police to keep you safe?". There are 222 comments at time of writing this, and I would estimate that answers in the negative comprise at least 95% of the total.Telegraph readers explain their loss of faith by reference to the usual complaints – police too busy filling in forms to pound the beat, PCs too PC, ‘human rights’ of criminals put above victims, that sort of thing. My purpose here isn’t to discuss these grievances - some of which I share – but to...

I started up this blog on October 30th 2005, and I'm not sure I ever expected to still be doing it two years on, but here we are; two years old today. At least I think it's two years; of course, it may be three and a half - official statistics are so unreliable these days, aren't they?That I still am staggering on with petty and ill-informed abuse, vitriol and spite is largely a tribute to yourselves for the comments and emails that have kept me going. So many thanks for coming back in spite of the dreadful quality of much of my drivel, and here's to another two years offending, insulting and complaining.After all, it's not like we're winning the...

A second and final plug for Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging, which is out this week. The list of 'top right-of-centre' blogs was chosen by a panel of 12 such bloggers; the main list of 500 top blogs, meanwhile, was voted on by about 500 readers of Dale's site. Appearing prominently on both lists is extremely flattering so, if you helped make that happen,...

It sounds like a nice line to take - the EU should stop its institutional navel gazing and get on with delivering results, looking outwards to deal with the threats in the world. Those were the words of David Miliband in his speech to the Labour Party Conference this week, as reported in The Guardian and at BBC News Online. But think about it for a moment. The Labour governments since 1997 have been paranoid about structures - creating different forms of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, establishing cabinet systems and directly elected mayors in local government, and making botched efforts to reform the House of Lords. Most recently Brown at a stroke created BERR, DIUS and DCSF (more from the Number 10 website). If that all of that is not the result of a bout of...

Beau Bo D'Or: Usmanov Already Wielding Influence at Arsenal See also Mike Power, who has the video of Sunny's appearance on More4 News last...

Disturbing developments over at Bloggerheads, where Tim Ireland's blog is "off-air" - forced out of business thanks to the bullying of an Uzbek billionaire and his lawyers.Alisher Usmanov recently bought shares in Arsenal. It's been alleged in several quarters that if they choose to dine with this guy, the Gunners should be supping with a very long spoon. The Guardian takes up the story:Schillings, the lawyers acting for Usmanov, have been in touch with several independent Arsenal supporters' websites and blogs warning them to remove postings referring to allegations made against him by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.Usmanov was jailed under the old Soviet regime but says that he was a political prisoner who was then freed and granted a full pardon once Mikhail...

It's pleasing to see that your scribe is now a respected City analyist. Cheers, Martin. Now, about that...

I am surrounded by a dense, dark, oppressive fog. I can’t see it, touch it, smell it, but it is real to me. I sensed it on the periphery of my day, quietly, ominously gathering force. I pretended it wasn’t there, at first. I blogged about my daughter, made some notes [...]...

I am rather honoured to be the subject of this week's Normblog...