Penguins are Go!
As the first post on my blog I thought I would start with a little introduction about who I am and what this blog is all about. I am a bloke from the Black Country coming up to my twentieth year of campaigning for the Labour Party and who after many months of having been a passive consumer of other peoples blogs decided to have a bash myself.
It’s quite apparent that this blog is not going to be about what I did with my friends the other night and that I actually have something to say about the world in which we live and the issues that affect our lives.
I hope to keep a lot of the focus of this site to the issues that affect the West Midlands although no doubt I will be commenting on national and international issues along the way. In addition to that I’m planning on doing a few research projects of my own for which I’ll be posting the results here. That is not to say content will be overly academic, there will of course be the usual musings, perceptive comments and irreverent stuff added into the mix. I’m also not adverse to a bit of LibDem and Tory bashing, although I’ll try to keep it in the context of there being a valid point to make and not do it just for the sake of it.
I will (at least to the best of my knowledge) be the only political blogger who resides in the Walsall Metropolitan Borough area following the sad demise of my old mate Paul Mac’s blog a few months back but hopefully a few more might be spurred into action.
Finally, a bit about this site. It was wholly built by myself using a few nifty tools (see credits section) with a lot of manual hacks to various scripting, a few fiddles and workarounds to various issues and is currently in its final Beta testing phase. This means there may still be a few glitches although the only one I can find is the slight layout issue with the calendar section for Internet Explorer users. This requires a bit of CSS work that I can’t be bothered to do at the moment and would rather get on with the blogging.
Terms of use are simple, you are free to post anything that you want as long as it is not offensive for the purpose of purely causing offence. I welcome well thought-through comments even if you fundamentally disagree with my views and I’m happy to discuss with you. Political point scoring designed to boost the ego of the comment’s author will be treated with the respect for which it deserves and be ignored.
21st November 2006 in Uncategorized
Paul Macmanomy responded on 22 Nov 2006 at 3:38 pm #
Thanks for the mention but who the f*** are ya! If you read my site at all you would know that I hate political blogs where people are too afraid to identify themselves and publicly stand up for their views – so lets have a bit of courage and attach our name eh?
By the way as my good friend Councillor Piper says I am a serial resigner and my abdication was a mild fit of terseness. Having followed the blogosphere for a while I realise that my intellect is towering compared to that of most out there (yourself excluded of course) – watch out ’cause I might be making a comeback.
Cassillis – if you’re watching “mate” sorry staying silent for more than a few seconds was never my strong point and I have no problem changing my mind and as you know my arrogance and self opinionated nature knows no bounds.
Political Penguin responded on 22 Nov 2006 at 8:40 pm #
Very nice to hear from you Paul.
Yes, I read your blog quite avidly and remember well your comments to those who chose to remain anonymous and on that basis I completely agree with you, although I will not be giving such contributors even the slightest attention unless of course they have something interesting to say which they rarely do.
On the issue of my own anonymity, well actually I had a long thought about this, for which Bob knows only too well when it came to devising a name for the site. My original idea was simply to use my name but I discounted that on the basis that it was a bit boring, I didn’t know what name to use given that it will change when my partner and I marry and more importantly I’m not in this for self-publicity or on some kind of an ego trip. Were I to be an elected representative such as Bob or Tom then I certainly would have used my own name, but as I remain simply un-elected me I decided it allowed me some flexibility and more scope to have a bit of fun.
I won’t elaborate on the decision process that led to political penguin but it fitted a lot of criteria for what I wanted. From easy name recognition, through to penguins being black and white which aids graphic design up to it sounding that little bit silly, or Monty Pythonesque as Bob put it. That pretty much sums up what this site is for me, hopefully some good well-informed posts and a some irreverent fun. Plus penguins are a lot cuter than I’ll ever be.
So that brings me back to anonymity. Actually, because my name is not emblazened across the front of my site it is for anyone with a modicum amount of tech knowledge quite easily and openly available. Simply do a ‘whois lookup’ search for the URL http://www.politicalpenguin.org.uk and it lists my full name and address. Were I intending to hide I would have either provided false information when registering my URL or I would have opted to pay extra to become the internet equivalent of ex-directory. Equally you might have noticed the link to Little Penguin on the blogroll, a quick click and I’m sure it’s not hard to guess my identity.
I’m very glad to see you might be considering a comeback to blogging, you’d be very welcome, an invaluable addition to the discourse, and I wouldn’t be the only political blogger in our borough. Although one thing Paul, drop me a line and we’ll get you your own URL and blog set up instead of that Blogger stuff, it’s not really that good a system and we’ll leave that to the likes of Iain Dale.
Anyway, enough of this, just for you Paul, it’s Gareth you muppet.