OK, scrub the last post about posting being a bit light, I’ve had enough of doing HTML/CSS scripting for one night and there’s a few issues I want to let off about.
The first of these is David Miliband’s blog. I’m not exactly sure what to make of it. I’m not going to go down the line of various critics out there that this site must be costing a fortune to the taxpayer because that’s a bit of a simple attack line that would be more in the childlike interpretation of politics that one would expect from the trash end of the blogosphere.
However my views on it are in some way shaped by it’s particular hosting. Here’s the thing. Corporate blogging is quite common, not necessarily a bad thing, good for companies to keep in touch with customers, especially if they provide a service and equally a more open and honest approach to feedback if the company screws something up.
My webhost is a good example of this, they run a blog to let us customers know when servers have gone down, routers need changing or simply they’ve fucked something up but are trying to fix it. I appreciate that openness and honesty on their part and I’m quite happy to stick with them for this, plus many other reasons.
Blogging in the private sector has taken off, it promotes more honesty, but like most systems it is open to abuse and there’s equally a number of companies that use it to misinform customers, play mind games with competing companies and try to influence things like stock and share prices.
I’ll admit to have not come across any openly sanctioned public sector blogs, perhaps it’s something we should encourage. Personally I’d be very interested in reading the blog of the Walsall Council Chief Executive. It could promote the removal of barriers between faceless bureaucrats in positions that affect people’s lives and those that they serve. Even, just possibly restore a bit of faith in our continually bombarded by the right-wingnut brigade public servants.
So on that basis, a blog appearing on a Government departmental website I wholly support.
However, when that blog is by the Secretary of State for that department things start to get a bit more muddled. He is afterall a politician, and because of that however much he may try to keep the focus on specific areas that are in relation to his department, personal views get through. This steps into the very questionable area then of how such a blog is to be perceived. On the whole it’s quite business-like and deals with the issues relevant to his department, however there are some aspects which are definitely of a personal nature which represent his own views and step (not in the case of outright party political campaigning) away from his brief.
I personally don’t think this is a good thing as it opens up questioning and mud slinging from a host of different people which further damages politics as a whole.
I did however notice that he’s got a new blogroll. This is what spurred me into this article. Haven’t got a problem with a blogroll were David to have his own website which is openly his and may even be of an overtly political nature, but as it is on Defra’s system then this really does overstep the mark for me. It also calls into question about who or what David Miliband is as a person.
Bear with me on this one. You can tell a fair bit about someone by the company they keep. In our online blogocircle thingy there’s a good chance you’re blogroll represents a group of people whom’s particular view you either endorse or at the very least give credence to even if it may be oposing your own. However the presence of a blogroll that includes overtly political links is not appropriate for what is or should be a corporate blog of a particular government department.
It’s also interesting to note the blogs that appear there, I’m thinking Paul (whatever his other name is) Staines AKA Guido Fawkes and Ian (honestly I’m not a liar) Dale. Apart from them being Tories who have tried to bring the blogosphere into disrepute of late with their little antics, they also represent the trash end of blogosphere and quite frankly, if David Miliband does read their little titbits then he has seriously gone down in my estimation.
In all honesty, I don’t think he would read such trash, he openly admits that although he writes the posts, his blog is done by staff at Defra. So the question is, did he request those particular blogs to be included himself, in which case he really should do a bit more research beforehand or were they put there because some bod a Defra who probably equally does not understand the medium or the politics of the situation decided to add them because they’d heard somewhere that they were ‘leading’ UK political blogs.