On the radio

Posted on 26 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

I’m doing a spot as a studio guest on a politics show from 7.00pm-8.00pm this Friday on Wolverhampton Community Radio which is broadcast on 101.8FM although I have no idea as to how large an area they cover.

I thought I should just qualify a few things. My taking part in this show stems from an invitation by a Tory in Wolverhampton called Matthew Revell. He’ll be hosting the show as it appears he’s trying to develop himself a career in the media so good luck to him. Originally he asked me if I would be interested in an internet radio show where we could discuss issues in greater depth than you would usually get in the mainstream media so I agreed. This moved on to Matthew securing a spot on an actual radio station but being the nice person I am I didn’t want to let him down.

I will be frank that I am somewhat hesitant over the format given that his original idea of a more in-depth discussion may well have been watered down to accommodate for the need to appeal to a broader audience. It’s a sit down ‘friendly chat’ format with the another guest who is Paul Uppal, another Tory and PPC for Wolverhampton South West.

I do hope it doesn’t become a replication of so many political shows where real in-depth discussion is discarded for a bland overview. Looking at the schedule I’m not sure how detailed we will be able to get on any particular issue but we will see.

I’ll add a final note. When Matthew mentioned to me that it would be a mainstream media broadcaster I was tempted not to say yes. I’ve always thought that there is something of the outsider nature about blogging, that it doesn’t cross over to the MSM despite the fact that some bloggers have deliberately used the media purely for the purposes of ‘getting on’. I blog because I enjoy it. If I stopped enjoying it, I’d stop. I didn’t start blogging to try and get myself a higher profile, nor to wangle my way into the media or any particular line of work.

That said, I hope I’m feeling a bit better tomorrow night. I’ve been getting the shivers tonight and have a sneaky suspicion I may be coming down with a Summer (yes, what Summer?) cold. So if I sound a bit ropey tomorrow, I do apologise.

A bit of reflection

Posted on 24 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

Last week I broke this story. It was nice that within the space of two an a half hours it was the breaking news on the BBC Newsnight programme, gave me a little bit of warm self contented feeling inside.

It is however curious when one considers the interaction between the mainstream media and those of us in the blogging world. I can’t claim to have read every paper or followed every broadcast but as far as I can tell, the only mainstream media organisation that actually attributed the story to me was the New Statesman.

I’ll admit to not being regular reader of that publication but fair enough to them that their online edition posted a link, for which my referral states have been going quite mad for the last 48 hours or so. Easily outranking any other referrer including Google searches which almost always dominates (usually with some strange search terms I might add) but it’s been nice to have been acknowledged so a hat tip goes out to the New Statesman tonight.

A bit of clarification

Posted on 23 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

Regular readers may have noticed an addition to the main menu of the site entitled ‘.htaccess project’. I only mention this because yesterday I was contacted by someone inquiring about it so I thought I better clarify what it’s all about.

The genesis of it came in relation to a problem brought up by fellow blogger Tyger who was having problems with the quantity of scummy spammers over at his site. Most bloggers will have come across the problem of spam but it affects us all in different ways. For some it’s just an annoyance or a waste of our time going through the reams of rubbish, adverts for pharmaceuticals, trackback spam or annoying little people who tell us how nice our site is while embedding a link back to teenage girls with big knockers.

I gave Tyger a basic crash course in some of the wonders of the use of the .htaccess file and out of that came the idea that a collaborative approach could yield results.

I won’t go into detail in this post as that will come when the project gets up and running but it’s aimed at bloggers who have a certain setup to their site. It is NOT aimed at bloggers who use free hosted systems. Things such as sites that end in .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. It’s aimed at bloggers who have gone to the expense of getting their own hosting package and URL who have access to their files on that server via FTP. If you have your own hosting, this will almost certainly be the case and don’t worry I will get round to doing easy to follow instructions for the whole process.

Who’s this aimed at? Well, in the process of scooting around I had a chat with Zeth Green who suggested what would be a superior methodology to achieve the same result but would have resulted in a need to programme specific plugins for various platforms for which neither I nor anyone else I know with the requisite tech knowledge would have time to do. This project is primarily aimed at those who don’t necessarily have oodles of tech knowledge (so most political bloggers) but it does have the advantage of being cross-platform so if you use WordPress, Movable Type, B2Evolution, Drupal or even Blogger systems, if you’ve got your own hosting then it will work.

What’s the point of the project?

Whatever blogging system you use almost all have some form of spam filtering techniques. Where they all fall down though is that they operate within the site. So by the time they do their stuff the naughty little spamming bots have been half way round your site interacting with it, attempting to place comments and this wastes bandwidth, not to mention computational power slowing sites down for real users.

What we want to do is stop them getting that far by using the .htaccess file which almost everyone will have to stop these spambots from getting onto the site in the first place. After all, bandwidth is what those of us who have hosting packages pay for, it’s money and why should we allow it to be eaten up by these obnoxious little urchins peddling their crap.

What it will amount to is an easy cut and paste list of ‘bad naughty evil IP addresses’ where known spam comes from that can be popped into a .htaccess file with the simple use of a text editor which everyone has and the use of an FTP client that is freely available to all. Tyger has already said he’s up for the project for which you may have noticed the addition of a login form on the site. This will be to allow those who want to contribute to sign into the site and add content. If however anyone else would like to be a contributor, feel free to let me know in the contact section. This is a distinctly non-partisan project so even if you’re a Tory or dare I say it, a LibDem then if you’re interested in contributing something back to the blogging community then drop me a line.

I’ve got one

Posted on 21 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

Yes, one of these:
Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallow book

It’s a bit of a surprise for Mrs Penguin but I convinced her that I would go into Wolverhampton tomorrow, (which is actually today now) and pick her up a copy. Instead I queued outside Waterstones for 2 hour after midnight in the sodding pouring rain to pick up a copy for her. She better bloody appreciate it in the morning.

Yes, love does do strange things to the otherwise rational mind.

So where was the 33,33,26% split on the votes then?

Posted on 20 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

I’m a bit confused. Isaby ran that story that he’d been given the split of the votes from the postals that would give Labour and the Tories 33% each and the LibDems 26%. One can only judge from the actual result now it’s in that these figures were either made up, deliberately spun to try and squeeze out as many Tory votes as possible to save them from an embarrassing third place for Cameron’s Conservatives or if as he claimed the figures came from someone in the Tory campaign that their tellers are complete and utter rubbish.

Exclusive – Electoral Law broken in Ealing Southall

Posted on 18 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

I just picked up on this blog post over at the Telegraph:
Telegraph article
For legal reasons I am not linking directly to it as it contains information that breaches electoral law. You will also see that the specific information has been smudged out so as not to open myself up to legal procedures.

What this article in the Telegraph claims is that someone from the Tories has provided information pertaining to the initial validating of the postal votes in the Ealing Southall by-election. All political parties are allowed representatives to oversee the validation process however any release of an indication as to how the votes are going for each party is strictly prohibited as such a release could influence or be prejudicial to the outcome of the ballot.

Anyone in any doubt of the seriousness of releasing such information should consider schedule 6 of the 2000 amendments to the 1983 Representation of the People’s Act which clearly states:

“66A. – (1) No person shall, in the case of an election to which this section applies, publish before the poll is closed-

(a) any statement relating to the way in which voters have voted at the election where that statement is (or might reasonably be taken to be) based on information given by voters after they have voted, or

(b) any forecast as to the result of the election which is (or might reasonably be taken to be) based on information so given.

(2) This section applies to-

(a) any parliamentary election; and

(b) any local government election in England or Wales.

(3) If a person acts in contravention of subsection (1) above, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months.”

This is of course a very serious issue for the Telegraph in releasing this information but as the article specifically identifies the source as being from the Tories they may have some serious questions to answer – to the police.

[Update] The page on the Telegraph’s website has now been pulled.

Now for a bit of Schnick und Schnack

Posted on 18 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

I mentioned a while back that I’m quite interested in advertising and can quite appreciate a good bit of work. Equally I personally find that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. Not to mention a bit of madcap comedy. That’s why I’d like to introduce you to Schnick und Schnack. They’re the focus of the new advertising campaign by Hornbach which is basically a German Homebase/B&Q DIY store.

I have no idea which one is which but Schnick Und Schnack are basically very badly made puppets, one from a green hot water bottle and the other from what looks like a blue refuse sack. This isn’t even Fingermouse or Bagpuss territory for making characters out of bits of old tat.

The strange thing is though, that it works. It’s madcap and when you compare the “you can do it when you B&Q it” or that geezer who used to be in Men Behaving Badly poncing around Homebase, I thing I’ll go with the pyschotic German puppets. Anyway, here’s my two personal favourites, the ‘fun with an air compressor’ and ‘belt sander racing’ adverts. Picked these up off YouTube but if you feel like checking out them all, Schnick und Schnack have their own website.

Hi, my name’s Tony Lit and my company was a Labour Party Donor

Posted on 14 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

I’m Tony, this is me with Tony, he used to be the Prime Minister. We got together at a Labour Party fundraiser back on the 20th of June. 7 days later I joined the Conservative Party and the next day my new bestest friend Davey Cameron imposed me as the David Cameron’s Conservatives candidate for the Ealing Southall by-election.

On the 15th of June just before I met Tony at the Labour Party bash, my company issued this cheque for

What Gurcharan Singh actually said

Posted on 10 July, 2007 by PoliticalPenguin

In the interest of honesty and openness for which I’m sure all in political blogging circles would agree is important. Here’s what Gurcharan Singh actually had to say on his blog before it got stripped by those who seem to think it might make someone appear a little disingenuous to say one thing less than a fortnight ago and another now.

We’ll just start with what’s there now and no commentary much as it’s very tempting, I’ll leave it entirely up to readers as to the interpretations they conclude from it:

gurcharansinghtoryonline