Three Score Years and Ten: A Blog to Enjoy
Via Bob Piper’s post “Never Mind the Width” I (memo to self: spend an hour a week “wasting time” surfing new blog), I found a new and interesting blog from Dronfield, which is in my area, Three Score Years and Ten - with the excellent tag-line:
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards” - Søren Kierkegaard
Harry Barnes was Labour MP for North-East Derbyshire for the years 1987-2005. He writes about local life (especially Sheffield Football Club - the world’s oldest club founded in 1857), Iraqi and Iranian events. Here are some a quantity of posts that I enjoyed reading from the last couple of months years. You have to navigate the blog via the archives or search facility, as Harry does not use labels or categories.
The Understanding Iranian Politics Series:
- Regional Context : Part 1 of “Understanding Iran”
- Internal Make-Up : Part 2 of “Understanding Iran”
- Democratic Sham? : Part 3 of “Understanding Iran”
- Factors Shaping Politics : Part 4 Of “Understanding Iran”
Sheffield FC:
- (sort of) Abramovich: Eat Your Heart Out
- Football’s Coach and Horses (Sheffield FC owns a pub)
- Eat Your Heart Out (on Sheffield FC arriving down the road)
- 150 years and 2 days old.
- When is second best? Anniversary of the oldest football fixture in the world (1860) on the same ground as the original.
- Official: the Best Team in FIFA. Visit of Sepp Blatter.
- Signing Pele. What it says on the tin.
And a selection of others:
- The Female Chartists of Iran.
- Baghdad’s Picasso.
- On the Thinking Person’s Thoughts (book review of The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Yale Nota Bene)
A gent for whom I would gladly buy a home made pie and a beer in a village pub somewhere in Derbyshire for the pleasure of the conversation.
Enough. A feed of political blogs awaits compilation. If my new alternative blog front page beta version is not out today it is half Harry’s fault.
Tags: Harry Barnes, three score years and ten, labour, bob piper
Thanks. The reason you had to navigate my blog is that I don’t know how to provide categories and the like. As Groucho Marx said “A child of five could understand this. Send somebody to fetch me a child of five”.
You put labels in the field of that name when editing a post.
You can see them on Iain Dale’s blog at the bottom of each post.
You have anything from a few to a few dozen labels, then when a reader clicks on one it brings up all the other posts with the same label.
In your case, you could go for labels “Sheffield FC”, “Iran Politics”, “Local Beers”, “Trade Unions”, “Iraqi Bloggers”, “Fabians” and so on - it gives visitors a way of following themes through your blog, and a way of finding more articles of interest to them. It also makes them stay longer and be (maybe) more persuaded by your argument.
If you’re feeling really dedicated, you can go back and re-edit all the existing posts (or perhaps the more important ones).
I hope that is helpful. If not, please ask again.
There is a tutorial here.
Thank you muchly. I owe you the home made pie and beer. I have now labelled my 302 posts. The main ones are - Iraq 110, Labour Party 53, Football 49, Sheffield FC 32 and Trade Unions 30. It means that I can now find my way around them myself!
I’ll cut you a deal. You buy the pies, I’ll get the beer - at a well dressing somewhere this summer.
Matt