The Wardman Wire

This post is about a new blog I picked up via Ian Whickham at Question That, which has a name every bit as good as the Harry’s Place slogan:

Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.

The blog is Underdogs Bite Upwards.

I’m not going to waffle on about blog names expressing identity (that’s one of the things that Internet Marketeers and PR People are for - so that the rest of us can think about interesting stuff); I’ll just note that these elements all have to work together:

• Blog Name
• Blog Slogan (or “Quip” as my first template called it)
• Blog Web Address
• Blog Logo
• and the personality of the writer(s).

But … I’ve never thought before that biting upwards is the only thing that Underdogs can do. It literally comes down to this (with apologies to that great Roman Catholic reforming monk Martin Luther):

“Here I stand -
I can do no other.
Chomp.”

I think of a small vicious dog in Beano-style: a piranha fish on legs, gnawing happily on the seat of the pants torn from some poor politician’s Saville Row suit.

Anyway, the blog isn’t quite like that (although it is apparently written by an artichoke).

Leg-Iron is a floating voter, and he specialises in nuggets than will delight some and go down with others like grit under the fingernails. Here are three from the last few days, and a promotion for a “Critical Mass Demonstration on Foot”.

A stroll in the City (ed: like Critical Mass on Legs)

On the Fifth of November this year, Old Holborn is going to walk to Parliament Square, dressed like this.

I haven’t seen all of the film ‘V for Vendetta’, but what I have seen of it makes the costume particularly appropriate. Old Holborn has declared an open invitation to anyone who wants to join him. The V mask, indeed the whole suit, can be bought on Ebay although the suit is optional.

If I can be in London on that date, I’ll be there (although walking is not my forte, admittedly).

If anyone wants to join this excursion, it will start on Wednesday November 5th, 2008, at midday in Trafalgar Square, London.

No placards, no shouting, no slogans, no clashes with police or anyone else. It’s just a walk. If everyone is dressed the same, it’s still just a walk.

Is that a light, there, in the distance?

The comments section includes some PC morons defending the ridiculous situation in schools and colleges now. I especially liked this one, in response to a parent complaining that their child’s teacher refuses to correct spelling errors:

If you expect a young child to correctly spell every word that is part of his/her oral vocabulary, you will end up with very simplistic unimaginative sentences, along the lines of, “I see the cat.” Children will quickly learn to use only words they are certain they can spell correctly.

I note that the writer herself had no trouble at all with ‘vocabulary’ or ‘unimaginative’, or any other spellings. A skill she must be proud of, yet one she sees fit to deny future generations.

In England’s grey and red-brick land.

We have to be eco-friendly, and to make sure we do they will tax us and tax us until we can’t afford to do anything environmentally unfriendly at all.

What will they do with all these Green taxes?

Well, they plan to use them to eradicate anything Green. Protected land is to become miraculously unprotected so houses and all manner of other structures can be built on them.

Free Doughnuts

I refuse to use the American spelling ‘donut’.

We are to be enticed out to vote by free labour doughnuts in future, it seems. I think we’d be better off voting for the doughnut instead.

What happened to all this concern for our health? That seems to have gone away very quickly.

When they lay a trail of cakes from your door to the voting office, ending in a cage propped up by a stick, you know they are desperate. It’s really not necessary to entice us out, you know. We are just itching to get to those ballot papers.

Wrapping Up

The blog can be found here, and the RSS feed here. He started in January, and posts 1-3 times a day now - after starting more slowly.

He is based in Scotland. What a pity it isn’t Macclesfield or Congleton. At least there is hope for more holes in Alex Salmond’s balloon.

Tags: new blog, underdogs bite upwards