Wardman Wire Magazine

This is an idea for a new non-partisan (or cross-party) group blog to cover Welsh Politics.

Most people know that I have been running a blog aggregator (politics-wales.co.uk) for a couple of years, with a combined Welsh Politics news feed at feeds.feedburner.com/politics-wales.

At present the site has a problem in that it has been auto-hacked through a weakness in the version of Wordpress used. I can clear it out, but it will take a full day to rebuild the site in another, clean, account. I can build a brand new blog in less time than that.

I am wondering if now - 1 year before a General Election - is a suitable time to move the politics-wales site over from being a pure aggregator to being a political group blog about Welsh Politics, since I can build one of those just as easily. This seems to me to be a gap in the market in commentary on Welsh Politics.

Post from: The Wardman Wire

A New Group Blog for Welsh Politics ?

Daily Show ‘does’ both Nick Griffin and, gulp, Our Beloved Leader.
Screen grabs:

How very dare they?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Indecision 2009 - Everywhere but Here Edition

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes
Political Humor
Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Post from: The Wardman Wire
Yanks go for our beloved leader

Post from: The Wardman Wire

Yanks go for our beloved leader

I ran out of space for his title, so I thought I’d better make his title an article…

(deep breath)

Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Lord President of the Council.

or, in brief:

Lord Mandelbrot.

Bearing in mind that he has more Ministers and responsibilities in his empire than anybody else since Clive of India, I’m wondering if the plaque on his office door is going to collapse into a minor black hole and whether the famous Chair went to his head.

Post from: The Wardman Wire

Lord Mandelson of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Yesterday I tweeted that I was having a bit of a Clear Out on Twitter at the Wardman Wire.

I’ve developed a habit of following politicians as they start out on Twitter to see what they have to say, and a quite a few don’t keep going. The classic Tweeter was Diane Abbott, who got very excited and sent one message in January before vanishing, presumably distracted by a television career has started Twittering again in the last 24 hours.

That’s what happens on Twitter. Things change every day.

Anyway, at present the statistics say that @mattwardman:

• is following 922 people who are not following back (”following”)
• has 459 followers who are not followed back (”fans”)
• is following 947 people who are following back (”friends”)

I’m only allowed to follow 2000 people without restriction, so I want to make some more room to keep following new people, so I’ll be having stopping following people who:

• Haven’t twittered for some time, which is likely to be a fortnight.
• Spam followers (e.g., “single girls from Russia”).

That should create some space. I’m planning to follow back more people who are following me, but also to start watching more outside the politics niche, since the one of the positions of the Wardman Wire is to be a “junction box” blog between different topics, such as technology, media and politics.

My apologies in advance to anyone who is unfollowed by mistake. If you unfollow me then refollow, now I’ll have the headroom to follow you back.

As first in a series of responses to David Cameron’s Reform proposals (1, 2, 3, 4), Lynne Featherstone MP has kindly agreed to this cross-post, which first appeared on her own blog.

Having just read David Cameron’s recipe to restore public faith in politicians I note his glaring omissions. He omits what I regard as a fundamental gravy train that MPs have supped from for far too long. When I got to Parliament in 2005 I was outraged to find that MPs could use public money from the taxpayer for their mortgage and - given the booming house market until recent times - could then sell their property for huge profits and pocket them. That has been a scandal. I have bleated on about this ever since. Nick Clegg has taken up this issue too. The argument is very simple - that no one should be able to make a profit out of public money. Of course - David Cameron himself is profiting from this nice little earner. So - that’s the first black mark.

He also says nothing of the House of Lords - the bastion of privilege and non-accountability or democratic mandate. Failing to even wish to tackle this antiquated anomaly shows again that DC is a conservative who has been forced to flagg up ‘reform’ - but without the heart and commitment of a genuine reformer.

I was pleased to read the small paragraph on bringing the advantages of internet to Parliament. I have banged on about this for some time - and again I don’t think Cameron gets to the heart of what really matters. For example (not in Cameron’s recipe) from the first publication of a Bill - the changes and amendments all come on separate bits of papers.

This is a Cover it Live archive of the Twitter streams on hashtags #f1, #formula1, #monaco and #monacogp.

It is aggregating these Twitterstreams into one place, with a delay of only around 30 seconds.

This is a trial for the archive of the #bbcqt hgashtag I’m planning to run for BBC Question next Thursday.

The pointed duck house in my last article:

has reminded me of the famous “John Nash and All Souls Langham Place” cartoon.

Would any cartoonists or artists out there care to oblige Sir John?

You could even include an audience of Mallards.

He’s to the recovery of the tradition of lampooning public figures, which has a long and Honourable history.