I think Dereck Draper is the best thing to have happened to the political blogosphere in recent memory. He’s an amazing gift to the left/liberals everywhere!

Did I say anyone did give a crap?

I wouldn’t employ you as my defence counsel!

Did you not spot the irony of gratuitously describing other people as “vindictive tossers??”

Your site is far more obnoxious than most of the right-wing blogosphere. Do you not actually take a look at it?

I mean, you post a piece describing Melanie Phillips and then, about three posts later someone is permitted to post a blog something clearly implying prejudice against the police in general. Does this not strike you as a double standard.

This blog is like some Noughties version of Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man sometimes.

I wouldn’t employ you as my defence counsel!

I never said I was a lawyer.

someone is permitted to post a blog something clearly implying prejudice against the police in general.

Wtf?

Sunny, I like how you said you were going to defend Derek Draper, then the rest of the post was about how he was just like Ann Coulter.

I see the irony swith is really quite broken with you.

How is the phrase “police acting like arses” not a massive insinuation about the police in general? It is deliberately ambiguous phrasing.

It is far more prejudiced than any of Melanie Philips attacks on Muslims who happen to be inclined towards terrorism.

Sadly you confirm what I have always thought, for many on the left only some sorts of prejudice matter, concern for equality is entirely selective towards specific agenda. Real respect and tolerance is not there, as your insults in the post indicate.

I’m a big supporter of what Derek Draper is doing online.

tim f – there’s a separate point to be made about whether his activities help Labour operations online and what they should be focusing on. But you can hardly say Labour’s online operations have died a quiet death like the much vaunted ‘Blue Blog’ Tory operations.

Problem is Sunny, if we keep feeding the right ammo then we can hardly be surprised when they let off a few rounds ?

Take the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.
First of all it is alleged that she has pocketed tens of thousands from the taxpayer (over many years) for, aherm, ‘expenses’.

Smith has also taken an eminent professor to task (Dr David Nutt) because she didn’t like his more systematic approach to classifying risk from illicit drugs, perhaps because Nutt’s work makes a complete mockery the class A,B & C system ?

Then we have Patricia Hewitt, the former health secretary who is coining it in thanks to her work with Boots and Cinven (who acquired BUPA’s assets).
Just think about it, a high ranking Labour politician (with insider info) now serving on the board of the NHS’s main competitors.
Hewitt was reported to be earning over half a million a year for her feverish extra-curricular activities.

The list of shame goes on and on I’m afraid.

Decent people on the ground may blog about their aspirations for a kinder and more equitable society world but when our so called representatives keeping shooting themselves in the foot it is hardly surprising that a certain group of commentators will seize on it.

Beside who is committing the greatest sin – a sleaze tainted home secretary (for example), or an opinionated right wing blogger ?

I support Draper`s brilliant work at Labour Lost unreservedly and as I read Online Campaigning at Oxford ….. I know what I am talking about

(Oxford bus station , there was a magazine in the bin called ‘On line campaigning’ and I read it. )

I just noticed the comment about scruples at the end of your post. Please don’t tell me you in anyway thought my post was serious. Dear God no.

Sunny, there’s no getting away from the fact that for as long as Draper and his ego are at the helm of LabourList, flinging out petty insults, rounding on other bloggers for offensive (racist) language then using offensive (disablist) terms himself, it’s doomed, gaining visitors much as a car-crash attracts gawpers.
Even the most on-message of New Labourites are expressing very grave misgivings over Draper’s tone and behaviour, and I suspect that it’s pressure from such folk that has led him to split some of his more rabid stuff to his own blog, and may well lead in the long run to his fading into the background at LabourList. Putting it bluntly if the site is to succeed, and ever recover from a frankly disastrous start,, it must be open, allow genuine debate and ditch Draper. Otherwise it’s a bloody embarrassment.

Yeah, the next right is actually quite good.

James, old boy… I’ve explained to you already over at my post why I feel that certain police actions warrant their being described as arses.

I made the point that coppers involved in the likes of the Rodney King assault, for instance, could rightfully be described as arses. I have other words for them, but have not used these, because I have decided that I have reached a time in life where I ought to try being a lady – if only for the novelty value.

Alas – you have yet to take up my offer on that post to elaborate further on your concerns about police and police arses. Instead, you’ve sloped over here to Sunny’s post to whinge at him.

What an arse.

dizzy – in which case, what are you complaining about re: LL and DD exactly?

a&e – yes, I do agree, though you’ll notice I’m not really trying to defend this government’s record here. I do think however that Labour would learn from more engagement with bloggers (even if not immediately).

I don’t understand this ‘defence’, Sunny.

I don’t think anyone on the right could seriously claim with a straight face to be “outraged” about Draper’s comments about “window-lickers”. Guido certainly doesn’t make that claim, nor does Dizzy. Iain Dale is upset, but he’s upset about Draper’s unsubtle insinuation that he is a racist for defending Carol Thatcher, not about LabourList itself and this window-lickers nonsense.

None of these people are “developing scruples” where none existed before. They’re pointing and laughing at a car crash, and it’s noticeable that you don’t actually defend LabourList – despite the title of your post – you just say “oh, well, Tory blogs were doing this sort of thing long before LabourList started”. By your own admission, what Draper has done is to take the worst excesses of “right-wing blogs” and – your words – take them to “absurd proportions”. You’re *agreeing* that LabourList is terrible.

LabourList isn’t, or shouldn’t be, in competition with Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes; it’s a supposedly “grassroots” site for discussion between Labour-minded people. Conservative Home is the model in this regard, and while ConHome can certainly be criticised in all sorts of ways, you surely have to agree that it’s hard to imagine, for the sake of example, Tim Montgomerie devoting post after post on his front page to a childish spat with Alex Hilton over a caption competition at Recess Monkey.

LabourList is four days old and already it is attracting major criticism from exactly the sort of people that it needs to get onside if it wants to succeed, as even a cursory look at the comments will confirm. You’ve every right to defend it, but your defence thus far amounts to “LabourList is just a mirror image of everything that is worst about Tory blogs”.

If that’s the best anyone can do, I’d suggest the trolls are right, and LabourList is headed squarely for the rocks.

Draper is a gift. I for one like his style, he is going to provide endless amusement and material for me. You have to laugh, what were they thinking putting that shyster in charge?

I care what Dizzy thinks.
His was the first blog where I started realising that I’m probably a libertarian than a liberal.

I think one of the reasons why rightwing blogs are doing so well is most of them use humour.

As thought proviking as Liberal Conspiracy can be on a good day, its pretty po-faced here.

\When you defend X, are you not supposed to say something positive about X? This article seems to be saying: “I’m going to defend LL. Here’s why. Because Dizzy etc are crap.”

I don’t like this whole “Draper versus everyone else in the blogosphere” thing, but I mean, really. Talk about damning with faint praise.

Dizzy always plays the “do I care?” or “did I say that?” card.

Mr Eugenides: You’re *agreeing* that LabourList is terrible.

My point is a bit more subtle than that. It is that this sort of internecine fighting and mindless mud-slinging (I’d accept it if it was over treatment of people on welfare or poverty programmes for example) was pioneered and constantly regurgitated by right-wing blogs… Draper is simply part of that Westminster culture that celebrates this sort of rubbish.

It reminds me of David Cameron’s promise he wasn’t going to get involved in ‘Punch and Judy politics’ before… doing exactly that.

So in effect, Draper is using their own tactics against them, and the poor right-wing bloggers are now crying.

Is it a car-crash? By what measurement? I expect their hits are sky-high at the moment… I think their design is a bit crappy but then Tangent Labs really don’t have good design skills IMO.

A good car crash is the Tory Blue Blog… or ‘Stand up Speak Up’, that died even without a whimper.

You’ve every right to defend it, but your defence thus far amounts to “LabourList is just a mirror image of everything that is worst about Tory blogs”.

Mmmm… but the Tory blogs are doing alright in traffic aren’t they?

LabourList isn’t, or shouldn’t be, in competition with Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes

This is a comparison DD was wrong to even try. LL will never be like Conhome anyway. LabourHome is still the nearest alternative but it has no editorial direction. I don’t see why left-wing blogs have to fit into right-wing models. There’s more than just the Dale/Guido/ConHome way of doing things. After all, LibCon doesn’t fit into those models and does alright.

Is it just me or is the vocabulary of Labourlist a switch off for anyone else:

Guido Fawkes’ racist comments have to stop – and Iain Dale must stop linking to him NOW!

Like JP, Labour must educate and organise for the 21st century

Together we forced Guido to take down the racist comments on his site but there is still more to do

Rohini Simbodyal: how we overcame the Tories in Enfield

It all seems yesterdays vocabulary of struggle. Too much forced, overcame, demands etc. Even without DDs rants it was boring.

@ Sunny (22) “Draper is using their own tactics against them, and the poor right-wing bloggers are now crying”
Not sure that is the case, Sunny. The right-wingers are laughing and jeering at Draper, he’s descended to their levels and it the left-wing posters on labourList who are despairing at Draper’s puerility (did nobody tell him not to feed trolls, and also, by the way, not to lambast those who theoretically share similar allegiances but whose opinions differ…) . Basically he’s on too short a fuse, and is easily goaded, so the right-wingers are doing just that, and watching the resulting (embarrassing) tirades, which simply exasperate the genuine (albeit blinkered) posters.

Oh, and Sunny (22) I expect their [LList's] hits are sky-high at the moment…. well, yeah, but look how many hits that histrionic Chris Crocker video( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc ) got…

All Derek Draper has done is taken the same culture and style to absurd proportions by picking a fight with all the heavies.

Well yeah – and ….. can we call him a tit of humongous proportions?

LabourList was supposed to be about the grass roots getting their say (as long as you agree with the party line and Draper) but it doesn’t do that – it is more akin to PerezHilton gone massively wrong – and it is a shit read!

PS

I no longer read it, giving Draper one hit is one too many in my book – he probably thinks the hits are about agreeing with his, erm…views.

Yeah, but it’s more funny to watch that smug tosser Donal Blaney cry about disablism when he’s the first one to start ranting and raving furiously about THE POLITICALLY CORRECT THOUGHT POLICE… when he’s not furiously “fisking” Clare Hazelgrove in the name of good politics.

Dizzy always plays the “do I care?” or “did I say that?” card.

Indeed, he always provokes a mental image of Harry Enfield’s Kevin The Teenager when he does that…

If he said he didn’t provoke a mental image of Kevin the Teenager then you’d have a point, but he didn’t so you haven’t.

Interesting to see a surge of activity from some of the blogging heavy weights.

They might argue rather disingenuously that they are here to put the boot in on Derek Draper, but I suspect this is really more an exercise in preening ?

Honestly, if one or two of them were chocolate they’d eat themselves.

I am not in competition with anyone, least of all LabourList. I thought Derek Draper would do a good job when he first told me he was doing it. I even talked to him about it.

My only issue with him was that he accused me of condoning racism. you of all people Sunny should understand how horrible that is. To me it’s the worst thing I can ever be accused of. I could have just ignored it, but I had to take the accusation on. So would you have done.

But that aside, you know that the whole thing is destined to fail. It’s top down and all about Draper. In the end the Labour Party will realise what damage he is doing. Enough people are telling them.

You have created an online community here, which Draper can only dream of. He should have learned from your experience, not set out to pick a fight with everyone. That’s not what the blogosphere is about. I don’t encourage fights, but if someone accuses me of things which bear no resemblance to the truth I’ll come out fighting. Just as you would. And have.

Blimey. Only need Draper himself to show up, and it’s a full house.

Draper cha cha cha, Draper cha cha cha………………………………..

If he said he didn’t provoke a mental image of Kevin the Teenager then you’d have a point, but he didn’t so you haven’t.

I don’t know what the hell you’re on about!? I said he always provokes the image of Kevin the teenager when he does the ‘am I bovvered’ act, he does for me as Dizzy comes off like a snotty nosed teenagers at times. *shrugs*

Yeah c’mon Draper get yo ass on here, we’re having a party y’all!

In the end the Labour Party will realise what damage he is doing. Enough people are telling them.

Iain, Well, I can see you guys are doing your best, but from a Labour Party perspective I reckon they think he’s creating noise and trying to undermine your credibility – which they think is a good thing. Besides, I don’t see the Labour Party seeing it work any other way. After all, is it worse than “The Blue Blog”? You haven’t mentioned that top-down approach in all your comparisons lately, have you? Like I said, I think the mistake was to pretend he would be competing with ConHome – which is a decidedly different beast.

As for accusing you of condoning racism… well, I didn’t get involved in that spat but I do always wonder why right-wingers jump so quickly in the defence of idiots who use racially derogatory language. It doesn’t happen in other circumstances, but any time these people say something stupid, you can’t just let it lie and accept they made a mistake. You have to cry about the politically correct thought police, even though in other circumstances you’d lead the outrage brigade.

I don’t really think the Blue Blog is top down, but I agree it hasn’t worked.

I don’t want to get into the Carol Thatcher thing again. I never defended her use of the word, by the way. Despite what people have been led to believe. All I did was try to explain the hypocrisy of the BBC’s attitude towards her, when they hadn’t taken action against other employees who had used far worse language. But there we go…

An interesting comment from Iain Dale@31.

Yes, LC has built a community here, which is why posts like this are so offensive.

It appears LC is now secure enough to be able to play to the presumed prejudices of it’s audience that it is willing to sacrifice relevance to chase readers and headlines.

Congratulations Sunny, you’ve wheedled your way into the establishment – what next, more announcements which further your personal agenda?

Thomas: Sunny just needs to vent against the right-wing blogs some times, a few days later we get calm Sunny back.

I believe the “hypocrisy” was because one apologised while the other didn’t… but then Carol Thatcher wasn’t really a presenter anyway. I take your point, though I was referring to most of your right-wing compatriots, including Charles Moore who actually had the bright idea of starting a Golliwog Club in support of Carol Thatcher.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/4520977/Golly-now-we-know-whats-truly-offensive.html
Nice company you keep.

“Iain, Well, I can see you guys are doing your best, but from a Labour Party perspective I reckon they think he’s creating noise and trying to undermine your credibility – which they think is a good thing.”

I’m not sure why you’re putting up a “defence” of him, then. That’s would be – or, well, is – an incredibly cynical tactic.

Lee,
are you sure it’s not what is called a ‘pivot’?

<sarcasm>Oh yeah guys, did I forget to mention I’m going to start blogging for Labour List next week?</sarcasm>

“Oh yeah guys, did I forget to mention I’m going to start blogging for Labour List next week?”

Really!?

;o)

I wonder, given the latest allegations / revelations from Alex Hilton, whether your defence of Mr Draper stands:

http://www.labourhome.org/story/2009/2/16/131227/809

If – big if, of course – these threats have anything to do with him. Which is entirely supposition on my part; they may not be.

What absolute rubbish.

Hundreds of thousands of people give a crap what Dizzy thinks, and more people read Iain Dale and Guido than buy The Times or Telegraph each month. (If you need figures, let me know.)

Furthermore, Labour ARE looking to Iain Dale and others like him in a desperate attempt to work out how to get Labour online. Why are you worried? If it’s your job to sort something out, you would naturally take advice from/copy/emulate those most successful at doing so. (Not shout at them, Derek.)

What people like you, and Derek Draper is one of them, so spectacularly fail to realise, is that the Internet doesn’t give a crap about YOUR partisanship. There are people of all political shapes, sizes and colours that work together online to bring about discussion, debate, gossip, general commentary, because they understand the mutually beneficial relationship this has.

To say that the right-wing blogosphere is full of vindictive tossers doesn’t make any sense. It betrays your completely outdated notion that left and right even exist online. There is a blogosphere comprising billions of different individuals and organisations with an infintessimal number of different viewpoints; some right wing, some left wing, some around and in between, some vindictive tossers, some brilliant writers. There is no sense in compartmentalisation, and even less in labelling a ’section’ of blogosphere in any way.

Finally, I can pretty much guarantee you Derek Draper (MA) is most certainly not laughing.

Although if you’re looking for some psychotherapy on the cheap…?

I knew the Times & the Telegraph’s circulation figures had gone down, but I didn’t realise they were that bad. Judging by page refreshes, are you?

I would like to think Clark HT was right with his numbers, but I am afraid he isn’t!! if only.

Oh I don’t know, I’m pretty vindictive. Not as vindictive as Derek clearly. Or as shouty.

Circulation figures take into account the fact that more than one person reads each newspaper, so looking at ABCe’s Multi-Platform report from Oct 2008, circ. for the Times was 629,561. Guido for Feb this year (can’t find his Stat Porn for Oct 2008) got 626,069 visits. I realise these are not unique visitors but neither did 629,561 people read The Times that month. It’s tricky comparing the two, so for the sake of keeping things on topic I’ll admit I got slightly carried away!

Won’t be long though Iain.

Interesting Sunny that you only mention right wing bloggers. [and probably here goes my chances of of ever being linked of Liberal Conspiracy again ]

I suppose my seeing the hypocrisy as Iain explained above as not being defending racism far from it. Also the insistance of immediate action when even the big bloggers were engaged in other media activities reeked of setting an agenda. And accusing people of racism when it was those that posted on their threads were the one posting the comments [the highlights of which are STILL available on Labour List ironically] of racism.

To then use a term he wasn’t sure of the derivation without a quick check, and it was quick, only for it to turn out to be derogatory stinks of doubletalk.

So lets see:

1. The racist comments are still available to view on LabourList
2. The disability comment is still available and repeated and attempted to be defended on LL and DD’s own blog.

I don’t think anyone whether left, right or centre is attacking DD for his politics, for crying out loud most of us do get on most of the time, no matter what we post about each other at time. I bet even some Labour people have provided anonymous gossip to Guido’s blog over the years. It’s all checks and balances. However, the man is a loose cannon. Dale is partisan but at least is fair. Draper is partisan in the most poisonous of ways.

Clark HT – your observations about ‘partisanship’ are worth listening to………….but

I agree entirely that the net provides a forum for individuals to express a range of personal views which may oscillate between left and right, depending on the specifics of the item in hand – in other words not everybody toes the party line all the time, especially given the freedom afforded in the blogsphere, not to mention the dark psychological impulse to be a bit naughty from time to time.

Having said that, surely most bloggers are allied to the left or right, and this loose partisanship is represented by the type of subject matter on political blogging site, as well as the kind of the threads that generally ensue.
For example, it is my opinion that the so-called right wing blogs seem to draw a far higher proportion of extreme commentators.

The bottom line is:
*most bloggers are broadly divided by the general sensibilities of the left or right.
*most revert to type even if they enjoy flirting with the opposition on the odd item.
*this historic pattern is unlikely to change any time soon.

A&E Nurse,

I re-phrase that paragraph a few times because I couldn’t quite get it right, and yes of course you are right that there are allied camps online. What I really meant (perhaps I should have spent more time on it) was that there isn’t so much partisanship online at the expense of etiquette and mutual respect. In other words, people tend to be more open to the views of others because they recognise them as fellow bloggers, rather than from the Labour Party, ergo wrong and not worth listening to.

So, my point was that Draper and Sunny (in the post above) seem to have taken that rigid adversarial approach and apply it online, and it just doesn’t fit. Draper was looking for a fight, and would have constructed one whatever the circumstances. (I’m not suggesting Sunny is doing anything like that here. I just disagree with his analysis.)

Also, I think that maybe there appear to be more extreme right wing bloggers because the extreme right is often more controversial than the extreme left. It’s kind of funny listening to people bang on about the death of capitalism and the rise of the workers; it’s quaint, harmless and irrelevant. Whereas the extreme right have seats on the GLA and elsewhere, and far more dangerous views that permeate society at a disturbing level. Thus, the extreme left doesn’t really get read. Perhaps. I am spectulating, because I don’t read either (extreme left or right, I mean)…

I would change one of your bottom lines (if that’s not too impersonal):
*Most (political) bloggers are united in what they do, but have two broad categories of political opinion: left and right.

Hundreds of thousands of people give a crap what Dizzy thinks

That is just hilarious.

If hundreds of thousands find that boring idiot illuminating, the British blogosphere is in worse shape than I thought.

Btw. I’ve just spotted a spelling mistake on a government website. Quick! Dizzy! I have a scoop.

Aaron,

Start laughing: http://dizzythinks.net/2008/11/at-last-some-stat-porn.html

Do you know anything about stats?

He gets 25k per month unique visitors. A proportion of which give a shit about what he thinks. That’s hardly hundreds of thousands.

Before you respond, please stop and think.

And they said the British blogosphere was too self-referential… who’s laughing now, huh?

Oh….

Aaron,

Our discussion is inhibited by an absence of definition surrounding the term ‘give a crap’.

What is not in any doubt, as I am sure you are aware, is that 229,543 is a number that is more than 100,000, or, ‘one hundred thousand’, also commonly referred to as ‘hundreds of thousands’.

I think this has strayed off the initial topic more than enough.

Good luck with the website.

Even accepting the slightly dodgy claim that people who’ve clicked through a link to a site once care about what a blogger thinks, it is illuminating to find that when right-wing bloggers say “hundreds of thousands” they mean literally “TWO hundreds of thousands”

229,543 visitors, of which a vast number might have followed a link and not spent more than 10 seconds on the blog – such is the way many power users surf the net.

I would define someone who “gives a crap” as someone who considers Dizzy an authoritative voice in the medium and follows the blog closely. Otherwise it’s just a transient visitor.

The problem is, web diagnostics is such an imprecise science we cannot make value judgements on very basic data. Advertisers have learnt as much.

I’m not saying Dizzy isn’t popular. There are a lot of frustrated salivating Tories who no doubt lap up Dizzy’s ill-informed claptrap. Not me, obviously, but then I find 99% of blogs fairly pointless.

I’ve made it! I’m a right-wing blogger!

You have made my day. Honestly.

But, this isn’t interesting.

P.S. Aaron, understood and agreed. Case closed.

tim f,

My blog got 180,000 uniques last year, and I haven’t taken it seriously in over a year. I occasionally write about US politics which wildly inflates my readership.

I doubt that more than 0.01% actually give a crap about what I have to say, mind.

Blogging is the ultimate vanity publishing.

Clark HT.

Okies. I respectfully withdraw.

I think the numbers game is pointless and rather like comparing dick sizes. There are some small blogs (spy blog) that get some influential traffic that can have more impact than we, dizzy or guido might do.

Also, I’ve not absolved DD of any blame – I’m merely saying he is using the same tactics within the same culture that the rightwing blogs have always done (faux outrage).

Lastly I’m not bigging up LC and saying this place is perfect. But this project is decidedly different to most other blogs out there. I hope that becomes more obvious in coming months.

Will just say – did Alex Hilton really leave his mobile number online on his blog? Bet he regerts that when the crazies start ringing.

I think he was inviting the crazy to call him, wasn’t he?

I don’t know.

I just know Hilton was the blogging equivalent of a pre-Pulp Fiction John Travolta. Now at least people are talking about him again.

/bitch

Newscounter has conducted an initial evaluation of Labourlist and found that the site is outperforming most people’s expectations: http://bacatu.blogspot.com/2009/02/labourlist-on-course-to-be-top.html