The libel laws of England & Wales are, you will recall, in dire need of reform.  They barely take account of hot-type printing presses, let alone the internet. 

High costs allow rich people and multi-national corporations to bully doctors, scientists and investigative journalists into silence; while the same high costs mean that wealthy media barons can smear ordinary people with impunity.  The ‘Reynolds Defence’ for responsible journalism is inadequate, and the distinction between ‘opinion’ and ‘fact’ is unclear.

On Liberal Conspiracy, we’ve covered several examples of people using libel to silence criticism. 

Regular contributor Dave Osler had to fend off an unfounded libel action in 2010. 

Blogger Vaughan Jones has been sued for libel after posting a review on Amazon.co.uk.  The costs incurred by Dr Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh and Dr Peter Wilmshurst, forced to defend solid scientific opinions through the High Court, are well documented.

All three of the major political parties pledged libel reform in their manifestos; and the Ministry of Justice have produced a draft Bill, which parliament has scrutinised at length. 

There is no good reason why Libel Reform should not be in the next Queen’s Speech. Let’s get this sorted now.

http://libelreform.org/one-click/

The key message from the seminar was that the UPR process relies on the evidence submitted by NUGOs. However, during the last review in 2008 only 19 civil society organisations sent submissions to the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). This seems incredibly low to me.

Crucially, the Universal Periodic Review has to base it’s report on the evidence submitted – it doesn’t go out looking for issues to examine on its own initiative. It is therefore essential that all those who campaign for any aspect of human rights in the UK, send their evidence into the OHCHR.

There are plenty of human rights abuses in the UK, many of which are reported here on Liberal Conspiracy: child poverty, human trafficking, child detention, and the unfair deportation of asylum seekers, to name but a few.

Surely the British charitable and voluntary sector can muster more than 19 submissions to the UPR, this time around.

Submissions are due by 21st November 2011. More information is available on the BIHR website.

The prgramme can be viewed online via the BBC iPlayer (available until 16th August). In a debate about why young people have joined the riots in London, student Yohanes Scarlett said:

First of all, I would like to say, earlier, during your newsclip here, you had a recording of a gentleman with a bandana across his face and sunglasses on, and I would like to point out right now right from the beginning that the BBC have cut out his original statement. I was there. He gave an original statement which he wanted the people to hear. It has been cut out, this is a misrepresentation.

Scarlett’s speech begins at about 15 mins 35 seconds on the iPlayer recording. The clip he referred to is at 7 mins 23 seconds.

Chairing the discussion, Gavin Esler immediately asked Yohanes Scarlett what the chap with the bandana said, but Scarlett said he couldn’t remember it by heart and was reluctant to paraphrase. He went to to say that the BBC should play the full clip. “Perhaps we will” replied Esler.

@Magic_Torch: @robertsharp59 @BBCNewsnight Just because they were accused it doesn’t mean it was true #justsaying

There is probably a simple reason why the interview was cut. Reporters have a strict time slot and the subject Liz MacKean was reporting on was very broad. However, it was an edit which a Newsnight interviewee – someone credible enough to be invited into the studio to talk specifically about the concerns of urban youths – thought was an unwarranted.

@Eastmad: @robertsharp59 @GavinEsler agreed – selective editing of people who you know don’t have much of a voice is egregious

Youths without a voice causing violence; youths causing violence because they have no polical voice. This context is important. This is not simply a case of a politician complaining about selective editing (which actually happens very rarely). Politicians have ample opportunity to clarify and expand upon what they say to broadcast journalists, and they are trained to talk in soundbites anyway. This is not true of the underclass, the submerged.

So fairly or unfairly, the BBC’s reporting has been called into question. If rebutting this criticism was in any way difficult, then maybe it would be appropriate for the BBC to shrug off Yohanes Scarlett’s comment, and the news cycle would move on. But in the age of YouTube and iPlayer, there is really no excuse for uploading Liz MacKean’s entire interview with the masked youth.

It only takes a few minutes, and will give those who want it a deeper insight in the psyche of those caused chaos on our streets.

Update 3:45pm, 11 Aug 2011

I’ve just received this response via e-mail from Newsnight’s Deputy Editor, Liz Gibbons:

With reference to your tweets about why we didn’t put the full interview and statement of the man who claimed to have some involvement with rioting on Newsnight on Tuesday night – it is standard televisual journalistic practice to choose clips from interviews in filmed pieces, rather than run interviews in full. This individual asked to make a statement to camera, but also agreed to do an interview in which our reporter was able to ask him some robust questions about why he thought it was justifiable to loot. I am sure you understand that it would be odd for the BBC to allow a statement from someone justifying criminal behaviour to be aired unchallenged, without us asking the individual some robust questions which the public would expect us to ask. We gave this individual no undertaking or promise of any kind that we would run his interview in full or that we would air his statement at all.

I have spoken to the reporter about the content of the statement that the individual made to camera and I am content that there was nothing he said in that pre-prepared statement that was not reflected in the subsequent interview exchange that was aired on the programme. Nor did he claim to represent any group, or organisation, or offer any insight beyond that which was reflected in the interview about why people were committing acts of violent disorder and criminality. You may have noted that Yohannes Scarlett who appeared in the studio, and was present when this interview was filmed, couldn’t actually recall what this individual even said in his pre-prepared statement.

I hope that allays your concerns.

First, the fascinating Brian Kellet writes this, in a fisk of a Liz Jones column about the NHS says:

I’m not going to link to the original story because I don’t want to send visitors to the rag that is the Daily Mail.

Then, in a battle of the pseudonyms, highly respected legal blogger Jack of Kent decides that he is going to have an argument with Gudio Fawkes, but without actually namechecking Guido or linking to the ridiculous Death Pentalty campaign he just launched.

I’m particularly disappointed in Jack of K, as he writes, in his very next post, that one should “use links and sources wherever possible.”

Linking out, regardless of whether you agree with the person you”re linking to, should be the standard for blogging, just as it is for academia. It is the link to sources which gives the work credibility.

In contrast, anonymous gossip disguised as lobby reporting is one of the reasons why there is so little trust in journalists at the moment (a topic discussed at the recent POLIS journalism conference, where I asked a panel of spin doctors and hacks whether the press should abolish anonymous sources)… and the fact that a tabloid does not have to cite its sources is one of the reasons why #Hackgate could happen.

Moreover, we know that our online bubbles are not as diverse as we like to think. Safe silos like Facebook actually filter content to prioritise those people that you already agree with, and our failure to link out just strengthens the confirmation bias.

I disagree with Paul Staine’s worldview and his approach to blogging, but I do actually want to know what he is saying about the death penalty, the better to campaign against him.

So, just as we’ve stopped using the Blame The Daily Mail cliche as a substitute for actual political analysis, can we have a moratorium on the whole “I’m not linking to those people” schtick, please?

I know we can Google pretty much anything we want to these days, but not everything appears on page one of the results. Worse, a failure to link looks a bit sly and scheming. Let’s leave the obfuscation and misdirection to those outlets with lower standards: The Newspapers.

Update

Over at my own place, Jack of Kent gives an explanation:

I simply wanted my post to be a stand-alone statement against capital punishment, for use in future debates as well as in the current one. In fact, I had not read Guido’s post; I just knew generally that he had launched some campaign. Accordingly, I was not even arguing against him – I had no idea what his arguments were. All I wanted to do was refer to the context of my post generally, and then make a general argument against capital punishment, rather than it being seen as a direct reply to anyone.

Had I linked to anyone it would have been misleading, as I was not “replying” to anyone in particular.

I’m particularly disappointed in Jack of K, as he writes, in his very next post, that one should “use links and sources wherever possible.”

I am particularly disappointed that you have jumped, clearly without really thinking this through, to an adverse view

This is actually a dream come true for rivals of News of the World.

It is the invasion of privacy of these families that the rival newspapers are keen to report, because they too know that it is images of these children that sell.

And by pasting the famous images onto Page 1, I would say that they too are stepping, once more, into the grief of these families.

Meanwhile, black men and boys (the victims of inner-city stabbings that are far more common than the abduction of white school-girls) don’t seem to be mentioned in the reports. Is this because Glen Mulcaire and his News of the World handlers did not think the stories were sufficiently interesting?

Or that today’s politicians and editors judge that an invasion of the privacy of (say) Damilola Taylor’s family would not sufficiently motivate the public, in a way that the Soham murders apparently do? Whichever explanation is closer to the truth, it says something unpleasant about our society and our media.

It is ironic that, in expressing outrage at the practices of the tabloids, we fall back on the precisely those assumptions and values that we otherwise claim to despise.

A final note: in the House of Commons last week, the Prime Minister made some throwaway comment about how the phone-hacking scandal was no longer “just about celebrities and politicians”. It is sometimes difficult to remember that both those groups are humans beings too!

They deserve precisely the same protection from the law as the families of murdered schoolgirls. The Rule of Law is the Rule of Law. When it is broken, the Prime Minister’s outrage should not be contingent on who the victim is.

Cross-posted, as usual

An immediate tweet discussion of the news caught my eye. From @dontgetfooled

Wow. So “clicktivism” can work after all?

This refers to Amnesty’s clever little Twitter campaign launched earlier this week (here’s my contribution). @mePadraigReidy responded thus:

clicktivism, + several years of work by @tasheschmidt from Index, Article 19, @englishpen and, of course @amnestyuk

It is of course wrong to say that “Twitter released Fatullayev” although some media outlets will report it as such. The Twitter response was made possible only because the groundwork had been laid by groups like ARTICLE19, Index on Censorship, Amnesty International and yes, English PEN.

Eynulla Fatullayev speaks with friends immediately after release. Photo: English PEN / Turxan Qar??qa on flickr

We also cannot discount the other effects. @onewmphoto said:

With news of the release of Eynulla Fatullayev following @amnestyuk‘s Twitter campaign, also talk of a ‘Eurovision effect’ on FB #Azerbaijan

Eurovision, and other types of International comings-together, are always accompanied by grandiose claims about ‘understanding’ and ‘cultural capital’ and fraternity between the human nations. (World Cup, the Olympics). However, it is rarely clear how this translates into ‘soft’ political power or influence beyond our borders.

The Fatullayev case is therefore a good and welcome example of where these cultural events do have benefits. As soon as Ell and Nikki won the Eurovision Song Contest two weekends ago, the mainstream media and the social media became peppered with negative and savvy stories about Azerbaijan (it was my job to contribute some of them!).

I do not think for one moment that @PresidentAz reads anything I write with my thumbs. But I do know that we all contributed to a critical mass of short sentences that together was of a significant size to be noticed. It is definitely the case that Azerbaijani officials, linguists and supporters would have been aware of this chatter.

Having all these discussions in the public forum of Twitter and Facebook (and ensuring through hashtags that said officials were aware of the conversations) would have left them in no doubt that a Eurovision PR headache was awaiting them in April 2012.

—
It would be prudent to note some obvious caveats. First, Eynulla Fatullayev was pardoned – his conviction was not overturned. This places his release as a gift of President Aliyev, not the just functioning of the law. This is not ideal.
Second, this release of a prisoner does not mean that the space for free speech in Azerbaijan is getting wider. In fact, the opposite may be true, as the Government on Baku proposes new ways to restrict discourse online. A much more difficult campaign, not centred around a free speech martyr, awaits.

In its regular archive feature, the paper presents its first ever editorial, which features a demand for libel reform:

Nor is the career of the Editor of a Newspaper attended with moral responsibility alone, it is encompassed with dangers; dangers against which the best and purest intentions furnish a preservative. In the present state of the libel law, his duty to his country and himself will often be at variance.

Circumstances may imperiously call for a prompt and fearless exposure of deliquency in high places. In the ardour of laudable indignation he may pass those “metes and bounds” which the discretion of the Attorney General assigns to the freedom of the press – he is not permitted either to prove the truth of his allegations, or to negative the averments of the charge against him.

In short he is asked to defend himself, where the law (or at least the practice of the Courts) renders defence impossible – he is convicted, and banishment presents itself to his mind as the penalty of a second involuntary or even laudable transgression.

For ourselves, we are enemies to surrility and slander on either side, and though we will not compromise the right of making pointed animadversions on public questions, we hope to deliver them, as that even our political opponents shall admit the propriety of the spirit in which they are written.

Did lettered people really use the word animadversions in everyday discourse? (I promise to do so from now on.) Apart from the flowery nineteenth century language, these are sentiments that could be written today.

In fact, a scrutiny committee is takings evidence in Parliament this week on the government’s draft defamation bill. I went to yesterday’s session, chaired by Lord Mahwinney, and the arguments put forward by the Libel Reform Campaign yesterday each find an analogous complaint in the Manchester Guardian’s editorial.

In one respect though, the short-sighted and unimaginative leader writers of 1821 failed miserably to predict future concerns, and that is with regards to protections for Internet Service Providers.

Nowhere in that first editorial can I find an analogy for the “privatisation of censorship” that occurs when lawyers send takedown threats to ISPs hosting controversial content.

Measures to protect ISPs from this kind of liability are also absent from the government’s draft bill – a curiously nineteenth century omission.

I hope readers of Liberal Conspiracy will instinctively support the inclusion of such a clause into the defamation bill, ensuring that authors take responsibility for their content, not the distant ISPs that provide the server space.

A good way to signal your support would be to write to your MP. The Libel Reform Campaign would be exceedingly beholden to those in our number that undertake to do so.

A longer version, in which I elaborate the analogies, is cross-posted at my own place.

Both events also mark symbolic endings to a particular period of national history.

In the British case, the confusion of Princess Diana’s marriage, the sorrow of her death, and perhaps the end of a particular type of monarchy.

In the American case, it is the ending of something much more significant (what Emily Maitliss on the BBC just called a “psychological watershed”), a decade of fear, insularity and a sense of revenge not yet wrought.

Micah in Kansas City is uneasy about the celebrations surrounding the killing of Osama Bin Laden:

The backlash of ignorant commentary and opinion about the death of Bin Laden on Twitter tonight was disheartening, and I’m so very glad I deleted my Facebook so I didn’t have to gaze upon the even more ignorant statuses of “patriots” glad about the death of another human being.

Moreover, the Royal Wedding and Osama’s death both signal much more optimistic new chapters. A pared down, modern and middle-class Monarchy for us. And for the Americans, a reassertion of their primacy in matters military.

I wonder whether these events can sustain this symbolism. Wills and Kate are but two individuals getting hitched in a country that has massive economic problems and not a few social and cultural challenges ahead of it.

And in the American case, the death of a figurehead will not in itself stop the Al Q’aeda threat, nor reverse its economic decline relative to the Asian super-powers. Time will tell whether these outpourings of national confidence, on both sides of ‘the pond’, mark a new period of success or a patriotic dead-cat bounce.

Regardless of the final significance, Micah’s post highlights an crucial difference between the two groups of cheering crowds: On The Mall in London, the flag-wavers were celebrating life; On The Mall in Washington, they were cheering a death.

I wonder how this essential difference between these two moments of patriotic punctuation will affect the two nations in years to come?

A few weeks ago, MPs voted to ignore the European Court of Human Rights to keep a full ban on prisoners. Our Prime Minister put blatant populism above politics, declaring that “giving prisoners the vote makes me sick” (even if that means paying £143 million in compensation from the barren public purse).

Then they came for the paedophiles.

This week, we heard that those convicted of sex offences might not have to stay on the sex-offenders register for life. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that those included on the register should be able to appeal against permanent inclusion on the list, and on Tuesday it rejected a Home Office appeal against the ruling.

There are clear similarities between these two stories. Both present issues where what might be considered the popular and common-sense approach is over-ruled by judges, forcing the Government to do something counter-intuitive.

But both cases are based on good and sober reasons why the judges ruled as they did, and why we should support their decisions.

In the case of prisoners voting, such a change could catalyze the reform of prisons into places that offer better rehabilitation for convicts. Moreover, if a person will be released within the lifetime of a parliament, why shouldn’t they have a say on who will be representing them once they’re out? Similar arguments exist for sex offenders: In cases where a prisoner has been rehabilitated, coming off the sex offenders register might help reintegration.

It is crucial to remember that in both cases, all the courts did was rule against an absolutist approach: No ‘blanket’ ban on prisoners’ votes; and sex offenders have the right to appeal, not an absolute right to come off the register.

The best comparisons for these issues are with parole or bail – you have the right to apply for it, but you might not get it. It is left to magistrates and judges to decide, depending on the actual circumstances.

So there may well be good reasons why extending the rights of some pretty unpleasant people might improve the whole of society, but it is for the penal reform groups to advance that argument.

My concern is how Cameron sets a terrible example, by undermining the European Court, the Convention on Human Rights and its manifestation in British law, the Human Rights Act (HRA). These outbursts are designed to soften MPs and the public into agreeing to a watered-down Bill of Rights that will make our standing as citizens more tenuous.

What the Prime Minister seems to forget, is that Human Rights laws are designed to protect the most hated in our society, not least because these people are sometimes amongst the most vulnerable too.

They are supposed to frustrate our gut reaction. They are meant to be inconvenient.

That the Courts’ rulings have caused outrage is actually a feature of our democracy, and not a bug. Kudos to the 22 MPs who recognised that, and shame on the Prime Minister. By undermining the principle of human rights, he undermines us all.

Although there were some fine words on Libel Reform and some interesting proposals on Freedom of Information, most of the discussion in the speech itself, and in questions afterwards, was on control orders and curfews.

Clegg refused to outline how these might change, but did say that those who want to see them abolished completely “will be disappointed”. There was one phrase that Clegg used which is particularly grating on the ears.

This was when he said that there were people who ‘we know’ are planning atrocities, but we do not have the evidence to convict them. It stood out, because David Blunket had used precisely the same formulation during his pre-emptive retort on The Today Programme this morning, and I am sure the current and previous Home Secretaries have taken a similar line.

This line of argument sounds tough, plausible and savvy. The speaker gets to burnish his or her credentials as a realist. However, it is a stance that rests on very shaky moral ground. Control orders are a form of pre-emptive detention, and the argument which justifies them is exactly the same as those used by authoritarian governments around the world, when they detain their political opponents.

Moreover, it is a rude and obvious short-circuit of the very basic legal principles. If a Minister ‘knows’ that someone is a danger, then they should be charged and convicted. If there is not enough evidence to convict, then neither politicians, the police nor the general public get to use the word ‘know’ in their rhetoric.

There simply is not the epistemological certainty for that kind of claim, especially not in the context of political arguments. A control order is an extreme form of accusation, and Deputy Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries must not be allowed to make such ‘accusations’ and leave them hanging.

As the Home Secretary conducts her review of control orders in the coming months, look out for examples of this rhetoric, “we know, but we cannot convict.” It is a half-formed argument, a question not an answer.

It is a cowardly fudge for those who do not want to make the tough decision: do we let these suspects go, or do we allow phone-tapping evidence to be admissable in court? This is the issue at stake, and the phenomenon of control orders is simply a clever device for punting the decision.

If Nick Clegg is really serious about restoring civil liberties to British citizens, then he and his Prime Minister need to stop using bad rhetoric, and start making tough choices.

But let us assert one thing right now: the personal exploits of Julian Assange tell us nothing about the morality of the Wikileaks project and it’s recent #Cablegate actions.

If Assange is convicted, watch out for those who use it to cast doubt on the idea and mission of the Wikileaks project. Such arguments will merely be an ad hominem that will add nothing new to the debate around Freedom of Information that the site has brought into sharp focus.

In the arts, many critics take the biographical approach when they analyse artists’ work. The classic questions: Is ‘The Wasteland’ reduced if T.S. Eliot was an anti-semite? Was Paul Gauguin a worse artist because he abandoned his wife and children? We might ask the same questions of political philosophies too: are we to abandon the American experiment because the Founding Fathers were slave owners? I don’t see how (especially when the principles which ultimately guaranteed the freedom from slavery were written by those same men in the Bill of Rights). Likewise, should we abandon the philosophy of Wikileaks if Julian Assange turns out to be a rapist? I think not.

Indeed, the very name of the website argues against this. It would be a very poor sort of Wiki that was vulnerable to a ‘decapitation’ strategy. Surely the whole point of a site worthy of the prefix is that it depends on a community, not an individual. Those who try to propagate the ‘Assange ⇔ Wikileaks’ meme in the next few weeks should be reminded of this.

I think my failure to become outraged or agitated stems from a sense that the Liberal Democrats have fallen into a semantic trap. ‘Manifesto commitments’ are things that you promise to enact when you have Power to do so in Government.

But the situation that the Lib Dems find themselves in does not seem to fulfill the sufficient and neccessary conditions to merit such a description.

A “U-turn” doesn’t really capture the essence of what has happened – It implies an agency and a mens rea that, by virtue of their Junior status, the Liberal Democrats simply do not possess.

This conundrum will have consequences for future elections. Now we have become used to the idea of coalitions (a prospect more likely if an AV or PR voting system is introduced), the way that political parties put their manifestos to the electorate could change.

The Liberal Democrats might present a ‘Two-Tier Manifesto’ to the voters (although they would never use such a crass term). First, they will present a more general statements of principles and ‘red line’ policies, which they would expect to be a part of any coalition deal.

Then they could present more detailed manifesto commitments, which they understand they may have to ditch if they were the minority partner in the Cabinet. The Greens, the Nationalist Parties and the Unionists might choose to do the same.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives and Labour could publish their own red-lines and general principles, signalling what is up for grabs in coalition negotiations and what would be out-of-bounds.

Such a convention would be a nightmare for those drafting the manifestos, and would lead to much factionalism within the parties around election time… but at least the voters would have a much better sense of what would happen in various coalition scenarios.

—-
x-posted.

#RoyalWedding, #RoyalWedding
Look how quick the news is spreading

I’m really pleased for Kate and Will
But will the tax payers foot the bill?

Gawd bless’ em, *reach for tissues*
Newspapers plan their special issues

Al Q’aida rubbing hands with glee
I’ll do the photos for a reasonable fee.

Middleton to marry some balding toff
But do you think we get a day off?

Twitter is in meltdown. Just don’t get it.
Frankly I just don’t give a shit

China plate makers at the ready!
Oh I do hope it will be on the telly

Ooo Ooo! Whoop! WOOHOOs!
Today is a good day to bury bad news.

(x-posted)

“Well I think there’s a difference between multiculturalism per se, and state multiculturalism, where the state intervenes and says, ‘You will do this, you will do that.’” For example, she offers, “When the state says ‘We’ll have winterfest instead of Christmas, so everyone feels included.’ That’s wrong.”

Eh? Did I miss something? When – and you don’t have to be exact now, a year will do – did the state say we’ll have Winterfest instead of Christmas? (Except for the time when Cromwell’s government banned Christmas, smartypants).

The Guardian article by Decca Aitkenhead is here. Now is the perfect time to link to Oliver Burkeman’s fantastic debunking of the Winterval myth:

Perhaps the most notorious of the anti-Christmas rebrandings is Winterval, in Birmingham, and when you telephone the Birmingham city council press office to ask about it, you are met first of all with a silence that might seasonably be described as frosty. “We get this every year,” a press officer sighs, eventually. “It just depends how many rogue journalists you get in any given year. We tell them it’s bollocks, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.”

According to an official statement from the council, Winterval – which ran in 1997 and 1998, and never since – was a promotional campaign to drive business into Birmingham’s newly regenerated town centre. It began in early November and finished in January.

Clicking back from the Five Chinese Crackers post, I find that the Exclarotive blog has been logging similar myths. Anton Vowl spotted another example of the Conservatives propagating the nonsense, this time over health and safety legislation. Ann Widdecombe cited several examples of PC gone mad during our debate on the issue last year. I wonder how many had any substance?

One might think that debunking articles, such as those mentioned above, might serve to sink the highly dangerous armada of lies that sails through our society, leaving a hatred of immigrants in its wake. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to be so. In the Boston Globe, John Keohane reports on a University of Michigan study that shows that the introduction of new facts may actually cause people to double-down on their strongly held misconceptions.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

There’s also my namesake in the Independent with a similarly fine debunking.

This is why we need to discuss much of our politics in terms of narrative. It sounds pretentious, but the fact is that a single article giving some facts will rarely reverse a political consensus.

A key conclusion was the that the eager awaited ‘Digital Election’ we had all been expecting (after the fantastic Obama ’08 campaign) simply failed to materialise, and it was TV wot hung it.

My thoughts on the events were blogged elsewhere.

However, since Sunny has just posted his provisonal Blog Nation programme, I will offer a quick addendum to my earlier thoughts here, which is simply that it is the Labour Leadership Election which will prove to be the Digital Election we have all been waiting for.

I note that David Miliband is becoming prolific at posting AudioBoos (short podcasts for those not yet up to speed); and Ed Miliband’s campaign team are turning around a particular type of on-the-hoof, off-the-cuff campaign video with efficiency.

Tom Watson MP, former Minister for Digital Engagement, is running Ed Balls campaign, so I am sure we will see some innovative uses of social networking courtesy of the man from West Bromwich. All the candidates seem to have Twibbons, an innovation which I fucking hate but others seem to enjoy.

The difference here, compared to the General Election campaign in April, is time. Much like Barack Obama’s gruelling journey to the White House, the campaign for the Labour leadership will be a drawn-out affair.

It will allow all five candidates to experiment with the different technologies on offer, and develop a deeper and more sophisticated conversation with their party… and each other.

Groups like Compass, The Fabians, LabourList, Left Foot Forward and, of course, Liberal Conspiracy, will also be able to plan and launch multiple interventions, as will entirely independent initiatives like the unofficial Ed Miliband for Labour Leader campaign.

Who knows, we may even see some ‘swift-boating’ or negative campaigns, like #KerryOut – the doomed attempt to unseat Kerry McCarthy MP from Bristol East through the medium of Twitter.

The next hustings event is tonight, and is hosted by the Fabians. Expect your Twitter streams to be cluttered with multiple, competing commentaries.

Expect images and video to pop up online before the weekend. There will be no spin room where Machiavellis, Mountebanks and Madelsons can suck our attention away from the substance of what is being said, and the digital commentary will count for much more that it did during the #LeadersDebates in the spring.

This is the Digital Election we have been waiting for, so get stuck in.

Laurie Penny was at it last week, now quoted approvingly by fellow Orwell Prize nominee Madame Miaow. Even my friend Ste Curran was at it earlier, and I expected better from him.

These curmudgeons assume that any time two teams from different sides line up against each other, it is inherently warlike.

They assume that whenever anyone chooses to support a team based purely on nationality, they are indulging in a form of blind patriotism akin to the worst excesses of political nationalism. And while the tone of these writings is, yes, a little knowing and light-hearted, I detect real sentiments of contempt in what they say. How strange that these writers cannot perceive the knowingness of the football fans at which they sneer, the tongue-in-cheek tone with which real sports fans approach their passion.

In particular, the charge of ‘patriotism’, or of any kind of ‘ugliness’ does not stand up to even the most cursory of examinations. Christ, you do not even need to go to South Africa to do this – the evidence is right there on the TV screens. See those idiot fans, cheering and leering behind the po-faced TV reporters? Look closely at their shirts, their face-paints, and you will see the colours of many teams, of many countries.

I think that it is precisely because football is “only a game” you find its purest form in the international competitions, not the club game.

In the latter, I think the naysayers have a point – the excessive sums spent during tough economic times on ringers from overseas does seem obscene, bizarre and unsporting. By contrast, managers of national teams are limited in who they can pick. They cannot buy in new talent from elsewhere. In this sense, their situation is closer to the game as most of us play it – you’re stuck with whoever is available.

The fun of most sport, indeed, of most games, lies in these arbitrary constraints. We agree on some rules to abide by, and set ourselves other random constraints (such as the players, the cards, the dice)… and then we try our damnedest to win. The fact it is all made up; that we have chosen to spend our time like this; that the outcome does not actually matter to our lives one iota; that it is entirely and necessarily divorced from our day-to-day existence: That is where the ‘sport’ exists.

The fact that it doesn’t matter is precisely the point, because it is an escape from things that do matter. Pointing out the futility of the exercise, usually by reference to the well worn “grown men kicking a pig’s bladder” cliche, is like the irritating snoot who tells everyone else how the magician does his tricks, thus spoiling the show.

Cheating in sport is despicable because it similarly breaks the suspension of disbelief in which the rest of us have colluded.

Football is so popular because most of us have the emotional intelligence to be able to buy in to the spectacle. The utter frivolity of what is at stake is the perfect excuse for a great big global party, in which people of all ages, from all continents and from all religions, can participate. The simplicity of the rules means literally everyone can understand what is going on.

Yes, there have been idiots who use football as an excuse for violence… but the game was always the excuse, and not the cause of that particular type of stupidity. These men do not define the sport, and they are a dying breed. In their place steps an ever growing number of sports fans who just want to watch the game with their friends, old and new.

Once every four years, the eyes of all of humanity turn towards the same place. Everyone, whether they like it or not, is distracted by the same thing. It is not religious, it is not violent, and it cannot be bought. Its a delightful phenomenon, one we should cherish.

English and German Fans mix in Cologne, before a World Cup 2006 fixture

Cross-posted.

Jack of Kent has a little bit of analysis of Dave’s case and was first to tweet the positive outcome.

I am sure he and/or Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship will report with a full analysis of Justice Eady’s ruling soon, but the analysis from Dave’s lawyer Robert Dougans of Bryan Cave (also Simon Singh’s lawyer) is that it sets a very good precedent for bloggers, and how much responsibility we take for wayward comments posted unmoderated on our websites.

I took some photos of Dave Osler and wellwishers outside the court (including another Liberal Conspirator, Paul Evans).

True, the last photo does show Dave sipping champagne (which might undermine his reputation as a staunch defender of the working class) but otherwise it is worth noting that both Dave and his partner looked relieved rather than happy.

This case has taken three years to defend, and for much of that time he has had to defend himself. Months have been spent preparing a defence against someone who appears to be a vexatious litigant, time that could have been spend freelancing.

Substantial costs are unlikely to be recovered, meaning Dave is severely out of pocket.

One of the Libel Reform Campaign’s recommendations is the establishment of a fast-track libel tribunal to deal with cases like this.

Although Dave Osler has won his case, its another example of why the English libel laws are not fit for purpose.

Update:
Dave speaks to blogger Richard Wilson after his win

Take Back Parliament rally, 8th May 2010. Photo by Lewishamdreamer on Flickr

*This post contains excessive alliteration, which some readers may find offensive.

Politics means different things at different times. During the election campaign, it was the politics of presentation: of a leader (and his lovely wife), and of a suitable narrative that you think chimes with the voters.

Now the election is over, we seem to be moving into the politics of game-play and strategy. The discussion centres around what Nick Clegg can force out of the tories, and how to bounce David Cameron into Proportional Representation. Associated with this are the recriminations over failed tactics. For an example, see @hopisen (his debates with @sunny_hundal yesterday were a good example of this kind of politics).

This kind of politics assumes an intransigence on the part of your political opponents, and it is useful to remember that this is not always the case. At this crucial juncture, we need a politics of persuasion too, especially on the case of electoral reform.

@ellielevenson: RT @ericjoyce A near-painful read, near-pathetic, read. RT @krishgm: Guardian group feeling guilty? http://bit.ly/aQoDWA

The above comments, discussing the Guardian’s Saturday editorial, sits within the second type of politics, the politics of strategy. But as a piece of persuasion, I think the article is very useful.

But the fact remains that victory, under the electoral system we have, means securing a Commons majority. Constitutionally, no other metric matters. If the Conservatives believe that share of vote and lead over the nearest rival should have some moral weight in deciding a winner, they have already conceded a vital point about the need for electoral reform: the proportion of overall support in the country as a whole matters. …

The Tories by contrast are confused about electoral reform. It cannot have escaped their notice that they have suffered as a result of the system they are determined to keep. It is Labour whose results are most inflated by systemic bias. The Tories insist that first past the post delivers clear results, when it has just failed to do exactly that. Conservatives have always grumbled that coalition politics means shadowy deals between parties cobbled together in dingy corridors. The opposite is now proven.

Now, I am not a Tory, but I think this sort of logic that might persuade them. These kinds of arguments need to be in the foreground. My three aspects of politics overlap here: A persuasive argument, presented right, can give your cause a strategic advantage. In this case, if the Conservative party become a little less cold to the idea of electoral reform, that’s a good thing.

There has also been some discussion over political power in the past few days. Here’s Laurie Penny, barging in on that Sunny/Hopi debate I mentioned earlier:

@PennyRed: @sunny_hundal @hopisen yes and no. I think there’s enough damage that only a real defeat, preforably temporary, can make us regroup.

@sunny_hundal: @hopisen @STEPearce @PennyRed I dint believe in power for it’s own sake. That is where labour is at and that is the path to hell

Its little comfort, but the politics of persuasion persists even when the party is out of power.

All of this is a way of saying, that while the Tories and Liberal Democrata hammer out whatever deal they can; while the Labour front bench has been told to keep quiet; and while Gordon Brown keeps a low profile, it would be a good use of Labour supporters’ time to help promote and grow the Take Back Parliament Campaign.

The coalition has taken only three days to amass over 41,000 supporters, which is very impressive. However, I think it needs a broader base than the middle-class Lib Dem supporting demographic I saw at the rally on Saturday.

This is a practical task that Labourites can take on right now, while we all twiddle our thumbs waiting for opposition.

—-
(Crossposted).

Meanwhile, his other hand was perched over the keyboard of his laptop, his fingers furiously typing.

His eyes were distracted from the screen as I approached, which put an end to his trowelling. He let his non-keyboard hand flop down below his thigh, and I percieved him flick something out onto the pavement by his tiny table. Then he stood up, and offered the hand in greeting.

I may have paused for a spit-second before I shook it, but I don’t think he noticed.

Ebenezer sighed in mock exasperation. “At last!”

I smiled, and protested. “Not my fault, I left the flat an hour ago. They’re working on the Northern line so I had to get a bus.”

He played along. “Well, you should have known. There’s an app for that, yeah?” He waved his nose-picking hand at the metal chair opposite his, and sat down.

There was half a free-sheet newspaper splayed across the seat. Upside down, the new Prime Minister’s gurning face looked back at me. I picked it up and chucked it onto the ground, somewhere near where the bogey had probably landed.

Then I sat down and placed my iPhone carefully on the table. Ebenezer rolled his eyes at me. “What are you drinking?” he said. I could see he had a half-finished pint of some kind of dark ale on the go, leaned up against his laptop.

“I’ll probably just have a coffee for the moment,” I said. I stood up with the idea of ordering, but a waitress had clocked me and was already striding over. She was bursting out of a tight white shirt and had one of those black ties with a huge knot sitting over the centre of her chest.

When I ordered my a decaf latte, Ebenezer let out an audible snort, and shook his head. The girl bit her lip to suppress a smile, then disappeared inside.

“That knot must have been, like, a quadruple windsor or something” he said when she was out of view.

I decided to change the subject. “What are you working on?”

“Just a blog. But not for the main blog, though. Just my blog. Its about Dave.”

I nodded solemnly. Dave was dead.

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to write something too. He was one of the first blogs I read when I started. Loads have people have been doing it. Its a good tribute I reckon.”

Dave Carswell was an old-school socialist, trapped in the second decade of the twenty-first century. He had worked in social care sector, but not front-line, and had been active in the unions for many years. He had also been a councillor too, in somewhere like Lewisham, but I think that had been a pretty short-lived experience. Whenever he wrote about that kind of local politics, his words would drip with condescension.

I just knew him as an Angry Old Blogger. He was good for a laugh if you desired some good old fashioned anti-Tory prejudice, the kind of craic you could really only find on the sites of the older guys. Whenever the younger generation attempted the same sort of stuff, it felt a bit false, as if they were desperate to live-up to some retro-ideal. But when Dave mentioned Mrs Thatcher and the milk, you knew it was authentic. His was a very real and very verbose passion.

“So, did you know him well then?” I asked. “I saw him at a couple of the meet-ups, but I knew him mostly from the blogs.”

Ebenezer shrugged. “Its not really an obituary” he said. “More of a review of his last few posts and tweets.”

I understood. Dave Carswell had scored a couple of big hits during the election campaign. “That’s great,” I said. “You could talk about the #LiberalDemoCrap hashtag, that was him. And that review of the first debate where he compared Brown to Michael Foot, that was awesome. Did you read that one?”

“Yeah, the first couple of thousand words, but…” Ebenezer’s voice trailed off for a moment, as if someone had pulled the plug on his inner motor. I could see he was choosing carefully what to say next.

“It’s about the run-up to his death. There was something not quite right about it.”

“You mean, it wasn’t a heart attack?”

He shook his head. “No no, it was definitely a heart attack. But there’s more…”

I cut him off in mid-sentence. “Hey look, if you’re going to write something about burn-out, about him blogging too much, its already been done. One of the obituaries was all about that, I re-tweeted it this morning.”

It was true. Dave had definitely blogged too much in those final days. He had fisked dozens of Cameron’s speeches, and written lengthy ripostes to most of the Telegraph’s front pages. He had played every spoof poster photoshopping game, and would forward links from elsewhere quite relentlessly. I was ashamed to admit it, but I had actually stopped following him on twitter about 10 days before polling, because he had been clogging my stream with RTs. He had dedicated resources to this election that only the unemployed or the retired could spare, though I was never clear whether Dave actually fell into either of these categories, or whether he was just self-employed.

“Well that’s part of it, yeah,” said Ebenezer. “He totally wiped himself out. The amount he was doing, staring at all those screens all day, it was bound to do some damage eventually.”

I was astonished at Ebenezer’s complete lack of self-awareness of his own life-style. He had about six computers set-up in his flat. And a man who posted exegesis on sock-puppetry in local government at 3am had no business casting aspersions over people like Dave, who at least kept to blogging inside normal social hours, 8am to midnight.

But I bit my tongue, for it seemed he was about to say something interesting.

“The thing is, he died at the wrong time.”

I was quick to score a cheap point. “No disrespect or anything, but to die on the first day of this new government may not be the worst thing to happen.”

Ebenezer ignored my attempt at humour. Instead, he messed about with his laptop for a moment. I looked beyond him and noticed the ‘free wi-fi’ logo on the glass pane of the pub door, below the Mastercard symbol. With a maestro like flourish, he clicked the laptop for a final time, and then spun it around to face me. It was Dave’s twitter page.

“Have a look at that!” said Ebenezer, triumphantly.

I was lost. “Its Dave’s tweets, right?”

“Right, but look at the last one.”

I read it aloud off the screen. It was just a short tweet about the new Prime Minister’s and the political fudge that had finally earned him his invitation to the Palace.

“Why so special?” I asked. “I tweeted the same thing. We all did, probably.”

“Yes. But this tweet was posted after Dave died.”

I bent forward in my chair and looked at Ebenezer. What game was he playing?

Eventually I thought of something to say. “Seriously dude, that’s bullshit. You don’t even know when he died.”

Ebenezer snapped shut the lid of his laptop, hard. It made a loud clap, that could have been a crack, and I winced.

“But I do! I do!” he whispered. “I have a contact in the police, who told me that Dave died around 3am on Friday morning.”

I leant back in my chair in disgust. “Get. To. Fuck. You. Twat. You don’t have any contacts in the Met…”

“Yes I do actually” said Ebenezer, suddenly no more than a schoolboy. “There’s this guy, right. He runs a forum where they review giant glass dildos and foreskin clamps and shit like that. Anyway, I traced his IP address back to a policestation in Brent. And but so now he does stuff for me. Nothing major or anything, he just confirms official reports that aren’t public yet. It gives me an edge.”

“What on earth were you doing tracing back IPs from a dildo site?” This revelation made me genuinely angry, because usually Ebenezer was militantly in favour of Internet privacy.

He blanked the question.

“So Dave had his heart attack at 3am, the police surgeon said.” He looked at me for acknowledgement, and I nodded my assent, conceding the point.

“And that figures, because it was at about 3am that it became clear who was going to get the most seats. After the results came in from Southampton and the recount up in Kettering, we could see which way the farts were blowing.”

I smiled. “So Dave had a heart attack because of the election result?”

“Right. He’d invested so much time working against it, he must have been livid. Pushed him over the edge.” His voice was almost breaking up.

I joined the dots that Ebenezer had sketched out for me, and asked the question he wanted me to ask. “So how did he send a tweet at 2pm? Someone must have hacked into his account, right?”

Ebenezer gave me a wry smile, as if to say, now who’s bullshitting. Why on earth would someone spend so much effort hacking into a twitter account, just to post something asinine about the election.

“No one hacked the account” he said, as if in conclusion.

I put my hands over my face and forced a muffled scream through them. “You cannot seriously be thinking what I think your thinking.”

He flipped open the laptop, and woke the screen from sleep. Dave’s tweets flickered back onto the screen. His nose picking finger pressed up against the LCD. “Look at the time stamp of the last tweet.”

I read off the screen. “2:05pm. Yes, I know, after Dave died, so you say.”

“Yes. After Dave died. But before our new Prime Minister announced his coalition. He didn’t make the announcement until at least a quarter to three. I know because I tweeted it when it happened, and Dave had already beaten us to it. I remember thinking it was odd because he never had any inside information before.”

I was speechless. Irritated at Ebenezer behaving like a hypocrite, annoyed that he was wishing ghosts into twitter.

“So that’s the gist of my obituary,” he said. “A guy obsessed with politics right up until the grave… and beyond!” He made a butterfly with his hands and fluttered it towards my face. I pushed him away.

“Seriously man, that’s really cruel. He had a wife, didn’t he?”

“Divorced.”

“Yeah, but still. Thousands of people read your blog every day. Its a really shitty thing to do.”

The mention of his blog statistics seemed to rip Ebenezer back into reality. He sheepishly slumped forward on his bulky frame, losing a couple of inches of height.

Just then, the waitress returned with my coffee. I thanked her, and she smiled. I didn’t smile back, and Ebenezer was much less interested in the knot in her tie than he had been before. She shuffled off.

The chime of a birdsong broke the silence. I was glad of new messages, so I leant forward and picked up my iPhone, to see what was new. It was a slight surprise to see that my screen was blank. The noise had not come from my phone.

Ebenezer nodded towards the floor. A little brown bird was hopping over the discarded free-sheet, twittering away.

I avoided Ebenezer’s gaze and reached for my coffee, and we sat drinking in silence, waiting for something new to happen.

@DougSaunders: British journalism in microcosm: 2002 op-ed by Nick Clegg: http://is.gd/bCESl Resulting Daily Mail front pager tomorrow: http://is.gd/bCETh

Merely linking to the article that was the basis for Tim Shipman’s front-page piece shows the real context, debunks the Mail‘s outrage, and exposes their highly partisan agenda. Iain Dale is right: this will backfire on the Conservatives (regardless of whether they actually had a hand in placing the smears), and further highlight The Slow Death of the British Newspaper As We Know It.

Alongside the online rebuttals and link-sharing, we see the rise of the satirical #hashtag, in this case #NickCleggsFault (seeded by Justin McKeating, I believe), and Chris Applegate has updated his seminal Daily Mail Headline Generator to capture the Zeitgeist:

WILL NICK CLEGG GIVE YOUR HOUSE SWINE FLU?

A few questions present themselves. The first is the obvious perennial: how deep does this sort of ridicule penetrate into the national conversation? Are these jokes just a distraction for a insular blogosphere, the “Twitterati”, or does the meme spread out enough to properly counter the spin being spread by the Mail?

Social marketers will spend all election trying to answer this question… but whatever the level of influence right now, I think it is safe to say that it grows on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the tabloids diminish in stature. This is now a given.

But what I really want to know, is this: What do the journalists at these outlets really think about the satirical attacks on their paper? I can well imagine a bunker mentality affecting the editorial team at the Mail, or the Express, or the Telegraph – these are intense and high-stakes positions, after all.

But does this attitude extend to, say, a young journalist working on the news desk? Or the sub-editors? Or the music reviewers? Or the poor chap (or chapess) who has to moderate all the angry comments!? What do they think when they see the Daily Mail Headline Generator and the #NickCleggsFault hastag cluttering up their screens? Just as the Mail’s readership is not a monolith, we know that their staff cannot be either.

I would love to know their reaction to these kinds of online surges – and not out of any sense of schadenfreude, fly-on-the-wall, Downfall-type snigger. I think it would be a genuinely useful insight into how major media operations operate in the second decade of the 21st Century.

Any pseudonomynous contributions in the comments would be gratefully received.

The other winners were Rashid Hajili, chair of the Media Rights Institute in Azerbaijan; The Peruvian station Radio La Voz; and the Israeli publishing house Andalus. Heather Brooke, who prised open the MPs expenses scandal, won a special commendation.

Henry Porter has some commentary, and you can view the awards shortlist on the Index website.

The new reasoning centres around access to public services. Many people, the poorest people, don’t have any form of identification at all: no passport, credit card, driving licence, or even household bills in their name. ID cards, says Hillier, will provide a solution for these people, guaranteeing that they can quickly access the public services they need. The idea that a robust and trusted form of identification can be a tool for empowerment is something that the liberal left, instinctively against ID cards, needs to consider.

The approach is not without problems. Hillier says that people may miss out on a job, because employers are legally required to check you have the right to work in the UK, and inadequate identification might hinder this process. Likewise, she says people may miss out on renting a flat, or be refused a bank account, due to lack of ID. This may be so, but the hurdles that ID cards are designed to solve are actually regulations put in place by the government! Why not lower the hurdles? Why not create a new, entry-level type of bank account, with less overdraft and laundering possibilities? That way, ID barriers and credit checks could be safely reduced (perhaps some economists amongst our readers could comment on the practicalities of this, or whether such accounts already exist).

Discussing the technicalities of the new card, Hillier mentioned the ubiquity of the iPhone and other modern gadgets that can run any number of applications. “Why not put a chip in the phone?” she asked. After all, it is the chip that is the important bit, not the waterproof plastic. Quite right… but the wags will soon ask why we can’t put chips in our foreheads, too.

During the Q&A, I made a point about the tension between efficiency (which Hillier was keen to trumpet) and privacy. Perhaps privacy lies somewhere in the inefficiency of systems talking to each other? If it is actually a bit inconvenient to check someone’s identity, then those in a position of power over us are less likely to do so on a whim or a prejudice. David Eastman has a beautiful short essay on this point:

If someone is trying to track me down, then someone must think I really am worth the effort. Its when computers talk to other computers that liberty disappears. Because a computer can correlate countless bits of data and create new records that would take many humans exponentially longer to do. And that gap, or grace period, is actually where anonymity lies, or did.

Unfortunately, the Minister said this view was “bonkers”. I fear this attitude has more to do with the inarticulacy of the person making the philosophical point, than with the underlying idea. Anti-ID card campaigners are genuinely concerned that the system will be abused by officious and power-hungry government officials. They are concerned that companies will start accepting only ID cards as suitable identification for giving people work. If I was refused entry to a nightclub because I wasn’t on Facebook, or if I was refused employment because I was not on LinkedIn, then I would be rightly indignant. If ID cards become so efficient as to be ubiquitous, and opting out becomes ever more impractical, then we do have a civil liberties issue on our hands. It is a very specific point, and pedantic, perhaps, so I can see why the Minister would get a bit exhasperated. But still, Meg, “bonkers” is not enough of an answer. Those arguing for ID cards need to address this issue, or risk the anti-card campaigners making this inference: That ID cards are designed to be ubiquitous, and designed to become so essential that opting out becomes a practical impossibility. If this is the underlying motive, then the government should at least be honest with us.

The other hardy perennial in the case for ID cards, is that since we already have Oyster Cards, Nectar Cards, PayPal and Amazon accounts, we have already surrendered a lot more information about ourselves than would be stored on a database. This argument is fundamentally weak – We can choose to completely opt-out of the Nectar card or Oyster system if we wish. Facebook has privacy issues of its own, of course, but you can delete all your friends, tags, apps and photos if you want. Can you opt out of the ID card system, once you have signed up for it?

“No” says The Minister. Once you’ve tied your finger prints to your name and identity, its on the system forever. This ensures that no-one else can put their finger-prints to your name and steal your identity, Jackal-style. This seems sensible… but it is nevertheless a fundamentally different process to signing up for any number of user accounts. Ministers should stop using the Nectar Card example as an argument for why ID cards are benign.

Hillier acknowledged throughout that the government has presented a “muddled message” on ID cards and that Labour should “take responsibility” for not putting out better arguments for the new system. A case made on empowering the poor is a much better approach than one based on fear and xenophobia… but the government needs to do more – a lot more – to convince skeptics that it is not trying to introduce something much more comprehensive and far-reaching in the long term.

Update 16th March 2010 – I am told the Minister spoke from notes, so there is no published version to link to. Y’all have to take my word for it that what I reported is an accurate reflection of what was said.

I wish my blog wouldn’t continue to bite me on the arse (not in the good way); I’ve held my finger over “Delete Blog?” button so many times.

I can understand why Zoe might want to start afresh, but this sentiment feels wrong and offensive – like book burning.

The other worry is for those who might want to start a political career. James Joyner at the Outside the Beltway blog discusses Philosopher Kings and the potential for a blogger-turned politician.

It seems to me that the chief barrier to bloggers getting elected to public office isn’t so much their typically introverted personalities or lack of access to money but the mere fact that we’ve accumulated a long paper (pixel?) trail of recording every fool thought that’s passed through our minds over the last several years. Even bright, thoughtful, decent types like [Ross] Douthat and [Ezra] Klein — and Lord knows, [Mickey] Kaus and [James] Joyner — have written things that would kill a campaign dead, dead, dead if it showed up in an attack ad.

We could certainly add Sri Hundal and the rest of the Liberal Conspiracy team to that list.

However, Joyner’s underlying attitude is defeatest. I prefer the alternative model, whereby blogging your thoughts allows you to spot holes, inconsistencies and hypocrisy in your own logic. This is Andrew Sullivan’s stated creed and I think it is this principle which sustains him as one of the most read blogs, both in the USA and internationally.

In UK, the political ‘attack ad’ is still a concept in its infancy. That may change during the forthcoming election campaign, but the parties still seem above that sort of thing. In any case, attack adverts posted on YouTube, can be instantly countered with an ‘reply’ video which links to the context from which the offending paragraph had been pulled. Anyone who blogs is likely to have the skills to do this within the hour. I think that anyone who tried to smear someone with quotes from their own blog at, say, a public hustings, could be easily discredited. A politician who knew what he or she had written (and it is suprisingly easy to remember your arguments, once they have been typed and posted) could easily call-out such a smear or ‘gotcha’ question for what it really is – pathetic and lazy political opportunism.

However, this sort of approach only really works if you engage properly with comments and corrections on the blog. Selective deafness to criticisms only makes the problem worse. I know this is the frustration of people like Justin and Tim when trying to hold Iain to account.

Indeed, it is via Iain Dale that another example of The-Internet-Coming-Back-To-Bite-You emerges. Anna Arrowsmith is a Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and a director of porn films. Since the Lib Dems tend to espouse “live and let live” style policies, I think this is relatively uncontroversial, but the BBC did a story on it anyway. Iain notes that Arrowsmith’s website also says something far more damaging:

Anna is liberal and open-minded but politically she supports The Labour Party, for all its sins.

Scandal!

Only, not really. The website is clearly several years old (it has plenty of <table> tags for layout, an archeological relic in web design terms) and a quick peak at the Internet Archive shows the biography was written in 2004. Likely poor Ms Arrowsmith forgot to update her biography when she switched parties, which doesn’t make it any less awkward. A more practiced blogger would have remembered when and where they endorsed piolitical parties, and made a correction to the internet record at the right time. Nonetheless, its another example of how the Internet’s perfect memory often foils our best laid plans. Hopi has more on the Arrowsmith story.

Ultimately though, I think that the wisdom of XKCD should see us through. Zoe Margolis, James Joyner and Anna Arrowsmith should all print this out and pin it to the wall above their computer screens. Then, stop worrying, and get on with being themselves as best they can.

The campaign put a small dent into Simon Cowell’s sales figures. Last year, Alexandra Burke’s Hallelujah sold 576,000 copies in the week before Christmas, while this year Joe McElderry only managed 450,000. But this hardly suggests that Cowell’s business model is on the wane – Leon Jackson only sold 275,000 copies of his single, When You Believe in 2007. Cowell knows that a bit of controversy is good for his bottom line. He knows that the label ‘Christmas Number One’ is an entirely relative marketing concept anyway, and modern music history is littered with classic hits which never reached that false summit.

So although the Facebook campaigners for Rage Against the Machine were successful, I can’t help thinking that there is something confused about the campaign and its aims. They say:

… it’s given many others hope that the singles chart really is for everybody in this country of all ages, shapes, and sizes…and maybe re-ignited many people’s passion for the humble old single as well as THAT excitement again in actually tuning in to the chart countdown on a Sunday.

In taking this line, the campaigners seem to be endorsing the Singles Chart as an appropriate indicator of good and popular music, when it is manifestly nothing of the sort. Yes, they reclaimed the ‘excitement’ for a single week… but they did so with a seventeen year-old song which was chosen precisely for its contrast with its competitor. That is entirely different from what the campaigners have nostalgia for – new music from good bands, battling it out. Former chart battles were essentially a positive contest, with music fans buying their favourite record. The 2009 campaign had an entirely negative “anyone by Cowell” message, which is unsustainable.

False Metrics

Modern internet campaigns often seem to fall into the trap of chasing targets based on false metrics. The campaign for Gary McKinnon (the computer hacker in danger of extradition to the US) seems to be a victim:

lets make #mckinnonmonday ‘trend’ – TWEET4GARY NOW !!! please tweet ALL #american friends and ask them to help #FREEGARY #garyMckinnon
- @cliffsul

The aim of #mckinnonmonday is to make Gary McKinnon trend #garymckinnon Pls RT
- @dandelion101

Shouldn’t the aim be to generate anger and interest in the Gary McKinnon story? How helpful is all the constant RT’ing if it doesn’t translate to bodies at the protest, letters in the politician’s in-tray.

And it is not just impoverished grassroots campaigners falling into this trap, either. Here is a recent tweet from a Cabinet Minister:

Support #welovetheNHS, add a #twibbon to your avatar now! – http://twibbon.com/join/welovetheNHS

Admittedly, sending the tweet is hardly a burden on Mr Milband’s resources, but its odd and disturbing that politicians and political campaigns have started to relate to us in this way. The idea that the NHS is something to love is presumed, and the campaign becomes about forming a huge group of people around a slogan for a fleeting moment only. Did anyone capture the e-mail addresses of those who tweeted #welovetheNHS? If not then it seems like a wasted moment.

And as for Twibbons? This innovation seems to me to be a hugely reductive exercise, shrinking political debate to a space 100 pixels wide.

Now, lest you assume I am engaging in pure snark, I should point out that I am as guilty of this hashtag chasing as the next person – perhaps more so. I helped the Burma Campaign devise their 64forSuu.org project, which was, frankly, all about the hashtag. And only today I’ve written a press release lauding the fact that PEN‘s Libel Reform petition has just reached 10,000 signatures, a figure that will something only if it serves to light a fire under either Jack Straw or Dominic Grieve.

Its very easy to raise ‘awareness’ of any given issue, but that’s not the same thing as establishing a consensus that what you are proposing is right. And in turn, that is not the same thing as actually motivating people to action. It would be a great shame if “taking action” became synonymous with simply sharing links and joining endless Facebook groups, because when that “action” fails to translate into meaningful change, we will only find that another generation have been turned off politics, disillusioned. The Obama campaign has been criticised recently for its rather top-down approach to twitter, which didn’t really engage in conversation with supporters. But nevertheless, he actually inspired people out of their houses and into the campaign HQs. Did some of us think that Twitter could start a revolution in Iran? Not quite (as Jay Rosen points out). While the #IranElection tag on Twitter has been a useful tool for the protesters and for those reporting on the crisis it is clearly the people on the ground that will really put that regime under pressure (and we hope that the passing of Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri will provide inspiration to renew that pressure).

All of which is to say that George Monbiot’s sanctimonious article this morning had the ring of truth about it:

For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people – the kind who read the Guardian – have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn’t do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions on to the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero. Where are you?

We’ve been tweeting #hashtags and adding #twibbons to our avatar, George. Get with the programme, yeah?

And then there is the problem of forum shopping, or “Libel Tourism”:

Britain is a pariah state, shunned by its allies and exploited by the unsavoury. The state of English libel laws (Scotland’s provisions are a little better) is so embarrassing that a number of US states have enacted legislation to protect their citizens from our courts. London is the global centre of libel tourism. From Middle Eastern potentates to Russian oligarchs, the rich and powerful use our legal system to bully people who try to hold them to account.

That’s John Kampfner, former editor of the New Statesman and Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, introducing the Index/PEN report into English libel laws. The report is the result of a year long inquiry that took in the opinions of publishers, lawyers, journalists, novellists, NGOs and bloggers, and identifies ten challenges for libel reform.

First amongst these the problem of burden of proof, which in libel lies uniquely with the defendant. The report recommends reversing this, and requiring claimants to demonstrate falsehood and damage. We also recommend reducing damages in libel to £10,000 and establishing a low cost libel tribunal that would allow bloggers, and others of slender means, to defend libel actions without having to re-mortgage their children.

You can read the rest of our recommendations at www.libelreform.org, a new hub that will co-ordinate the campaign for libel reform, in collaboration with Sense About Science. We need to lobby MPs to sign an EDM calling form reform, and to pressurise both the Tories and Labour to join the Liberal Democrats and make libel reform a manifesto commitment. The campaign for libel reform has already attracted the support of writers such as Monica Ali and Andrew Motion, and makes bedfellows of newspaper editors Alan Rusbridger and Peter Wright. If you are fed up with the wealthy and big corporations using English laws to suppress free speech, then we urge you to join them, and sign-up to the campaign.