I just want to give this a bit of transatlantic publicity. It'll show you how childish the right wing blogs in the UK can be - and how underdeveloped blogging in the UK is, if this person can have a claim to be a, or even 'the', leading UK political blogger.

Background: "Guido Fawkes" (real name: Paul Staines) is a blogger who gets the occasional tipoff from political sources, and so has broken a couple of minor political stories (along the lines of gossip) a few hours before the print media. He has talked this up to being called a 'leading political blogger' - successfully enough for Newsnight, the BBC's flagship news-in-depth programme, to give him 10 minutes on why political journalists shouldn't get friendly with politicians - he claimed that bloggers like him had 'cleaner hands' (despite him getting those stories from somewhere). Fawkes is generally a Tory (he was involved in Conservative student politics).

Tim Ireland is a liberal blogger who has done some good in UK web politics - he harried 10 Downing Street until they finally got an email address that the public could send messages for Tony Blair to, for instance, and promoted MPs starting their own blogs. He's highly critical of Fawkes, who he says edits critical comments out of his blog, or uses sock-puppets on other blogs. He also criticises Iain Dale for similar tactics - he's a sometime Conservative candidate who is a leading UK blogger, and who now webcasts a political channel on the Net, and who has published several political books, including a 'guide to UK political blogging' (Dale and 'Fawkes' have even published an anti-New Labour book together).

Today's development, from Tim Ireland's Bloggerheads site:



This is indeed the case, at the time of writing. The page3.com site isn't that bad, but it is indeed 'not safe for work' at somewhere fairly strict. Dale still just redirects to his homepage, but the principle of trying to discourage others looking at past entries on his blog still seems childish and fundamentally against the spirit of blogging.

When I compare this behaviour with some of the political blogs in the USA, or sites like DU, it makes me feel ashamed to be British. These 2 blogs really are counted as 'well-known' - for instance, a recent BBC guide to political blogs lists both of them, in quite a short list. And their idea of political discussion is trying to make it difficult for opponents to see what they say - or to put rude pictures on their screens.

So, if anyone ever tells you that 'Guido Fawkes' or 'Iain Dale' are worth looking at, they're not. They make 'Little Green Footballs' look professional.