I had a half-formed post in mind to work on this morning, but then I read Glenn Greewald’s latest and concluded that if you are going to devote ten minutes of your day, nothing I could write would be as profitable as your reading him.
I would only add the obvious fact that Blair had already done to New Labour precisely what Obama has done to the Democrats; and that western “democracy” has lost its meaning because the institutionally entrenched parties offer no actual policy choice to voters, but are all neo-conservative.
Good point ‘Nevermind’ sock-puppetry in teenage forums has lead to murder, suicide or rape.
I wouldn’t use any free hosted forums, since this blog is powered by wordpress, the obvious choice is bbpress hosted on the same server as the blog.
A forum with only Craig starting threads seems like a blog to me.
private messaging might reinforce any club like feel. I really like the openness here.
But I agree that registration will help the mods
Know what you’re saying, Phil. I’m not really coming at it from “let’s start a forum” though. There are plenty of fora for people with coincident political views. But I’m thinking that this blog already resembles a forum in the number of comments and side-issues – and blatant irrelevancies – it attracts; perhaps it would work better in forum format. As to there being a “club” issue with messaging, well, yes. It’s possible. But I don’t think it would be a huge problem on the main board. Where alliances are also made, but with less discussion.
Anyhow, it’s Craig’s blog and I’ve said more than enough on the subject.
‘My money’s on this guy (who claimed to be a Thatch advisor, but isn’t even mentioned in her memoirs) Literally swivel-eyed lunatic. Christopher “Lord” Monckton.’
If we’re to look at the Lords for the ‘Thatcher aide’ referred to by Tom Watson yesterday this guy looks to be a better bet-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_McAlpine,_Baron_McAlpine_of_West_Green
McAlpine apparently lives in Australia now. I wonder how hard that would make it to prosecute him.
Keir Starmer was the man in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service when the police submitted their file against Jimmy Savile in 2009.
I find it incredible that the potential prosecution of a celebrity figure who had personal contacts with highly placed individuals like Mrs Thatcher; Prince Charles; Tony Blair; Ted Heath and many other members of the establishment, was not overseen by the Director of Public Prosecutions himself or that he was not, at least, informed of the details that the police had provided and the reasons for the CPS not prosecuting.
Mr Starmer is now to investigate the organisation that he was in charge of at the time.
I note that he has not yet received his knighthood.
More Killing to come.http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/disposition-matrix/
Dave
Spot on Doug Scorgie. More than 300 ‘victims’ so far identified. How come that chain of Director Generals and Chairman of the Governors (latterly trustees) at the BBC promoted Savile as a their brand leader for over 40 years when there was so much knowledge of the weirdo. It stinks.
Qs. Was Savile hinself abused as a child? Did his mother know what he was up to? Probably no answers will be forthcoming. I read here that his great niece was abused by him when she was 12. Nobody took any notice of what she reported. The family members were all on his bandwagon presumably.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20081021
Komodo;
Commentators at a blog I frequent communicate via email to discuss visitors not privy to the communique, and were effective at remaining unified in their strategy toward suspected or confirmed trolls.
Patten on WATO today with Martha Kearney
http://audioboo.fm/boos/1024947-bbc-trust-chairman-lord-patten-interviewed-by-martha-kearney-on-the-world-at-one?utm_campaign=detailpage&utm_content=retweet&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
Hi all. I’m not of the view that sockpuppets are much of a problem. Email-based signup could however put casual/occasional posters off, and won’t stop a committed puppet, so that’s worth bearing in mind.
As for a forum, that’d be in addition to, rather than instead of, the blog (imo) – and moderating them tends to be more work anyway. WordPress is very nice as comments can be seen in the admin interface in a time stream, making moderation quick; however the likes of phpBB, in my view, has a convoluted and click-heavy interface.
I’ve tended to cast my lot against private messaging, since it encourages an invisible dynamic that works against newcomers, and it could create cliques. I believe others recently said something similar about off-board comms on a thread a week or so ago.
FWIW I think what we have is ok, except for the blasted spam! 😉
BTW; I decided to embrace my status, here.
“Don’t hide your warts. Decorate them…”
–Hunter S. Thompson–
WordPress, eh Jon?
There’s a nickname for it at other sites.
FYWP
Ben Franklin,
“When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.”
Right? ;.)
Heh, Ben; I had to look that up! However that phrase really should be FYWP.com, since our software is self-hosted, and as such is completely free to use. It won’t ever suddenly start costing us extra money 🙂
Jon, I was thinking further about the lack of SSL on this site. It occurred to me that since there is no SSL, whenever Craig logs in to post or comment his password is sent unencrypted to the webserver.
On an open wifi network this means he is broadcasting his password to anyone who cares to listen (using wireshark), and since Craig is always travelling I imagine he uses open wifi a lot.
Furthermore since as Craig often professes he is not tech savvy he likely uses that password for most if not all his online services.
This site desperately needs SSL for logins at least.
Jives;
(channeling Clark) He! He!
The CIA’s dupe has taken Romney down a notch. The Romentum has lost the MoJo.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/oct-24-in-polls-romneys-momentum-seems-to-have-stopped/
I get carried away sometimes. Someone has to stop me. 🙂
“Politics is the Art of controlling your environment”
—HST—-
First lesson for Virginia Farm Boys.
I know some will not be entertained by my sarcasm, but my importance is overestimated.
I’m retired anyway, so it would have to be just a ‘hobby’.
Gotta go now. Have to kick my youngest in the arse, and convince him to actually use shoe-leather to find a job. Online applications are completely useless.
Ben Franklin.
“With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.” HST.
Whoops.
Jon;
Most of the rabble find dupe comments and ‘slowing to a crawl’ during live blogs the most frustrating.
It’s not a big problem for the admin. Or they don’t care.
Thanks god the recession is so over, thanks to the Olympics. One whole percent, mark the calendar.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/25/us-ford-jobs-idUSBRE89O0IW20121025.
Some 500 job losses in the pipeline and next years comprehensive spending review promises to axe some more.
‘So out of the recession my big fat arse.’ said wicket Ingrid.
http://www.financial-news.co.uk/8173/2012/10/will-mass-nhs-job-losses-affect-standards-of-care-in-hospitals/
I smiled to myself when I heard this item of news on the World Service last night when the sentence was announced on the Goldman Sachs Board member found guilty of insider trading. He was said to have a personal fortune of over $85m.
Ex-Goldman exec’s 2-year sentence draws scrutiny http://online.wsj.com/article/APfcdcfabcf6794369a2a24c1865d287c8.html
‘More than 400 letters written to the judge on Gupta’s behalf included documents signed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.’ Enough said.
He had it all by the looks of it. What made him throw the self destruct button?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajat_Gupta
Ben, for fast-growing threads, I should think things are much quicker now we have paged comments.
Michael Stephenson, I agree. Clark and I both floated this idea, but didn’t get any enthusiasm; the trick is to persuade the person who’d be footing the bill! I might try again, but in the meantime I use the self-generated certificate, which if you’re comfortable with creating a browser exception, is better than nothing.
@jon Footing what bill? can you be specific, surely this blog is run on a shoestring.
Jon, you must have missed it when I posted this on another thread, but you can get a free ssl cert from here:
https://www.startssl.com/
With Craig’s password so easily snatchable you should probably consider it already compromised, someone could have been logging in and recording the IP’s and email addresses of commenters, which would be a concern to people who use pseudonyms.
In all likelihood the site hasn’t been compromised I’m not a paranoid nutter, I’m just raising the possibility for securities sake.
Nevermind, for an SSL certificate for extra site security (they can run into hundreds of pounds). Michael, didn’t see that comment; however I always thought free certs wouldn’t be recognised by most browsers and so wouldn’t be worth having. But I will have another look, thanks.