By Derek Draper
Well, needless to say the Tory trolls, as Tom Watson points out in his comment on our first post, have been out in force, but then who thought they’d be out with friends or lovers on Saturday night? Only kidding, after all, look where I am! Seriously we can dismiss these people as the impotent irritants they are. In fact, I am already so bored by them that I will henceforth be taking advantage of our fantastic “trashcan” facility. Our moderation policy explains this as follows:
“In order to ensure an insightful, engaging debate we will also place other comments judged to be grossly unintelligent or obtuse or Trolls in our trash can. These comments can, however, still be viewed by users by clicking on the “include trash comments” button under each post.”
I am 1000 x more interested in what the serious right are saying, so I thought I’d draw attention to these responses:
Tim Montgomery on ConservativeHome has written:
“... Derek. I wish you luck with the project and hope that we'll learn from you as you've been "inspired" by us - as you are kind enough to acknowledge. My advice to you: Don't just recycle party lines. LabourList will only work if you represent the breadth of opinion within your party and wider movement.”
And a Tory, Steve Tierney (notice, trolls, he uses his own name!), on LabourList itself said:
“I’m a Tory. I’m just saying that in order to be open and honest. Now I'd like to congratulate LabourList on its forthcoming launch and wish you the best of luck with the site. I may not agree with much that Labour supporters say but I do believe that political discussion is exceptionally valuable in all its forms. As such I hope this website helps bring debates forward and encourages people into the political arena, whatever their ideological colours.”
And Obnoxio the Clown (ok, not always serious but he is here) said:
“That nice Dolly Draper has asked me to tell you that they do, in fact, allow critical comments on their blog. And they do. I don't know for how long, but I will give them their due, they do currently allow it. They will also be publishing material critical of the government. Allegedly. (I don't know why Dolly's stooping to my level to big up his blog, he must be drunk and confusing me with Guido. :o) But I will say this: it is a good start and I do actually wish them well with the blog. If nothing else, it should give me a lot of ammunition before Mandelsnake kills it.”
Well, apart from that last bit (and as you may see, Obnoxio, in the next few days, Peter - far from killing us - will be feeding us), this all seems rather constructive. Amidst the noise from the Trolls, there is sensible, insightful, even well-mannered debate to be had. I am relishing the idea of it!
UPDATE
I also thought you might be interested in a reply I have posted to Jon Worth’s critique:
“Jon, thanks for what you say. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. On the technology front the specifications involve daily e-mails and other innovations (still to be revealed). That could not be done on such a platform. Also i am particularly proud of the way that comments link to threads which provides a much better user experience... I think that we need to break out of a narrow "blogosphere" mentality and involve thousands if not millions more people in taking some politics online. I suspect that will happen slowly and when it does I also suspect that they will be more intetrested in reading what Spencer and Alan have to say than you think - after all millions of people will be reading Alan's article on social mobility in the Sunday Times tomorrow... of course, we need to do both - get exciting new, niche writers involved AND the big names. That's what you'll get on LabourList!”
Oh, and just to show how open to feedback we are, thanks to Daily Referendum for this:
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Application of the term troll is highly subjective. Some readers may characterize a post as trolling, while others may regard the same post as a legitimate contribution to the discussion, even if controversial. The term is often used to discredit an opposing position, or its proponent, by argument fallacy ad hominem.
Often, calling someone a troll makes assumptions about a writer's motives. Regardless of the circumstances, controversial posts may attract a particularly strong response from those unfamiliar with the robust dialogue found in some online, rather than physical, communities. Experienced participants in online forums know that the most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore him or her, because responding tends to encourage trolls to continue disruptive posts — hence the often-seen warning: "Please do not feed the trolls".[11]
Frequently, someone who has been labelled a troll by a group may seek to redeem their reputation by discrediting their opponents, for example by claiming that other members of the group are closed-minded, conspirators, or trolls themselves.
So.... thats all settled then
All looks too subjective to me
Not a Tory. Merely a very disgruntled ex Labour voter for over 30 years, seeking some answers to questions.
I guess being trashed is the all answer I need
DISSENT NOT PERMITTED HERE.
WELCOME TO THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF BRITAIN.
Utterly pathetic.
It's not easy fighting your own corner at the best of times, I'd certainly hate to be fighting a corner that only had a decade of abject failure, incompetence, bullying and thuggery to show for all the fine words that marked its manifesto, like "fairness" and "justice". But your complete failure to even try does not reflect well on your prospects.
These have been trashed. Banter between him and Draper hasn't been. Which leaves one to conclude - there will not be serious debate here about Labour policy, and that Draper has a very high opinion of himself.
So the first conclusion to be drawn about this new Labour blog is that there will be no dissent or criticism. In which case, apart from massaging Dolly's enormous ego, one must ask, in the manner of Down The Line
What is point, LabourList?
One of the most important points that Tom Gensemer made at the meeting in December was to use the term, "supporters - not members". As I've written elsewhere (transatlanticpost.com), blogs should be a means to political engagement - not the end of the road.
In other words, you shouldn't have to be David Lammy or Peter Mandelson to be able to post a blog on this site. Something along the lines of the TPM Cafe feature would, I feel, provide a constructive forum - not only for debate, but also potentially for activism: fundraising, volunteering, local organization, and so on.
DailyKos, with it's support of ActBlue has been a particularly good example of this sort of activism: blogs being a gateway towards action, not just something for the insider crowd.
As for concerns about trolling, or sorting the wheat from the chaff - again, I would point to TPM, with their four tiers of blogs: the front page, with David Kurtz and Josh Marshall, and then the TPM Cafe, with featured contributors (MJ Rosenberg, Jon Taplin, etc), recommended reader posts, and then recent reader posts.
Anyway, I dashed off a post on LabourList on my blog: http://tinyurl.com/a8lpqe -and I'll add LabourList to the sidebar.
As for trolls and loony, anonymous, BNP-moulded posters some of you may be interested to read this:
http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/issue/comment/anonymity-threatens-integrity-online/
If you are not prepared to put your name to your views then the lack of accountability this entails means your words will be ill-considered at best. Whilst banning anonymity is a step too far, we should encourage responsible posting and integrity.
Interesting then, that rather than respond to them, I am binned.
Pathetic really. Mummy, he disagreed with me. Well, turn him off, darling.
Still Derek, I guess it's better than spending all your time pointing and directing all the little 'Draper Drones' that populate the BBC blogs. (BTW, have you has a chance yet to become intimate with the "17 people who count" in this government?
I give this blog six week before it atrophies into irrelevance.
What
I wish you luck in this endeavour (I am a Lib Dem activist and blogger) however I do have a couple of concerns.
Firstly the list of contributors seems to largely consist of very mainstream party figures. If a blog like this is to be successful, it cannot always parrot the party line. There has to be space to be able to question and constructively criticise your own party's approach. I hope you can find the right balance here.
Secondly, and I don't wish to get too personal but I am fearful that with such a divisively partisan figure as yourself Derek as the driving force behind it, there is a risk that the blog will reflect this too strongly. I saw you on BBC News 24 a while back and I was shocked at how unwilling to even engage in the discussion with your Tory opponent you were. You just kept shouting things at him like "Same old Tories!" and similar and also kept grossly misrepresenting your opponent's position on things. It was exactly the sort of performance that turns people off from watching political "debates" in my opinion. I hope you can curb these instincts and allow proper debate to occur on here. I know you will have problems with Tory trolls but not all Tories are in league with the devil and they often have valid opinions that merit debate. As do we Lib Dems and others from across the political spectrum. If you can engage in this way, the blog is muchmore likely to be successful.
>constructive comment, disagreement and argument from outside the Labour Party
Indeed - that's where all the new voters have to come from.
>I think the model of offering the choice between the discussion with or without blocked comments is in principle a very good one.
Yes. That's good.
>Another quite good idea is on Liberal Conspiracy, where I am among the bloggers, where a fairly tight comments policy does allow fundamental disagreements - fairly expressed - but where they 'disemvowel' (remove the vowels) from nonsense that might not merit deletion.
Tight policy YES. Disemvowelling NO. Imho it is demeaning to the commenter and the enforcer - like playing white noise when someone is speaking rather than telling them to shut up. Have the courage of your convictions and banish "blocked" comments to the "full" thread.
Rgds
Matt
1) Tony Blair: 1997 Conference Speech
"I want this to be the New Labour Government that ended Tory boom and bust forever."
2) Gordon Brown: July 1997
"Today, the Bank of England has agreed with me that, if we are to prevent the cycle of boom and bust, inflationary pressures in the economy, which the previous Government negligently failed to tackle, must be brought under control "
3) Gordon Brown: November 1997
"I am satisfied that the new monetary policy arrangements will deliver long-term price stability, and prevent a return to the cycle of boom and bust."
4) Gordon Brown: April 1998
"We will not return to the stop-go, boom-bust years which we saw under the Conservatives. "
5) Gordon Brown: May 1998
"The Government have put in place policies to deliver that objective and are determined to avoid a return to boom and bust."
6) Gordon Brown: June 1998
"rigorous financial discipline that, together with monetary stability, ends once and for all the boom and bust that for 30 years has undermined stability "
7) Tony Blair: February 1999
"Moreover, for decades we have been prone to far greater swings in the economic cycle than our continental counterparts. It has been boom and bust....Under this Government, there is an entirely new framework for economic management in place "
8) Ruth Kelly: November 1999
"The Government have rejected the boom and bust of the Conservative party "
9) Tony Blair: November 1999
"We have the best chance of ending boom and bust in years."
10) Gordon Brown: November 1999
"Indeed, Britain was set to repeat the old, familiar cycle of boom and bust. Since then, we have created and rigorously adhered to a new framework of modern economic management "
10) Alistair Darling: January 2000
"On top of that, we have a healthy and stable economy and an end to the boom and bust that characterised the Tory years."
11) Alan Johnson: February 2000
"The Government's first priority on coming to office was to secure long-term economic stability and put an end to the damaging cycle of boom and bust."
12) Gordon Brown: March 2000
"Britain does not want a return to boom and bust. "
13) Tony Blair: 2000 Conference Speech
"The first big choice: a government with the strength to deliver stability, or a government that takes the country back to boom and bust."
14) Gordon Brown: November 2000
"Our approach is to reject the old vicious circle of the '80s--rising debt, higher long-term interest rates, higher debt repayment costs, lower growth, higher unemployment, then enforced cuts in public spending. That was the old boom and bust."
15) Gordon Brown: March 2001
"We will not return to boom and bust."
16) Ruth Kelly: May 2002
"We must avoid a return to the days of boom and bust that manufacturers had to endure for a long time under the Conservatives."
17) Yvette Cooper: May 2004
"We know that they want to turn the clock back, but it would be foolish to turn it back to a policy of boom and bust."
18) John Prescott : January 2005
"Labour economic stability has replaced Tory boom and bust "
19) Tony Blair: 2005 Conference Speech
"In the first two terms we corrected the weaknesses of the Tory years: boom-and-bust economics "
20) Alistair Darling: March 2005
"As I said, there are two approaches—first, a strong economy, stability and helping families or, secondly, the Tory cuts, the undermining of stability, and a return to the boom and bust of the 1990s."
21) Gordon Brown: March 2006
"I have said before: no return to boom and bust."
22) Gordon Brown: December 2006
"Boom and bust is a term that applied to the Conservative years and two of the worst recessions in history"
23) Gordon Brown: March 2007
"We will not return to the old boom and bust."
24) Alistair Darling: June 2007
"...acknowledges the outstanding performance of the economy under this Government with the longest unbroken economic expansion on record, in contrast to the boom and bust of the previous Government "
Well, that's all right then.
The Penguin
"In 1998, he was working as a lobbyist for GPC Market Access... and as an Express journalist when he became embroiled in the first major scandal of Blair's government. He was caught on tape along with Jonathan Mendelsohn boasting to Greg Palast, an undercover reporter posing as a businessman, about how they could sell access to government ministers and create tax breaks for their clients. Draper denied the allegations."
And you wonder why politicians and politics has such a bad rap and people would rather vote in Big Brother (one for the irony police there too....)
Crisis-hit businessmen asked for £20 to meet Gordon Brown
Unembarrassed by spending an estimated £200,000 of taxpayers' money on the Cabinet's "away-day" in northern England, the Labour Party asked businessmen hit by the economic crisis to pay £20 each to meet Gordon Brown.
(from article below which this shit software did not format as pasted in)
Yet Nicholson’s £37,600 housing perk could comfortably meet the annual repayments on a £500,000 interest-only mortgage. It is more generous than the benefits typically on offer in comparable levels of the private sector. Most companies offer relocation packages for senior executives but not an annual allowance for a second property. Nicholson, who was a member of the Communist party in his early years as a health official, has told parliament that he intends to “squeeze the pay bill in the NHS”. Stephen O’Brien, the Tories’ shadow health minister, said: “Why is it that NHS bosses think it is acceptable to award themselves generous perks like second-home allowances and inflation-busting pay rises while hard-working nurses are being forced to take what is effectively a pay cut of 1.9%?” The existence of a second-home allowance has previously only been declared by central government for high-flyers lured from abroad. Chan Wheeler, an American who was recruited from overseas as a commercial director at the NHS, was paid an allowance of £90,000. He has since left the NHS. Public accounts detailing the remuneration of senior civil servants in other Whitehall departments do not show such large benefits. This means either that they have not been claimed or, as with Nicholson, they have never been declared. A Cabinet Office spokesman was unable to say how many other civil servants were receiving second-home allowances.
Education, education, education, eh?
Any original thoughts of your own to add here?
Im not tory or labour by the way.
Bright bunch you have here, Dolly.
And what about linking politicalbetting.com? probably the best political discussion site around at the moment.
I'm sorry I didn't realise I had to be a Tory to detest Labour. I'll join up right away just to confirm you in your prejudice.
Hope we will have lots of discussion her about New Stasi's destruction of our freedom. What that bloke with the brush moustache couldn't do, they have.
So, Dolly (darling) if Not Flash, Just Mental is so PRO hard-working families, why does he tax them until they squeak? And how about the 10p tax debacle? Good one eh? He may love families, but he sure as hell hates people without kids.
Times good on them today, and their careful use of taxpayers money.
Civil servants get £40,000 home perk
Jon Ungoed-Thomas
SOME of Britain’s top civil servants and quango chiefs are receiving lucrative perks as annual “housing allowances” worth many thousands of pounds from the taxpayer.
Whitehall did its best last week to hide the extent of the allowances, which in some cases are worth more than £40,000 - twice the controversial subsidies given to MPs.
But it emerged that senior officials at the NHS, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Legal Services Commission and Transport for London have quietly amassed the housing perks. There was anger last night that some had not relocated their homes to qualify.
Mark Wallace, campaigns director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, commented: “It’s excessive to be given massive second-home allowances on top of huge salaries and extremely generous pensions.”
Related Links
* Quangos spend £10m seeking more money
* Quango chief runs up £50,000 taxi bill
David Nicholson, the head of the NHS, claims an annual £37,600 allowance for working away from home - yet he was already working and living in London when he took the job three years ago, so did not have to relocate. Nicholson was head of NHS London, and had a flat in the centre of the city, when he was moved to his highly paid London-based post in charge of the National Health Service in 2006.
According to the Department of Health resource accounts for 2007-8, he received the second-home perk on top of his £215,000 salary.
Bill Kirkup, the NHS associate medical director, who has worked in London since 2005, claimed a second-home allowance of up to £25,800 last year.
Officials say that both Nicholson and Kirkup receive the allowance because their “main homes” are not in London. Nicholson has a house near Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
Initially, an NHS spokesman claimed that Nicholson received the allowance because his appointment was based in Leeds.
The department later confirmed he was based in London, but said he was entitled to the allowance because he was “working away from home”.
Health officials say allowances should be used only to pay rent and other costs. Yet Nicholson’s £37,600 housing perk could comfortably meet the annual repayments on a £500,000 interest-only mortgage. It is more generous than the benefits typically on offer in comparable levels of the private sector.
Most companies offer relocation packages for senior executives but not an annual allowance for a second property.
Nicholson, who was a member of the Communist party in his early years as a health official, has told parliament that he intends to “squeeze the pay bill in the NHS”.
Stephen O’Brien, the Tories’ shadow health minister, said: “Why is it that NHS bosses think it is acceptable to award themselves generous perks like second-home allowances and inflation-busting pay rises while hard-working nurses are being forced to take what is effectively a pay cut of 1.9%?”
The existence of a second-home allowance has previously only been declared by central government for high-flyers lured from abroad.
Chan Wheeler, an American who was recruited from overseas as a commercial director at the NHS, was paid an allowance of £90,000. He has since left the NHS.
Public accounts detailing the remuneration of senior civil servants in other Whitehall departments do not show such large benefits. This means either that they have not been claimed or, as with Nicholson, they have never been declared. A Cabinet Office spokesman was unable to say how many other civil servants were receiving second-home allowances.
The QCA, the exams watchdog, offers generous second-home allowances. Ken Boston, the Australian boss suspended after last summer’s Sats marking fiasco, was recruited with a £50,000-a-year allowance.
The Sunday Times established last week that Andrew Hall, now the QCA’s acting chief executive and director of strategic resource management, received £43,400 last year for his accommodation in London. The QCA said he had received the allowance because he was coordinating the move of the organisation to Coventry and already had a home in the Midlands.
The Legal and Services Commission pays a similar taxable benefit. One executive, who has since left, received £40,800 in benefits, including a taxable allowance for accommodation. The commission refused to give further details.
Transport for London says the benefits for its senior officers can include payments for “temporary or medium term accommodation”. A spokesman said he was not aware of it being claimed by British executives. Tim O’Toole, the American managing director of London Underground, claims the allowance
Dear me.
(And I must point out that I'm not a Tory!)
On the bright side, you have a much better chance of getting your RSS fixed than we have of ever fixing the UK.
I firmly believe that the state is in fact the cause of more problems than it solves and that it should be restricted to that handful of things that can't be provided effectively by the market: defence, roads, rubbish collection, policing and the like.
However, this is nirvana to someone who believes in the freedom of the individual and would not work in a society conditioned to believe that people only have the rights given to them by the state, so I have a more pragmatic approach outlined here.