Blogging on Sunday am

Just watched Andrew Marr interviewing Iain Dale and Yasmin Alibhai Brown on the BBC's Sunday am.

The BBC introduction was good in terms of breadth and coverage - though they could have shown their audience a little on how to set up their own blogs.

Not sure Harriet-for-Deputy deserved to be introduced as a major blogger though. Lynne Featherstone would have been better. Of course Nadine Dorries has a real blog - which does more than just politics.. but Harriet does invite comments. I must go and check if she accepted mine a week or so ago. ( And the answer is yes she did ! - link here. She's gone up in my estimation.)

The interview was unfortunately dominated by Yasmin's grumpiness on the issue. She didn't say she would like the banned but you get the impression that's what she was thinking. She's the Independent online editor and hates online content like blogging - well that's an independent attitude for you. ( She says she interacts with her readers by email - which is no doubt on her site somewhere ).

Iain Dale did well - all that practice on 18D is working well, especially the use of body language to disagree with Yasmin without speaking over her.

His points about numbers of people reading blogs vs Political magazine circulation and the fact people choose to read blogs were good. I'm afraid Yasmin just doesn't get the idea of giving people freedom and choice. ( In fairness she did cite one example where her reputation had been damaged on a blog and she had to get Iain Dale's help to rebuff it . )

Will blogging become more important in future British elections ? In a free society we will find out. What is worrying is that you feel much of the left would like that freedom to be removed, but haven't yet found the excuse to do it.

PS Elle Seymour starts things off - admitting to blogging addiction. Elle - your a star. I look forward to attending Blogging Anonymous meetings with you - though in some ways I'm already there.

Now I must go as my wife is about to pull the plug on me - its off to battle annoying Welsh dual language motorway signs ( which are just bloody minded and ridiculous - I'll be writing a mental post in my head with each one I pass ) on the way to Cardiff for the day.

Update: See Iain Dale's take here. You can guess my answer to Iain's question.