Last night the cream of British political bloggers met in Westminster for a seminar organised by Vox Politics.
I wasn’t there but I would like to collect together links and comments on the event. However, as I write this on Tuesday morning, the supposedly instant punditry bloggers provide is a bit thin on the ground.
Why could that be? Well Tom Watson MP does manage a brief post: “The blogging meeting was great fun but I made the mistake of going to the pub. More on the meeting later”.
The only post I can find so far is from Nick Barlow who works night shifts and so didn’t go to the pub. He doesn’t sound too impressed.
More to follow as the ‘blogosphere’ shrugs off its collective hangover…..
Updates: Matthew Turner is up and about and thinks people were taking blogs too seriously.
Vox Politics now have some links and comments on their event.
A bit of bloggocks: Andrew Sullivan has noted the event, featuring the first ‘deputy’ to have a blog and says – “So the tectonic plates of media and political power slowly shift.”
Do they? Has any real power shifted at all? I don’t think so. More voices, greater diversity perhaps, but power?
Another Update: Politx have some interesting things to say, about last night’s event and the kind of people who attended. They also give an outline of what they think blogs are really about at the moment and what they could be.
Politix also lament the absence of any ordinary bloggers on the panel at the discussion – which seems a fair criticism. Tom Watson MP and Stephen Pollard, as politician and newspaper columnist, are interesting but they are hardly representative of what blogging is about.
Still sounds like it was a good discussion in the pub. Events like these are never going to satisfy every agenda but Vox Politics are to be congratulated for putting such an event on and getting a lot of attention for British blogs.
More Updates: Slugger O’Toole was at the seminar and has some good points to make. He also links to lots of other opinions about the event. Seems the hangovers have well and truly worn off.
Maggie’s Militant tendency also turned out. Their new hero Silvio Berlusconi used the phrase ‘democracy tourists’ to describe his opponents in the European parliament last week and the phrase did spring to mind looking at the photo of the Samizdata crowd in front of parliament. Silvio would never enter parliament with his shirt untucked though. Needless to say Perry and co are hoping that blogs do not help the democratic process.
Here is Guardian Online’s report on the event, written in almost blog format.