Belatedly (in my case, not his), here’s Jonathan Calder’s piece about blogging from Liberal Democrat News. This blog got a mention, for which I’m very grateful. It has made me worry about the impression I give of myself though 😉

Will Howells’ No Geek is an Island reflects his status as a Dr Who nut and soduku grandmaster as well as a sound Liberal.

The last part is a particular compliment as Jonathan is a noted sound Liberal himself.

This post from Ryan has been spotted by the BBC:

Some bad news for those Lib Dem leaders who believe they have finally cast off the image of the party as full of anoraks and train spotters. One internet blog from a conference visitor – if not a windup – details the excitement he experienced driving to conference. “On the way across the country I managed to spot consecutively number plates 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287 and 288 a consecutive record for myself. The only problem was that I failed to find 281 first”. How on earth can Charles Kennedy compete with that once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Oh no, it’s not a windup.

Update: Former LibDem blogger Hazel’s on the site too – with photo.

Speaking of Ludditism… I made the mistake last night of watching a programme on the BBC about the MMR jab. It began as an apparently sensible documentary about vaccination but descended into stupidity. We had the presenter being given reams of paper saying that MMR was safe. He said he still wasn’t sure, blamed the Government for not being able to convince him, and then went on to demand that politicans be more equivocal. He noted that the media had worried people with little evidence before taking out magazine ads and putting up posters asking the public to raise concerns about MMR. I switched channels but went back to see if he’d decided to get his daughter the jab after all, and was faced with a thoroughly pointless stunt projecting a campaign slogan on the House of Parliament. Editorialising, incoherent rubbish.

The next show I watched was When Blue Peter Became ABBA. Another error, but another programme that started promisingly. Quickly though it became apparent that Zoe Ball’s chosen presenting style for this was “snide”. Cue sarcastic comments about the four ex-Blue Peter presenters’ admittedly poor attempts to sing, and various digs at the band they were “paying tribute to”. Topped off with a surprisingly successful finale – helped, as far as I could tell, by backing instruments that concealed the band’s weaknesses – and I wanted to throw something at the TV.

Which I almost did when I was then shown an ad for Spoons, a new sitcom starring Rob Rouse of The Top 100 Ugliest Comedians fame. (#1 indeed.) The usual response to Christian Voice types who complain about TV is the off button.

Reader, I used it.

It is unusual for me to come down on the side of backwardsness and tradition when these are pitted against modern technology, but I hope the authors suing Google win.

Being a massive corporation doesn’t come with a free pass to ignore the law – whatever precedents various big businesses may have set – and this applies to copyright as much as to fraud, insider dealing and waste dumping. In this case, Google is digitising copyrighted works without the permission of the authors.

Writers are, generally speaking, entitled to control how their works are published. Google rather arrogantly declared that it would respect the wishes of authors who wanted to opt out, but that’s not how copyright law works. Telling authors that the project

“directly benefits authors and publishers by increasing awareness of and sales of the books in the programme”

is a patronising, “mother knows best” attitude and the authors are right to object. Providing books and journals in electronic is useful and valuable – hence the wide range of companies now publishing online and the growing number of free electronic journals. The digitisation of popular books is welcome but authors need to be brought on side, not steamrollered into it.