I wasn't going to talk about this at all, but since it's gone this far... Apparently, Jo Anglezarke has deleted her blog. Since I am partly to blame for this, I am going to give my side of the sorry tale. Make of it what you will.

It came to my attention that Jo had taken against me when I saw a discussion between her and Mark Valladares in a public thread on LDV. Apparently Jo was upset with Mark because he voted for me in Iain Dale's beauty contest. I spent quite some time afterwards trying to be nice to her in a vain attempt to not have the Lib Dem blogosphere soured by needless drama. I apologised for voting for "the other Jo" in Dale's blog awards (even though Jo Christie Smith is utterly awesome, and wrote my favourite Lib Dem blog post EVER). I read her blog a few times, picked up her memes a few times, and walked on a lot of eggshells. I got it all thrown back in my face with extra bile, and decided a few weeks ago that if she wanted to be like that, that was fine, and I would just ignore her. Since then I have been parodied in a pretty meanspirited way on her blog (which I wouldn't have known about had a person (who shall remain nameless so he doesn't get dragged into this as well) not pointed me at it) and accused of "cyber bullying", "bullying by exclusion" and "having a secret blog which exists only to be mean to Jo", dramatically unfriended on FaceBook and seen a lot of people I like very much get caught in the crossfire.

Now, I HAVE been ignoring her, but I haven't been singling her out for ignoring. I generally ignore a lot of the Lib Dem blogosphere - Linda Jack and Irfan Ahmed because their writing style bugs me; Nich Starling because the way he looks at things bugs me; and vast swathes of it because I just don't have the time to read about the minutiae of someone else's life. I have (so far) muted thirteen blogs on Lib Dem Blogs, and I have no doubt that number will only increase. If someone bugs me, I stop reading their blog. Sometimes that decision to ignore gets fairly quickly reversed (step forward James Graham) sometimes it doesn't.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there are huge numbers of Lib Dem bloggers who don't read my blog because they don't like me, or my writing style, or both. I know I can be sweary, and that my style is acerbic, and that not everybody wants to read my views on Doctor Who. That is fine. I am under no illusions that I am the best thing ever, and am doing this because I enjoy it, not for any nefarious purpose. We all have different tastes, and we all want to read different stuff, and that's the beauty of blogging: there's something for everyone in it, and room for us all to play without treading on anyone else's toes. If you don't want to read my blog? That's cool. You don't have to. I don't think there exists such a thing as a must read blog, and if there did, I know for a damn straight fact I would not put mine in that category.

Similarly, I do have a friends only-personal blog. I have had it since 2004, before I knew Jo Anglezarke even existed, and it's so secret that I link to it from my profile page here on The Yorksher Gob, and in EVERY SINGLE POST I MAKE if you click on my username. I did make a post on there saying something along the lines of this other Lib Dem blogger has taken against me, my instinct is to ignore her and say nothing, what do you guys think?, to which the response was generally yup, you should ignore her. I have no qualms about having had a private conversation with my friends, although perhaps I should have anonymised the links...

Anyway, that's what happened as far as I can tell. If you think I have been cruel or unjust you're quite welcome to stop reading my blog, or leave vitriolic comments if you like. I'm a big girl, I can take it.

I'm not going to pretend that I like Jo, or that I will read her blog if she undeletes it. I can't be bothered dealing with her. I've never been one for walking on eggshells, and it wouldn't work anyway, and frankly, I have more important things to worry about than other people's egos and how easily they bruise. But I know a lot of other people do like her, and do read her blog. Jo: if you're reading this, I'd like you to know that what you do with your blog is your business, but the internet is quite big enough for the both of us, and Duncan is missing you. Why don't you undelete yourself, and we can both ignore each other, but at least people will stop worrying about you and everything will be a bit less dramatic?