As from today, I will no longer be posting to The Yorksher Gob, and my LJ account will only be updated with crossposts when I remember to do them and twitter updates (to make absolutely sure that my large LJ f-list will be notified when I post and won't miss anything unless they choose to). This is mostly what has been happening for the last week or so anyway. I will still be reading my LJ f-list and commenting and things. I am not abandoning my friends on LJ, or deleting my account, or anything over dramatic like that.

My new home is at http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org Please update your bookmarks and RSS readers as necessary.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them - but bear in mind that from hitting post on this to midnight I will be at work and I might not get back to you immediately ;)

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This entry was originally posted at my Dreamwidth blog. Please comment there using OpenID.

So the Westminster Bubble is all still wittering on about smeargate, despite the fact that we now know that Ian Tomlinson died of abdominal bleeding and there are lot of other important things in the news. Still, smeargate has had one welcome effect. Alice Mahon, one of the wonderful and principled people who was still suckered into supporting the Labour party, has seen the light.

Come to the Lib Dem side, Alice. We have cookies (homemade by my own dear wife).

I shall copy and paste the text of ( my first ever LJ entry, for those who don't have access to it... )
So, what has changed for me since then?

Well, I have a lot less money to play with.
I have passed my bike test, bought and lost two motorbikes, and am now bikeless.
I have a different home, a different job, and most importantly, a different 'im indoors.
I have an extra doggie, and have gained and lost two snakes.

And despite all that upheaval, and the lack of cash? I am much much much emotionally better off.

LJ, meanwhile, has started having adverts, has sold out and sold its userbase down the river, and if anything better had come along before, I'd probably have been off a while ago... So I am really crossing my fingers for Dreamwidth.

Hullo world! I am still trying to catch up with my mammoth backlog, and this is complicated by the fact that I have taken the plunge with Dreamwidth. So you all still know I am alive etc., have some linkies:

• Firstly, my beloved explains why Dreamwidth is so awesome and why we are both so stoked about it. Another clue is in their diversity statement, which reads like the preamble to the constitution to me...


• We are having a Beltane Beer Festival at work, and you're all invited, if you can get to it!


• Perse posts a nice discursive post about the writing of New Who in dw_academy. Also, Daddies Richard and Alex might want to nosey at this post ;)


• Mr Quist strikes again in his puncturing of government.


• And finally, Lidl's most tempting offer yet - via huskyteer. Suspect hairygit will be especially interested in that one.

And now I must go watch more Batman with my Small Person. Oh the trials of motherhood...

So, amazon are enabling LGBT and disability discrimination. It are all over the internet. Is there any reason why The Party is still supporting and promoting them via the affiliate scheme? All the ethical people are disabling theirs.

Oh yes, perhaps it's because all the Westminster-based Lib Dems are still banging on about the complete non-event of a bottom-feeding, muck-raking Tory blogger being holier-than-thou about a bottom-feeding, muck-raking Labour blogger bandying about some silly ideas in an email, and hasn't noticed that something important regarding actual oppression of actual people by a huge commercial giant is happening..

For fuck's sake.

The reason people pay attention to this bollocks is because we are all talking about it. You can't spend your life talking about Draper/Staines and then complain that people talk about them too much. Find another frigging topic. Preferably something that actually matters.

Click to Embiggen

Make your own here, or look at Millennium's and Mr Quist's efforts. Thanks to the Award-Winning Alix Mortimer for breaking this to the LibDemosphere...

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Speaking of terror posters, witness Helen Duffett's horror that she is a textbook terrorist, given that she fulfills every last one of the criteria on this particular poster... Of course, she's not brown, so she ought to be OK.

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As an inveterate scratcher (apparently I do it in my sleep as well), I found this article on why scratching helps to relieve itches really interesting. Claude doesn't think it should ever have been published, but there we go.

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You'll find two of the above on today's netcast, which went up late today, partly because I was finding it REALLY difficult to pare down what I wanted to link to. I had 12 links which I thought were really interesting and well worth linking to, and I have a self-imposed maximum of eight in the post... Still, I'd like to ask for more people to send tips in because if I have more than eight I have a watertight excuse for rejecting some of them. Your tip will be given more weight if you are not tipping yourself but recommending someone else; although tipping yourself is allowed, even if it gets annoying if it's every five minutes.

This entry is prompted by a discussion with a particular person, but I have been meaning to write it for ages, and the discussion this morning was merely a reminder.

If there's one excuse that's guaranteed to piss me off when you have upset someone it is It was just a joke! This phrase is generally trotted out by people in a position of power when they have upset someone who is in a less privileged position. I am bang alongside the right to free speech, but the right to free speech cuts in all directions. Yes, you absolutely have the right to say offensive things; but the corollary of that is that other people have the right to call you out on it, and to tell you that you are being offensive and why.

If you thoughtlessly (or even purposefully) say something sexist or racist or whateverist, and someone calls you out on it, and your instinctive response is to say but I was only joking!, think what you are saying by saying that. You are saying Not only do I reserve the right to be inconsiderate of your feelings, but when I hurt you, I will compound that by making out that you should expect to be an object of fun. How does that make things better? Why is it funny to pick on people who are weaker than you and then laugh about it? That's not humour, that's bullying. That's why Johnny Vegas sexually assaulting people on stage isn't funny, because he is the one in the position of power and he is abusing it. That's why racist "jokes" aren't funny, because white people are in a position of power, and they are abusing it.

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, and I am fully in favour of it being as extensive as possible. But if you use your freedom of speech, you have to accept that sometimes, you are going to upset people, and that is a perfectly valid reaction for them to have. Belittling people for being offended is missing an opportunity to learn why something is offensive. And this absolutely does not mean that you can't say the offensive thing again; but if you say something offensive with the knowledge that you are being offensive then that is you being a bit of an arsehole. That's cool if you are OK with being an arsehole, but it's a bit rich to pretend that you're not.

And do you know what makes it worse? If you then follow up a conversation about why picking on people is not funny with anti-racists/feminists are so HUMOURLESS!! and telling the person who has called you out that if they don't like it then they aren't your friend and you're taking your bat and ball and going home. I've said this before, and I'm saying it again: my definition of a friend is someone who cares enough about me to not be afraid to tell me when I am wrong, or if I am being thoughtless, or if I am being a bit of a twat. I might not always be totally receptive to criticism (quit it with that hollow laughter at the back there!) but I'll always at least try to hear someone's criticisms of me before dismissing them.

So next time you feel like saying but I was only joking!! when someone tells you you are being a twat, consider if that is the message you really want to send. If it is, then that's cool, you fill your boots. But if what you actually mean is I'm sorry, I didn't realise I was being hurtful, and I'll try to actually be funny next time I am attempting humour then why not say that instead? It'll cause a lot less strife.

Those of you waiting with bated breath for my report of the Ros Scott interview will have to wait a little longer, as I'm not going to get it finished before I go to work. But what I AM going to do is clear down some of the tabs I have open as "interesting stuff to link to":

1. Star Trek Perfume. Is anyone else really disappointed that they didn't get BPAL to do these?


2. The Gallileoscope! $15 for a working replica of Gallileo's telescope? Hot damn! This International Year of Astronomy isn't half throwing up some interestingness.


3. Fellow Calderdale Lib Dem Nader Fekri's anti-Faith-School amendment might have been defeated, just, at conference, but that doesn't mean those of us who are against the state-funded religious indoctrination of children are giving up. Give the BHA some money, go on. For those who are not clear on this: I don't mind religious people having schools for their children if they want. But if that's what they really want, they can fund them for themselves. State funding for faith schools must end, IMHO. My views on this have really hardened since I have seen it happen to my daughter.


4. El Presidente thinks that the bloggers who interviewed her were "really nice, actually". Oh that's NOT helping... LOL

Oh well. See you after my nice eight hour shift...

Hot damn! The Award-Winning Alix Mortimer has made the longlist for the Orwell Prize! OK, so did That Tory Blogger, but... GO ALIX!

TwitterSheep is an appropriate web page for today, I think, given the number of people currently signing up for twitter.

Worryingly, the four biggest words in my tag cloud for entries (in order) are "JamesGraham" "going" "up" and "me". I'm quite proud that the tag cloud generated by my followers is a bunch of liberal writers, though. With a healthy dose of Who geekery, obvs.

Anyhoo, I now go to meet andrewhickey and minnesattva. Hope you lot all have a good day.

ETA: Oh Cthulhu, Ann Widdecombe is on Any Questions.

* runs to turn the radio off *

* with a small cheer for Greg Dyke and John Sergeant *

There's a lot of comment in the Blogosphere today about Derek Draper behaving like a cock towards That Tory Blogger. Why is anyone surprised by this? Draper is used to "debating" in person, where he CAN turn up and ride roughshod over what everyone else wants to say, and suppress opposing opinion fairly effectively. He hasn't worked out that the blogosphere doesn't work like that yet, and he also hasn't worked out that even those of us who have massive ideological differences with That Tory Blogger still regard him as one of our own, and can (for example) spend time in the same room with him and lots of free wine and not let it get further than good-natured mutual piss-taking.

Blogging is all about opinion, yes, but not (as Stephen Glenn puts it) soliloquies in the wings. To extend Stephen's theatrical metaphor, it's about standing centre stage and taking the the rotten tomatoes thrown at you, and throwing some of them back, and getting into a glorious food fight, from which we all emerge red-stained but wiser, and, more importantly, friends.

Without interaction, there is no blog. Without paying attention to your commentariat (both negative and positive) there is no blog. Without a sense of humour and the ability to take it on the chin, there is no blog. Blogging is not about the powerful dictating the terms of the debate; blogging is about the concerns of the masses. There is no medium more democratic: if a meme, or a news item, or whatever gets picked up by someone, and other people like it or think it's important, it will be passed on. If other people don't like it or think it's important, it won't be passed on. There is no way you can force other bloggers to say what you want them to, you can only state your opinion and hope for agreement, or better, to learn something new by way of the responses you get from other bloggers. We're not a captive audience to be browbeaten; we're a community of free agents with perfect freedom of association. If you want to capture our attention, you have to do something worth paying attention to. It's not enough to be a famous name. You have to SAY SOMETHING INTERESTING.

Iain Dale might be an Egregious Tory Tosser, but at least he gets it. Cthulhu, even John Prescott gets it. But waiting for Derek Draper to get it will be a long wait indeed, I think.

With all that in mind, why is anyone still paying the self-important pompous little tit any attention? I shall be joining That Tory Blogger in blocking Draper on Twitter, and will continue ignoring his pathetic attempts at blogging entryism. Nothing could be easier. If everyone else does that too, the blogosphere will be a happier place.

Dan Dan the Wikio Man has slipped me a note under the table again.

( click here for the speshul sekrit exclusive stuff )

If you think that this chart is all to cock, it's up to you to change it. Wikio gets better the more blogs are submitted to it. If you are reading this? Submit your blog. Submit the blogs you read. ESPECIALLY if they are fandom blogs, art blogs, science blogs... Wikio is hugely skewed towards politics at the moment, because all the political bloggers, egotists to a (wo)man, have submitted themselves. Lets right that skewage a little, shall we? I still want to see That Tory Blogger knocked off his perch by someone like Lawrence Miles... ;)

See, the whole reason I will never be a successful politician? My reaction to those I perceive as My Betters, for want of a better term. I am a peculiar mixture, when it comes to class, of really quite posh on my Dad's side, and screamingly working class on my mum's side. Technically, this should average out at middle, and I should be normal, but things don't work like that, do they?

So I know where my cutlery should be and how to pass the port, and am passable at passing myself off as landed gentry should the need arise - I got through 12 dinners at the Inns of Court, for example, without being chucked out, despite the number of piercings I have - but I never feel anything but a fraud when doing it. And when I went to dinners at the Inns of Court, although the food was marvellous, and I enjoyed the port and cigars immensely, and was amused by the school dinners layout of the fifteenth century hall, the place I was most comfortable? Was standing in the courtyard having a Consulate and talking to the doorman (and his gorgeous Weimeraner).

My reaction to people I feel are in some way better than me tends to go one of two ways upon our first encounter. Either they are someone I admire for being better than me, in which case I will unintentionally make a complete tit of myself by saying something incredibly stupid, realise immediately that I have done so, and stammer to a redfaced halt and hope they don't kill me. When this happens either they take offence and I hate myself forever, or more rarely, they take pity on me and social interaction commences (Y HALLO THERE MADAM PRESIDENT!)... *breathe* OR they are someone I dislike and resent for being better than me, in which case I will intentionally offend them... You get the picture. I have been creepy and/or offensive to countless people who are My Betters, and I don't seem able to stop myself doing it.

Rare indeed, then, is the person who I see as A Better whom I don't offend, either by ill fate or ill will (perhaps, Helen, you now see why I am crapping myself so thoroughly about the prospect of meeting Vince?). Step forward then, John Q Publican, gracious and charming. I have the urge to giggle, slap you with my fan, and say La, sir!. Except I'd only do it like Nanny Ogg and knock you flying. The new About page is miles better - I almost signed up for a Wordpress.com account to tell you so ;)

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A meme, from the sainted Debi:

You are the _________ to my _________.

Fill out the blanks with something fandom related, anything really (ex: You are the Columbia to my Dr. Frank N. Furter). Comment with it and I'll add it in my user info think about you fondly probably tell you why you're wrong in great detail. It will make everyone me happy, so please do it!

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And finally, a very apposite Nemi.



I would note that this would have been the case for Small Person, had I not taken pity on the fact that her daddy is the last male of childfathering age with his surname in the country and (thanks mainly to my fecund big little brother) there's bucketloads of Riggs spawning all over the place.

Which is to say, I am no longer needed, having been superceded by a younger, more up to date, and more successful model. Via Penny Red: a new blog.

Hmm.

Someone who works behind a bar (but owns it, rather than getting paid a pittance).
Someone who VOLUNTARILY didn't become a barrister, rather than not being offered pupillage.
Someone with far more interesting heritage than me.
Someone with a more interesting way with words than me.
Someone male.

I'll jack in now, shall I?

...

Nah. Bollocks to that, and bollocks to deference. My knees are too knackered from hefting barrels to bend that easily. But I shall be keeping my beady little eye on johnqpub_feed...

(From one blogger to another, though, John, you might want to link to your first entry from your about page, because while your first entry is quite informative, your about page says NOTHING that a new and nosey reader would find remotely interesting, although it has a lot of terribly long words in it. I'm told that people find this annoying).

They talked about the micro-blogging site Twitter on Woman's Hour this morning. This is a sign that it's truly gone mainstream, yes? Also, Jeremy Clarkson is now a Twitterer. That, and the fact that the Daily Fail don't like it, are sure signs.

Twitter does, quite often, lead to surrealness. For instance, I have been told off by Will Carling this morning for having slashy thoughts about him and Robert Llewellyn - it's not my fault! They were saying slashy things to each other! - and of course, ubergeek Stephen Fry's swearfests are always worth watching. And there is also the profusion of NASA Twitter feeds that lead to geeks like me crying over bits of metal (LUFFS YOU PHOENIX!!!).

But you might think that the Fail has a point - Twitter is completely pointless, right? You can't get across anything meaningful in such a small space, surely?

Well, at the risk of being clichéd, there are only 10 characters in I love you. Meaningful does not HAVE to mean lengthy, and breaking news sometimes benefits from breadth over depth. Twitter gives you little snapshots of insight into someone else's thoughts without overwhelming you in the way that a long blogroll can. It is great for citizen journalism - especially if you combine it with twemes, so that you can see what everyone is saying on a particular subject - and it's great for keeping an eye on your mates, too.

However, if I haven't convinced you of the value of Twitter's frivolity, and you REALLY have a hankering for something in depth and serious this morning, Alex Foster is cross, and wants you to join in..

No, not THAT exciting news. Dan Dan the Wikio Man has sent me a sneak preview of this month's politics chart. Now, I realise that there are those of you who are reading this who are thinking so what? Well, the Wikio charts are compiled in an interesting way. They don't measure how many readers you have, or how many subscribers you have; they measure how many people link to you from the body of their posts. So it's not a measure of how many people are reading you, but of how many people consider you an authority.

With that in mind, it's depressing that That Tory Blogger is limpet-like at the top, and has been forever, but that is partially because Wikio only tracks the (tens of thousands of) blogs which have been submitted to it. Which is where you guys come in. Wikio gets better the more blogs are submitted to it. If you are reading this? Submit your blog. Submit the blogs you read. ESPECIALLY if they are fandom blogs, art blogs, science blogs... Wikio is hugely skewed towards politics at the moment, because all the political bloggers have submitted themselves. Lets right that skewage a little, shall we? I'd be really happy to see That Tory Blogger knocked off his perch by someone like Lawrence Miles... ;)

Anyway, two days ahead of the official release of the data, I bring you the top 30 Wikio Politics blogs:

( they're under the cut )

Cthulhu, I feel like Jacqui Smith now...

Work was interesting today. For those of you not in the hospitality trade, the last Friday before Christmas is generally known as Mad Friday. This is because it is the day when all the officey people "break up" for Christmas, and they all want to come and get pissed. So it was with a sense of trepidation I set off for work this morning... And then it was quiet. REALLY quiet. Even by normal Friday standards. it was just... odd.

Then at roughly 3.30, someone opened a can of people and all hell broke loose. I didn't stop at all between that moment and knocking off at 8, and was up and down to the cellar changing empty barrels all the time. My dad had to come and wash glasses for us at one point so we didn't run out. So YAY for a nice busy day's work, and YAY for a good day's takings in the till, which will hopefully mean I'll still have a job in the new year.

Also YAY for a nice big pile of tips - enough for Mat and I to be able to go out for Sunday lunch, assuming we drag ourselves out of bed in time (and I get the netcast done).

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Mat is making me cottage pie for my tea. I can smell it. It smells yummy. I have managed a fair amount of solid food today, although still nothing with bits/crumbs. My gap getting better is very YAY-making.

People have been commenting that I look much better, too. Which is nice.

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One of my favourite blogs at the mo is The Lay Scientist (layscientist_fd). Witness this masterful evisceration of Richard Littlebrain. This makes me very happy.

Various people are committing themselves to doing happy posts for various lengths of time and various reasons at the moment.

I figure I have been whining enough recently, what with the dentist and stuff, so I am going to do a whole week of posting positively on this blog. So, without further ado, here are the things which have made me smile this morning:

• Robert Llewellyn liked my post! (which you can find here, if you're not a TGTer and haven't seen it already)


• Steph is blogging again! And she posted a cute picture of Ros and Lembit!


• Taking Small Person to school in a posh frock for Christmas Party day today. She does love dressing up, and it is a VERY posh frock.


• This video, which is almost definitely NSFW:
  
  

>li>ETA: via ginasketch, this news item in The Australian, about cool new creatures being discovered</li>

That'll do for day one, I think. Now I just have to restrain myself from making any negative posts...

Anyone like to start a sweep on how long I'll actually manage it for? And I might make a start on those drawings/drabbles tonight. Any other takers for that, BTW? Only two of the five spaces taken so far...

When nominating oneself for the Golden Dozen, try not to do it in a week when one has made the clickthrough chart also. It looks greedy.

* sheepish grin *

Maybe remembering to nominate other people might be a plan also. Millennium and Mr Quist and Alex have all had excellent posts this week which didn't get selected, for example...

Oh dear. Am feeling guilty now. Time to give the old hair shirt an airing and flagellate myself a bit. Toodle pip.