qwghlm.co.uk : because all the other domain names were taken

12 days after the London bombs, and as it’s become clearer that, with the main protagonists dead and their associates scattered around the world, the investigation into the crimes are going to take some time. So, no quick conclusion, nothing to talk about, so everyone gets back to their favourite game – blaming the usual suspects for the same old gripes. Such as…

Blame the BBC! The BBC used the word ‘bomber’ initially instead of ‘terrorist’ – use of this whitewashing euphemism for the people who did this apparently makes the BBC fascist-appeasers. The fact they are the national broadcaster with an ethical commitment to restraint, trying to report on confused, conflicting and partially-complete information on a sensitive issue is handily dismissed with the all-powerful benefit of a few days’ hindsight. Easy. And the solution? Privatise it and let the market sort it out! Remember, consumerism is democracy.

Blame The Guardian! A trainee at the Guardian apparently belongs to Hizb Ut Tahrir, an Islamist extremist organisation. The simpler explanation that this was a fuckup by the HR department is a mere veil; instead it’s further proof of the Grauniad‘s descent into madness. Incidentally, the ‘free market will give us the media we deserve’ argument appears not to apply to the Guardian.

Blame Hampstead! Apparently, the bruschetta-munchers in North London (who include amongst their number George Galloway and Ken Livingstone) are to blame for the dual rise of Islamic fundamentalism and white working-class racism in East London and other impoverished parts of the country, by er… reading The Guardian and voting Liberal Democrat. Exactly how our Hampstead overlords are controlling and manipulating the rest of us is never explained, but one thing is for sure, the current political atmosphere has nothing to do with the current government’s foreign policy failures, its caving in to right-wing media hysteria over immigration and its inability or unwillingness to redistribute wealth. Oh no.

Blame the Americans! Apparently the Yanks fucked up and blew the cover of an Al Qaeda mole who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew one of the bombers (Kevin Bacon may have been involved, who knows). In the absence of any actual evidence and with the investigating authorities keeping their cards close to their chest, we’ll just hit the conspiracy trail and say it was all their fault.

Blame everybody you like, including the pinkos at Amnesty! – By far the worst thing I read this week was this shit-unfunny piece of unfunny fucking crap, which is amongst the worst, sub-schoolboy excuses for satire you’ll ever read. It reads much like comic strips in the Daily Mail which ‘mock’ ‘barmy’ Health & Safety regulations (right next to the piece asking whether saying the word “envelope” will give you cancer) – amongst their many targets that are hemmed in together as being comparable with suicide bombers are the commie terrorist-lovers at Amnesty International, probably for having the temerity to point out that Guantanamo Bay may have more than a passable resemblance to the Soviet gulags. Which of course, nothing could be farther from the truth – after all, the detainees at Guantanamo have been imprisoned without trial and (allegedly) tortured by a democracy. So that’s all right then.

Right. Anyway, there is a point to all this, which is namely this. Political blogging, I am sad to say, is shit. Well, not all of it (the political blogs I link to on the right are the ones I enjoy; I read many more that I don’t really enjoy), but it pretty much is. Generally, the articles are long, turgid, hyperlink-light (and are often the same ones used again and again) and written in the style of newspaper columns. More often than not, they actually are newspaper columns, reproduced in great chunks with little more than a minor pithy sentiment of agreement (linklogs exist for a reason, guys). Genuinely illuminating reporting or research is kept to a minimum (the ‘scoop’ about the Guardian trainee reporter doesn’t count, it could have been undug by anyone armed with Google), and there’s precious little use of any medium other than text (images, sound, video etc.). Oh, and they’re rarely funny, and even more rarely witty. But most irritating of all is the grubby and entirely predictable factionalising that occurs; in the end it becomes entirely tiresome with page upon page of the same points rehashed at the same bogeymen (I am this close to creating a Harry’s Place content generator). Otherwise intelligent and interesting people just become parrots, as the aftermath of the London bombings have proven. Compared to some of the other far, far more illuminating blogs on other fields of interest like technologies, design, economics, etc., political blogs are (with a few honourable exceptions) just… boring.

When I first started blogging (2 years ago this month, I think) I talked about all sorts of crap, on a daily basis. More recently, this blog has become more political and more wordy (it’s quite interesting to compare the early posts in the archives with present-day ones); partly because I have less time to write, and also because I like to cover my bases when writing politically, my posts have become fewer and fewer. I fear I might be heading down the same path towards predictability and cantankerousness, so I’ve decided to write about politics less from now on. Not completely stop – if something gets on my tits enough I will deliver a first-class rant, promise. But I’ll try to talk more about the books I read, the websites I encounter, and the things I see around town (and even start integrating my photos a little more) more from now on.