They Blog For You

In case you still can't get enough of me after reading this blog, I've recently started blogging over at the Enfield Independent's website as well. Inevitably there's likely to be some repetition between the two blogs, but if you do log on, let me know what you think (there's a [...]

I WON’T make a habit of writing new blog posts in order to explain why I’ve given up blogging, but I really feel I need to assert a few truths here. I just did an interview for BBC World Service who, believe it or not, wanted to discuss why I’d given [...]

IS IT just me or does every blogger consider, in advance, what title he’ll give to the last post he’ll ever write? I considered “The last post” but dismissed it as too predictable. “So long and thanks for all the comments” would have stuck with the whole Hitchhiker’s Guide to the [...]

SOME unexpected and rare free time this weekend has allowed me to make a necessary, if belated, update to my blogroll, with the addition of Better Nation. This is the collaborative effort of three of Scotland’s very best (though politically unsound) bloggers: James “Two Doctors” Mackenzie, Jeff “SNP Tactical Voting” Breslin [...]

I've been a bit quiet on here lately. This has been due to a combination of a few technical hitches with my blogging site and the fact that I've been closely monitoring the impact of the Comprehensive Spending Review, waiting to comment until I knew how local people were going [...]

The government have just released a written ministerial statement on the cost of government cars for the last financial year of the Labour Government. It’s curious. This is what I think will happen: They will have teed up a symapthetic blogger/blogging journalist to get the ball moving on the story. They’ll express outrage [...]

It does help, when you leave Parliament late at night and intend to work when you get home, to take the lap top charger with you! Blogging figures from yesterday in five...... [...]

Welcome to your Roused website. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Welcome to your Roused website. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! [...]

The House of Commons being run the way it is, I've had to sit around since early afternoon waiting to take part in a debate on AV electoral reform.  Hours later, I suspect that I might just about get a few words in before the business is rolled up for [...]

This breaks my heart http://bracknellblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/fed-up-so-im-going-to-stop-blogging.html If you don't suffer from dyslexia, you cannot understand his frustration. Peopel just don't get it that you can stare and stare and cry and s... [...]

I DON’T particularly feel like blogging about… well, about anything really, let alone the Shadow Cabinet elections. But I was so annoyed at Mike Smithson’s ridiculous “analysis” of last night’s vote that I feel inspired to respond. Essentially he says that those voting in the Shadow Cabinet elections did the same thing [...]

Firtsly, a big thank you for sticking with me. As you can see from previous postings, I’ve not been around for some time. Those of you who have been following my Tweets will know what a torrid summer I have had – including a five week stay in hospital!  Anyway, [...]

I gave an after dinner speech tonight. Thank you to Basingstoke Conservatives for having made me so welcome. As I tripped in through the front door, the totalpolitics guide to political blogging in the UK was lying on my doormat. Having not blogge... [...]

WHETHER or not this blog was the main reason for my sacking as a minister in 2008, I’ll probably never know. Either way, it’s clear we have not yet reached the point where having a blog – or at least having one that’s worth reading – is compatible with being a [...]

I SUPPOSE I should at least mention the fact that I’m a candidate in the Shadow Cabinet elections underway at the moment. While I understand that this is an interesting event to political types – one that hasn’t occurred, in fact, since 1996 – I don’t want to provide a [...]

IT’S NOT easy to get an accurate picture of what’s happened to The Times and Sunday Times since the advent of the infamous paywall. Techdirt reports (gleefully) that the experiment has been a disaster, that advertisers are shunning the site and sources are choosing to give their stories to other [...]

The deal on offering us a referendum on AV was cooked up by politicians seeking to cobble together a coalition to gain them power. Hardly new politics. The plebiscite is not being offered to us on the basis of high principle, or as a consequence of careful consideration on [...]

THE VOTES have been counted and I’m chuffed to bits to have maintained the top position in the MPs’ category of the Total Politics Top Blog Awards 2010. This is despite some serious competition from (among many others) John Redwood, Douglas Carswell, Tom Watson, Lynne Featherstone and Kerry McCarthy. So, thank you [...]

CAROLINE Lucas, the Green MP, has announced she will be tabling an amendment to the AV Referendum Bill to allow more “PR” options to the question. Next Left, inevitably, is calling on Labour to support Lucas’s, or a similar, motion. Fat chance. What’s fascinating , however, is that, since full proportional representation [...]

SIX months after launching this blog in March 2008, I was chuffed beyond reason to be voted top Scottish blog in the Total Politics Blog Awards that year. Now I’ve scooped the top spot for the third year running. Although I try to be blasé about this sort of thing, there’s [...]