[blogfocus tuesday] 14 final victims under scrutiny

Another 12 bloggers here …

3...Macadamia describes himself as conservative, middle aged, a tad opinionated ... seeking to change the world one mind at a time. He’s also a Canadian patriot, reflected in his Support our Troops ribbon. Having just suffered a computer meltdown, he’s back, commenting: In arboreal solitude & silence, I rise once again from the digital ashes... Operating as Neocon, he’s awaiting the inevitable disaster and believes we all better get ready as best we can:

For reasons I'm not prepared to go into here, I firmly believe that bad things can happen to anyone... at any time. I am also a true believer, these days anyway, in as much emergency preparedness as you can reasonably afford.

4...Samantha Brett is a South African/Australian journalist, TV presenter, blogger extraordinaire and author of the book Luv ‘n Text, about SMS text messaging. Her blogs in Sydney and Melbourne attract an enormous number of comments, running into many hundreds and the reason is that she touches on universal, yet taboo topics, in which everyone would like to know whether others feel the same way as them. In fact, her blog is required reading by a fair slice of the population and many couples have testified that by raising a particular issue, she helped them. Plus she’s one hot chick that more than one man has secretly wanted to bed. Here she looks at fantasies:

While a girlfriend and I were sitting in traffic the other day, we found ourselves gawking at a bunch of firemen, climbing into their trucks with their sun-orange uniforms, hard hats and engines blaring. Even Candace Bushnell, author of Four Blondes, Trading Up and Sex And The City, who says the ultimate modern day female fantasy is being with someone wealthier, taller and older, seems to have it wrong in my books.

5...Reactionary snob describes himself as a 52 year old advocate living in Edinburgh but then he goes and spoils it by adding Scotland, United Kingdom, as if we couldn’t f---ing guess. He rabbits on: I have a dislike for governments encroaching on my liberty and frittering my money away. Politically, I am a libertarian and an Atlanticist. Meaning the Lost Land of Atlanta, presumably. Away from law, I enjoy reading, golf, travel and Wagner. One of the most interesting things about RS is that he loves Rumpole of the Bailey the book, as distinct from the series so he’s obviously not a Leo McKern fan. He also likes to swear like a trooper in a good cause and is one of the most astute commentators currently on the circuit. Sneaking admiration for Mr. RS. Here he explains himself [a bit]:

I admit. A large chunk of my blog is abuse. But the abuse I hurl at the likes of Reid, Salmond and, gawd help us guv'nor, Blears is based on analysis. My contempt for Reid is predicated around his utter contempt for due process and the rule of law…The reason people think that our leaders are out to shaft us is because lots of them seem to be out to bend us over, grab the KY jelly and give us a damn good rogering.

6...Thersites is one I ran across months ago through P-G but the man’s a bit of an enigma, and his super-naff e-mail system frightens me – I feel if I put anything in there, it will snap it off at the base and ruin my future. Blognor Regis lists him as a local – I surmise Sussex and he himself says he initially trained as an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, before re-training to be a General Practitioner, which is what he now does in the South-East although, being married to a midwife who worked in the NHS for 25 years, perhaps he still keeps his hand in with his old profession [a bit]. He calls his blog a plague of opinion but what he writes seems to make surprising sense to me, especially about the appalling inadequacy of the NHS:

In one of my surgeries this week I listened to a patient and her daughter recount their experiences of a London teaching hospital, the patient having been transferred from our local — therefore soon to be closed — district general hospital to the ‘centre of excellence’. I sat and listened to a tale that was, for me, all too familiar but for the patient and daughter unexpected and distressing.

7...Tim Montgomerie is a friend of Philippa Stroud, a preacher's wife; he shares her evangelical Christian outlook and is involved with the IDS-controlled Centre for Social Justice, of which Mrs Stroud is the Director. That vital snippet from Guido leads us to the enigma who is Tim. Not so much running a blog as a political calendar, I’ve managed one e-mail from Tim so far but it was a nice one and he showed himself to be a gentleman. Doughty viewers, of course, know far more than I do about TM’s keyboard antics but I can’t get Doughty through my dial-up, more’s the pity. Here Tim addresses a question very much on my mind. What ‘s the secret of …

Winning with women? He then ruins it all with:
Seats and candidates: Non A-listers continue to prosper in selection battles
Peter Noordhoek on YourPlatform: From burqa to a pardon - in Dutch politics the integration debate rages on
BritainAndAmerica.com: McCain risks White House ambition with call for more troops
Which are not nearly as interesting as a pretty girl.

8...Blognor Regis opens with: You are the audience. I am the author. I outrank you. Well, that sort of belligerence is good for a start but when one scours his blog for … him … so to speak, we find he likes trains, films and bicycles. Presumably BR lets his most unusual and intriguing posts do his talking and a good thing too unless you actually want to know something about him, which I want to, other than the fact that he’s connected with Sussex and likes trains, films and bicycles. Oh, did I mention the fact that the man can write – and write some quite nifty pieces; which means his blog must be rolled onto your sidebar immediately as an essential, regular read. Here BR’s tumbled to the solution to the problem of fat kids and hunting, not a combination which normally springs to mind:

Now then, here's where my plan comes together. The fox hunters want a exhilarating ride across the countryside, the hounds want to run, the fat kids need to run. Do you see where this is going. Simply catch the fat kids, shouldn't be too hard, throw them in the back of a van, toss them out in the middle of nowhere, release the hounds. Everybody wins.

9...Gracchi explains the moniker: Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were Roman politicians and brothers who campaigned for the rights of Plebeians against the senatorial classes in the mid second century BC. This blog is about politics. But it’s about politics in its widest possible sense. Lovely shade of pink, Gracchi's blog. Actually, he's just given me an idea for my winter shades. Westminster Wisdom sets me to wondering whether Gracchi considers Westminster wise or whether he is imparting some wisdom to those most in need. If the latter, then he’s providing a sterling public service and roundly deserves plaudits. Here his literary bent is apparent, as he addresses Appleyard, Shapiro, Shakespeare and paedophilia:

[Bryan] Appleyard, (whose website is here), asks a question I didn't reflect upon: what the work of a biographer tells us about the works of the subject they write about. How much would the idea of Shakespeare the paedophile effect our evaluation of Shakespeare's plays, how far does James Shapiro's work on Shakespeare, also looked at earlier in this blog, tell us about Hamlet or Henry V?

10...Daily Propgda or Alan Drew in a different persona, is essentially concerned with the Root framework for the analysis of Muon Spin Rotation data and rivetting stuff it is too. For the plebs amongst us, of which class P-G assures me I’m a member, it’s as well to know that Alan was married at [or at least partly inside] Chiddingstone Castle, Kent, on the 28th August 2004, he now lives in Switzerland [things got too hot in Britain] and has simultaneously moved to the right, politically. In his Daily Propaganda persona, this sort of thing concerns him: There is no scandal that the ODA will have to pay some VAT. Just look at the funding arrangements - you will see that the ODA has £1.5bn from the National Lottery, £625m from London Council Tax and £250m from the London Development Agency.

This would seem to make him a pretty essential daily read, the blogname clearly a reference to that which he is trying to debunk. Alas, commitments are beginning to tell on his blogging and it can only be hoped that he can overcome this sort of thing and get back to it: My wife's (early) birthday celebration, a huge deadline at work (working over weekend), and a business trip scheduled for next Tuesday makes little time for blogging. Will try and post something over weekend.

11...Existing Actually’s Phil Edwards opens with: Like lions after slumber, unvanquishable number, oh yeah. That poignant ‘oh yeah’ redeems his employment of the most appalling Blogger template known to man – Minima and his contributions to The Sharpener further redeem him. He also has a decent store of Westminster wisdom to impart and is a pretty handy psychologist as well, as evidenced in this small excerpt:

If we could track the specific ideas, things and people Blair has identified as 'modern' over the years, I suspect it would give us a pretty good picture of how Blair's thinking has evolved - and of which specific all-powerful historical forces have populated his personal cosmology at different times.

12...Notsaussure keeps it all crispy clean. I can’t glean a thing about him and his clean, goodlooking wordpress blog, other than his clean, goodlooking wordpress blog. His parliament logo gives an indicator of what he’s about and he is fascinated by the sport of lockpicking but one needs good political analysis as well to succeed in this game and Notsaussure can do that in a canter. Often he glances tangentially and comes up with gems such as this one about religiously acceptable chicken:

It’s a bit unclear from this report in the Telegraph quite what Mrs. Johnson and her daughter are objecting to here; I can’t make out whether they’re bothered about being offered chicken as opposed to turkey or halal chicken as opposed to chicken slaughtered by more conventional methods

13 Opinion Dominion wouldn’t remind himself of me but he reminds me of me – in some ways. Always with an eye for the original angle, the quirky Queenslander [he can’t be held responsible for either his state of origin or for the fact I once dallied with a Toowoomba marriage] who simply calls himself Steve, is remarkably consistent in coming up with fascinating little posts on this and that and to tell the truth, after the steady diet of politics, politics and more politics, he comes as a welcome relief. Here he warns us, quite aptly it would seem, about our modern times:

Why I don't invest in properties with ocean views (Well, apart from the fact that I have no spare money, that is.) This article missed my attention last week, but it's a good one from the New York Times, about research into the question of whether ocean hitting asteroids have caused gigantic tsunamis within very recent times (the last 10,000 years.)

14...Wat Tyler is up front about his mission – it’s all about how Britain’s big government politicos are burning our money and he says: Enough is enough. We the peasants demand our high-spending, high-living, conflicted politicos mend their ways. A member of the taxpayers alliance, it’s fairly clear he’s one of the eco-boffins in the engine room and I know of at least three uber-bloggers who use his stats and analysis as background for their own pieces. He runs a BOM correspondents network which keeps him up to date on the latest wastage but Canary Wharf ain’t one of ‘em:

They sent a photographer down to the Wharf to get the late-night snap above, and reckon the offices must have been empty.But at 0001 am on Sunday, the working weekend is still young. NGOs may knock off at 4.15 on Friday afternoon, but in Global Finance things are different. Down on the Wharf, the Beast must be kept fed and watered 24/7, lest it burst from its cage and rampage through the streets bringing destruction to the entire wibbling eco-trifle (in case GAP don't know, Finance and Business Services now account for nearly 30% of national income).

Sadly inactive bloggers whom I wanted to include this evening:

Ranting Guttersnipe
Johnathan Pearce
Minette Marrin

That's it until Saturday evening, at 21:00, London time, if you'd care to join us here.