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Someone at the BBC has noticed

on 21 September 2006 , 4:48 pm 29 | 1 views

Despite Wendy Austin’s views, someone at the BBC appreciates the blogging efforts of slugger and a number of our regulars’ own efforts.

  • smcgiff

    Holy cow batman, ATW got a mention! David will wet himself! 🙂

  • Scotsman

    When will Vance explain why my licence fee be used to advertise his rightist propaganda? Biased BBC, indeed! 🙂

  • pith

    and when will Vance explain what we are all supposed to do about that place he calls, “Islam dominated Europe”? It’s been weeks since he told us we would have to join the US in dealing withit but still no detail. My horse is getting hungry.´

  • slug

    To be fair to David Vance, he puts out a provocative, non-stop flow of readable commentary from a consistent right wing perspective with a bit of politically-incorrect edge that makes it interesting. That is quite an achievement and requires effort and enthusiasm and I think it deserves recognition.

    The fact its right wing should no problem even if you are not of the right – or do you want the BBC only to promote blogs that don’t have a particular view?

  • This statement

    “there are many blogs about Northern Ireland politics and culture from ‘Slugger O’Toole’ to ‘A Tangled Web’.”

    implies Slugger and ATW are two ends of a spectrum, as we all know Slugger is an award winning place of open and respectful, intelligent, tolerant discussion, and ATW is the other end of the spectrum? Indeed!

  • Just saw this – via Andrew over on ATW.

    For me the big issue is underwear utilisation whilst blogging. smcgiff already has provided us with a good reason for wearing such. Can I confess that I normally wear underwear whilst blogging and wonder will Mick also own up?

    Second, will BBC journos admit to wearing tinfoil hats whilst spewing out their bias?

    Finally, I would simply offer my sincere congrats to ALL bloggers. We may not all agree, but I see no reason to be churlish!(Take note zOMG!!)

  • Miss Fitz

    On the underwear and fungal toenail issue:

    No on both counts, thank you.

  • David,

    Don’t sweat it kid, I found the article writers choice of “ends of spectrum” amusing. Online discussion is full of pointed barbs far worse than mine. [play the ball, zOMG – edited moderator]

  • zOMG,

    1. I am not your “kid”
    2. Your last sentence does this blog no favours. I am sure the administrator will deal with it.
    3. I have no problem with debate but I care nothing for crudity.

  • Nevermind Mr. Vance, we don’t all have to have the same sense of humour. I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you, you don’t see zOMG mentioned on the BBC, I would think you have bigger fish to fry!

  • p.s. Genuine apologies to the ATW chaps, was concentrating more on constructing my homographic pun than where it might land.

    Admin: feel free to delete the offending post(s)!

  • zOMG,

    That’s OK. We can all say the wrong thing from time to time! 🙂

  • Forget about the Vance Rants- there’s a certain other high-quality blog of a nationalist hue which gets a mention towards the bottom 😉

  • Always nice to be mentioned isn’t it El Mat 😉

  • Ghost of PDN Past

    Semper ubi sub ubi.

  • Chris- Well technically I was referring to El Blogador, but I will concede that Balrog isn’t too bad either 😉

  • Congratulations to ATW, to Slugger and to the initimable El Blogador for the mention.

    I’ve felt for some time that blogging is a revolutionary technology. This is especially so in a place like six-county Ulster, where there is at times very little communication between communities. There would have been some shouting past each other, not a lot of listening.

    But that may be breaking down a bit. Slugger has loads of readers from every segment of the community. But “A Tangled Web” and “El Blogador” also attract plenty of contributors from other sides of the divide, and they are not shouted down. They’re listened to.

    That’s a new thing.

    Congrats, gents.

  • missfitz

    Gents?
    Gents?

    Has it escaped your notice Phantom that not only is there a female contributor on Slugger, some of the most cogent and useful commentors are also of the female persuasion.

    Every segment of the community now extends to the female variety, so please a little equality if you dont mind

  • Slugger O’Toole Admin

    Nice one GoPP!

    Seriously though, what this article begins to scrape at is that there is more to NI blogging than Slugger. A few years ago (when Slugger was younger and considerable more innocent) I suggested in an interview with Chris Lydon, that the future lay in the a multiplicity of voices, not simply those of ‘powerful’ individuals.

    I hope it will encourage others to join in, and I hope that we at Slugger will do more than we have in the past to help push those new voices into the melee of Northern Irish online discourse.

  • Harry

    The traditional wisdom is that talking leads to understanding and is a good thing in itself. However in the case of n. ireland far from leading to mutual respect it actually leads to greater contempt. This is discernible at times on blogs as well as being clearly visible in the case of politics, which after 10 years of talks has resulted in an impasse and possibly increasing instability.

    Personally I never believed much of the propaganda about unionism and how bigotted, sectarian-minded, supremacist, vicious and uncompromising it is. I would have to see it for myself before believing it.
    Now after some months of engaging with unionists online my hope for the future has contracted and my contempt has grown. Much of what was said about unionism is in fact true.

    So talking a lot is not necessarily the panacea it’s cracked up to be, and carries its own risks.

  • Aw shucks, Phantom 😉

  • missfitz

    I stand corrected.

    Actually, I haven’t been reading Slugger as much as I should, and on multi-contributor blogs, I don’t always pay attention to who it was that made the post ( with the exception that when the one scoundrel from England posts on a certain site, I do notice that )

    Cheers,

    Phantom

    PS- Like the handle!

  • Anna Dale

    I kind of agree with Harry’s scepticism although for different reasons.

    The various smaller NI political blogs, with one or two notable exceptions (e.g.Big Ulsterman and Levee, are every day and on every issue saying exactly what you’d expect them to say. The ensuing comments and debate again roll along very well-trodden paths. Even on Slugger, I think both Fair Deal and Chris Donnelly do a very professional job, but by and large, when they blog about NI politics,they’re not saying anything new or radical that I can’t read off either the SF or DUP website.

    Obviously with the minimal numbers blogging here, we’re not going to get the influence on the MSM and *real-life* politics that is happening in the US. But in the rest of the UK, we’ve had people stepping outside the usual political faultlines ( e.g. the development of a thinking (!)left-wing at Harry’s Place, the libertarian right at Samizdata) and if nothing else, giving an alternative point of view to the same old boring Tory/Labour/Lib arguments that we have been reading for years.

    Where’s the politico bloggers taking equivalent risks in the NI arena?

  • fair_deal

    “but by and large, when they blog about NI politics,they’re not saying anything new or radical that I can’t read off either the SF or DUP website.”

    1. I rarely use the DUP website for any blogs
    2. Check the range of my posts and I think you’ll find it goes far beyond what you’ll find on the DUP website (unless it has suddenly expanded its repetoire and I didn’t notice).

  • fair_deal

    My last 20 blogs covered the following. Parades, NI blogging, regional tax incentives, housing conditions, european parliament, the RoI elections, attitudes to public institutions, Sectarian property attacks, media censorship, drug education, economic/social equality, cross-border co-operation, sectarian attacks, Paisley’s 1st speech to Labour conference, Catholicism and society, marriage, NI football, Cameron on globalisation, the McCord case and teenage secual behaviour.

  • To be fair to FD, he isn’t a DUP press release regurgitator. He may take a tough unionist slant on issues, but then he’s of that persuasion so it’s perfectly understandable.

  • missfitz

    My flight has been delayed for 12 hours at Dublin airport, so thought I’d share that first.

    FD, in addition to all you mentioned, you forgot your excellent GAA coverage…… 😉

  • fair_deal

    Missfitz

    The list is only of my last 20 blogs, the 5/6 GAA threads preceeded those.

  • Anna Dale

    Fair Deal,

    Ok, fair enough, point taken, I should have done a bit more research before generalising.

    I think my main point about the line followed by the NI political blogs that have popped up in Slugger’s wake over the last 2 years is still valid though.