A cherry short of a Schwarzwalderkirschtorte?...

Hello to anyone still reading; sorry for the radio silence since the glorious Obama-dawn broke in America. I needed a break from the internet after the election madness, it all got a bit OCD, poll-checking every half hour, and I've started a new contract job. And in my spare time I've been over in Vienna with 35 amazing women who've been launching a new global anti-extremism network initiative, of which more later. And what with one thing and another there hasn't been time to blog.

However. An issue has come up of importance to UK bloggers and I believe the parties concerned deserve support. So I had an overpowering urge to postpone the Merlot for 15 minutes and say something.

Like - for God's sake. And - oh, get over yourself.
And - what is it with some people? Because it's awfully vexatious when this sort of thing happens, and it can drag on and on, and we all know how tiresome and timewasting that can be.

So. Here is a Schwarzwalderkirschtorte.

It has, you will see, the full complement of cherries.

It is nothing like Johanna Kaschke.

No, absolutely nothing like Johanna Kaschke at all.

What am I going on about? Well, it's hard to go into any detail because there is a threatened court case. Court cases do take up time, energy and money. You have to be pretty dedicated to go through with it all.

And if I were to think of a word to describe Johanna Kaschke, having spent some time reading about her today, the word that repeatedly springs to mind is ''committed''.

So I suggest that anyone curious about the imminently- legally-verifiable and almost-certainly-certifiable point that Johanna Kaschke is nothing like a Schwartzwalderkirschtorte with a full complement of cherries consults Google or Google Blog search.

And having done so, that you make no comments at all. Because the whole thing makes your brain want to explode.

I'm off to the pub - have a great weekend.

Reflections on The Hendo's blog

There have been a lot of yellow police signs asking the public for information around where I live recently. Stabbings, mostly, assaults, the occasional shooting. The latest one at the end of my road is for a fatal accident; a lorry hit a woman who was crossing the road. The shopkeeper whom I am mates with said it was terrible, but the only thing he took out of it that was positive was that at least it was an accident, not a murder, for a change.

Meanwhile, 21st century life in South London can be scary. Hendo writes in his blog, 'Reflections of The Hendo' about an alarming incident where a young man banged on his door asking for help. He had just been relieved of his keys, PIN, address, bank details by three men who held a knife to his throat and a gun to his head. The police, thankfully, turned up within minutes

Reading around on Hendo's blog, looking for happier news, I discovered these wonderful reviews by the British public of Katie 'Jordan' Price and Peter Andre's album, which I am grateful to Hendo for pointing out to me.

Which in turn reminds me of this 90's flowchart that I laughed at yesterday, c/o a poster on urban 75. (Urban 75 is how I know Hendo.) Anyway, after commenting yesterday about the mugging, I was surprised to find out that Hendo had never had a comment before, so if anyone wants to go and comment on his blog, I'm sure he'd be chuffed.

A reader writes...

My book, Out of the Tunnel, will be out soon, in the second week of July. Proofs have been sent out to newspapers and magazines by the publishers, in the hope of it being covered or reviewed. Interviews have been pitched. All authors are expected to do publicity for their books, and I am no exception. It is part of the contract that you sign. You have to 'push' it. There are thousands of books published every year. Only a small percentage are 'successful'. 'Success' criteria being debatable in these days of store-driven discounts and multi-buys and the collapse of the net book agreement. You don't just have to tell it, you have to sell it, nowadays. Margins are too tight for talent or skill alone to see you through. It's a hard-nosed, cut-throat, high-pressure business. But you can take cynicism too far...

I discovered that some people were saying recently on a few websites and blogs that they thought the whole cyberstalker thing was a 'PR stunt to sell the book'. I didn't bother to argue, after I saw the accusation posted more than once, ( what is the point of arguing with people who think like this?) but for the record, no, it is hardly sensible to try and PR something that has not been printed, or to try to sell something that cannot be found on the shelves. A decade in advertising did teach me that much.

In fact, all the attendant hoo-ha over FJL was a real problem from the point of view of the book launch: the publishers would have much preferred the story, and me, not to be in the news at all, as it was seen as being very risky in terms of the book PR they were planning which is to start when the book is actually available. (Next month, not now.) I am still slightly staggered that a few people actually seem to think that I got harrassed for a year in order to sell a book that, at the time of the harassment starting, back in spring 2006, was not even conceived of, let alone written. Or the idea that I perhaps deliberately arranged to be attacked, bombed and then stalked in order to 'become famous'. Yeah, right. Hmmm...*I failed the Big Brother auditions in 2001, so I thought, what can I do for my next bid for attention...? I know, I'll get attacked by nutters...
* I didn't audition. Obviously. But sometimes I wonder if I have to spell this out.

The CPS and police made the decision to prosecute way back last year because the damn woman was harassing me and it kept escalating and she wouldn't stop, not even after being ignored, arrested, warned, and it was frankly scary...(And no. I didn't 'use it as material'. It is not in the book. Argh.)

I know why I wrote Out of the Tunnel. I wrote it because I was asked to write it. I wrote it because when I had PTSD the first time around, after the rape, I was frantic and desperate to find out what was happening to me, and to read the stories of other people who had lived through it. Accounts of violent sexual attacks by strangers, that's what I was looking for, then. Not really their graphic accounts of survival, but the aftermath. The days, the months, the years after, how they coped, what they felt, if they changed, if they healed. There weren't many books about afterwards, not back then.

Now there are whole shelves in Waterstones and Borders titled 'painful lives'. 'Misery memoirs', they're called in the trade. Child abuse, mostly, suffering and survival and horror and degradation. I have never picked one of these books up and paid for it and taken it home. I tend to read novels, not real-life tales. I wonder whether people will think my book is a 'misery memoir'. Maybe they will. I didn't write it like that. But I haven't ever read any of the white-covered books with wide-eyed children's faces on the cover and titles like Inside I'm Screaming and Stop, Mommy, No. So I haven't anything to compare my book with. I just wrote what it was like, what happened, what happened after.I wrote things I had never told anyone before. Not on this blog, not ever.

'Did it make you feel better, writing it?' friends ask me, hopefully. Sadly, no. Writing it was an absolutely grim experience, and it set off the PTSD again, big-time, and it made me depressed and anxious, and what with the stalker as well, and having suddenly stopped working in an office where I used to laugh and chat all day, it was a pretty horrible time. Stressed as hell, on my own all day, writing and re-living the worst moments of my life, worrying about the effect it was having on me and people I love and respect, and the abusive messages from that strange woman pinging into my in-box all the time, it was frankly, awful. I was pleased when I had finished it, in the same way I am pleased when the painkillers mean the headache has gone. Re-reading the proofs last week was almost more than I could stand. If it had not been for my publisher's patience, and the kindness of David, my agent, who lent me his office to work in, so I had space and peace, and a vase of spring flowers, so I could escape the demented cyber-bombardment and the loneliness of the cold empty flat, the book would never have been finished at all. It is all new content; the blog provided the notes, but it was written as a book, from scratch. Hard work.

'But it will make you lots of money, eh?' people say next. Nope. In fact, my earnings have dropped by more than 80% since I took voluntary redundancy and became a writer. If I make any money on this book, I won't be paid it until March 2008. My redundancy money will have run out long before then. It's almost gone now. Big Fat Advance? Ho ho. Put it this way, if I hadn't taken redundancy there was no way I could have written the book. I would have run out of money after six weeks. And the book took quite a while longer to write than that.

So why did I do it? Because, in the end I had to. I wrote it to pay tribute to the people who helped me and inspired me, including my fellow-passengers. And I wrote it for myself. Myself as I was in 2002, after the rape, and myself as I am in 2007. I couldn't not write it. I want to write, it is all I want to do, now, it is the thing that is most meaningful to me, even though it will never provide me with an advertising director's nice salary and an expense account. But perks and salaries stopped being important. I wanted to start off being a writer by writing my own story first, so it was gone, and done and out there and I could let it go, and move on to writing other people's stories, fiction, new things. I want to write for the rest of my life. But not just about bombs and terror, not any more.

And I wrote for this moment: My first written reaction from a reader who has read Out of the Tunnel. A man whom I like and trust and admire, a commissioning editor on a big newspaper, Bob, who first commisioned me to write my story back in November 2005.

''I’ve just spent the past two hours reading the proofs of your book. I should have been doing something else, but I couldn’t stop because it’s brilliantly written and a gripping narrative. Congratulations.''

That made it, makes it all worthwhile. And now, I want to do more, write more things. I'm still pushing for an independent inquiry into 7/7, with the other survivors and families in the group. I'm also working on a novel, slowly. Doing freelance stuff. It took a bomb going off to start me writing, but now I can't stop. I hope that I can keep writing, make a living from it somehow, but even if I can't, I won't give it up, because writing has kept me moving forward, one foot in front of the other, got me out of the tunnel and into the light. It saved my life, in more ways than one. And it was you readers, you people on the internet who read my stuff and sent support, and cared enough to come back, and kept encouraging me, that got me writing and kept me writing.

There's a dedication in the book to you. You know who you are. Thank you.

Blogs Turn 10

The Guardian Newsblog has a piece on ten years of blogging, in which I get an honourable mention, which is very kind of them.

Hello to anyone visiting from the Guardian! I was asked to explain blogging to a District Judge in Stratford Magistrates' Court this week when I was giving evidence in a trial. She asked what was the difference between 'a blog' and 'a website'. I explained to her that a blog was a kind of website where you could self-publish your thoughts, and that there were now 71 million of them worldwide.

'Why do people blog?' she asked, unwittingly asking a question that has generated millions of posts from millions of people.

I explained that it was a form of free self-expression, for some, it was writing practice, or a way of keeping in touch with family and friends and making new friends, sharing ideas, finding out information and hearing other voices and opinions. 'People have blogs on all sorts of subjects,' I explained '- cooking, gardening, politics, families, technology, or personal diaries...and most of them allow comments so you can engage in dialogue with your readers.' I forgot to mention the excellent Magistrate's Blog that I read regularly, so she could see that even pillars of the community were blogging these days, but I tried to give her an idea by saying ' If Anne Franks or Samuel Pepys was around in 2007, they'd probably be keeping a blog'. (Not that I am comparing myself to either.)

' And why did you start a blog?' she asked.

I explained that I had come home on 7 July after my train carriage was blown up and, because I couldn't sleep, I had sat down and written about what being bombed was like on urban 75, a London-based message board where people were sharing stories and news of what had happened that day. Someone from the BBC had read my account and asked me to write a diary for the BBC News site for a week, as a 'citizen journalist', and so I did, and lots of people read it, including other survivors, who got in touch and we formed a support group to help each other. After the week of the bombs, I decided to carry on with the diary, so I set up a blog using blogger software. It was easy to use, even though I am a techno-muppet, and I enjoyed writing on it. Writing was becoming a lifeline, helping me deal with what had happened, and it had become a means of staying in touch with other survivors and forming a support network, called Kings Cross United, so I decided to carry on with it.

'And what is your blog about?' asked the Judge. I told her that I no longer just wrote about life in the aftermath of 7/7, but had broadened out to include politics, civil liberties and campaigning for an independent inquiry into 7/7, as well as other subjects close to my heart like cooking and dancing classes. And as a result of the blog, I ended up being asked to write for various newspapers like the Sunday Times and the Mirror, and magazines like Grazia, and then I got asked to write a book and do things on TV. Eventually I left my advertising job to become a full time writer. So blogging was quite an important thing for me, and it had changed my life.

She looked very interested. Perhaps she is thinking of starting one herself.

I think my writing has changed since I first started blogging, and I can track my shell-shocked emotional state through what I wrote over the last 18 months, from numbness and fear, to passionate anger, to renewed political engagement and the eventual re-appearance of my sense of humour. It was interesting when I was writing the book, referring back to the blog and seeing what I was like then.

Blogging has enabled me to have a voice and to shout out when I care passionately about political issues, like the handling of the so-called War on Terror and to do something rather than just yell at the TV when Newsnight is on. It enabled me to voice my disagreement with the 90 Days legislation, (and it got me into a row with the last Home Secretary.)

One of the best things about blogging has been the camaraderie found amongst fellow-bloggers, the cross-party issues that have united people like civil liberties campaigning, and the support I have found in the compassionate words of strangers and friends. Other 7/7 survivors started blogging too, and you can find them linked on my side bar. I've made many real life friends from blogging, and things like the Simultaneous Lone Mass Demonstrations and the Illegal SOCPA-busting Carol Services ( organised by Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads)were examples of blogger-activism offline that ended with pints in the pub afterwards and coverage of our efforts in the mainstream media. Blogger TV is happening with 18 Doughty St's net-based political programming

There isn't space to list all the blogs I adore reading, though my blogroll in the side bar has a good selection - all these are blogs I try and read regularly, and there are many more that I read once a month or so.

Fergal Keane, a journalist and writer whom I respect enormously told me once that I was a writer and writers should write every day. He was very adamant about it, and he was quite right. If you are a writer, you need to write regularly. Blogging enables me to do that, to practise and get feedback and to do something I love, freely, for the simple pleasure of it. I wasn't a writer two years ago, but I am now. It even says it on my passport.

That's all because of blogging. So Happy Birthday Blogging.
Life would be very different without you.

What do you get out of blogging, and how many people in your life blog?

'Blog death threats spark debate'

Helen, one of the blog readers has kindly sent me a link to this BBC story about a respected female blogger who has been the victim of death threats. ( Death threats against bloggers are not protected speech)'. The blogger in question is Kathy Sierra, of the tech-blog ' Creating Passionate Users'. Many of the threats and abuse she recieved are too explicit for me to want to reprint them here, since my mother reads this blog, but they included:

'f**k off you boring slut... i hope someone slits your throat and c*ms down your gob'.

And worse.

A few bloggers in the US have remarked that this furore and re-opening of the 'blogging code of conduct' discussion is 'not good for free speech', well, no, it isn't, but this is not 'free speech'. Free speech, famously, does not extend to shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre. Free speech does not include threatening, defaming, libelling, stalking, bullying, and abusing other people, any more than 'freedom of expression' extends to slapping someone's face, or 'free love' extends to drugging and raping someone because you fancy them.

Helen says: 'Free speech? Well, when we talk about 'freedom' we have to be careful to be clear about whether we mean 'freedom from' or 'freedom to', but in this case it seems fairly plain that someone simply airing their views on a public blog (and isn't she American, freedom of speech, etc) should not have to suffer death threats. If what she says is litigious, then use the damn law. If not, and you don't like it, start your own blog. But violence - and/or the threat of - is not acceptable, full stop'. Quite.

I agree that people can publish what they like - as long as it is lawful - but I've also said that as a blogger I don't have any obligation to host nasty comments on my personal blog. And there is a line which can be crossed where cyber-communication and free speech can become abuse and harassment, and quickly run foul of the law.

Just because it is the internet, doesn't mean it's not 'malicious communications' or harrassment - hate email and threatening anonymous comments are no different in law to posted hatemail and anonymous threatening phone calls.

As in... I have a letter box in the front door of my flat. I am able, and happy to recieve mail sent to my address. But simply having a working letter box does not mean I consent to having dog poo posted through my mail box, or a stream of poison pen letters plopping onto my door mat on a daily basis. Anyone does that to you, you go to the police a.s.a.p.

Similarly, I am all for people freely expressing themselves, but if someone decided to go about my town posting up flyers that falsely and publicly claimed I was a malicious criminal, a sick liar, an abuser and in dire need of urgent psychiatric assistance, I would first ask them to stop, and if they did not stop, report it, and take legal action.

If someone went to the police and made a malicious false complaint about me, I would contact the police immediately to explain and prove why it was false and make a complaint myself. And so on.

And if I got the sort of death threats and threats of sexual violence that Kathy Sierra has been getting I, too, would be afraid to leave my house and would cancel public speaking engagements.
If the abuse was published or distributed or sent electronically, it would make no damn difference at all. It would still be abuse. And there are laws to protect people from this sort of thing. Happily, the US police have launched an investigation into Kathy Sierra's case, and many bloggers are coming out in support.

But it still makes me sigh. I have touched on this issue before, in a post about bullying and blogging, and have recently temporarily turned off the anonymous comment facility to stop trolling, since there seems to be something about having anonymity that encourages stupid abuse to spew forth from some troubled souls. This latest tale is particularly grim though, and what is really creepy is the misogynistic and extreme nature of the violent threats. Kathy Sierra is highly successful as a technology writer in what's traditionally a 'man's world' - and jealousy is often at the heart of such attacks. The abuse here is clearly sent by men - or boys - and is graphically, violently sexual. It's had a horrible impact on her life - she has cancelled her appearance at a conference and writes that she is 'afraid to leave her yard'. However, despite this, she says

'I would never be for censoring speech--these people can say all the misogynistic, vile, tasteless things they like-but we must preserve that line where words and images become threats of violence. Freedom of speech--however distasteful and rude the speech may be, is crucial. But when those words contain threats of harm or death, they can destroy a life.'

There was something about this on the Guardian's Comment is Free site, though I can't find it anymore, about why women writers seem to get torrents of vile hatemail. CIF is less of a zoo these days, though flame wars still break out. (However, more and more CIF site users now seem to 'get' that disagreement is more powerful when expressed via a smart riposte than a personal insult. I've hit keyboards in anger, I guess all of us have, but the level of vitriol displayed a by a few on the internet can be truly frightening, especially when a personality disorder meets a broadband connection.)

Indigo Jo picked up on the subject a while back and quoted Maureen Dowd of The New York Times discussing reactions to female opinion in her column last year.

"While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating." She went on to say she called Alan Dundes, a renowned folklorist, to ask about it. "Women are supposed to take it, not dish it out," Dundes told her.

See also 'Female pundits could use help with hate mail'.

'I believe women can take the heat of opinion journalism as well as any man; the problem is that the heat we take and the reasons why are very different.'

And that comment, in the twenty first century, when words can be freely published and ideas move across continents at the speed of thought, when we can write without boundaries or borders (or genders), and publish and share the sum of human knowledge and experience for the sheer interest and pleasure of it on this marvellous medium of the world wide web - is very sad indeed.

RIP Fatboy, Blogger TV & stuff

BritBlog round up of the best of the week's blogposts is on tour and this week it's at Poon's place. (Thanks for the link,Poons.)

I'll be on 18DS Blogger TV Monday at 9pm, with Mike Denham, Michelle Tempest, Helen Szamuely and Vicky Ford if anyone fancies tuning in. Busy day tomorrow, seeing some human rights lawyers in the morning with other survivors & families about a matter to do with 7th July, having a catch up glass or two with Michael in the evening and then over to Iain's Tory lair where I will try and sound on the ball. I am knackered, fell asleep for 4 hours this afternoon, haven't read the news yet so had better get into bed with the papers and see what's what.

The sad news of the weekend was the unexpected death of Fatboy, ( see picture, the big orange one above the grey arch) our nine-and a half-year old goldfish who lived in a 3 foot tank with seven friends, including two dopey koi carp, Stripey and Goldy ( seen behind Fatboy in the picture - stripey orange & white, and pale gold) . During his almost-decade of happy life, Fatboy grew from the size of a tiny baby carrot, to the size of a very big fat parsnip, and has survived moving house three times and being transported in a fish bag, being accidentally dropped on the floor, and jumping out of his tank. I don't know why he died, he was perfectly all right then he flipped over and floated to the top of the tank. Heart attack possibly, he was very greedy. He was buried in the front garden with full fishy honours.

The main good news of the day was England winning against France. Some great new players and the captainship of Catty lifting the team no end, thank heavens. Magic stuff. J is chuffed to bits. He's watching the game again on video, grinning.

'Well, I can't enjoy it live, Rach. It's only fun when you know you've already won'.

This blog's comment policy

A boring housekeeping post follows. When you come on here and post comments please be aware of the blog comment policy.

1. No spam
2. No hate-comments

3. No cut n' paste conspiraloonery
4. No obnoxious personal abuse

That should be quite clear, and if you don't like it or agree with it, tough luck. Start your own blog with your own comment policy, or go to places where the comment policy is different.

For me, blogging's a hobby, it's creative expression, its a discipline - a way of writing every day - and it's something that I and millions of others do, freely and happily, because we just like doing it. Recently, I have been enjoying it less and less.

I have been thinking of stopping blogging for a while. I am also thinking about taking all the posts down, saving them as unpublished drafts offline, and re-publishing them again when I feel like I want to re-engage. For now, whilst I mull it over, I am taking steps that I think will make me feel happier and more safe when I blog. I am looking after myself and setting some much-needed boundaries.

I have been honest and open on this blog since I started it, writing freely about personal and political matters which I care passionately about. For the most part I have loved it, it has been a roller-coaster ride and the support, advice, feedback, comments, suggestions, debate from readers has been fantastic. There have been times when I have been seriously under the cosh and coming here and writing has been life-saving. It has helped me deal with depression. It has helped me deal with PTSD. It has allowed me to campaign about issues I feel strongly about. It has allowed me to link to the blogs of others. I have made friends in real life through this blog, and it has been a privilege and a pleasure to have a window into other people's worlds, and to share some of my life and thoughts with you all.

There is a downside to blogging. There have been times when I have felt exposed, vulnerable, and under vicious and relentless personal attack, simply for writing what I think and feel on here. There have been times when this blog has invited the wrong sort of attention, to the extent that I have felt extremely afraid and very distressed. It has got to the point that the police have had to get involved, with repeated instances of harassment from one individual. It's one thing to disagree, it's another thing entirely to send streams of venomous abuse, directed at me or other commenters on this blog. I really don't enjoy blogging when I get sent abusive emails or comments, or threats. I don't publish them, but I still have to read them.

I realise some of you may feel strongly about what I have written, or what other commenters have written sometimes, but I still don't think that gives you the automatic sacred right to be abusive, obnoxious, threatening, obscene, baiting, bullying, harassing, or whatever, and to expect me to give your views a platform on my personal blog.

If you want to say something, you can always start your own blog. Then I can choose whether or not I read it, and so can others. That's freedom of speech, that's freedom of expression.
You have that freedom; nobody is taking it away from you, least of all me. Blogger.com, from what I can gather will let you publish pretty much anything, unless it is stomach-churning ( images of torture, child porn or so on which are internationally unlawful). There are plenty of blogs which are defamatory, libellous, malicious, hateful, untruthful and delusional out there. I choose not to read them and not to link to them.

Despite me reiterating and explaining my comment policy several times recently, I have still been getting a steady trickle of obnoxious, aggressive comments sent in. I am now completely fed up with it.

I am not going to publish them, and from now on, I am not going to read them either. Most of the people who send such abuse do so anonymously. Personally, I think this is cowardly, as well as rude. Why expect me to give you a public platform if you will not allow me to know who you are, or to respond personally to you? Would you say such things to my face, in public? I doubt it.

Well, from now on, nobody will be able to post anonymous comments. The anonymous comment facility has been removed. In order to comment. you will have to go to blogger.com, ( click 'create blog' at the top of this blog), and set up a blog which has a profile, so you can be identified with whatever name, number or nickname you have chosen to give yourself. You don't need to post on your blog account once you have set it up, but you will need to provide a valid email address to set up a blog and get a profile. The whole process will take you less than two minutes. If you can't do it, email me and I will try and help.

I realise this is a bit of a pain, and that some of you want to be anonymous on here because you are sharing something that may be personal and private. For example, there have been men and women who are survivors of violence and rape commenting anonymously here. I am sorry that because of the behaviour of a few, I am no longer able to offer you total anonymity.

As an experiment, and as a gesture of trust, I am taking comment moderator off whilst we move to this new policy, so once you have registered and set up a profile, you will be able to comment freely. Hopefully this will make comment discussions more meaningful and easier to conduct because other commenters will know who you are and can address their points to you rather than 'anonymous', which is particularly confusing if there is more than one anonymous commenter in action.

If my blog traffic goes down as a result of my comments policy, I don't care. I don't validate myself by looking at my blog traffic. And I would rather know who I am talking to.
If people abuse the no-moderation policy, then I will switch comment moderator back on, and delete obnoxious comments. I repeat, I am under no obligation to host such stuff.

And if it STILL continues, then I am taking the blog offline. Finito. There's no point continuing with a hobby you no longer enjoy out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

I am addressing this to a few people; they know who they are and hopefully they will now go away and leave me in peace. To everyone else, thank you for dropping in, I appreciate you and I would like to thank you for visiting.

Right. It's a gorgeous spring day and I am going to switch off my computer and go for a walk in the park and look at the daffodils and all the signs of new life springing up which remind me that there's a big, beautiful world out there and that I want to spend more time in it.

Take care and see you soon.

Bloggers with book deals...

Congratulations to Wife in the North who has just got a book deal! Her lyrical writing has been a keen pleasure I have hugely enjoyed over the last few months. There's now a posse of us bloggers with book deals with a secret forum - and over the last few months we have happily procrastinated by sending emails round, encouraged each other, shared whinges and victories and tips for writer's block and deadline hell. A few weeks ago we all went out to lunch and some of us carried on until the evening. I will blogroll my fellow writers shortly. But for now I'd just like to thank them for being good eggs. It's ace that the internet has unleashed so many new voices into the world and enabled us all to share the joy of writing, wherever we are, whoever we are, deal or no deal.

Blogger TV again

Last night Iain Dale invited me to be on 18 Doughty St , for Blogger TV, Vox Politics and End of the Day Show, with Devil's Kitchen, Stephen Pollard, and Ben Sherread .

' Why are you on 'Tory TV', Rachel', people may cry? Well, 18DS bills itself as 'anti-establishment' and 'political TV for adults'; it has non-right wing guests and presenters on all the time, and I do not see the point of shutting myself or anyone out of political debate simply on party politics lines. I am not a member of any political party, though I would define myself firmly as a non-Tory. I have never voted Tory and I can't think of circumstances in which I would. But I have friends of all political persusasions, and I have conversations with people across the political spectrum. There are several areas that I am passionate about that are cross-party issues: civil liberties, ID cards, SOCPA & the right to protest, excessive legislation, free speech... There are some areas that I will never agree with the Tories on. And that's okay.

I'm sure that all this political bloggery will get very hardcore once we get to a General Election, but I try to avoid fights for the sake of fights and look for common ground these days. I know I say the personal is the political, but not to the extent that personal attacks are de rigeur.

We discussed Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's concerns that blogging is just 'pub bores' ( see debate on political blogging here on TV), the state of the blog wars, in which both sides have taken a lot of flak, particularly Tim, who has provoked a needed debate about damage done to the image of blogging by lack of basic 'netiquette', and who has been viciously ( anonymously) lambasted for it, which rather proves his original point. Personally, I think there's a place for all kinds of blogs, Guido is one kind of blog, other people have other kinds of blogs. Guido's blog does not define blogdom. How can it?

Blogging's simply a channel of communication, open to abuse and subject to the laws of libel like any other kind of publishing. Moving on, we talked about hope, and the positives of blogs, and Barak Obama. We also talked about our blog posts of the week - mine were Indigo Jo on the state of communities, and Sunny Hundal on Comment is Free about Independent Jewish Voices, Melanie Phillip's vitriolic rant on the same subject ( because it made me wild) and the consistently excellent Random Acts of Reality.

It was quite a lively programme with a lot of interaction from viewers. I'm glad that politics debates passion and heat and that the Opposition has livened up: that is good for democracy. Long may the debate continue. Fairly and without abuse.

Update: slight edit for clarity

Weekend blogging round up...

I've finally switched to the new blogger system. I didn't want to risk it for months because I was scared of losing everything on the blog. Recently, however, I got to a point where I decided I simply didn't care anymore if the blog disappeared into the ether forever, so I closed my eyes and clicked ...

..and phew, all 560 posts, all your comments and all the links are still here, which is good because now I can do a round up of some of the good stuff that has been written this week. I have not been able to read other people's blogs for about a month, because I have been working flat out, so it's been great to catch up a bit this weekend.

Not Saussure on the extremists within our midst....

'I’ve also asked Ruth Kelly to set up a study group to investigate ways of better integrating motorists — many of whom were born and brought up here — with the community and ways of persuading them that sending letter bombs is very un-British. I would encourage the parents of young motorists to look for the danger signs — a fascination with Top Gear is very suspicious — and to report them to the police as soon as possible for their family’s sake...'
more...

Sunny from Pickled Politics in Comment is Free

'As I stated in November when introducing New Generation Network (NGN), the idea that whole "communities" can speak with one voice is not only disingenuous but counter-productive. It only benefits those willing to constantly shout the loudest and spend time pushing their own agenda...'

Sunny also has a good guest post on Islam and Feminism from Zohra, and a lot of other interesting stuff.

Wife in the North has been consistently excellent since she started blogging, and here is a taster, for those who have yet to discover her writing Mothers and Daughters

'She told me the nurse was going to give her an anemone. I thought this unlikely. The bustling Scottish nurse arrived, not with flowers but with rubber gloves. Mother mine, teeth biting into the cotton pillow and tears falling onto my hand shrieked in silence as the nurse got on with it. Old age smells of shit and shame not Chanel...'

One Violent Crime and the Female Victim (hat-tip: Incurable Hippie)

'Again and again, women are told that we can avoid rape if we don't go out alone, don't get drunk, carry our car keys as a weapon, take self-defence classes, don't dress revealingly, don't talk to strangers, and on and on. We get it. We live it. And we still get raped.Women get raped sober and drunk. They get raped when they're out and when they're home. They get raped wearing short skirts and wearing burqas. They get raped by men they know and by men they don't know. If one woman avoids rape by using her self-defence skills, a woman unable to defend herself gets raped instead. Whatever women do or don't do, men continue to rape them....'

And whilst we are on the subject of rape, please send a prayer or a wish for one of this blog's readers, whom I will call Annabel, ( not her real name) who contacted me this week to tell me about the rape trial she is in the middle of, where the verdict is expected soon. Any raped person who finds the strength within herself to stand up and face her rapist down in court does us all a great service, and I wish her every success in getting the justice and the closure she deserves.