Repeats and ads
Harry Barnes is an excellent man, with whom I've corresponded. He was Labour MP for N.E. Derbyshire from 1987 to 2005. Now retired, he writes a blog here. Of Harry's support for the Government over the military intervention in Kosovo, Tony Benn (also sitting for a Derbyshire seat) wrote in his diary on 14 April 1999: "He is a very muddled man." Oh no he wasn't. He could recognise a xenophobic aggressor in Slobodan Milosevic, and urge what needed to be done to stop him.
In his capacity as a blogger, Harry criticises my piece for The Guardian this week on the curse that is political blogging, and also gives his opinion about this site.
Oliver Kamm's attack on political blogging is strange. Not least because he is a (restricted) form of political blogger himself. His limitations as a blogger are (a) that he doesn't engage in debate with his readers even via a managed comment box and (b) too many of his posted items are just repeats of his various newspaper columns or are adverts for his coming radio and TV appearances.
True enough, I'm afraid. You can hear me on BBC Radio 4's Talking Politics programme at 11.00am on Saturday, where I shall be a guest along with Nick Cohen, John Rentoul of The Independent on Sunday and Fraser Nelson of The Spectator. We are discussing welfare, especially in the context of a new book by the American libertarian Charles Murray and an interview with Frank Field MP. At one point the presenter, Dennis Sewell, asks for our view on Liberal Democrat thinking on the subject, to which question we respond with unanimous derision. That's what I call a balanced panel: accuracy in reporting, regardless of our differing ideological premises.
When you've done that, you could switch over to the BBC World Service Politics UK programme on Saturday at 11.30am, where I shall be discussing two new books with John O'Sullivan of The National Interest, David Green of the think-tank Civitas, and libertarian activist Brian Micklethwait. The books are On Fraternity: Politics Beyond Liberty and Equality by Danny Kruger, who is special adviser to David Cameron; and O'Sullivan's own book The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World.
Darn it. There I go again.
