I did not know that WORDPRESS sent out an annual report. I do not recall this from last year, possibly because it was hardly worthwhile . In the period August 2011-January 2011, I would have been lucky to get twenty views in a day.
To be honest, I think I was more concerned with WRITING stuff than being READ. I tended to use this blog as a journal.
Things have changed a lot in 2012. I have some other Internet incarnations. Politics is only one of my interests. I type with two fingers…..or this stylus tapping on the iPad. I bought the iPad in June and it took me three months to open the box. I am a blogger who is actually a technophobe.
The way the Blog has worked out is that it has coasted along and then been given boosts, by for example Mick over on Slugger linked to my blogs on Capital Assets Transfer and fair play to him on each occasion he has done so, then the Blog has reached a new record and then fallen back to coast along at a new higher level.
Looking at BangorDub’s and An Sionnach Fionn’s blogs on their own Annual Reports, they get a lot more views than I do. Periodic boosts, notably and ironically from Mick at Slugger has given me an average of 700 views per day in the first two weeks of December. That is the “high” I take into 2013. There is I think an optimum number. When the Flegs issue was at its height, I could barely cope. I am after all a one-man-band.
Yet reading An Sionnach’s blog yesterday and going thru the links he posted….and by the way, I am not good with posting links, it is obvious that I don’t pay enough attention to other blogs. In part this BLOG is highly personal….nationalist,republican and socialist but leaning….in January 2013 to the SDLP.There would be little point in me getting comments from the massed ranks of DUP,UUP and TUV voters. That would be too hostile an environment. For me this blog works best when it is teasing out nuances in the nationalist family. The core contributors to this blog are on that same page.
Which brings up a bigger question. Yesterday An Sionnach brought up the old phrase…web ring….a genuine blast from the past. I recall some years ago that I had a small blog and I actually tried to join a Norn Iron web ring….not as easy as it sounds because I had to submit a 200 word application.
I gave up after about 120 words. Too much like a cartel for my tastes. an Sionnach described me as an independently minded SDLP member. I think there are good historic reasons for that. I am rooted in the 1970s and have a voting record 1993-2009 voting Sinn Feèin and also fair to say that I have little SDLP baggage as I’m not seen as close to any individual or groups for thirty years. As of today I am TECHNICALLY not a member of SDLP….as I have not got round to renewing my subscription. Which does at least raise the academic question of whether I would be more effective For the SDLP if I was outside the Party.
It is an interesting point because thru my own choice I am not actually a member of a SDLP branch. I don’t think that local politics is my forte and I think it is also unfair to branch members to have an active blogger in their ranks. And that raises another question of how I can better serve SDLP inside or outside its party structure. I have of course joked in the past that the surest way of having SDLP ignore you is to actually join the SDLP. There is something deep in the SDLP DNA which is totally at ease listening to Davey Adams and Duncan Morrow while taking the actual membership for granted. At least that was my belief at the 2010 SDLP Conference. There were welcome indications at the 2012 Conference that the SDLP is now prepared to listen to its own members and supporters rather than be complimented by assorted letsgetalongerists who would never vote SDLP anyway.
I do not know if SDLP has a strategy on Blogging. Any discussions I have had have not really developed beyond “that sounds like a good idea”. Isolated as I am, I dont know if SDLP is actually missing a trick here or if one lone eccentric SDLP (unauthorised!) SDLP voice is enough. Certainly most SDLP dont seem interested in the blogosphere and I am tempted to say they are right……bloggers are little more than anoraks confined to South Belfast/East Belfast and North Down with little knowledge of how to get to West Tyrone.
Is there room for a loose federation of pan-nationalist bloggers to present the Sinn Féin/SDLP case to combat the pan-letsgetalongerism of a nameless discussion board and the over-friendly twitterati of the Metrotextual?
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Two odd obsessions on this weblog. First off the obsession with Slugger O’Toole and often hostility to Slugger O’Toole. Second, the obsession with an effets moribund political party SDLP..
I dont think any of my obsessions are that odd. Surely it stands to reason that as a member of a political party, I might actually promote that Party on a political blog. I have been described as “an independently minded SDLP member” and you state I am obsessed.
Whatever.
SF are going to increase vote share in the Ulster Mid by election. SDLP are going to lose vote share.
Ooops. My apologies, I thought you had formerly rejoined the party. I have amended the post to “…a veteran if independently-minded former member of the SDLP”.
Hope that suffices? 🙂
Funnily enough I was having very similar thoughts about a Republican collective of bloggers as I was writing the post and looking at the ones out there (I could have included another 5 or 6 links, so should probably also apologise to those I left out). I have a series of RSS feeds at the bottom of my blog from various like-minded bloggers or sites I find interesting.
A very good example of collective blogging is the Cedar Lounge Revolution. The guys over there having been blogging for several years now from a Left-wing position on politics, the economy, society and culture, and very successfully so. In fact they are quite influential and have quite a readership in political and media circles. Both favourable and hostile. “WorldbyStorm” , “Garibaldy”, “IrishElectionLiterature” are excellent writers and frequent challengers of establishment orthodoxy.
A Republican group-blog (Left and Centre-Left in nature), along the lines of Cedar Lounge, would be a way of challenging and answering the anti-Republican, anti-Nationalist, partitionist narrative in the south of the country, and the anti-Republican, anti-Nationalist, Unionist-lite narrative in the north.
There is also course the case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Several Republican bloggers, albeit from different positions, publishing on a daily and weekly basis? 😉
Oh just to make things clear.
I was a member of SDLP 1973 to 1981.
And am again from Sept 2011.
I am only TECHNICALLY a non member until they hunt me down and make me hand over £20.
Sorry I should have made that clearer in original post.
I will need to look at a lot more blogs.
In some ways Tinternet favours a kinda anti-Republican agenda. Look at politics.ie and Slugger and there is a kinda smug consensus which is even anti-political……and the main contributors feed off each other.
Speaking off the top of my head here but republicanism is often fractious and perhaps advancing a PRO Agenda is always more difficult than advancing an ANTI Agenda.
But I am certainly interested in a Republican “collective”.
Ah, I will leave the sentence as is. You never know, you might find it advantageous to keep party links on the long-finger to free up your opinions. I’m sure the SDLP is like every other political party in the country and fairly reluctant to have people speaking off-script. All those TDs and MLAs getting themselves into trouble via Twitter and Facebook 😉
I agree about the fractious nature of Republicanism. I was going to write something about the divisions in Sinn Féin Poblachtach (RSF) but trying to plough trough the myriad of competing claims (and websites) gave me a headache. I gave up after an hour of it 😀
A Republican “Cedar Lounge Revolution” (or “Slugger O’Toole”) based on the WordPress platform would be entirely doable if people are up for it. Simply create a WordPress blog, give it a name and template and then allow selected contributors to post to it.
I think your idea has a lot of merit. But necessarily it would have to be limited. From my perspective the “constitution” of such a group would be the recognition that SDLP is a valid “nationalist/republican/socialist” party and I would also want to avoid language like “Shinner” or “Stoop” even when used ironically. As youve probably noticed I have not used those words in my Blog.
I dont know that the SDLP actually sees me as a “member”…………or to be more accurate I dont think SDLP members see me as a SDLP member………….they still tend to look on me as “yer man who puts it up to yer man on Slugger O’Toole” but I get little feedback. I think in my “Metro-Textual” post, I am trying to draw out the distinction that I dont believe in SOCIAL MEDIA as a political force. Rather I believe in an ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA.
I would think that at 60 I have litte chance of a “role” within SDLP. Not being a member of a branch means I can never be a SDLP Conference delegate or select a candidate at a local election. Or obviously become a Branch Chairman or Secretary or on a Constituency Committee. And necessarily this means that I can never have an ambition to be on (say) SDLP Executive…..even at my age and without several years of networking skills………I COULD use this Blog as a platform….if I was so minded.