Oh Lordy. He means me....

Hopi Sen, one of this years judges for the Orwell Prize for Political Blogging, has written a really terrific post about his experience of reading all this years entries.


It's full of good advice and pertinent observations about where we where the political blogosphere currently sits. But two paragraphs in particular stood out for me...

"The blog that felt old fashioned were those of the now-cliched figure of the opinionated, nearly-connected figure on the fringes of political life who decides to say in public what is being said in private. He's probably male, and probably writing in his lunch break, or in his pants of a weekend.  There were a lot of these kinds of blogs, and mine would have been among them. Reading them as an outsider, I can see why I wasn't long-listed last year.

En-masse, reading the opinions of a 30-something man about the challenges and problems of their political party becomes enervating, not exciting. If you write this kind of blog, and didn't get long listed, please know that I am probably judging myself far harder than I'm judging you. i often felt that I was reading a closed shop, designed only to influence people like me, who already know the code. I could be being far too harsh here, but I'm being hard on myself, so I apologise"

Now, that description is a pretty accurate view of me and my blogging (I should add that while I am writing this at the weekend, I am wearing jeans)(and I'm not 30 something). And it makes me look at my blog with a new eye.

It makes me realise that perhaps I need to make my blog more interesting, more different and  appeal to a wider and more general audience than the average 'Lib Dem Blogs' reader and the odd click through from Comment is Free.

It's a good wake up call for us all to stop talking to ourselves and start talking to the wide public.

Because otherwise, there are going to be a lot more Bradford Wests coming on the horizon