London Blogger Rights

The one in which he talks about the Spring London Bloggers meetup in reverse order

I'd walked into a fence, drunk on the way to the station, I could almost feel blood trickling down my cheek from the wire. Aw well, I thought.

On the train, sat two seats to my left was a young lady knitting, it seemed to be a white scarf. English wasn't her first language, but I think we bonded over knitting as I pulled out my latest project.

Its a bit of a checked, weaved kind of thing. I was a little drunk on the train, so I think I mushed it up. As I said before, aw weel.

Earlier I was at the London Bloggers Meetup at Doggetts Coat and Badge in Blackfriars, towards the end of the evening I was sat at a table with my chum and recent boing-boing star Aref-Adib, Caroline of Caroline's Miscellany, Michald, and Alex4d who can be found by searching for his name. Interesting conversations about the nature of Twitter and the future and the internet and whether documents will exist in a hundred years and many many other things.

Do I actually have to apologise at these things if I roll my eyes when people say they do PR and Marketing. I accept that people who blog have the same skillset as people who do PR so there's huge overlap, but sometimes it feels like there are two types of people who go to #LBM, PR folk and everyone else in the room. It sometimes feels too much like a PR networking event, rather than a bloggers meetup.

To demonstrate a point that I struggle to verbalise, how come after the event my blog here doesn't get streams of traffic from the sites of professional PR and marketing people? I'd have to pay for that wouldn't I. There ought to be lots of blog posts like this one listing people who were there, rather than a brief flurry of tweets dropping off the bottom of the page. There ought to be a London Bloggers roundup post, like the Britblog Roundup or Sugasm.

Interesting folk I spoke to include:-

Julius
Alex4d
Michald
Aref-Adib
Ridiculant
Andy Bargery
Louis from Adcentered
A tall chap from teh Londonist
Caroline of Caroline's Miscellany
Meaghan from the Spoonfed event listings site

People I made brief eye-contact with include:-

Jaz Jazettera Jazeera Jazamatazz
The Londoneer
Andy Roberts
Fresh Plastic
Miss Geeky
Cristiano
Lolly
Mex

People who I didn't talk to or make eye contact with:-

Utku
Annie Mole
PR-otagonism
The Red Rocket
My London Diary
Fake Plastic Noodles
Stephen Waddington
Milo Yiannopoulos
Brian the Pigeon
We Are Social
Just Giving
Kai
(admittedly some of these aren't people as such, but are blogs written by people who I didn't talk to, make eye-contact with or otherwise recognise)
I've probably missed loads of people, if I have, leave a comment and I'll fix the world.

Photies here, featuring me second on the left

There was a speechy talk thing by a Miss @hel_razor from The Equality and Human Rights Commission. It was about how they're engaging with the blogosphere now, and are interested to here what we have to ask of them and the ways we can engage with them. There were writers from the Guardian and other dead trees covering the event (should I feel used?).

My opinion of human rights is documented elsewhere, and whilst its good that government agencies are engaging, or at least opening themselves up to the public, there are already plenty of debates about human rights going on out there on the internet all the time, rather than wanting people to come to them, the Equality and Human Rights Commission could go out and engage.

There are already debates about Human Rights out on the blogosphere, with any number of players engaged with them, the government, the media, charities, bloggers. If a QUANGO wants to join the debate, they should do so but not by sitting back and asking people to come to them.

What about civil liberties? Actually, with Chakrabarti's Liberty, do we need a Government sponsored Human Rights organisation too? Hmm, now I think about it, I've been a big fan of Human Rights Watch, they do some excellent work around the world, do we need a Government sponsored Human Rights organisation?

Blah blah blah, can we have our money back?

Instead of the taxpayer having to pay for this with the threat of going to prison, can't we just vote out any government or authority that tramples what we believe are our fundamental human rights and we keep more of our money ourselves?

Its a bit rich to take our money, then ask us how the resources are to be deployed.