Peter Black v Bethan Jenkins
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
King of the Welsh political blogosphere takes on the young rogue who, I know from experience, wouldn't accept a royal title even in this fictional context.
Peter Black is a Lib Dem regional member for South Wales West. After the next Assembly election, he and Bethan Jenkins will be colleagues of sorts, as she tops Plaid's regional list in the same area.
Up until now, they've been treading on each other's toes in the local press, and possibly on the streets of Swansea too. Today, they're battling it out in the blogosphere.
Bethan says Peter's exploiting student issues just because we're approaching an election. Peter asks if Plaid can pay for its tuition fee promises and proceeds to spam the comments with Lib Dem hyperlinks.
There are those in all parties who are extremely sceptical about political blogs. But, as long as the debate sticks firmly with policy I believe it's healthy that this sort of discussion is happening online, especially one relating to youth issues.
The danger is that arguments between politcians degenerate into the cattiness that characterises so many other blogs. It would not reflect very well on an already beleaguered political class.
In the meantime, why not use the internet as a battelground for the student vote? Students are, after all, more likely to read a blog than tune in to political TV.
Labels: Bethan Jenkins, blogs, Peter Black, Welsh Assembly Election 2007
posted by Blamerbell @ 4:38 pm,
5 Comments:
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At 7:27 pm,
bethan said...
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I agree totally. I hope that students will read the blog, and decide that Plaid are the Party for them!
Peter Black- please could you un- spam my blog? We can try and get on better then, I promise! -
At 8:16 pm,
Blamerbell said...
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No campaigning on here please - there'll be enough of that elsewhere in the coming months...
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At 9:19 pm,
bethan said...
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are you vetting your blog, blamerbell? surely you should be promoting democracy amongst young people, whatever their opinion;-)
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At 9:47 pm,
Peter Black said...
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Bethan if you want to be selective about comments you should activate the vetting process for comments in blogger. You should do this anyway as you are responsible for the contents of those comments and it is the best way of protecting yourself against spam.
By the way although my name is Peter Black, when people address me directly I prefer they call me just Peter. -
At 10:13 pm,
Blamerbell said...
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I agree with that Bethan. Better to moderate comments than delete them later.
A number of bloggers with reputations at stake go for that approach - notably Peter and Iain Dale. Just select the option in the blog settings to approve comments by email.
I have no need, however, given that I've already been called all sorts of things in various corners of the internet. Some of the insults are actually quite inventive and I wouldn't want to delete a single one of them!
