RSS Feed Readers and life after Google Reader closes down

Anyone who uses Google Reader on a PC/laptop/netbook or on a smartphone to follow blogs and [news] websites of interest cannot fail to be aware that Google plans to close the service down at the end of this month. They (Google) say few[er] people now use RSS feed readers and that anyway in the age of mobile devices and in particular the emergence and explosive growth of 'social media' they are no longer so useful.

Whilst I may find their reasoning curious and 'wrong', it is obviously a commercial decision and as they provided the service for free, no doubt they have calculated carefully the costs/benefits of keeping it going as opposed to closing it down.

I started using an RSS feed reader many years before Google Reader was launched. I used Bloglines and the website is at bloglines.com and even after the launch of Google Reader much preferred Bloglines - the interface seemed 'cleaner' somehow. However, nothing remains static and Bloglines was taken over by Merchant Circle who, although they have fortunately maintained the service its look and feel changed somewhat. So like millions of others I gradually came to rely on Google Reader more and more and once I had adjusted the 'dashboard' to suit me better almost ceased using Bloglines on a regular basis and stopped maintaining my feed subscriptions there, so they have tended to become a bit out of date. An advantage of Google Reader is that in recent times, after I started using a smartphone, I could 'sync' my feeds on an app there using the mobile version of Google Reader, but as this is also going to close have converted this to an app called 'gReader' which the developers say will continue even after Google Reader closes.

However, I took the opportunity ahead of Google Reader closing to export my current feeds there back to Bloglines to update it. Similarly, on my smartphone I downloaded the Feedly app and it 'synced' automatically all my Google Reader feeds and I must say I find the Feedly platform a very attractive one, so much so that I have now installed it on my laptops (the website link is http://www.feedly.com) as well and everything seems to 'sync' very smoothly between my smartphone and laptop, just in the same seamless way that Google Reader does at present.

In summary I have more or less prepared for the day when Google Reader ceases to exist and think that whilst I will mainly be using Feedly for its ease of use and synchronisation between mobile and laptop platforms, I will keep my Bloglines subscriptions going, too, if only as back-up.

Back to reality with a bump - and a cough - it's almost winter!

I arrived back home in Scotland for the winter a few days ago, having left behind slightly deteriorating weather in Spain, typical of this time of year, but still rather warmer than here of course. I left the house there very early (about 5.45am - argh!) on Thursday morning to drive to the airport at Alicante, about one hour and twenty minutes up the motorway, to be well in time for check-in as I have never liked to have to rush or be late for anything. Anyway the flight left on time and arrived in Gatwick a little early, so after retrieving my luggage I had plenty of time to transfer between terminals and check-in for the next flight, which meant I could get through security (again) and have plenty of time for a proper and fairly relaxed lunch.

The flight up to Inverness was on time, too, but when stepping off the aircraft (no air-bridges at Inverness) down the stairs onto the tarmac the cold blast of air hit me in the face. Truly, I was home. After a speedy luggage-retrieval process (the advantage of arriving at a small airport - mind you my luggage was delivered remarkably rapidly at Gatwick earlier in the day, too), with the taxi I had booked by telephone before leaving London awaiting me (*) I was back home about 15 minutes later. The neighbour who kindly holds my keys when I am away, and who collects and organises my mail as well as doing a check of my property (central heating, tap running and toilet flushing, etc) had as she usually does left me some eggs, cheese, grapes and oatcakes so as I was feeling quite tired after many hours of travelling I contented myself with this and did not even think about going to the supermarket that evening.

So the next day, Friday, I took myself along to the supermarket to stock up the refrigerator again. All good, except that someone must have been carrying a cold/cough virus and 'kindly' passed it on to me - thanks so much. By Saturday afternoon I was not feeling too good so had to decline an invitation to attend an opera performance to use a ticket that another person couldn't use because she was unwell. In the event I took myself off to bed at about 8pm, not forgetting to put all my clocks back to 7pm before doing so. I wakened up around 1.30 am on Sunday feeling 'like death warmed up', with a VERY sore throat; I remembered I had some 'Lemsip' (paracetamol-based cough/cold remedy) sachets and some Strepsil throat lozenges from last winter so went and took a dose of each - back to bed and slept soundly (well, after an hour or two on the laptop propped up on my lap in bed to pass the time) and wakened up about 8am feeling a very great deal better. On reflection it is probably better I was infected with this cold/cough virus quickly so I could begin to build up an immunity to it - I'll see just how effective that immunity is after another night in bed tonight.

One of the advantages of the clocks having gone back an hour last night is that one wakens up to lighter skies in the mornings, at least for a few weeks longer until the longest night/shortest day just before Christmas, against which of course is the 'penalty' that it gets darker an hour earlier in the afternoon/early evening. I jest slightly of course, but this is the usual seasonal pattern here, until the days begin to get noticeably longer toward the end of February and early March. And later in March I will be heading back to Spain again for my usual 3-months there in Spring - something to look forward to.

(*) Recently the taxi-parking regime at Inverness Airport was tightened-up even more than it had been been before. Only taxis from one particular Inverness-based taxi firm are permitted to queue for business at Inverness Airport (I understand they pay a substantial annual fee for the privilege), with passengers headed for other towns in the area and who wish to travel by taxi obliged to book ahead. But as those booked taxis are not permitted to wait at the airport without payment for more than 15 or 20 minutes, it makes it necessary to re-confirm by telephone to the taxi-firm from the arrivals hall/luggage collection area, so they can come into the airport from where they have been waiting outside the airport perimeter to collect their passengers - it is all very inconvenient both for passengers and taxi firms not based in Inverness. Surely there is a better and more equitable way of catering for passengers' needs without infringing over-much the 'monopoly' created by HIA (the airport authority) and its fee-paying Inverness-based taxi firm, which passengers living outside Inverness could not use even if they wished to?

If you're interested in "talk about us" blogging ...

... this is the headquarters of "narcissism central" for Scottish blogging. I've read it for years, but remain perplexed what it's all about. Apart from talking about 'talking about' anything remotely related to Scotland. It used to be reasonably good, now it seems simply to be a 'look at me' blog-fest for people that are immensely pleased that their blog has achieved a mention in it.

Blog lists - blogs which have been taken private

I have noticed a tendency recently for some blogs to be taken 'private' - in other words access to them has been restricted only to invited readers. Those who write these blogs have presumably taken this step for reasons of their own and I make no comment whatsoever about that. Whether I have asked for access and been granted it is however irrelevant in relation to the continuing appearance of such blogs in lists of blogs linked to from my little blog - in all cases where I become aware of a blog which is included in my blogrolls having been taken 'private' it will be removed from such lists here as my blog is, and will always remain [so far as I am concerned], viewable by anyone who cares to visit and read it and it is only logical that blogs I suggest others may like too, should actually be viewable by anyone who cares to try and do so. I will continue to monitor such 'private' blogs [where I can] and if and when they are restored to 'public' view I will consider reinstating them in my blogrolls here.

The face and the name behind the "Lallands Peat Worrier" blog

I've had the Lallands Peat Worrier blog in my bloglist for some years, but apart from coming to value the obvious 'erudition' of his articles on legal issues affecting Scotland I had no real idea of who the person behind this blog is. So I was inerested to come across this video-clip of a recent appearance by Andrew Tickell on the 'Politics Show - Scotland' programme:



- speaking from Oxford. However, as the programme presenter introduced him as a "Scottish legal blogger" we are not in fact very much farther forward in being able to understand who he is, so a little digging via Google reveals this very interesting biography, which I think puts his credentials into much better focus. Below is an excerpt:

Education Andrew Tickell is a DPhil candidate. Before joining the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in 2009, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2008 with a 1st Class Honours degree in Law, awarded with the Lord President Cooper Memorial Prize. A year of his undergraduate study was spent in the Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands. In December 2009 he completed an MSc in Equality and Human Rights (awarded with distinction) at the University of Glasgow’s School of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences with a thesis exploring ‘Gender and the Scottish Bar: Masculinity, Femininity & Representation in the Faculty of Advocates.’ He holds an Arts and Humanities Research Council Award.

- so the basis for his erudition is much clearer. On the other hand I do not share his views on Scotland's position within the United Kingdom, nor his desire to see that position change with a move to Scottish separation/independence. However, whatever I may think of his views on this matter, he is certainly someone who writes with great clarity of thought and rationality and his is one of those blogs that I try and read regularly, simply for the sheer quality of his writing.

(Video-clip thru Caron's Musings, another blog I read although somewhat less-regularly, but also thru Scottish Roundup whose weekly selections I generally glance through. I did some more research myself to find the link to his biography.)

The pitfalls of "anonymous blogging"

(Please see UPDATE at end)

One of the things this blog is not, and never has been, is "anonymous" - there really is a person called "Bill Cameron" and I have been blogging here for in excess of nine years. Enough people in the "real world" (assuming you don't actually buy into the notion that we are all living in some kind of Matrix make-believe world) know both me and this blog for its genuineness to have been established long ago.

What has prompted this now? Well, it seems there has been for some months a blog purportedly written by a lesbian in Syria, a country currently enduring considerable social turmoil, which was revealed a few days ago to have been a completely fictitious creation of an American heterosexual male currently studying for a Masters Degree at, of all places, Edinburgh University. Another false blog profile was apparently created, a male US military person again writing as a lesbian, to 'authenticate' the original fraud.

Many people write 'anonymously' for one reason or another. Often-times, in my opinion, such blogs are written by Walter Mitty types who have no obvious real need to write anonymously, but seem to feel that it adds an air of 'mystery' or 'exoticism' to their scribblings. So far as I am concerned I find such 'coyness' merely tedious - and boring. I could cite dozens of blogs in the UK and US which fall into this cateogry (but won't, or at least not directly) - some do write interestingly, but most are really not worth the time and effort of anyone else to read them. Perhaps they do save some money on therapists for the writers.

The first I heard of the 'Syrian lesbian blog' in question was a couple of days ago in a gay news ['mainstream' in the online gay community] website, based in the UK although the first link I saw to it was in a blog article today, but unfortunately the blog in question has now been restricted only to invited viewers, so I am unable to comment directly on any of the actual articles in the 'offending' blog; I use the word 'offending' ironically. Equally ironically, the linked blog is itself written 'anonymously' - no doubt the person behind it is a person who exists in a physical reality, apparently in Dundee (a city in Scotland), but I have absolutely no means of evaluating this in any way that might be called 'evidence'; the email address provided in the linked blogger profile is decidedly obscure. I have no particular reason to doubt the claim within the blog that the writer is indeed a 'lady of a certain age' living in Dundee, but nor is there any credible 'evidence' to substantiate this, so I have always read 'her' blog with a certain degree of scepticism. There have been certain incidents in the past which have since made me wonder whether my classification of the writer as 'histrionic' (a sort of 'Winifred Mitty' if you like, a female version of the afore-linked 'Walter Mitty') is not so very far off the mark.

I make absolutely no apology for the scepticism with which I view all 'anonymous' blogs; the writers of such blogs may protest their genuineness as much as they want, but I reserve the right to continue to regard them with some suspicion. Even some of those where I have come to know the real identity of the writers seem to me to have suspect motives for continuing to write their blogs anonymously.

More pernicious undoubtedly are those blogs which set themselves up with a completley false 'persona' which purports to be that of a real person - such seems to be the case with this latest "Syrian lesbian" blog imposter; perhaps the original motive of Tom MacMaster for starting this blog was honourable, but it was at best naïve and at worst deeply destructive and dangerous for those within Syria who have apparently been duped into believing in the genuineness of his blog.

The only safe stance on the internet is to be on guard at all times. It has become all too common in recent years for 'phishers' to purport to send emails from genuine companies or oganisations in the hope of gleaning from innocent users of the genuine websites their usernames and passwords, later to be used by the 'phishers' for nefarious purposes. So although my little blog is completely genuine, as could be attested by various friends, acquaintances and family members in the 'real world', most readers of it do not know me personally, so the only completely safe policy for them is to maintain a healthy scepticism.

One of the other links that Subrosa provides is to a Guardian article written by someone called Kira Cochrane, a more contrived load of pseudo-feminist claptrap than which I have not read in a very long time, richly deserving a complete fisking, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to do a complete job as I have a life to live. However a couple of examples:

In the case of MacMaster and Graber, sexual gratification doesn't seem to have been the prime motive, although there are certainly signs that the two men may have got some erotic thrill from pretending to be lesbians – "Amina" apparently often flirted with "Paula".

- well, although as I mentioned above I have not been in a position to read the actual exchanges in question, it seems to me that it would be a prerequisite to 'carry off' the deception that the two purportedly lesbian protagonists would have possibly 'flirted' with each other, although frankly any semi-sentient human being might just have smelled a rat - just how 'genuine' and believable were these exchanges? Moreover, unless at least some of the articles in the blog were in Arabic I would have been extremely sceptical as to the blog's genuineness - it is perfectly true that a number of blogs written by Arabs (male and female, gay and straight) exist or have existed with most articles written in English, this was specially true in the run-up to and following the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (there was indeed one very well-known blog written by a gay Iraqi man who subsequently became a columnist in the Guardian for a while), but most had at least some content in the Arabic language, either in the articles themselves or in the comments. If the whole thing was in completely perfect idiomatic English, and none of the comment I have read indicates otherwise, then that alone would have been a warning indicator to me.

In fact, as the psychotherapist and feminist writer Susie Orbach says, they seem to have been using these lesbian personas as a "double inversion – exploiting the 'illegitimacy' of the person they were impersonating to give themselves legitimacy".

- am I the only one who thinks this is just so much iname 'gibberish'? It reads like invented pyschobabble to me!

Alomost the only part of this tendentious twaddle that seems to have any validity whasoever is the final paragraph which reads:

While there are worries that this will undermine the lesbian blogosphere – creating a question mark over all who write about gay issues online – Campbell suspects it won't do too much lasting damage. "Internet life is full of hoaxes," she says, "it's full of virtuality. Lesbian bloggers who are embedded and authentic will continue, and all these others will fall away."

- although the bit about internet life being 'full of virtuality' is the kind of trite, pseudo-profound insight that is in reality just the meaningless rubbish that typifies far too much mainstream media writing about the internet. The whole internet IS VIRTUAL - Doh!

There are/were bloggers writing in western countries who have perhaps been justified in maintaining anonymity, either because they were writing about sensitive matters that might have personal ramifications for them from those who know them in real life, or because of their employment if their blogs touched on matters relating to their place of work; indeed a number of such bloggers have been dismissed or forced out of their employment when their identities were revealed.

Finally, I don't pretend to know what it is to be lesbian or to be a lesbian writer from a country where repression and intimidation is the norm. On the other hand I am a gay man who has lived for many years in a number of extremely repressive societies in the Middle East and elswehere, so I think I do have an inkling of some of the pressures involved and certainly a lot more than some of the male and female bloggers and journalists who have been pontificating about this over the past few days, most of whom are neither lesbian nor gay, nor do they have the experience of living under a repressive reigime.

To whose who say "Don't believe all you read on the internet", I can only respond that I may enjoy reading many things on the internet, but I never, ever forget to be sceptical of all I read there - and for you, dear reader, that means this article, too (unless you happen to know me personally, that is).

UPDATE: (Thursday 16JUN2011 08.50 BST) Here's a more wide-ranging analyis and discussion in Slate on the phenomenon of people adopting false personas for their writing exploits - click here; the Google-cache link to the blatantly false apology from the operator of the LezGetReal bulletin board is well worth clicking on, too, from there.

Blogroll updated - at last!

(Please see UPDATES at end)

Since the blog-listing utility 'Blogrolling' closed some months back, I haven't had a proper public blogroll for the blogs I read which I select to list here. I don't like using the standard Blogger blogrolling utility (for various reasons I won't bore you with), so have instead created my own in a format which will be relatively easy to keep updated and which is readily exportable for other purposes (for example to appear in my other [Spanish] blog and in the links page of my main website).

Now I have done the work from A-B, but as this includes blogs which I classify as American, Australian, Belgian, Brazilian and British, that covers probably three-quarters of the blogs I read regularly. I'll get the rest of the blogs that I'm going to add to the list done in the next few days. You can see the blogs so far added in the right-column under the header "Blogs you may like".

As part of this exercise I have taken the opportunity to remove quite a large number of blogs both from my old bloglist and from the rss feeds I monitor, because many of the really brilliant blogs I once followed have, like the parrot in Monty Python, ceased to be, an inevitable result of having been blogging for nigh on nine years. However, I've also had the pleasure of reading a number of much more recently-started blogs and some of these are now in my blogroll, too.

By the way, and as I have written here a number of times before, I do not have a policy of reciprocity for my blogrolls - requests to include a link in my blogroll usually push that blog to the bottom of the list for inclusion, and I NEVER ask for my blog to be included in anyone else's blogroll list, although obviously I am grateful to those who have chosen to. In particular, those who ask me to place a link in my blogroll to their blog with the promise that they will in turn place a link to my blog in their blogroll will be sent away "with a flea in their ear" (to employ a Scottishism); attempting to increase the number of blogs which link to one's own blog by such base means cuts no ice with me (on the few occasions I've made an exception to this rule I have always come to regret it later - I'm far too polite to name names). On the other hand, when I do add a blog to my blogroll I often highlight the fact with a brief article here, specially if it is what I consider to be a particularly interesting blog.

UPDATE (Monday 14FEB2010 19.15 GMT) I've now added the blogroll from C-Z for my main blogroll. I'll be putting the blogroll for Spanish blogs in place shortly.

2nd UPDATE (Monday 14FEB2010 19.50 GMT) As always with this kind of exercise there have been a couple of errors [of omission], for inexplicable reasons. A couple have been corrected; there may be more, unfortunately.

Personal announcement

There has been very little activity in this blog over the past month because I have been observing a period of mourning for my late mother, who died one month ago today. I hope to return to slightly more regular blogging from now on.

With acknowledgements to L S Lowry

The scene from my apartment a little earlier this afternoon as children and a few adults took the opportunity to have some fun on the small slope close by the Bandstand here in Nairn:



- see some genuine L S Lowry here as well as some children's drawing from his local town after his style.

Happiness is ...

... a light but delicious lunch of a plate of Black Forest Ham and Cornichons accompanied by a glass of Amontillado:


- followed up with some blueberries and cream with a couple of squares of 85 per cent Ecuadorian chocolate to add savour.

Daniel Boys sings 'Ave Maria' at House of Fraser in London

My first post alluding to Christmas 2009; Daniel Boys sings 'Ave Maria' in the window display at House of Fraser, London last week, to promote the 'Christmas in New York' concert:



- at least Daniel is nice to look at [ ;) ] even if the singing is a bit 'bar-room karaoke'. Yes, I've just been to wash my mouth out with soap! Read more about Daniel here.
(thru Made in Scotland)

De-linking all Nairn blogs

I've just de-linked from all the local blogs in Nairn to which I still linked (and a few were never linked to anyway); this is probably unfair on one or two of them, but to be quite honest I'm just a little cheesed-off with the petty and nasty nature of a few of the better-known ones (in this very small blogging pond, at least) in recent days. I've had enough!

They're still in my RSS feed-readers, so I won't be totally unaware of what some of these 'bottom-feeders' are focussing on, but I won't be paying much if any attention to their witterings for some considerable time. That's it. I'm done with this topic.

Light blogging for at least the next week

No surprise there then! In fact my blogging has been VERY sporadic for several weeks now, as a few visitors may have noticed. I'm sorry about this, but 'real life' has a way of butting in so rudely, don't ya know? So, this light blogging will be a feature here for at least the next week or ten days. On the one hand I am somewhat 'stressed' as a result of a rather tricky family matter - my mother moved to live in a care home earlier this year and whilst it is, I think, a pretty decent place both in terms of the care offered and the physical environment of the home (it is warm and comfortable and, according to my mother, the food is of high quality - and my observations bear this out), she has unfortunately taken against it. Some of the reasons which lie behind her attitude I am party to, but I feel we (the family and her social worker) have still to get to the root of some aspects of the problem. Unfortunately the home she wishes to go to does not have vacancies at present and quite apart from that it is a 'residential' rather than a 'care' home according to the arcane definitions that the governing authorities set so is very probably no longer suitable to cater for my mother's much deteriorated physical condition; she is very much 'on the ball' mentally, if a little forgetful. So I've been losing some sleep in recent weeks as a result. Why else would I be on the internet at 1 a.m,? This has been a pretty frequent occurrence of late, I'm afraid - my internal clock is way out of kilter, because of the worry.

The other factor that is contributing to my light blogging of late is a new website I am designing for the 'urbanisation' where I have my Spanish holiday home, to take over from the former website. Whilst it worked, it had a fairly basic, if cumbersome, design. All of the basic design criteria have been ironed out and I have got the username/password script working as it should (for the private part of the site); there are between 500 and 1,000 users so it is not too large a user-base, but it's not tiny either. However, there is still a lot of work to do if I am to meet the 'launch date' I have set for the middle of next week. There are three major strands to what remains to be done:

- loading and linking to a lot of the data (in the form of .PDF documents in the main, with a few other file-types as well) carried over from the former website; the file structure I am designing will I hope make it easier to maintain the site in the future to cater for additional data;

- putting in place an effective FAQ section, with the ability to handle new queries 'as and when' so that the database becomes more useful over time and keeps pace with changing requirements;

- taking care that all the major language requirements are catered for, principally English, Spanish, German and Dutch with some requirement for documents to be in French and Norwegian as well. Fortunately I am not responsible for preparing translations into most of those other languages (except for French, which I can do pretty competently I think), but certain parts of the site require to have separate sections for each of the languages and other pages require to be multi-lingual. This introduces all sorts of design constraints that take a bit of 'lateral thinking' to implement satisfactorily, quite apart from having to rely on a variety of others to supply the necessary translations in a reasonably timely manner so that all parts of the site say the same thing in the different language areas.

So whilst typing this I've been watching a movie recorded a few days ago on my DVR, but now I must really take myself off to bed, although I'll probably end up reading for a while before putting my bedside light off.

A quasi-meltdown of SNP-leaning blogs is in progress

Over the past few weeks a couple of SNP-leaning blogs have 'ceased transmissions' ("Wardog" and "The Universality of Cheese") and now I learn that a third, "Subrosa", has gone off-air, too. I had started to write a blog article a few days ago which would have been entitled "SNP-leaning bloggers on the psychiatrist's couch" and the first couple of paragraphs would have read:

Reading quite a few of the SNP-leaning blogs over the past week or so has been like being an observer at a global mind-dump; the snide remark might be (and slap me hard for typing this lol) that there's been a lot of trash accumulating in them there minds to dump. But that would be cruel. The current cycle of introspection amongst this cohort of bloggers seemed to kick off a couple of weeks back with the sudden disappearance of the 'Wardog' blog, which I wrote about to high-light the dangers to wider freedom of speech which his 'silencing' seemed to represent.

- that post had been 'inspired', if that's quite the right word(!), by some blog entries in the SNP Tactical Voting and J Arthur MacNumpty blogs, probably if I recall correctly in Subrosa's blog, too (no longer possible to check there, however) which all seemed to be indulging in what one might politely describe, at least in the case of the first two (the third being, we are led to believe, a lady) as keyboard onanism, as if SNP-blogging is co-equal with all Scottish blogging. There are other bloggers in Scotland than the fantasist SNP-leaning bloggers (and of course one of these two is I understand not actually based in Scotland at all, but is presumably someone with a Scottish heritage). Admittedly the SNP-bloggers have in recent months been generally more 'vocal' than other bloggers here. In all recent SNP-leaning blogging there has been a pretty clear whiff of 'victimhood', that somehow they, and by extension all Scottish/British bloggers are somehow being 'got at', possibly by agents of what is known as the MSM or 'main stream media', who are all castigated as being 'Unionist supporting' or sometimes 'Labour supporting'. Now I haven't ever made a practice of reading the Scotsman newspaper online (or in print) as I find it a pretty mediocre rag, but I have occasionally seen articles in both media - a feature of many of the few articles I have read online was the 'over the top', some might say 'obsessive' nature of many of the comments there, mainly emanating from what seemed to be SNP-supporters. I recall, before 'she' started blogging having occasionally seen the name 'Subrosa' given as the author of some of the comments, a few of which were frankly racist in tone. Nevertheless I found her as a blogger generally interesting, although hardly objective. On a couple of the occasions when she left a comment in my own little blog I had occasion to comment on the unpleasantly quasi-homophobic nature of these comments, but her comments were left in place by me (she may have deleted them subsequently, for all I know or care, as I now realise 'Wardog' has done too over the past couple of weeks, although in his case our debates never touched on homophobia as I never detected any whiff of that in him whatsoever) because the way she expressed her comments was always civil and I put her views down to being those of someone of advanced years. I knew no details of who she was, but she represented herself in her blog as being someone of advanced years.

In any case, one feature is common to the three SNP-leaning blogs which have been taken down recently - they were all anonymous. Shortly before the first two ceased blogging their identities were revealed, in the case of 'Wardog' by himself in his later blog entries and in the case of 'The Universality of Cheese' as a result of investigative journalism. From what I have gleaned from a couple of bloggers who have written about Subrosa's blogging demise, her identity was to be revealed this coming Sunday.

I can understand, at a pinch, why some bloggers wish to blog anonymously, but for the first 33 months my blog was in existence (until January 2005) I simply did not link to 'anonymous' blogs, period. From January 2005 I have relaxed this policy, and plan to continue with that more relaxed policy now, but I have never been entirely happy with the whole concept of anonymous blogging. It is significant, I think, that whilst both the SNP Tactical Voting and J Arthur MacNumpty blogs are written under the mask of pseudonyms, neither is anonymous. I have in the past written highly-critical articles about the author of the SNP Tactical Voting, from none of which criticism do I resile in any way, even if I accept that his writing is often of a high standard and displays a sound analysis on occasion, but of course I agree with neither on the merits of what the SNP desires to achieve in/'for' Scotland. But that is healthy debate with which I have no quarrel and both of these bloggers do write generally very coherent articles (even if they are interminably long sometimes).

In my own case I have never blogged anonymously. I have lost a few friends as a result (not everyone seems to have been willing to accept the 'revelation' that I am gay, but I can do without their acquaintance, quite frankly) and some of my views on other matters have irritated a few people beyond reason to the extent that I did have a stalker at one stage who purported to post scurrilous comments in other blogs under my name, presumably as a means of discrediting me. Luckily I was alerted to this by a couple of other bloggers so was able to overcome the problem. However, even in the recent past (following my recent article about 'Wardog' - linked to above) I was obliged to delete a comment from an SNP-supporting 'nutter' claiming 'victimhood' and various other 'excuses' for why [s]he had contravened my comments policy by writing offensive homophobic comments and alleging that I was somehow a Labour supporter (just as offensive!), which no rational person who has read much of what I have ever written here could reasonably assume to be an accurate interpretation, just because I don't happen to fall at the feet of wee-Eck's phantasmorgical nonsense!

So what does all this boil down to? Firstly, I am sorry to see these three bloggers (so far) disappear, because I do believe in free speech, however objectionable I may find some of the views expressed. On the other hand all three of these bloggers did pretty regularly post scurrilous obsessive nonsense either in their own blogs or in the comments pages of newspapers - and some people take exception to this. My view generally is that if I have something to say, I say it. Of course I do often self-censor so that what I think does not pass my lips or appear in print in my blog or in comments I occasionally make elsewhere, because I am not a complete idiot. Some idiots (i.e. these three bloggers), however, seem to think that they can say whatever they choose under the cloak of their supposed anonymity, then claim some kind of victim status when someone 'calls' them on it. My attitude is that I must accept responsibility for whatever I write here - sometimes I have written some pretty pointed things about various individuals but so far, luckily, this has not brought me more than minor 'grief'. Fundamentally I do think anonymous blogs are cowardly - it's rather like some of my closeted gay acquaintances over the years who have made all sorts of excuses for why they remain closeted, pretty pathetic in most cases, with a few exceptions admittedly (if I were gay and living in Iran or Nigeria, for example, I'd keep quiet about it too, very probably). Just what was it that people like Subrosa, Wardog and The Universality of Cheese were trying to achieve by their anonymous blogging and why is it considered such a disaster for them to have their identities revealed? I may be a 'libertarian', but I am not an 'anarchist' so I do accept there are certain limits to what one may say or write even in a democracy, without potentially being subject to legal sanction; anonymous bloggers seem to hope to skirt around this basic rule of living in a society governed by law. The attempts to portray them as 'victims' does not, in the final analysis, wash with me, however much I may regret their cessation of blogging. Live by the sword...

Wardog - now an "ex blog"

(Please see UPDATE at end)

I just read an article in the Wardog blog tonight in which he indicates that he is hanging up his 'blogging clogs'. Unfortunately I haven't been reading his, or any other, blog much in the past few days because I have my own family concerns right now and besides been very busy with setting up a new website and these matters have been consuming more or less all of my waking houurs (not to mention giving me sleepless nights of late), but his final message indicates that he has been going through a rough time and has had various pressures exerted upon him which he says have left him with no alternative but to cease blogging. All his earlier articles have now been removed, as well as all his links, etc. (NB/ Note added 21NOV09 19.25 GMT - the 'Wardog' blog has now been taken down completely. Let's hope the writer is resurrected elswehere.)

To be clear, I always found Wardog a stimulating read. I rarely agreed with anything he wrote - he being what I would call a 'rabid' Nationalist and me being unapologetically in favour of Scotland continuing as a partner in the United Kingdom. I have absolutely no truck with the aims of the SNP, nor really the Devolution disaster that Labour has saddled us with, even if I've come to accept reluctantly that there is no going back to the status quo ante. In the greater scheme of things, Labour have more serious things to answer for - just as an example they have trashed the economy, just as every Labour government before it has done; Mr Brown is the very last person I ever, and not just in the past couple of years, could associate with the term 'prudence'.

However, I don't need people to agree with me before I am happy to acknowledge that they have worthwhile (if in my opinion often misguided) things to say. I certainly don't like people being coerced into silence because of what sound like the tactics of a Police State. But as I have been writing here for quite a few years now, that is just what the UK is becoming, or indeed may well have become if this latest incident and a number of others in the recent past are any indication; I've been writing as much for several months now. Freedom of expression, however objectionable some of the opinions expressed may be, is a vital thing and not to be surrendered lightly.

I have never made any secret here of the contempt in which I hold Labour (and the 'New' variety is just as objectionable as the traditional version of that noisome Party), nor frankly do I have a higher opinion of the fantasists in the SNP, or their sympathisers such as I think it safe to say Wardog numbered himself. But that does not mean to say I am not outraged when I learn that he has felt threatened both personally and professionally by what seem to be the actions of people who take have taken exception to what he has been writing. It is truly, truly outrageous!!

UPDATE: (Sunday 22NOV09 21.30 GMT) I've just come across an amusing, and pretty accurate, commentary today on Wardog's woes in the Nationalist Mythbusting blog (written by someone who operates under the perplexing of name 'sm753') - you can read it here. Incidentally, and I should have mentioned this when I was writing this article a few days ago, but in some of the articles in the Nationalist Mythbusting earlier this month there are many of what can only be described as 'obsessive' comments from said Wardog. I always try and be fair to people when I write my articles, but it's only fair to point out that Wardog often came across in his online persona as a bit of a 'nutter'; my view is simply that even 'nutters' should have the right to express themselves verbally within reason - and if someone has a genuine grievance that they have been libelled then they can take the matter to law. However the behind-the-scenes threats that evidently have been made against Wardog are noisome in the extreme.

My time in Mazarrón is almost over as I return to Scotland tomorrow.

(Mi tiempo en Mazarrón está a punto de terminar como regrese a Escocia mañana.) I shall very likely be back in Mazarrón, however, near the beginning of March next year and will probably be here unti the end of May.

Meantime I've altered the sub-header message at the top of the page to mark my imminent departure from Spain.

As you were ...

Bill's on the move (again) ...

Keen-eyed readers may notice that I have adjusted the sub-heading at the top of the page to reflect that I shall soon be travelling to my home in Spain for a month - I won't actually be travelling until Wednesday, but may be quite busy for the next few days and not have time to make the change later in the week. I'll be in Spain until mid-October.

As you were ...

Nairn Blogmeet Update - Wednesday 2 SEP

The Nairn bloggers' blogmeet on Wednesday at 7.30pm will be at the Classroom, the same place we used the last time; if the Classroom proves to be very crowded we may later move to the nearby Albert Inn, but we'll be meeting up at the Classroom to start the evening off.

As I mentioned last week, it will be the second meeting of bloggers in Nairn; three of us turned up for our first blogmeet back in February (Graisg at A Gurn from Nurn and Brian at MyNairn, plus me) and I think we had an interesting evening, exchanging views about blogging and 'this and that'; we're all hoping that a few more local or visiting bloggers will be able to join us this time around to exchange our sometimes very different ideas. See you on Wednesday, I hope!

Nairn Blogmeet - Wednesday 2 SEP

(Please see UPDATE at end)

Nairn bloggers are planning a blogmeet next Wednesday at 7.30pm; the precise location has yet to be finalised (the place we went last time is excellent, but may be a little busy at this time of year, however there are a few other places nearby that will be good, too). It will be the second meeting of bloggers in Nairn; the first was held back in mid-February and three of us turned up on that occasion (Graisg at A Gurn from Nurn and Brian at MyNairn, plus me) and all three of us are planning to be there again this time. We're hoping a few more local bloggers will be able to come along and join us next week so we can have a general chat about the habit/drug/obsession that blogging is for some of us.

If you have a blog and are based in Nairn or the Nairn area (e.g. people from places such as Forres or Inverness or in-between, etc) and would like to come along, it'd be great to meet up and exchange ideas. Indeed if you live elsewhere, but have a blog and happen to be in Nairn next week, please get in touch with one of the three of us by email; my contact information is in the right-hand column under the 'Feedback' section or click here. It should be good fun I hope.

UPDATE: See my later article with full details of where we'll be meeting here.

It's been some days since I blogged here

... and it may be a few more before I get the time other than to look in occasionally. For the past week I've been completely preoccupied with producing material (and ideas) for a forthcoming meeting of the owners of the place where I have my home in Spain and that has taken almost all of my time. Apart from that the rest of my time revolves for the moment around visiting my mother in the nursing home where she now lives and getting the last details of her move from her former home sorted out administratively - electricity, council tax, etc. I hold her Power of Attorney so am having to get all her affairs adjusted to suit her new circumstances - apart from the frustration of dealing with various organisations (bank, utilities) and government agencies, whose level of efficiency is 'variable' to put it at its kindest, it is in some ways a rather sad task because her former quite independent life is really definitively at and end. We are very lucky that she remains pretty normal mentally (if a little forgetful), but physical ailmments have made life quite difficult and painful for her - we all get old, but it's different for everyone I suppose. So if I do look in here again in the next few days it will most likely be as brief as this article - apart from that, all is well here.