Ah, blogging about blogging. Always a way to get warmed up.

As both my readers know, I’ve had a little holiday from blogging since the European Election.  Not because Bread and Roses was a ploy to get elected (not a very good one – I was still 400,000 votes off), but because I’ve started a new job, not spent a lot of time in Glasgow, and graduated: logging into facebook or twitter alone has been a bit of an effort in the last month.

But an excellent post by Will Patterson, in which my modest efforts as a blogger really does not merit a mention, has sent me back to the keyboard.  Will’s post on the perils of blogging, particularly in the case of former SNP Glasgow North East candidate Grant Thoms, provides a deft analysis of the hazard blogging can pose to a political career.

Dorothea Brande, in her seminal work Becoming a Writer, described the writer as a dual personality: one childlike, sensitive, spontaneous; the other adult, discriminating, critical.  Too much of one, and no work gets done; too much of the other and fluency is paralyzed.

Although Brande wrote in 1934, the principle remains.  Engaging brain before mouth, or keyboard, is always a good idea. Calculating the political impact on your career of every word you utter is a bit sad.  Having to calculate the political impact in the first place is worse.

Thoms is unfortunate as a candidate in having faced a by-election rather than a General Election.  By-elections are nasty, scrappy, necessary evils: short, over-heated, over-scrutinized messy things with too many people working too hard, making it too easy to seek easy hits.  Like the contents of a candidate’s blog. 

There isn’t a solution, other than trying to find the balance above, between writing something interesting, and making a t*t of yourself.  The idea that what someone has committed in writing isn’t going to be reported on or (mis)used isn’t credible, but neither is the anodyne reposting of propaganda. 

So, no answers to this conundrum (it’s my first post back, gies a break), but enough of blogging about blogging.  I appear to have missed a few important events in the last few weeks. It seems the fashion to analyze Scottish politics through the medium of the West Wing (I can think of at least three researchers on the Labour floor attempting the Josh Lyman look: stress on attempting) I thought I would summarize some of what I’ve missed via, sotto voce, a far superior piece of television.

 Expenses finally published – ‘I won’t lie to you Stace’

 Expenses reaction – “Everyone was laughing at me. And not just because I fell over.”

 The Tories reacting to Bercow elected Speaker – probably much like the restaurant toilet in Caprichos  at the start of season two.

 Iraq Inquiry – “Ooh, I’m going to fall out with you today!”

 Calman Commission – “Listen Gav, no-one wants this marriage to fail more than I do.”

Michael Jackson – “At the end of the day, when all’s said and done, d’ya know what I mean.”

Tidy.  Just a shame there’s no opportunity to mention John Prescott.