Total Politics and which is your best blog?

It is blog voting time again for political blogs - and the national competition is being organised by Iain Dale - see details here. The votes for that can only be from the Total Politics listing - I see they have 80 Green blogs and curiously got mine twice - anyhow there is much good stuff amongst them - see here: www.totalpolitics.com/politicalblogs/ Meanwhile Jim Jepps is compiling the top 20 Green blogs - see here.

Photo: next door neighbours kittens - nothing to do with this post but dead cute

But I wanted to mention Total Politics in this blog entry. This is a new magazine out aimed at anyone interested in politics - as a councillor I got a complementary issue - ahhhh the perks of councillor life! Anyhow I have to confess to being grossly underwhelmed by the first issue - indeed it actually put me off the whole lot of it - with stories like cars politicians drive and how Tories should dress to impress - it also seemed to be full of the techniques to win elections...with a story from Boris Johnsons campaign man on how to win, managing your reputation online, how to use the internet, facebook etc - and worst of all the headline "Why negative campaigning works."

The latter had no analysis on the damage that negative campaigning does - yes of course politicians have to define and publicise how a they are different, what contrasts them etc but where are the issues? Where is the debate about developing a real and meaningful democracy?

The second issue of Total Politics arrived today - another complimentary issue - one article says a large segment of the population don't feel the three main parties understand their concerns - is this any surprise with the likes of negative campaigning and nonsense we get from the main political parties and the media - however even more worrying is the fact that when asked what are the big issues, 17% chose economy/inflation while only 7% chose the environment. This is surely an indication of the level of failure of the three main parties to put climate change - which they acknowledge is the greatest threat we face - at the heart of everything they do - yet instead we get debate about whether we should build a runway at Heathrow. There is no debate we must reduce flying not increase it....

Anyhow I warmed a little to the second issue of Total Politics with it's comment piece on tackling sleaze and I will read more this evening as no meeting tonight - wonderful!! However I fear this magazine could just reflect the nonsense of our political system rather than take a lead...if they want me to shell out my own dosh they will have to do better!