My tribute to ‘And Another Thing’!

Like a lot of Tom Harris’ friends, followers and blog readers, I was sad to read that Tom will stop blogging. His blog posts will be hugely missed but I hope for only a shot while. As one of the best political bloggers and in my opinion the best Labour blogger, his departure will be a great lose to the blogosphere. Specially, as he said: “I love blogging because I love writing. I love politics, I love the Labour Party, I love writing about Labour Party politics”. It will be a crime to let all that love go to waste, this much passion should be shared.

Reading what would be Tom’s penultimate blogpost, a paragraph caught my eye, it’s where he explained – “But the blog has become a burden. It’s taking up too much time (though not as much as some might think – I am a very fast writer), it’s getting me into too many squabbles with people I have never met and are likely never to meet. And increasingly I’ve felt like I’m adopting stances simply for the sake of being confrontational and provoking a row”. To me that read, I’m a fast writer and can transcript my thoughts into words in a flash (I so envy that by the way) I’m an open minded passionate person, and sometime because of that I get in trouble talking to close minded idiots!

Hate to break it to you Tom but that’s life and you know it. And although I’m sad to hear that these things had negative effects on your personal and family life, but that too can be managed and fixed without you having to give up something you love, and are very, very good at.

Like many other public endeavors bloggers need to draw their own parameters and know before hand what they will and will not enter into with their readers and the same applies to twitter by the way. I am neither saying nor advocating a “no comments” policy – because that just defeats the purpose and if I may say, is a little narcissistic – however, a blogger can decide in advance the type of comment posters not to engage with. I know it’s rich coming form someone like me (my blog is barely a year old and I don’t hold any political office). But life has taught me trouble makers feed on attention, and if the blogger/tweeter doesn’t give it to them they’ll soon move on to someone who will. The same goes for explaining and re-explaining ones’ position and stance – ones it’s clear for all to understand and is out there, be careful about re-explaining it over and over again – because nine times out of ten it’s a ploy to drag the whole thing it into a confrontation.

One of the reasons I started blogging was to see my Party get elected, helping in whatever small increment was and is always important for me. I see Tom has the same goal. It was sometime at the beginning of this year that Tom had blogged a series of tips for good blogging practices – those tips are today the foundation of my daily blogging regiment. When my blog, this Summer, ranked on the Total Politics Bloggers awards I felt very proud and honored but knew my blogging discipline and the tips I followed from Tom’s series has played a great part in that success. ‘And Another Thing’ has made a positive difference to me and I am sure to many others too, it will be a shame to see it end so prematurely. That’s why I am still hopeful this is just a well deserved break – and instead of Adios I’ll say see you late mate!