Comments on: Labour to consider blogger invites

By: Jackie Laughlin

Jackie Laughlin — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 02:17:37 +0000

Damien,
For the love of God, pollsters are employed to find out what people want so that they can be supplied!!! Asking “bent” questions would produce not data but rubbish. It would be commercial suicide for the polling company. It would be commercial disaster for the company paying for the poll to act on such results. Political polling is the commercialisation of politics. The problem is that these days political parties will do nothing but listen and alter policy to suit.

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:43:31 +0000

Any credible polling works by a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.

For all our preciousness our views and opinions can be coded, classified, and counted.

Labour might as well invite graffitists as bloggers — there’s little difference.

Online discussion fora do allow discussions to be articulated at more length and with more time for reflection than an evening at the pub might.

They also allow recipe swapping.

By: Damien Mulley

Damien Mulley — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:14:15 +0000

Jackie,
Pollsters make a living by asking people a predefined set of questions. That’s not listening to people. That’s listening to answers to carefully constructed questions.

By: Jackie Laughlin

Jackie Laughlin — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:16:01 +0000

Cian,
I tend to agree with you but the effects of which you speak are precisely because the argument takes place on-line.

Damien,
Pollsters make a living from listening to people. There is far too much “letting opinion flow” and not enough argument. My local TDs – especially the Green – belong to the view, “There’s goes the mob. I am their leader. I must follow!”

By: Declan

Declan — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:46:17 +0000

Is this the blogger equivalant of being embedded with an army group in the Gulf? It’s an interesting idea, though I imagine the mainstream journalists would spit the dummy when they see a bunch of bloggers show up in the press room.

By: Cllr Seamus Ryan

Cllr Seamus Ryan — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:27:21 +0000

I hope they remember to invite one of their own!!!!

By: Damien Mulley

Damien Mulley — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 06:54:29 +0000

Jackie, Tony Blair listened to pollsters, not people. He played demographics and manipulated public opinion. He was and still is about controling opinion, not letting it flow. If you don’t want a party to listen to people you have plenty of choice in Ireland.

By: Cian

Cian — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:43:10 +0000

There’s nothing special about political blogging. It’s just old fashioned argument but on-line.

I disagree profoundly jackie. Old fashioned argument had little or no capacity to influence political outcomes. Blogging is in two ways different from old-fashioned arguning

1) Its more egalitarian everyone can have a blog and an opinion. engaging with others and coming to a point that is read widely and thought about. It has more reach that old fashioned argument.

2) blogging has the capacity to influence power. That is the strongest point. It should never become power but be a source of the extension of the “argument franchise” more and more “normal people” with “common sense” get heard and their views can influence the mechanisms of power and hte process of politics.

Blogging is no replacement for acitve democratics participation but it is a movement toward the recognition of the majority of people in the process of public reasoning and control of power.

By: Jackie Laughlin

Jackie Laughlin — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 23:42:49 +0000

Damien, Has your cynicism left any space for a political point of view?

I don’t want a party to “listen to the people”. Tony Blair has done enormous damage with that approach.

There’s nothing special about political blogging. It’s just old fashioned argument but on-line. Nothing needs to be done about blogging. Let it happen.

By: Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » Labour consider inviting bloggers to the Ard Fheis. Oh how terribly nice of them!

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:42:10 +0000

[...] One of the things that annoys me about IrishElection.com is the fact those that post on it also post their thoughts on their own blogs so you see the same post replicated throughout the Blog O’Sphere. I find it probably cheapens the site as the content isn’t unique. Anyway, now I’m doing the same as I’m replicating comments I wrote on it. Adam Maguire reported that Labour is considering inviting bloggers to their Ard Fheis. Here were my thoughts and I’ll add more to the end of it: [...]