I belatedly add a word on the tragic utterances by Hazel Blears MP on the quality of public life and blogging:

But mostly, political blogs are written by people with a disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.

I recall visiting Mostar in Bosnia, site of some of the worst fighting during the Bosnia conflict, with Serbs, Croats and Bosniacs/Muslims taking it in turns to shoot at each other. The buildings in the worst areas were like exotic desert rock formations, scarely recognisable as former human structures at all as they had been so much reduced by sheer volumes of gunfire.

Anyway, H Blears must feel a bit like one of those former buildings now after being hit by successive voleys from Alix Mortimer:

I’m gibbering with fear already. This woman thinks that no-one else’s views are entitled to be seen as being as valid as those of cabinet ministers. She is suggesting that it is wrong for people to have views which are taken as seriously by the electorate as those of cabinet ministers. She thinks that cabinet ministers have a special claim to have their views prevail.

She has genuinely, totally forgotten that cabinet ministers are supposed to serve the people, represent their views. She has genuinely, totally forgotten that this is a democracy.

What in fact is happening here is something like this.

Back a few hundred years ago the Reformation and the printing-press transformed the means of production of ideas, which thitherto had been owned primarily by the Church and passing Monarchs/Emperors.

This led in due course to a proliferation of pamphleteering and polemicising through coffee-houses and so on, which in turn led to some pamphlets getting regular readerships and turning themselves into ‘news-papers’.

Which in turn grew and grew, driving smaller publications to the margins. The process accelerated as ‘mass’ radio then TV communication came along via few and expensive outlets.

This created an elite cadre of journalists and commentators, a lucky few who could penetrate these mass media strongholds, whose views helped shape the attitudes of millions of people and who self-defined themselves as especially worthy of being taken seriously. Their oligopolistic strength indeed compelled politicians to take them seriously. It all was very cosy.

That lasted nicely for some seventy years. Until in fact the early 1990s, when Michael Crichton saw what was going to happen with uncanny prescience:

In 1993, novelist Michael Crichton riled the news business with a Wired magazine essay titled "Mediasaurus," in which he prophesied the death of the mass media–specifically the New York Times and the commercial networks. "Vanished, without a trace," he wrote.

The mediasaurs had about a decade to live, he wrote, before technological advances–"artificial intelligence agents roaming the databases, downloading stuff I am interested in, and assembling for me a front page"–swept them under. Shedding no tears, Crichton wrote that the shoddy mass media deserved its deadly fate.

"[T]he American media produce a product of very poor quality," he lectured. "Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it’s sold without warranty. It’s flashy but it’s basically junk."

He was right. Thanks to cheap IT, that whole structure as previously constituted is collapsing. Anyone can blog or pontificate for free. And does.

We have lurched scarcely without realising it back towards something much more like the anarchic, unruly and often obscene C18 situation, people clamouring away in e-pamphlets (blogs) and e-coffee-houses.

Maybe better in some ways, worse in others? But in any case Very Different.

So what in fact is so Dreary about Blears(y) is that she fails to grasp (if her CiF piece is what we have to go by) that the deep relationships between people and ‘authority’ of all sorts are changing fast.

‘Old-fashioned’ qualities such as Integrity and Honesty are back in fashion. Hypocrisy, dishonesty, phoniness are all exposed unsparingly.

The masses now own the means of production of comment, and potentially the means of production of news and facts and knowledge too.

Informal news-gathering is now well established. Networked analysis and research carried out through informal, private means also can be pretty effective, and will tend to get more used. See eg the vociferous networks of sick people willing to experiment with new medicines rather than wait for some government body to pronounce on their suitability/safety.

In short, governemnt as hitherto constituted and the frumpy, defensive attitudes of people working in it are all becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Thus the absurdity of Hazel Blears:

Unless and until political blogging adds value to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports (sic) politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.

Sorry, Hazel. Too short a passage for so many blunders.

No-one needs to be impressed when you pronounce on who or what ‘adds value’ to our political culture.

‘Political blogging’ is not there to ‘allow’ (or not allow) anything.

The ‘mainstream media’ are decreasingly mainstream, and are increasingly unable and unwilling to report in a responsible manner.

And (Mixed Metaphor Crisis Alert) cultures can not be ‘fuelled’ by blogging or by anything else.

Not even that flashy. But still basically junk.