There are different sorts of bloggers.

Apart from all those who write honestly and well about Cats or Cars or Cooking or somesuch, there are those of us who attempt to tackle wider themes.

And we fall into two general categories:

1   Those who press their points home by unrelenting obscenity.

2   Everyone else.

Two leading UK swearbloggers are Devil’s Kitchen and Obnoxio The Clown (I will now proceed to pleasure myself with this fish)

You get the general idea.

Oh, and there’s Mr Eugenides. There have been handy Swearblogger Roundups.

Nonetheless, behind all the somewhat wearing barrage of rude words are some lively libertarian-leaning minds. Here’s the Devil drilling down into some of the deep philosophical principles arising from the way copyright law works (or not).

These popular bloggers perform much the same function as the fans who chant obscenities at football matches. Most fans don’t join in, but enjoy a weekly dose of the smutty wit and energy:

Charlie Nicholas illegitimate

He ain’t got no birth certificate

He’s an Arsenal bastard  

But swearblogging ultimately lacks impact because the swearers are too remote from the subject. They can rave away all they like about Gordon Brown and even urge people to vote for him, such is their hatred.

But Gordon Brown himself sits in No 10 ignoring this distant background army of enemies. 

The arrows are sharp and dipp’d in poison, but fired from far too far away. They clatter down outside somewhere, doing no damage other than to make the environment less tidy for other people..

No.

To be a really wonderful and effective blogger using calculated insults and occasional raw language, you need to be close to the subject of your invective.

Your insults need to hit home with the unerring power and precision which only someone who knows the target well can deliver. And everyone has to read these finely-turned insults – and marvel at them

Welcome to Malta’s Daphne Caruana Galizia.

And this lively piece of writing:

Some men will shag anything, even if it still looks like a cross between something you can buy at Mosta Bacon and Worzel Gummidge after he’s taken a bath and has put on two bits of Lycra that are better suited to a Ukrainian escort – or, as on her Facebook page (yes, sir, the magistrate is on Facebook), a denim mini-skirt that looks very unfortunate on her sort of shape.

Phew.