So startling and immediate is this news that I am led to believe that the final post may already have been written by the Labour researcher and the blog has been voluntarily taken down by Kez already. No doubt there is more to this retirement than Scottish Tory Boy's blogging equivalent of asking for a hug.
I am lucky enough to be in contact with Kezia away from blogging circles and she was kind enough to let me ask her a few questions as her final bow from the blogosphere:
Why did you get into blogging?
I started blogging a couple months after I finished my Masters. I genuinely missed the process of taking a topic and thinking analytically about it, but I also really missed writing.
For the most part, blogging helped me clarify and shape my views on things... but as time went by, it also became a political tool - the power of which I sometimes underestimated!
What was the high point?
It's always nice to get diary stories out of your blog or to make it into the "Best of the Blogs" in the Scotland on Sunday. The Support for Give Them A Roasting was a real surprise - I plan to continue that campaign - just not quite sure how it will work yet.
What was the low point?
The Sturgeon Affair during the Glasgow East by-election. My source is still absolutely adamant that it happened but I don't believe for a second that Nicola Sturgeon would take the trouble to email me if her side of events wasn't the truth.
I have a huge admiration for Nicola Sturgeon - take the politics out of it - she's a cracking role model for young women in Scotland.
Do you have a favourite post?
Probably "Minding my Ps and Qs"... a post written in the run up to a dinner with jack mcconnell and nicola sturgeon - trying to work out acceptable topics of conversations whilst identifying ones that should very much be avoided! Was all down in good humour and I think Nicola found it mildly amusing to...
How do you see the next few years of Scottish Politics panning out?
I think Labour will win a fourth term. I think the Scottish Parliament will grow in stature, with more powers and that minority government is here to stay. I think the Historic Concordat will fall apart spectacularly. I think that class sizes and student debt will be higher in 2011 than they were in 2007 and I think Iain Gray will be the next First Minister of Scotland.
How relevant is blogging to modern-day Politics as a whole?
Extremely. Blogs, comments forums, phone ins, letters pages, YouTube, all collectively set the mood music for Scottish Politics... the SNP know that and they utilize it very effectively. But I also think it's a very seedy environment - the vast majority of bloggers operate anonymously. And with anonymity, accountability completely evaporates...
Blogging is no longer, in my view, a proper vehicle for debate. It's been saturated by partisan venom and that can be quite debilitating.
I'll write a post and then 95% of the comments that follow will be negative. That doesn't mean I'm wrong every single time... but it does begin to feel that way when the blogosphere leans so heavily towards nationalism and/or a right wing agenda.
Why did you decide to hang up the keyboard?
Blogging has become too much of a risk. I have an inclination that the vast majority of my readership are SNP activists just desperate for me to trip up spectacularly. I'm not risk adverse and this is no act of cowardice but I have to make a judgement about whether or not blogging almost daily for the next three years, in the run up to the next Scottish elections, is good for me personally, good for my career and good for the Labour Party. I've decided that for now, and certainly the immediate future, it isn't.
Will there be a referendum on independence before 2011?
No.
Fresh from your Glenrothes adventure, can we hope to see you standing in 2010 or 2011 as a Labour candidate?
Yes. I'd very much like to stand again in 2011 on the Lothians List for the Scottish Parliament but that is completely beyond my control. I'll put my name forward and campaign for votes... but if I don't improve on my 4th place rating from last time - I'll move on. I'm only 27...
there's decades of political twists and turns ahead of me.
So, although I have no doubt we will see Kezia Dugdale elected to a Holyrood or Westminster office before too long, I am sure I speak for the vast majority of people who read her blog and locked horns with Kez in arguments when I say that she will be sorely missed. The already unbalanced blogosphere has lost a heavyweight, an anchor of a website that was pulling the other way against those pesky 'Cyber Nats'.
23 comments:
A sad day. Thank god STB started up again, or it'd just be me and the Nats blogging away from inside Holyrood.
As usual, I hope Kez changes her mind, but I certainly won't be twisting her arm.
I was scratching my very own canine scalp (not fleas) and this is most interesting!
Wider comment about the blogosphere as well.
http://jess-the-dog.blogspot.com/2008/10/labour-and-blogosphere.html
I may need to go back and rewrite this, though.
I reckon she was pushed and didn't jump. Labour trying to nail down the blogosphere, with the return of the undead Mandelson and Campbell? A commissar at every keyboad from now on!
luckily I have saved all her posts in text format and screenshots. Have a feeling some of the stuff she wrote might come back to haunt her...
A sad day indeed.
I don't think Mandelson was behind it somehow. The kidney stone story was ruse and mandy flew up to Edinburgh to close down the Soapbox? I doubt it.
And Mono, that's actually rather alarming; i'd say that's a prime example of the nasty side of blogging and a prime example for why Kezia had to stop.
Mandelson WAS behind it! The kidney stone was just a cover story. Kezia's been "taken" for "re-education" by the Prince of Darkness and will re-emerge a clone of Hazel Blears, with a zip up the back of the head!
I do predict there will be a general clampdown on the established blogosphere in the runup to the election in particular, in parallel with whatever "relaunch" is going on. I haven't been following the LabourHome stushie but there seems to have been some rumpus going on. Only on-message blogs will be allowed (couldn't see much off-message about the KD blog though). Whether this will be explicit instruction or gentle hint of damage to one's prospects is perhaps another matter.
Sad day indeed. It's hard enough to get elected representatives Like Tom Harris, Lynne Featherstone,Joth Redwood to blog, so that when somebody off one of the party's approved lists who is a compotent blogger stops for some of the reason's stated it is a very sad state of affairs.
Meanwhile, seeing as someone announced the start of Stephen hunting season without telling me, I'll continue dodging bullets for the time being.
Aw man! Kezia - all that nagging to get me to blog!
[I will recommence blogging soon btw - still don't have internet in the house]
Good luck Kez and thanks for some informed blogging, you'll be sadly missed.
well when she becomes prime minister and is writing her memoirs she might want a handy record of what she wrote. Or I'll sell them to the Sun :p If you put things out into the public then there should be a record of it. Imagine if it had been published in a newspaper and then she burnt all know copies of that paper? We all have to remember that what we express online may one day come back to bite us on the bum... me included!
Anyways I'll miss her writings as I enjoyed alot of what she wrote, whether I agreed with it or not. But if she couldn't stand the heat, she is quite entitled to get out of the kitchen.
I'm really quite sad about this.
I'm dismayed that it's come to this. So dismayed that I've started to nag. It's what I do.
I'm dismayed that she stopped blogging and/or was forced to do so. I started the blog and believe you me I don't post a lot of what I would like to post - but I make a point of reading lots of blogs outside my own political sphere. Probably hanging up Kez will be worse for Labour morale than for the SNP.
additionally, the Internet Archive will have a record of her blog which is quite difficult to remove.
I disagree that it's alarming for Mono to record what Kezia has said - it's better to have an internet that keeps a record of itself than one whose past infinitely malleable.
Genuinely dismayed at this news.
Not only because she still owes me a tshirt, she was braver than most of us internal cybernats, and to be fair sometimes, they annoy me as much as her!
Hope that there is a suspicous reason for this, and that means she is either got a promotion, or is soon to be standing for office again. As some cheesy wummin shouted at John Mason at the weekend: haste ye back
Very sad news. Although I am not part of the blogosphere myself I am still very much a politics nerd and Kezia was one of my most valued dealers of the literary smack. I wish her all the best.
I will definitely miss reading Kez's blog but can certainly appreciate that the regular waves of negativity must have been hard to thole. I'm also sure we've far from heard the last from this canny lass. Good luck Kez!!
The "Latest Poll - Daily Torygraph 11th July" in your sidebar is actually the 2nd latest poll.
The Sunday Times did a YouGov poll (3 Sep 08 - 5 Sep 08):
SNP 34%
Lab 32%
Con 17%
LD 13%
thanks for that, worryingly I make it the 3rd latest poll.
bit sloppy on my part. There should be another one out soon going by the monthly trends.
I would have missed the blog up until a few weeks ago, but the decision to publish a letter detailing a daughter's allegations against her father from a family feud was seriously ill-judged no matter which side of the political fence you're on. Kind of stopped me reading and probably makes it a good idea not to blog if you have political aspirations but have induced such a reaction from unaligned readers.
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