Local Election Liveblog

April Statistics

• Absolute unique visitors: 1023
• Pageviews: 3849
• Time on site: 00.04.39
• New / returning visitors: 62.88 / 37.12

Breakdown

This month’s most popular article was Vamp’s piece on the first televised Mayoral debate.  Traffic arrived from Iain Dale’s blog (always welcome, of course!).  This said, it was a rather good piece and deserves April’s crown.  The featured article graphics in the sidebar continue to deliver traffic at a level lower than one might expect.  Investigations and experimentations may be made soon.

As an aside, Google Analytics provides data of nearly 400 networks used to access the website in the past month.  This has thrown up some interesting results, although I will refrain from publishing them.

Tweaks

The biggest change to the website this month has been the introduction of tabs to the feature box on the homepage.  This is an imperfect system, and might be subject to further development at some stage.  The main concern is over the use of Javascript, which some readers have not enabled in their default browser.  For those who are interested, the code has been cleaned up a little, too.

It has been a good month for Scribo Ergo Sum, despite a slightly reduced output of substantive posts.

March Statistics

• Absolute unique visitors: 457
• Pageviews: 1954
• Time on site: 00.06.34
• New / returning visitors: 58.15 / 41.85

Breakdown

The most popular articles continue to be Fenby’s series on Scientology.  Those featured in the “top story” box on the homepage also get above-average hits.  A stable level of traffic continues to reach articles seen in the “features” section of the sidebar, despite those particular articles being at least two months old.  Perhaps it is worth changing that section to show the most recommended posts?  Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Issues

We are aware of continuing problems with formatting on the homepage, chiefly with bullet points and numbered lists not rendering correctly.  Images also seem reluctant to stay where they are told, despite everything looking nice and rosy on the individual post pages.  The reasons for these problems are known, but solutions are not.  Yet.

Tweaks

No major changes are the pipeline - we are pleased with how things are going as they are.  However, the latest release of Wordpress (on which the site is built) has just been released, enabling us to do some new things and some existing things better, so slight tweaks might come soon.

(more…)

The Scribo Ergo Sum blog is now a month and a day old. In that time, we’ve had:

• 1,098 Visits
• 643 Absolute Unique Visitors
• 4,485 Pageviews
• 4.08 Average Pageviews
• 153 Posts in 59 Catergories
  • Making an average of 4 to 5 posts a day

Of which:

• 52.46% Direct Traffic
• 32.51% Referring Sites
• 15.03% Search Engines
  • Including 18 hits from Google for “Respect Renewal Scribo Ergo Sum”
• 00:10:44 Time on Site
• 52.73% Bounce Rate
• 57.38% New Visits

From:

Browser     Visits     (%)
Firefox         715           65.12%
IE                 361            32.88%
Safari            18               1.64%
Opera             2                0.18%
Mozilla            1                0.09%

Not bad progress, overall, given that on average we received around 30 hits a month before the transfer. Hopefully you’ll forgive us if the January-February issue of the magazine is a little later than we’d hoped, then - but that should be done soon as well!

Thanks for everyone’s support!

The Editorial Team

Scribo Ergo Sum likes experimenting. We are hoping to try out some nifty liveblogging software (essentially thinking that what ConservativeHome is doing with a TV programme could be done with an important vote in Parliament). It should be a bit of fun, and a bit of an experiment at any rate.

What you need to know

Starts: 9.30pm, 21 January 2008
Ends: When everyone gets bored after the vote at about 10pm.
Rules: Anyone can participate, although high turnout is hardly anticipated. It is up to the administrator to decide what comments get published, although the administrator expects to publish all comments. The programme allows everything to be done in real time, so it should all be lovely.
Watch: You can watch the debate and vote live via the BBC Parliament feed.

[Updated 23.45, 18-01-07]

You may have noticed some changes to the Scribo Ergo Sum website.  The slight modifications to the layout have been made to allow for easier showing of our new video content - Video Ergo Sum is coming soon!

The “What We’re Discussing” list of categories has been reduced to a drop-down box.  This has saved a lot of space from the sidebar; only a little over 1% of pageloads used the categories list, yet it was displayed on every page.

I notice that nearly 70% of readers use Firefox as their web browser.  Firefox tends to be standards-compliant, and generally superior to Internet Explorer, so renders pages differently.  I prefer the look and feel of IE, but use both as I see fit (meaning that I use Firefox whenever IE crashes).  It has been of slight concern to me that the typeface used on the site was more difficult to read in Firefox: given that an unusually large proportion of you view the site in Firefox, I have changed it to Arial which is less prone to distortion by Firefox.  Additionally, the font is now slightly bigger to facilitate reading.

When the website was reconfigured to include this blog (using the open-source Wordpress system) I ensured that all of the posts were categorised by the author, with the author’s name included in the URL.  A rationalisation of this has meant that a single account will be used for all messages from the Editorial Team.  This will keep the real content separate from posts such as this.  Also, every post now has a photo of the author in the top-right corner.  Hopefully this will help readers to identify the author quickly.  We will be linking the photos to biography pages very shortly (just as soon as we’ve written them).

On a different note, we are expecting some fresh work from fresh writers soon.  Watch this space.

As always, your thoughts would be appreciated.

Ali Gledhill,
Assistant Editor (Media)

Earlier today, we realised that the, “Write for Scribo Ergo Sum,” button was broken. Following a technical fault, it displayed the message, “Sorry, but the page you requested cannot be found.” This probably gave the wrong impression.

We would in fact be delighted if people came and wrote for us, as 4 really isn’t enough. The link has been temporarily fixed, and now redirects to the editorial e-mail address: doug@scriboergosum.org.uk. Just drop us a line there, or ask in a comment, and we’ll set up an account for you.

Douglas Johnson,
Editor

Last updated | 26-04-08

The Scribo Ergo Sum Editorial team like to spend a lot of time on the internet. Here is our list of websites to watch. This is contributed to over time, and is permanently linked to the front page in place of a traditional blogroll.

Important Blogs

Politics Home | Political web hub. Looks very useful. Review here.

ConservativeHome | ConHome keeps getting worse. It is clearly the most tiresome and fantasy-dependent blog in the UK, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the Tories’ long road to “election success”, or at least willing to tolerate their prematurely smug crowing.

Iain Dale’s Diary | If ConHome is too business-like, then Iain Dale is the self-styled leading independent blogger in the UK.

Spectator Coffee House | The only print media organisation to do a decent blog (so far).

Political Betting | Better polling analysis than any newspaper, and more comments per post than you can shake a stick at.

Mike Rouse | Political media - must surely be tapped into more in the UK in the coming months?

Beau Bo D’Or | Easily the best cartoons and virals on the web.

Liberal Conspiracy | An interesting idea, but not really getting off the ground.

Guido Fawkes | Entertaining, if occasionally irritating. Actually, irritation is guaranteed.

Britain and America | ConservativeHome’s sycophantic love-in with the Republican party has its drawbacks. Otherwise, it’s a great resource for seeing what’s going on in America. The 2008 election coverage has been excellent.

Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Dish | HIV-positive, homosexual hack Andrew Sullivan is the world’s most prominent queer conservative, making Iain Dale’s claim to the throne look as convincing as Respect Renewal’s plans to become a viable alternative to Labour. He edited the New Republic for half a decade in the 90s and was amongst the first mainstream, traditional journalist to complete the transition from writer for dead tree pulp salesmen to continuous, if not professional, blogger. His philosophy is one of conservatism verging upon libertarianism, to the extent that he is considered by much of the notoriously noxious American Right as a hysterical leftie, with a bizarre aversion to theocracy and inexplicable squeamishness towards torture as a tool for information extraction from the untried. Truly useful for those wishing to keep abreast with American politics. Not infallible, by any means, but capable of picking up on things waved aside by traditional journalists long before their surging, overwhelming relevance (see: Barack Obama) and often a provider of interesting links to non-political matters that have reached him virally.

My Fellow Americans | In their own words.

Charles Bremner | French politics are interesting on at least two fronts: first, in their contrast with British politics, and second in the fact that, frequently, more happens more vigorously in them. However, they can be difficult to keep up with for the non-francophone. This blog helps break the language barrier, serving at the very least as a very decent starting point for those wishing to learn more about politics across the pond.

Nick Robinson’s Newsblog | Political Editor at the BBC, Nick Robinson has won more than a little praise for his blog.

Nick Bryant on Australia | As you may have noticed, we like to keep up with world politics on SES. Blogs which explain circumstances and link to more detailed reports, as this one does for Australia, are thus welcomed…

The Tory Troll | Glorious hatchet jobs against the Tories.

London: Mayor & More | Excellent blog covering the London Mayoral elections by Guardian journalist Dave Hill.

Stop Boris | Really, speak for itself.

Useful News Sites

The BBC | One of the most objective news-sources around, despite the claims of bitter Zionists who’d rather we didn’t talk about their atrocities.

The Guardian | Ignore the editorial line, and it’s well worth reading.

The Times | Ditto. Increasingly less so, though - soon, ignoring it all may be the best course.

The Telegraph | Disturbingly right-wing, and useful for knowing what the other side is thinking.

New Statesman| The website of one of the UK’s most prominent left-wing magazine, offering a broad range of liberal-left and socialist commentary.

The Guardian G24 | PDFs of headline news for easy printing.

Journalists

Johann Hari | Chief shin-nipper and agent provocateur of The Indie maintains this site with everything he writes for them and the Evening Standard in addition to free-lance odds and ends. This site is not a true blog but has two things going for it: firstly watching his writings across the entire Mainstream Media allows you to groan when he recycles facts and secondly reading it makes the purchase of the The Independent effectively redundant.

George Monbiot | The archive of the Monbiot’s Guardian Columns. Entertainingly angry , if occasionally frighteningly authoritarian in his approach to the environment.

Nick Cohen | The archive of Cohen’s articles. A columnist and author controversial for his support of the Iraq War, Cohen is perhaps the most prominent face of the pro-war “left” and the now defunct Euston Group.

Pressure Groups

The Taxpayers’ Alliance | Quite loathsome in many ways, but they campaign very well.

They Work For You | Keeps track of MPs’ official records.

Nutty Lefties

Lenin’s Tomb | A sound resource for socialist viewpoint of recent events. Or rather, one socialist view, since that philosophy is notoriously divergent in its strains. This fellow seems to be of the unreconstructed form, admiring the second Russian Revolution immensely and reliable for attacking the establishment as filthy dogs and their foreign policy as foul imperialism. At times his invective is truly potent and momentous while at others the description of Iraqi terrorism that kills civilians as “Resistance” against the US and the unflinching devotion towards all Palestinian “Freedom fighters” shown by the various acolytes who post there is tiresome. A mixed bag, all in all, but frequently updated and rarely anything other than entertaining. If in doubt of his sincerity just re-read his URL.

Nutty Racists

Enough Is Enough | Despite what it might wish the BNP’s struggle with the “Real BNP” is far from over. Keeping abreast with this schism has been much, much easier than with Respect’s little collapse since not even Lenin was covering that properly, while with the BNP the ringleaders of the split are actually publishing their every experience on this thing.

It is as if the Mensheviks kept a web-blog.

The updates are surprisingly fast, vast and thorough, with the most scathing comments towards the BNP’s leadership I have ever witnessed coming quickly and caustically and all hatred of niggers, kykes and pakis apparently abandoned to leave the focus on their “fellow” white nationalists. In terms of material they have somehow managed to all be entirely excluded from everything yet still provide the most juicy gossip imaginable, served with an extra lashing of contempt.

All while being called an eclectic mish-mash of mutually contradictory insults, ranging from neo-nazi scum to far-left traitors and sinister establishment collaborators, by the orthodox BNP. They are clearly so overwhelmed with panic that Griffin’s New Years message was astoundingly not set to the standard smug hubris one has come to expect from him. This has managed to muster a paltry 37 comments thus far. If this is any guide a glance over this page will let you know exactly how much trouble the BNP is in.

Both parties appear to be engaged in hurling the claim of Nazism at the other and are aiming all of their biggest guns inwards, devoting every resource available to supremacy over the rival faction. In the process they both try to present themselves as as friendly towards Jews as they possibly can, waving tokens triumphantly as political “Get out of jail free” cards, and attempt to distance themselves from the racist pasts that they almost invariably share. Each says that they are modern and each attacks extremism.

All in all it’s a set-up which Searchlight must have dreamt of long before it came a reality.

Scientology

Given our stance of the Church Cult of Scientology, we’ve decided to include some revelant sites. Thus:

Operation Clambake | Also referred to by its domain name of xenu.net, Clambake is one of the longest-running websites critical of scientology. The website which published OTIII materials, it’s been going since 1996 in its attempts to, “undress scientology.” A veritable mine on the darker side of the Cult.

Xenu TV | A site dedicated to all those videos the Co$ just didn’t want you to see. Since the Church got his YouTube channel shut down this is your best bet.

Enturbulation | Very good, very detailed information site on Scientology and Dianetics. Less strident in tone than xenu.net, it defines also itself as against the Church of Scientology, rather than scientology itself. Their main purpose, though, is best seen in their own words: “Our main goal however is to concentrate on activism - that is, supplying guidelines to picketing, how to approach & plan your picketing, what to expect from The Scientologists if they decide to confront & how to react, and so on and so forth. The guidelines are only that, guidlines; not rules. We do not intend or attempt to portray ourselves as the be all and end all of Scientology activism, but rather hope to serve as what we think has being practiced successfully in the past and should perhaps be continued for the best result in getting awareness into the public eye.”

Project Chanology Wiki | A co-ordination centre for Anonymous’ insurgency against the C0$. Look here first for details of local activism.

Religion

Richard Dawkins | A website dedicated to salivation over Richard Dawkins, containing an archive of his articles. Dawkins pwns.