(For some reason, I had to resist the impulse to scrawl a four-letter noun probably describing some sort of genital configurement across Boris’ forehead. It was difficult.)

Perhaps I wrote prematurely last night about the state of blogs and the mainstream media when it came to foreign reporting. Observe: the BBC is carrying a relatively long article reviewing Zimbabwean bloggers’ reactions to the elections there.

This is the first time I’ve seen the BBC News site - rather than their own bloggers - do this, on anything. There are, as far as I can tell, a few possible implications. Either:

- That this is a specific response to the situation in Zimbabwe. Western journalists find it very difficult to get visas in Zimbabwe. The BBC has thus been forced to resort to re-using large chunks of information from Zimbabwean bloggers. This is the nearest equivalent they can find to their usual trick of going out to talk to people on the streets, and doesn’t mark much of a change in attitudes to the internet.

- That this demonstrates that the BBC feel the bloggers have something at least as intelligent as their reporters to say, and should be listened to. This could mark an increasing respect for the blogosphere as an organ of debate, and be a sign of its further growth.

- That this demonstrates that the BBC feels the bloggers are genuinely representative of something and need an article for the sake of decent reportage.  Again, this would mark progress for the blogosphere, I suspect.

Of course, a combination of any of these three is possible, and probably more besides. It’ll be interesting to see if the BBC runs any similar articles in the future, supporting my second and third possibilities, or not, probably supporting the first.

Or, of course, I could just have missed stuff on the BBC website, I suppose. Time for a dig - but if not, an interesting occurance…

With just over a month until the London mayoral elections, I am caught in a bit of a quandary. I have the opportunity to vote for the first time, but I do not know who to vote for. I don’t want to waste it.

Current estimations show Boris Johnson ahead by 10 points in the first preference vote, and at 54/46 against Ken Livingstone after the second preference votes are counted. It should be noted that I resent being asked to vote for someone who I do not wish to win, but in a democracy one must accept the electoral system dictated from above. With two votes to cast, I do not know who to cast them for. My logic (so far) amounts to the following:

Ken Livingstone is nasty and authoritarian and ought to be kicked out of office. His gross manipulation of the office of Mayor (mainly though using taxpayers’ money for shameless self-publicity) is simply wrong. And I cannot get over his Routemaster betrayal and subsequent bendy-bus nonsense. The only decent response is via the ballot box.

Boris Johnson is perfect for London in so many ways. He talks like a commuter, rants like a cab driver, and puts his foot in it like his heel tastes of strawberries. He would shrink the office, which can only be a good thing. When he says something outlandishly offensive, he will apologise instead of engaging in a costly legal and PR battle over whether telling a Jewish reporter that his behaviour was tantamount to that of a concentration camp guard was a breach of office or not. On the other hand, he is a Tory and I am not.

The media is responding to polls showing just how much of a two-horse-race this is, based on first-name personalities instead of politics. Brian Paddick is a nonentity within the LibDems, having just joined them, so he is going to struggle to win any support. Reading his manifesto pledges, it appears that he has less grasp of London than my humble self: most of the proposals are either in place already, in the pipeline, or completely nonsensical. Even if I agreed with the proposals, the simple fact that he hasn’t done his homework leads me to question his suitability for the job. Plus, photos of him pompously wearing his police uniform are rather counter-productive in making his crime policy look good: if he was such a good policeman why does he need to go into politics because crime is so bad?

The minor parties and fringe nutter groups are also in plentiful supply. Alan Craig, of the Christian Choice, is clearly a little divorced from reality. He seems to think that protecting marriage is part of the Mayor of London’s brief, and argues that we should oppose the apocalyptically-named “Olympics Mega Mosque” because he predicts that it will foster extremism. As far as I see it, if London gets lumbered with this crackpot reactionary who nestles somewhere to the right of UKIP apparently speaking on behalf of Christians, don’t Muslims deserve a mosque in return? After all, his “aggressive stop and search” policy will probably inconvenience them more than most. Come to think of it, Alan, just build the mosque and then station your gun-toting pseudo-military police force at the doors.

Gerard Batten is the UKIP candidate. He is every bit as loathsome as your average UKIP candidate, but a good deal less intelligent. He doesn’t seem to understand that helicopters are, by their nature, airborne, and that children’s toys are not the best method of tackling teenage yobs: “Get the Police back on the streets – I don’t care if they drive cars, fly helicopters, or go on pogo sticks, but get them back on the streets fighting crime.” Even giving him the benefit of the doubt on this attempt at humour, the man wants to elect police chiefs because Sir Ian Blair has “politicised” his position. With joined-up thinking like that, it’s a wonder he is only a humble MEP (a position which, it should be noted, he gained from a closed list system).

Lindsey German shows just how weird and radical and nasty the Respect Party is.

Richard Barnbrook of the BNP aptly demonstrates just how illogical one can get when so blinded by prejudice and hatred.

Matt O’Connor is a bit of a red-herring in the race. He was involved in Fathers for Justice, but is now focusing on non-racist rightist principles. The last election in which the English Democrats stood saw them gain fewer votes than the Monster Raving Looney Party. I know who I would prefer in office.

Sian Berry’s Green gang have a sensible little set of policies, but they are decidedly narrow-minded. I want a mayor who wants to run London, not just its airspace and green fields.

Winston McKenzie is standing as an independent (with a £10,000 deposit to lose) and his manifesto is a self-penned rap. I’ll confidently place £10,000 on him never seeing that deposit again.

He has a point - a very valid one, at that - but is quite clearly skating on very thin ice.

I realise that, since returning, my posts on this website have almost exclusively been on Zimbabwe. Apologies to those not particularly interested, but frankly I’d rather write about this than British politics, at present.

Anyhow, I’ve found some of those sites I mentioned. Coming largely from the Zimbabwean diaspora or Zimbabwe itself, they’re often different, at the least, to Western coverage.

Case in point: the Zimbabwean Pundit. Carrying the tagline, “The World as Seen From the Eyes of a Zimbabwean,” it’s written by (as far as I can tell) one of the many Zimbabweans who supported Mugabe for many years before turning against him. Make of it what you will, and have a look at the posts criticising the Western media in particular.

Moving on: Zimbabwean news-site in exile. Goes into more detail than the British broadsheets, up to a point.

Sokwanele.com is one of the largest opposition websites I could find, and among the easiest to naviagte. They have a blog, and are running their version of election results alongside the Electoral Commission’s. The contrast is enlightening…

Kubatana is a collaborative blog run by Zimbabwean activists. Again, often interesting reading.

There are more, but time is rather limited. Look on the blogrolls, they should keep you going…

Oh, and the official sites would be useful, I suppose:

My interview, it seems, is not until 3.30. I therefore have some time.

Look here.

The Electoral Commission claims the 24 parliamentary constituencies to declare so far in the country were split equally between Zanu-PF and the MDC. There are 186 to go.

It’s clearly too early to comment in depth. So far, though, this seems vaguely plausible: Mugabe’s wins were among the rural constituencies where, if he was going to win any votes, he’d win them. It is quite possible that Zanu-PF did win those constituencies on the popular vote.

However - this delay is suspicious, deeply so. It could be indicative of two factors: gross under-competency and rigging. Both are possible, if not likely. Counting has been going on by candle-light, Zimbabwe is a large country, there may be a shortage of counters, etc, etc. It’s possible that human error is, in part, responsible for the delay.

But if the authorities were going to stuff ballot boxes, or lose several thousand opposition votes in one go, or figure in all those dead people on the electoral roll, now would be the time they’ll do it.

Of course, there could be another reason for the delay. At this very moment, Mugabe could really do with opposition activists doing something stupid and making the first, violent move. That would give him a pre-text to accuse the MDC of cheating, and launch a crack-down without actually finishing the election.

Delaying the results this much could serve to do that. Grassroots MDC supporters must be getting increasingly frustrated at the delay, when they know Zanu-PF could be using it to rig the vote. The temptation to just do something must be fairly strong. Could this delay be targetted at making just a few angry voters do that something?

Interesting also are the reactions of independent bodies. SADC (SouthernAfrica Development Community) are split over the election - the majority of members claim the election was, “peaceful and credible,” while two reject it as, “deeply flawed.” Are certain SADC members being more honest or looking deeper than others - or was the election simply different in different parts of the country? I do wonder.

The Independent Results Centre in Harare, meanwhile, is claiming a heavy victory for Tsvangirai - 57%, enough to avoid a run-off. While this does seem a likel result, I do wonder how reliable their data is. Presumably it’s based on exit polls - which, given the presence of police at some polling stations, might be somewhat hard to judge by…

But we’ll see.

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.

Before I rush off to sleep, very briefly…

The contrast between the treatment the Zimbabwean election has received in the mainstream print media and the blogosphere is, I think, somewhat enlightening.

Most of the mainstream media in Britain covered Zimbabwe in some level of detail. The BBC has reported it fairly prominently, even if the analysis leaves a lot to be desired. The (ex-)broadsheets and “serious” papers have had it over the front-pages, in the columns, even the glossy photo-reports occasionally. Political magazines have gone in at least as far, if not further - the Economist has, as discussed, run quite a bit on it.

The British and American blogosphere has, meanwhile, been pretty silent. Unless I’ve missed something, the most has essentially been, “Robert Mugabe is a bad person, boo-hiss.” There’s been little useful commentary or analysis, for which I’m forced to revert to print-media and their websites.

This, perhaps, highlights one of the areas where the mainstream media still retains a slight edge over bloggers. Newspapers, magazines and television stations hire reporters and analyists who research and focus on far-flung foreign affairs, and so who can write on them. It’s their job.

Bloggers, meanwhile, often have another job, and can be quite busy people outside of blogging. In general, their expertise will be domestic politics, which, entirely naturally, the focus on - at the expense of foreign affairs, which, however fascinating, need researched and read up on.

Ah, but, you might say, but - bloggers here do focus on British politics, yes - but bloggers in other countries will focus on their domestic politics, and so we’ll get coverage of domestic politics everywhere. And, to a point, that’s true. I’ve begun read a number of African blogs, for example, which I’ll link to when I’m next downstairs. Blogs are beginning to come through, even in the most repressive of societies - off the top of my head, Generacion Y does an excellent job of finding places to post in Cuba…

But there are limits, very big limits. Computer access is very limited - to most of the population, at least - in many countries still. Many bloggers abroad do suffer heavily from censorship and oppression. If nothing else, there is a language barrier - I have some French, but beyond that I’d struggle with a foreign language blog. And so on, and so on.

The mainstream media, meanwhile, is able to provide regular, relatively reliable coverage in a language I can understand. Thus, for the moment, it has the edge.

Matters are changing, and will continue to do so. As computer access world-wide improves, I expect more and more blogs will spring up all over the globe. Grassroots coverage will become truly global, and there’ll be an alternative to getting irritated at the editors of the Economist.

Until then, though, the editors of the Economist and their ilk have a distinct advantage, at least in certain areas of the globe.  Until then…

A brief glance at the news - which I’ve more or less missed for the past week - tells me that China has again sought India’s support for its stance on Tibet.

More interestingly, it tells me that India continue to do so. The official in question reiterated that India feels Tibet is part of China, and that it did not allow anti-Chinese demonstrations on Indian soil. This has been the Indian government’s policy throughout this particular flare-up.

Historically, the opposite has been the case. India and China had a stormy, occasionally violent relationship until very recently. Relations were often cold to the point of frozen. Moreover, there is a large (at least 150,000), very vocal community of Tibetan exiles in India. In the past, they have been allowed to make as much noise as they like - occasionally with the government’s sympathy.

This thus interests me on (at least) two grounds: (please note that, despite being in a quote-box, the following is me rather than a quotation; I’m having trouble getting indentation to work properly today)

It marks continued attempts to thaw relations between the two burgeoning superpowers. Recently, both governments have made attempts to normalise and improve the two countries’ relationship. Joint military exercises have been held, a stark contrast with the occasional border wars of the past. That India is willing to reverse - or at least soften - yet another long-held position for the sake of this thaw highlights how increasingly possible it is that the two countries might become close.Such a movement has very important implications for the world, and certainly complex. I’d thought to say something like, “Good relations between the countries would create an even more solid trade base in what is steadily becoming the world’s workshop, while the human cost of bad relations and a mini-cold war would be disastrous,” but I realise that that’s incredibly simplistic. I’ll write a longer post on it at a later date.

India here resists the international trend. There hasn’t been huge pressure on the Indian government specifically over this, but to support China would be to run against the international wind of condemnation. An indication perhaps that, as India’s industrial might grows, it’s increasingly willing to stand on its own? Actually, increasingly here is the wrong word by a long way. Given, if nothing else, India’ prominent role in the non-aligned momement during the Cold War, “continually,” would probably have been more appropriate.Perhaps it would have been better instead to talk of Western powers’ increasing unwillingness to pressure India too overtly. With increasing segments of primary (and often tertiary) industry located there, it could get distinctly problematic for European and American business should India turn upset (stupid as such implied moves would be on India’s part). Europe and the US may thus treat India more and more carefully in the future…

But I’m already verging into speculation - and there is, of course, far more actually happening now here to be looked at, I suspect. However, I have an interview tomorrow and want some sleep before it, so will stop there. Good night…

It occurs to me that, for those who keep only a loose eye on African politics, elements of that last post lacked background. Admittedly, this isn’t helped by the BBC’s fairly shoddy coverage of matters - tucked away in corners of the site and only skimming the surface.

I found the easiest way to keep up was to flick through the Economist website occasionally. As incredibly irksome as the editorial line can get, they’re the only mainstream British publication I can find that covers African politics in anything like satisfying detail. Their most recent articles on the topic, here and here, are probably enough to follow events.

And let me know how long it takes to spot the irritatingly blatant slant in parts of the pieces.  Hint: Compare the “young, intelligent, charming, technocratic,” stereotype they apply to Makoni with the “courgageous yet thick” one they apply to Tsvangirai.

Also note that Tsvangirai was a trade unionist, and note the Economist’s typical (negative) view of trade unions and socialists.

Moving on from what risks becoming an annoyed rant about how so excellently detailed a publication is frequently marred by the editorial thrust, I also found some rather useful blogs on Zimbabwean politics. Unfortunately, they’re on another computer (I’m back to my usual machine, which has been fixed).  I’ll link to them later.

And yes, I’m back, and appreciably rested.