This week will probably see a chunk of blogging here around the themes of blogs and politics (and sometimes combining both) to promote not only the talk I’m giving at the free Nation1 ‘profiting from blogging‘ event on Wednesday, but also the ‘Politics and Social Media‘ theme for the third Scottish Social Media Dinner, also on Wednesday (buy a ticket here).

Anyway, I was talking to someone at the Journalist Charity Press Lunch on Friday about politics and blogging and they were surprised at the – claimed by me/backed up by the awards – level of Scottish political blogging (indeed Go Lassie Go – or to give her her dayjob name Joan McAlpine was also at the lunch. Didn’t see any other political digerati though).

The point being they said that blogging on politics would be a dull thing to do. I disagreed. I quite like reading from a mix of political parties (official and unofficial) especially as I’m a very floating voter and I think it always does us good to challenge our assumptions.

But the chat came to mind when I was reading this fantastic guide of top ten tips for political bloggers by Tom Harris MP which shows how people can make a blog – about politics, but also other topics – interesting.

(on the note of Tom – and I’ll put it here because if I do too many posts praising anyone, I can just see the shouts of bias already – he’s changed his twitter name to TomHarris4MP. Now, as far as I know, even though he is a PPC, he is still the MP associated with his area, so he could have left it as was (I also doubt the electoral rules have caught up with twitter usernames yet) but the fact that he has changed it shows to me a person who is not taking his votes – and by extension those he engages with online – for granted. It’s a very simple move, but to me also seems very humble – as well as a good way of reminding people what’s at stake – and I think Tom deserves praise for it.

On the other hand, watch the cybersquatters go have a field day buying up the relevant URLs…)