Bel is thinking

Voting has commenced in the Blogpower Awards. Thank you to everybody who nominated me in the Best political blog or column category. I am grateful for all your support (and votes). I am in a category with some really good bloggers, so of course I am grateful for every vote that has so far come my way. If you haven’t yet voted, you can do so here.

There are some interesting categories. The two I am watching with interest are the ‘Most over-rated blog or column’ category and the ‘Most unintentionally humorous post’. Reading the entries for the latter category had me in peals of laughter. I love Blogpower; how else would I have come across some of these hilarious posts?

Image by Ian Grey.

I have written my maiden post for the Ghost Cabinet. It is entitled ‘Public schools and charitable status’ and can be accessed here. In it, I discuss Alan Johnson’s recent suggestion that public schools volunteer their teachers etc to work in the state sector, and question why, instead of such vindictive, publicity-grabbing stunts, the Government does not simply copy from public schools the things that make them so successful.

The Ghost Cabinet is a team of bloggers who examine Government policy, and where appropriate, present alternative ideas. All the main policy areas are catered for by bloggers with experience or interest in each area.

The move to my new server has taken place, and I seem to have lost one post, entitled ‘Watching Gordon Brown’. That was only to be expected, as it was a post I wrote after I had executed the move. I will republish the missing post, and paste in the comments that were made under it. As I had expected to lose the post, I saved the comments in Notepad.

Thank you to everyone who helped in moving my blog to the new host, in particular my regular readers, Tony and dolbyn, as well as Daniel from the excellent Daily Blog Tips blog.

UPDATE. The comments are not loading properly, and I am working on it right now.

UPDATE 2. Comments and permalinks fixed now. I had to update my permalink structure, so it’s all working well now.

If you subscribe using Live Bookmarks, they may not work. Perhaps better to re-subscribe? Thank you. Actually, scratch that. I am told that this is a feed problem. Because the dns has not updated, it is trying to load the site from the old server. Live Bookmarks subscribers need not do anything. The problem should fix itself when the dns resolves to the new server.

Also, if you notice anything that’s not working right with the blog, kindly leave a comment or email me.

My hosting provider has decided to go out of business, so I am in the process of moving this blog to a new host. The domain name remains unchanged, so you won’t need to update links or any such thing. I am praying for all to go well, so there should be uninterrupted service. I have backed up everything to be on the safe side.

I’m rolling up my sleeves and getting to work now, transferring the blog. If anyone has any tips on MySQL or phpMyAdmin, I’d be grateful if you could email them to me. Here’s praying for success.

UPDATE. Warning, technical post alert.

(9 May 2007; 3.42am.) Move to new server hasn’t yet taken place. I ftp’d my files to the new server, created a new database, imported the old database to the new server, etc. I had a preview on the temporary url thingy and while all the styles etc have fed through, I am getting a 404 and the blog content (ie posts and comments) is not showing up. My feeling is that it is something to do with the database. I have edited the wp-config file so that it contains my new MySQL database name and password, etc. I can’t think of what else I have left out. Bedtime now. I shall take another look tomorrow. If anyone has any ideas, please email me.

(Normal discussion about politics etc to resume shortly. I have to first make sure that this blog has a roof over its head.)

Sorry it’s been a bit quiet here. I’ve been working hard elsewhere, but things are returning to normal now. Expect blogging to resume in earnest shortly.

Taking a much needed break from blogging. Back next week.

Busy with work right now. Will write something soon.

Busy with work right now, will be back soon. In the meantime, I have put some interesting articles on my Shared Items page, which you can access here. Have fun.

A commenter on my previous post took issue with my use of the term ‘envirofascist’. I have been thinking, and while unrepentant, I have decided that, in future, I will no longer use this term when discussing our hypocritical politicians. I will instead call them ‘pharisees’. Why? Because they prescribe how we should live our lives, while they merrily carry on doing whatever they please. Someone once condemned pharisees thus:

“They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”

I will reserve the term ‘envirofascist’ strictly for those environmental activists who want us to swallow their untested ideology without question.

And yes, it is possible to be both a pharisee and an envirofascist.

I was tagged last week by James Higham of the Nourishing Obscurity blog, to set out the two posts that have received the highest traffic on my blog. However, I decided to wait until the page load speeds on my blog were back to normal. No point linking to archives if they take a long time to load.

Here we are:

The post with the highest traffic was the second one I had written about the BNP ballerina. I later gathered from Google Analytics that it was the subject of fevered debate on BNP blogs and forums.

The post with the second highest amount of traffic was the one entitled ‘Prisoners’ payout for cold turkey in jail’. Many of the people who had found their way there had done so by searching google with the words ‘How to claim compensation for cold turkey’. Interesting, that. Didn’t know there were so many affected prisoners out there. Unfortunately, my article didn’t address the ‘how to’ aspect of the thing, so I wonder where they went after that.

While we’re here, I might as well add my third and fourth highest traffic posts:

Third highest: yes, the BNP again. My first article on the ballerina, in which I condemned the Guardian for ‘outing’ her, and questioned whether holding unpleasant views automatically stripped one of all rights, including the right to privacy.

Fourth highest: an article criticising a charity for suggesting that the morning-after pill should be as accessible as Nurofen.

If you haven’t read them before, Sunday afternoon would be a good time. The BNP and morning-after pill articles yielded great debates in the comments, and I learnt a lot from the people who gave their views.