I see Oliver Kamm is once again defecating on the medium through which he made his modest reputation as a writer.

The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted - overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.

The ‘Oliver Kamm is the author of Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy. His blog is at…’ sign-off was my favourite bit. Blogging is bobbins, please look at my blog.

Ah, I remember Oliver when he merely used to get stroppy about the difference between a ‘faction’ and a ‘fraction’ (as in the ‘Red Army…’). ‘The stupidest blogger alive,’ was how he described Ryan of Beatnik Salad over the affair, not poisoning the debate at all. Happy days.

I met Kamm once. It was at the lunch where the bloggers who were christened ‘the new commentariat‘ by the Guardian were summoned. (I was invited, inexplicably, all other bloggers in the country seemingly too busy being civil to each other and engaging in intelligent debate). Oliver turned up late and immediately launched into another tedious and protracted diatribe against Noam Chomsky. The starters were therefore cold so Tim Ireland and I finished all the wine between us. True story.

I believe Oliver lives near me although I’ve never bumped into him. Since that day I’ve kept an eye out for him so I can mess up his hair, push him into a patch of nettles or roll him in dog muck in the park.