The Blog Digest 2007: You And Me Against The World - Activism

It’s true to say that while blogging has proved the ideal inducement to people sitting on their arses, it’s also provided many incentives for people to get up off them as well. If you’ve got a cause, blogging is the perfect medium for rallying others to it.

Coupled with other online tools (Pledgebank.com, where people pledge to perform a certain action, and WriteToThem.com, which allows you to email your MP), blogging has become a real force, if not exactly for holding Authority to account, then at least for going a long way to informing it of what it is its true bosses (that is, us) are thinking and want.

Here, amongst other articles calling for awareness of important issues, we see how a cause, a blog and a little bit of good old-fashioned pluck, can bring about real results.

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December 2005 - Bloggerheads: Public Carol Service
Under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 it is now illegal to protest or make any kind of political statement in Parliament Square in Westminster without prior permission gained six days in advance. British Blogland’s very own merry prankster, Tim Ireland, saw an opportunity for some mischief. Here’s the text of his invitation to a Christmas carol service with a difference.

December 2005 – Rachel North: Amazing Grace
The concert went off without a hitch and a tidy £300 was raised for the charity Medical Aid for Iraqi children. Rachel North reported back.

January 2006 – Burning Our Money: PFI Panic
What the Government gets up to with our money is a subject that seems to leave most people rather uninspired. However, once you get down to it, it doesn’t take long for righteous indignation to manifest itself. Here, Wat Tyler, who has made it his life’s work to expose government profligacy, explains how the Private Finance Initiative works and why we should be up in arms about it.

April 2006 - Bristling Badger: Carbon offsets are a fraud
The debate about energy - how we produce it and how we use it and what we do with the carbon dioxide created in the process - gained greater prominence than ever this year. The idea of carbon offsets were trumpeted. It’s not a very good idea, said Merrick.

March 2006 - D-Squared Digest: Thought for the day
A common feature of Blogland is the creation and spreading of ‘memes’. A concept invented by Richard Dawkins, memes are ideas as viruses. Tell someone your idea and they are immediately infected with the virus. Daniel Davies created another. Spread the word.

June 2006 - Charlie Whitaker: Stuck to the back of the filing cabinet, in the basement…
So, you want to help save the planet. How about starting small and cutting back on your energy consumption by insulating your house? That’s what Charlie Whitaker decided to do. Getting help to do it, however, means negotiating a system seemingly designed in committee by Orwell and Kafka and then built by M.C. Escher. You have to admire Charlie’s tenacity.

August 2006 – Burning Our Money: Down These Mean Streets
In August, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair’s observation that it was safe to leave front doors unlocked was met with peals of ironic laughter from many. Wat Tyler mounted a rebuttal against Blair’s vision of Utopia.

August 2006 – Nick Barlow: Mud, mud, inglorious mud
Sometimes it does a blogger good to get out of the house. Nick Barlow took this to extremes by embarking on the trek from John O’Groats to Land’s End. His walk was done in the aid of the Brain Research Trust charity after his brother Simon died from a brain tumour. At the time of writing (mid September) Nick is still yomping. By the time you read this, and with a following wind, he will have completed his epic journey and be enjoying a well-earned rest, but you can still drop a few quid in his virtual bucket here: www.justgiving.com/nickswalk. Nick’s blogged his journey at every opportunity and this dispatch from the wilds finds him following the backbone of England.

September 2006 – Web of Evil: Get it off your chest
The mainstream media cottoned on to interaction in a big way this year. Members of the public were asked to send their eyewitness accounts, photographs and semi-coherent musings to news channels desperate to fill the hours. It was called ‘citizen journalism’ by some or, more plainly, ‘getting the public to do our job for us for nothing’. Here, Web of Evil subverts the idea…

Next, Chapter 6: Blood, Sweat and Beers – Work and Play