| It was a full house last night for our 2008 bloggers party. The theme was "curbing the crap artists" and we drafted in three top bloggers to speak on the topic. Tim Worstall went first, curbing the crap journalists. Invoking Hayek, he said that the collective information of the bloggers will always be superior to that of a journalist, so bloggers should pick them up on their mistakes and to not let them get away with poor research or lazy assumptions. If you're not blogging already, he said, join the club!
Guido Fawkes went next, telling us about curbing crap politicians. Politicians are basically glorified social workers, he said, [over]paid to administer the welfare state. And they're mostly crap. The key to curbing them is giving them much less stuff to do. Quite right too.
Perry de Havilland of Samizdata filled the final slot, on curbing crap businesses. He cited three examples. Dell were forced to improve their service when the blog "Dell Hell" made it onto to first page of Google. An overpriced chocolate brand was found out when a blogger revealed that it was just crap chocolate in a really expensive box. And finally, switching things around, Johnson & Johnson actually managed to win a public relations war against the Red Cross (!) by getting senior executives blogging on their website.
Afterwards we adjourned for alcohol and sandwiches. I've never seen so much real ale disappear so quickly. Clearly bloggers are a thirsty bunch. Telegraph blogger Alex Singleton was there taking pictures: you can see them here. |
