The Perils of Political Blogging

Matt Sellwood has discovered the perils of speaking your mind when you're directly involved in electoral politics.

First off, I should apologise for being out of the blogging business for almost a full month. Unfortunately, as those of you who live in Oxford East will have seen, the Liberal Democrats rather took advantage of my open approach to posting my views and thoughts on the Internet and splashed a 'loose quotation' from me all over their election literature. It was a sad lesson for me in the dangers that elected politicians face in trying to engage in open discussion - and I took the decision not to post anything until after May 5th, just in case the Lib Dems were lurking to selectively quote me again!

Can't trust those geography teachers, can you?

I think we're going to be seeing a lot more blogs by candidates, councillors and MPs in the future. What values will prevail in the collision between the honest and informal style of blogging and the current political culture of spin and image?

We're also reached the stage nowadays where a lot of aspiring politicians might have been usenet posters; how many campaigns will be sunk because of some comment posted to the net while drunk at 1am in the morning fifteen years ago?