I just wish I could get more into this blogging lark

I keep forgetting it's here. I need to become obsessive about it!

There is so much I wish I had time to comment on or put on the public record.

For example, it's just 3 days before the Iraqi referendum and I should have recorded, well before now, my failed attempts to spread the idea outlined in my previous posting (August 8).

In various forms I posted that suggestion to about 20 different newsgroups, emailed a dozen MPs who I thought might leap at the suggestion, wrote dozens of letters to the papers in UK and USA, sent half a dozen messages to the BBC, one of which did actually make it on air and sent copies to about 50 people in my address book and asked them to assist - if they approved - with a bit of viral marketing. As this is probably the first time you've heard anything at all about the idea, it's pretty obvious that I failed. What more could Ihave done?

It's that sort of thing that makes me wish I was famous.

If David Beckham or Brad Pitt had come out with that idea it would have been front page news. Never mind that he's just a bleedin' footballer/actor. He's famous. If he'd said it, we'd all be debating it. Fame certainly has its upside.

The selectivity of public discourse explains the general poverty of public debate, which is, of course, a major reason were in the mess we're in.

My own ideas may be utter drivel of course. Obviously I don't think so, but I accept the possibility that they are. But I can't even get anyone to explain - if they are utter drivel - just why they are. Do that (convincingly) and I'll shut up.

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to post my Terrorism chapter/essay up to K5. I think it may be the longest post that's ever been submitted (over 15,000 words) and I'm sure they'll rip it to shreds in the normal fashion - some of them just because it's too long! But, in amongst the flames, trolls and the plain stupid, there are always nuggets of reason and I'll use those to sharpen up my arguments or even, if they manage to puncture them, abandon those arguments altogether. K5 is a damn good test bed for stuff like that. Mind you, I submitted the Referendum question idea to K5 and it sank without trace there too, so I don't really know
what to expect.

I'll try to remember to let you know.