Gina Davidson: Better to blog off than post drivel

ANYONE who is anyone – and even those who aren't – seems to have a blog. Except me. Unless you count a weekly column as such, although I'd like to think that my so-called words of wisdom every seven days are slightly more illuminating than what I ate for my dinner last night – though I'm prepared to admit I could be wrong.

But, have no fear, as someone who has never kept a diary – not even in my angst-ridden teenage years – I am not about to open my own blogspot, because I've decided that unless you are an expert in a particular field and have something valid to say about your favoured subject, or you live a most entertaining lifestyle, then blogs are for losers.

The kind of self-important losers who feel that their every spit and cough is something that someone in the digital void will want to know about.

It's a huge assumption but it must be true, otherwise bloggers would just keep a diary and therefore stop inflicting the dismal banalities of their lives on strangers who stumble across their musings by accident.

The biggest losers of all must be those who create blogs on an anonymous basis, ie political party nonentities who want to be able to be as vile as they like about their opponents without any personal comeback.

Most political parties seem to have people like this working on their behalf in the world of the web, but it's the Labour Party which has come in for the most flack in the last fortnight or so thanks to the antics of Damian McBride and Derek Draper, and the elusive authors of the Scottish-based Leaky Chanter.

Admittedly, some of the anti-Scottish Government postings on the Leaky Chanter are amusing in a playground way, and I'm sure the smears that McBride allegedly suggested about Tory MPs were juicily salacious, but surely if you have real political points to make about opposition politicians and their policies, the best thing is to step forward and reveal yourself. Otherwise, why should anyone believe what you write, or that your opinion should hold any validity?

The worst thing about blogs, though, is the danger they bring to a valid source of news and investigative journalism: newspapers.

Obviously, I have a vested interest, but bloggers (especially those anonymous ones) seem to be able to write whatever they like with no legal restraints.

The allegations and half-truths made on many blogs – such as that proposed by McBride – would cost newspapers a good chunk of money should they print the same things.

Indeed, as one internet expert described it, the web has become "like one giant universal pub in which the darkest allegations against people can be recycled without risk".

Of course, many people with online personal journals are not politicos with axes to grind, but that doesn't stop unverified information being repeated as gospel – especially when the very reason their blogs exist at all is because they want to attract attention to their "controversial opinions" and have people comment on their blogs as a kind of justification for having written one in the first place.

There are, though, some acceptable uses of blogs. There are those written by experts in their fields for whom a blog is a way of alerting people to their work in medical science, or their photographic trip through Africa for National Geographic, or, as a CEO, their opinion on the financial collapse of the western world. It's also acceptable – however vacuous – for "celebrities" to blog as a way of slaking the curious thirst of their fans.

Then there are the blogs which chronicle the history of something that someone else might find useful, such as an attempt to earn a pilot's licence or how they eventually lost ten stone before their wedding.

However, most blogs are full of blathering idiocy. The type I least understand are those written by journalists without thinking about the long-term economic impact on their futures. After all, why should readers buy newspapers when they can get the same writers' opinions on the internet for free? It's beyond me – but I won't be blogging about it.

Mind you, in case you were actually wondering what was on the menu last night, it was chicken fajitas.

Grounds for concern
No matter how many "impressions" are drawn of how a 17-storey hotel would look at Haymarket, the word that immediately springs to mind is "hideous", quickly followed by "brutal" and "monstrosity". Indeed, the latest one, in Monday's paper, looked exactly like the kind of high flats they are pulling down in Leith.

Admittedly, Haymarket might not be the prettiest part of town, but why make the landscape look worse by shoehorning in a too-big development on a too-small site?

Have there been no lessons learned from the creation of the Scottish Parliament in its tiny location?