I notice, trawling through the blogs as I am wont to do, that Neil Clark and his egregious puppy are crowing about Clark winning some obscure award or other. Like the silent majority, I neither cared to take notice of the awards, less still take part in any voting. I find awards tiresome, whether they are the Oscars, the Baftas or some silly and pointless weblog awards. Still, Clarke was keen to get his supporters to vote for him and it seems to have paid off. Upon reading the nauseating self-aggrandising codswallop on Comment is Free, you have to wonder at the Groan’s policy on selection of writers. Clark is neither a good writer, nor is he entertaining – come the that he isn’t informative either, so why do they pay him to promote himself in the manner of a twelve year old who just won the three-legged race at the school sports day (if they still have such things)? What made me smile, though, is the man’s blatant prejudice (somewhere below his arrant gall):
British political bloggers are overwhelmingly middle class and male, London-based and university educated. An extraordinary percentage of them seem to work, or have worked, in financial services.
Wow! Not too many unsubstantiated sweeping assertions there, then… Let’s see:
Middle class? My father was a carpenter and joiner, so I come from working class roots. I currently work for a living.
Male? Guilty as charged. Not a lot I can do about that short of some pretty radical surgery.
London-based? You couldn’t pay me enough to live in London. Nope. Nor have I ever lived there.
University Educated? Nope.
Financial Services? Nope – what is this man on?
He really couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.
But there is a downside too. The very nature of blogging encourages narcissism. Your blog is a place where you can be as big-headed and boastful as you like – and the medium unsurpisingly attracts its fair share of egomaniacs.
Er.. Hellooooo… Mr Pot, I’d like to introduce you to Mr Kettle, I reckon you’ll get along together just dandy.
What a fuckwit.
Clark’s a total prat and I’ve never visited. I know this from when he puts it about.
“middle class and male, London-based and university educated. An extraordinary percentage of them seem to work, or have worked, in financial services”
Like many generalisations there is a lot of truth in it, as three-quarteres of that applies to me.