The start

01 Feb 2009

This blog was set up following a BBC blog comment by "Jericoa":

"29. At 12:31pm on 31 Jan 2009, Jericoa wrote:

Tigerjay / somali pirate / alexander Curzon / Rahere / many others (you know who you are)

Re starting a political party.

A part of me would love to do that Cromwellian style and shake up the establishment, hence my enthusiasm.

Somali pirate has a point though which does bring me back to earth.

The pragmatist engineer in me away from the idealist suggests a more measured course, an extension of what we are doing anyway by way of our and many others (you know who you are) regular contributions.

My suggestion is not a political party but a formalised lobby group.

There are many intelligent and more importantly experienced people here who are ahead of the curve and the media in terms of analysis of what is happening and what would be sensible to do next.

Time and time again I see posts here that are realised a few weeks or a month or two later, analysis that I do not see in the news.

I also get a sense sometimes that ideas expressed here seem to emerge from the mouths of politicians a few days later..probably just co-incidence / people thinking in similar ways but it would be nice to think otherwise.

Both politicians and media are hamstrung to see what we can see by their very nature, they are professional politicians and journalists. No undeserved disrespect to them but you have to be on the ground up to your armpits in grease to 'feel' what is going on.

The politicians ambitions within fortress Westminster and the journalists 'impartiality' detract from that required level of ' grease up to your armpits' understanding.

A formal lobby group, a collection of 'wise men and women if you will' should enable us collectively to do much more than we are currently trying to individually here, noble though that it, it is not very effective.

Although I would like to think we are making some kind of difference in a small way as we are, I am sure with a bit of organisation we could do more.

I have a full time job and I have my young family also, I don't have much spare time beyond those commitments to do the 'nuts and bolts' of creating a formal lobby group, otherwise I would.

I would hope somebody out there has different circumstances and is better placed to take that on.

It could be the cyber equivalent of the bohemian 'cafe' culture of the early 1900's.

We could meet up for real also, agree press releases of some description by consensus between us etc rather than spraying our views 'machine gun' like all over the net. No doubt some of the bullets hit but one large precision guided weapon is usually much more effective in achieving its goals.

On a lighter note in order to get some publicity, modern society being what it is one of us would need to marry a premier league footballer or dress up as superman and hang from the hands of big ben or look good in a bikini / trunks or pretend we were deranged in some way and go onto big brother or hook up with Paris Hilton or Jordan in order to get general attention.

Anybody like to volunteer to be Paris Hilton's new best friend for ITV? AC maybe.

I will post this on Paul Mason's blog also, as shamefully, considering his insight comments are less cluttered there.

A volunteer who's circumstances permit him / her to look into setting up a formal lobby group would be a good starting point a core of 2 or 3 people could then communicate 'off blog' to get the ball rolling (there goes the engineer in me again).

Hope to correspond and maybe even see you all soon.

If we want to get a message out there (as we clearly do or we would not spend the time we do here) may as well do it more effectively don't you think?

Just a suggestion.

Jericoa "

	comments . . .
01 Feb 2009 kate-B	Want to sign up for this and wanted to register immediate support. Have watched the comments on RP Blog for a year now and really want to something. Perhaps some sort of skills/time audit should be conducted, as and when more people get on board?
02 Feb 2009 bobrocket	Good idea kate-B Name : bobrocket Skillset : I'm a kind of tecchy geek, been playing with PCs since they came out in 1984 and I can program/re-program most anything with a chip on it. I work in retail for a big supermarket chain, money is lousy but I get to talk to a large customer base and the hours suit picking the children up from school. Time: Between work,the kids and my allotment (I've got big blisters today from 5hrs digging) not a lot, but there are 24hrs in everyday so I can put some time to good use.
02 Feb 2009 John Bray	Bob, "PCs since they came out in 1984" ??
02 Feb 2009 bobrocket	yes, do you not remember the IBM PC, 8088 processor, 128k memory, 5&1/2 inch floppy disk, no hard drive, mono or 3 colour monitor, MS dos (that was where Bill Gates got his start and look at him now :) You must remember the Sinclair Z80, hammer sensitive keyboard, 1k memory. No, perhaps it's just me, I'm quite sad like that.
02 Feb 2009 rahere	Dear Bob, I've got a 20-column card from the Lyons Leo somewhere, I go that far back - I started in 1962 and like Mark Zbikowski, I've got my mark in the centre of every executable, driver, library and patch in the system. I indeed remember the 8086, having worked with the designer of the AT card. Kids, honestly!
04 Feb 2009 OldNick666	Commodore Pet, Nascom, Zenith, Gemini, BBC, Apple etc. etc. all preceded the dreadful IBM PC. I started with Fortran II on an ICL 1905 in 1966. Gates bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and renamed it MSDOS. His last good work was an 8 bit assembly tool. I still hate computers.