I finally got around to looking at the Guardian’s new campaign blog, KickAAS, which is dedicated to abolishing agricultural subsidies, certainly a laudable goal., and while I don’t know if it’ll be a regular read, it’s surprisingly non-boring. It’s also interesting as a phenomenon, especially for those buying into the hype on poli blogs.
Via their comments section I discovered ideosyncratic conservative Back40’s blog, where was delighted to find a coherent and reasoned defense of CAP*, probably the first time I’ve seen such a thing. The blog’s full of original takes on original choices of topics. (except when talking about ‘the liberal media’.)
Who knew agricultural subsidies could be fun?
Less fun is the news that Matthew Yglesias will do all his political blogging on The American Prospect’s staff blog – unaccredited. I join his commenters in wondering why they didn’t give him his own blog, which would presumably get them more of his considerable readership, and thus get TAP more revenue and exposure. Especially since he on his own has posted more frequebtly than all TAPPED contributors combined.
This is sad since Yglesias was one of my favorite’s bloggers and this will obviously not be the same thing.
Update: Henry Farrell gives us a nod (thank you!) and responds to Iain’s post. In comments, ‘Doug’ made this brilliant observation, that I gotta reproduce here:
“There?s an interesting article to be done on what fantasies European integration evokes from local paleocons. In Britain, it?s apparently Guy Fawkes. In Poland, it?s godlessness, Communism and abortion. In Hungary, it?s Jews and maybe Germans. In Germany, it?s waves of invaders from the East. There?s probably a specific set for almost any EU or soon-to-be EU country that would tell outsiders a lot about the neuroses in national history. And these, in turn, tend to draw on political tropes that are so old fashioned you wonder what steamer trunk someone lifted them out of.”
In Sweden, of course, it’s an evil neoliberal plot to destroy the welfare state.
*The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.