Recently in Blogosphere Category

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I started a hare running with my (admittedly somewhat intemperate) remarks about Tower Hamlets a few days ago. I have had a huge response to this, both in public and in private - mostly in private, and mostly supportive of my spluttering sense of exasperation. I am particularly grateful to the last post on this blog from Phil, who offers the voice of reason in all of this. 

It is a febrile and fraught environment east of Bishopsgate, and no mistake.  And I cannot help but observe that the City of London has enough threats on its horizon without its immediate neighbour destabilising the fringes. So I stand by my remarks, although I do concede that I could have expressed my views more professionally.

Was at the EG Awards Dinner last night (courtesy of The Management) and out came the same old glittery frock, and on went a bit of lippy, in preparation for sitting next to the Good Doctor, the lovely Andrew Gould, now Big Cheese at JLL.

Lovely to see him having done so well; I am so pleased for him. I did my normal routine of shouting at him for being too old to run marathons. (Alright, alright. He clearly isn't. And, yes, I am just jealous of his athleticism - and slender form - but hey!).

Have got a genuine New Best Friend in the shape of Rob "he's a Brummie" Bould from GVA Grimley, who was sitting on my other side. What a nice man. He and I were just having a bit of a joke about Table 32, adjacent to us, splendidly deserted, in the midst of a sea of densely packed surveyors.

Was Table 32 stuck on a train from Scotland, we wondered. Or did they have swine flu? Had they put the wrong date in their diaries? Or were they washing their hair? Ten minutes after speculation had run rife, in traipsed the latecomers en masse and ....yes! .... it was my gaffer, Martin Samworth, and the entire CBRE delegation. Ahhhhh! Love them. They were clearly having a wonderful evening and as they (sorry I did mean "we") picked up not one, but TWO, awards it did indeed get better and better.

EG Awards is not quite the same as the Blog Awards (as trailed in last blog), in that one is in cyber space and the other is ...er.. not. But an Award is an Award for all that. I am still much exercised by the whole blogging business, and mulling over how far things will shift over the next few months. I think it may be seismic.

Paul Scully, who is Leader of the Opposition in LB Sutton (and who I am delighted to say I met just recently at a meeting in CBRE, and liked enormously) is consistently in the top five of the local authority bloggers in Iain Dale's Blog Awards. I have now begun to follow Paul Scully's blog (Scully's Blogspot) and it is proving invaluable in gleaning an understanding of current local authority thinking from the front line.

What's with all this blogging activity then ? I may well be a part of it these days, but I'm truly at a loss to understand it.

Isn't it all narcissistic onanism on the part of a bunch of folks with half baked opinions and super-annuated egos ?

My mother has not caught up with my blog yet but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't approve.

I have to say, though, that I do find it all hugely enjoyable, if somewhat self-indulgent.

And I am truly surprised and flattered by how popular my own blog has become over the last six months.

 

Until last week I was Top of the EG Blog Pops - that is until the finance lads started their shameless self-publicising malarkey.

But I'm still grateful: having always suffered with a touch of the Groucho Marx, I cannot quite believe that I am allowed to lodge in the same stable as "proper people" such as Peter Bill and Paul Norman - nor that I have the brass necked cheek to do so!

I am also rather charmed (even if I'm a little out of my depth) by how much things are potentially loosening up, with the possibilities of new technology.

I have tried to get to grips with the potential for blogging (and even tweeting) as routes through to community engagement. After all, anything must be better than asking people to forego Eastenders to sit in draughty church halls of a cold November evening whilst enduring some ghastly "community consultation" meeting.