Many thanks for writing in and contributing to this new site.
We, in Boris Johnson’s Office, are overwhelmed by such a warm response.
In answer to some questions:
– registration for comments: not a bad idea… we will see what we can do but let’s see how long an honour system lasts, first. It makes comments more accessible to the general public, so unless they’re likely to be scared off or drowned out by others who abuse the comments function, we’d like to keep them open for now
– RSS: does exist and we are putting a link to it on the front page.
Thank you again for your enthusiastic comments
Melissa & Co
Most welcome. MPs communicating directly with the public, eh? Where will it lead? I just hope the welcome is enough to ensure this thing is kept up with…
Nice to see you have a site up – but you sadly neglected to link to Recess Monkey. 🙁
Great to see you blogging , have been following your news on another site for a while and will watch this with great interest.
Welcome, Boris and Melissa.
Registration for comments – no, please no! Unless you get a lot of idiots, of course. It’ll reduce the contribution of casually-interested members of the public to zero, nothing, zilch.
And I think the casually-interested members of the public are the ones that politicians need to energise, no?
The RSS feeds have already been syndicated on LiveJournal.
One is ‘boris_blog’, I forget the other (the full feed).
Got to see you finally caught the blogging bug Boris. The only question is what took you so long?
Melissa, may Online Parliamentarian here in Edinburgh which you all well with the blog.
Boris,
Good to see this blog coming into being. Couple of format suggestions if I may:
1. Please use a larger font – it’s not that easy to read; and
2. The white central section for text is only about half the page wide – waste of space and may be why the text is so small.
Great to see my MP blogging. I’m new at this as well, but the Canadians who got me started offered free blogs to all election candidates, so it’s fantastic to see Boris joining the ranks!
‘boris__johnson’ is the full feed on livejournal 🙂
*thumbs up* to Boris for starting the blog. All the cool kids have them.
Well done Boris,
How about a cross-party campaign to remove VAT from bicycles?
May I suggest to Boris that he does not make this just a place to air his views – we see him around often enough to know what he is thinking. It would be more interesting to read his personal reflections on life as a politician. It might generate more interest, stand out from the existing politics-centred MP blogs and, given that its Boris’ blog, it could be very funny – unlike Jody Dunn’s rather tedious account of her grocery shopping.
For instance, what is the House of Commons tea room really like? I imagine it to be a school canteen, where MPs throw jam doughnuts and call each other “bastard”. Or is it less civilised?
Welcome Boris (and Melissa!!):
On the subject of comment registration, I wouldn’t resort to it too early but it’s one to bear in mind if the comment traffic gets heavy.
We ran Slugger O’Toole for nearly two years without it, but when we hit 1000 comments a week, I needed some means to handle the guys who serially insisted on ‘playing the man and not the ball’. And I got fed up of endlessly issuing our notional yellow and red cards.
Until then I think the principle of least interference holds good.
Good luck with the adventure!
Mick
PS – good job Manic – well done!
This may say something about my twisted view of life. Despite the fact that I read hundreds of articles every week, yours is the only name which will actually make me click on links every time I see it. I have added you to the nine other blogs which I read every day and to the list of many which appear on my blog as recommended reading. We will be meeting regularly.
Kind Regards
Cass
I’m surprised you’re surprised at the popularity of this site when there is someone who can get
Blogis Johnson
Tom Watson lets his readers know that Boris Johnson has began blogging. I would also like to welcome Boris to the ‘blogosphere’ – I no longer have to rely on the Adam Smith weblog for comments asking for more private money to go into the NHS, as Boris …
Good show, Boris. I do hope that you include some salacious gossip and juicy titbits about your fellow MPs in the style of the 3am Girls from The Mirror. Perhaps not!
Yeah Boris go for it! Skiers here love yah man!! We want you in cyber space. We are putting you on the cover of our new skifilm, you can check out the trailer on the web site at http://www.skifilm.no. Guess we’ll see you at the ski show in Okt – lets kick some ass around the bar, yeaaahhhhhhhh!!!
Flash Trash, Skifilm.no in Norway
Well done Boris! I look forward to reading your blog.
To: Online Parliamentarians in Edinburgh.
I had to grab a chair and nearly fainted when I saw that your top story on your website was a welcome to Boris and this site!
So kind of you to think of us in those terms. Let’s hope we live up to expectations – very undetermined so far as we are concerned – it’s been great fun so far though.
MCW
If Boris ever lost his job as an MP he could certainly make a fortune as an entertainer – never mind the journalism!