Five Most Popular Posts for January

The five most read posts of the month were:

1. Sharon O'Donnell and Jumping the Gun
2. The Top 100 Independent Tweeting Bloggers 2013
3. Sex, Power Play, and Trotskyism
4. The Far Left's Prospects in 2014
5. Immigration and Class Politics

Who now remembers the Sharon O'Donnell story? It seems an age ago. Unfortunately, the attempt to portray a photo opp about the ridiculous Help to Buy policy as something sinister fell apart like jenga with souffle blocks after the most cursory of butchers. And I wrote this mea culpa as someone who enthusiastically tweeted away about it when the "story" broke. It never hurts a blogger to own up to being wrong when they are.

As for the rest, the far left do the business as per. I intended the overview of its prospects to be the only thing I wrote about my erstwhile comrades but the silly, unserious split in the IS Network demanded comment. Quite apart from the revolutionary narcissism of the ISN majority, how do they square their fulmination against mixed race couples' indulging sub/dom play with the idea that socialist society is supposed to offer greater freedom? One supposes that so-minded couples and playmates will have to wait some years after the revolution before the ISN finds such consensual acts permissible. What idiocy.

The post this month begging for a second chance is Why Do People Buy Twitter Followers? Interestingly, the tweeter of the piece - one Oliver James - maintains he has not purchased any followers but merely followed thousands, who he then unfollows in an attempt to bulk up his account. How he finds the time to do so when apparently working 50+ hours a week, and why - several hundred followers down - his Twitter train is filled with spammers and zombie accounts explains my continued scepticism. Nevertheless, motives are what matter and those are explored here.