Staying up for the long night ahead? Then’ll you need to know what to look out for and when the key results will come in.
Here is your definitive print out and check off guide to Election Night 2012…
Courtesy of Jag Singh.
There is lots of speculation around that in this election blogs and even Twitter will be decisive, Toby Helm had a hyperbolic piece in the Observer this weekend How the 2010 Election Will Be Won by Blogs and Tweets. Guido is not so sure.
Nowadays blogs help set the mainstream media’s tone, not just because the most avid readers of blogs are mainstream journalists, but because increasingly we are mainstream.
In the last 24-hour news cycle Guido has seen Iain Dale and Jag Singh going head-to-head on Sky New’s evening show, on the BBC at the same time Shane Greer and Will Straw were spinning their lines. Guido woke up this morning to hear on the Today programme Tim Montgomerie defending the Tories. Bloggers are clearly sexier pundits for broadcasters than old stalwarts like Michael White and Polly Toynbee…
Guido is off to physically wage war tonight on politicians, we’ll find out if Labour are “fighters and believers”, if the Tories “will fight and Britain will win”. The Guy News team will be impartially shooting at both sides, as always…
There has been a bit of banter and sledging on Twitter in advance (hashtag tonight is #blogwars). Pictured above: Guido looking camp in Kampuchea with the Khmer Bleu, LabourList’s Alex Smith still searching for WMDs, ToryBear looking for @BevaniteEllie, CCHQ’s Sam Coates practising his sharp shooting and Brittany Greer demonstrating why you don’t mess with Texas.
Thanks to Jag Singh (pictured right) at MessageSpace for organising the match. Do his Labour Party colleagues know that the former Hillary ’08 staffer is a paid up member of the NRA? Splat!
Newer Labour reports that it went for a “high five figure sum… with some of the existing editors, like Alex Hilton, one of the foremost Labour bloggers and co-founder, Jag Singh, staying on board.” PoliticsHome had also shown an interest in bringing the site into the “home” network – Freddie Sayers had been in negotiations with the site but got gazumped.
Guido called Alex Hilton, LabourHome’s chief commissar, to commiserate with him for not getting a six-figure valuation. (Guardian Media Group just bought PaidContent for $30 million, the Gawker group of blogs is valued at over $100 million.) Alex would only say “We are very pleased to have the support of the New Statesman” from his yacht in the Caribbean.
Guido reckons that if the valuations being achieved in the U.S. were reflected here, the leading blogs would be worth seven figure sums. Mrs Fawkes has become noticeably less intolerant of Guido’s blogging of late…
