As recently posed by Coatse (Tom Coates) in an otherwise NDA’d BBC blogging policy meeting:
(Paraphrased:) Maybe the reason the UK public are a little behind our Amercian cousins when it comes to being across blogging is because it’s not very ‘British’ for the common man to stand and up and ‘have his say’ on something.
I think he’s right – in America, it’s constitutional right, etc. In Britain, well, we don’t even have a constitution…
Anyone who stands up in a public arena to voice their opinion is open to be heckled with “who do you think you are?”, etc. We just don’t seem to be in the habit of reading the opinions of others, unless they are presented as an “expert”, “opinion former”, “commentator”, etc.
With this in mind, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that there are far fewer blogs per capita in the UK than there are in the US, or even in our neighbouring France. Will the average British public ultimately get blogs? I hope so – but let me know what you think…
(I’m at work so this post has been curtailed slightly a I have to get on with what I’m paid to do!)