Inside Politics: 100 posts and beyond, sign-up and follow

by The Editor


FEATURE: This is the 100th post to go up on Inside Politics and I thought I would take the opportunity to thank those people who have taken time out to read something on the blog and to suggest, for those of you interested in keeping track of what goes up, to follow Inside Politics on one of the three main news feeds it offers. So read on to find out how, and the kind of analysis you will be in store for if you do.

Inside Politics: 100 posts and beyond, sign-up and follow

By: Gareth van Onselen


2 June 2012

Inside Politics has now been up and running for just over four months and the response to it has been fantastic. As it so happens, this is the 100th post to go up and I thought I’d take the opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has supported Inside Politics so far.

Please forgive me, then, if I take a moment to suggest to those of you who are enjoying the blog, take a moment out to subscribe to one or more of the various feeds Inside Politics offers to keep you in touch with what goes up, as soon as it hits the virtual universe.

• First, you can subscribe by e-mail. It’s very simple. Just scroll down to the bottom of any page, fill in your email address and press subscribe. You will then be sent an email. Confirm it and you are on the system. You will now get every post that goes up (roughly one a day), sent straight to your email. If you prefer to keep in touch this way, rather than checking the blog everyday, this is the way to go. (Apologies to those of you who already subscribe this way.)

• Second, you can follow Inside Politics on Twitter (@insidepols). Again, simply click the follow button here:

All posts uploaded to Inside Politics will now automatically appear in your Twitter stream.

• Third, you can follow Inside Politics on my Facebook page (Gareth van Onselen). I use the page solely to post updates from the blog. If Facebook is where you spend you spend your virtual time, send me a friend request.

So, what do get if you follow Inside Politics? Well, hopefully some interesting and original analysis of current affairs from a liberal perspective. Want to know what the ANC’s ten most disturbing quotes are? Whether or not SAPS answer their phones? Look at a picture of The Spear and understand why it is important it is available to the public? Perhaps you are interested in liberal ideas: why rationality is important, what secrecy’s effect is, why innovation is important to politics, the nature of mediocrity or how power influences those close to it? Perhaps you want to know how much government spends on entertainment, why the ANC was hypocritical about Helen’s refugee comment, about the madness of Marius Fransman or how virulent racism against the DA is largely ignored by the media. Or perhaps you just want to better understand the media – how its views on cadre deployment have changed over time or why optimism makes for bad political analysis. Or it could be you are just interested in key political developments: the 187 votes that got Julius Malema elected, for example. If its good governance that interests you, you could read how the ANC in the Free State has dismally failed to manage the finances of those local governments it runs or how cadre deployment has brought Buffalo City to its knees. Johannesburg’s potholes? Its all here.

Answer yes to any of those questions and Inside Politics is worth following. So take a moment out of your day and subscribe. An increasing amount of content on Inside Politics is making it into the media too, so its not just analysis you get but breaking news too. So recommend it to anyone interested.

Once again, thanks for all the support and, hopefully, the next four months will be even better.

Oh, and keep the comments coming, I shall try to engage with as many of them as possible.

Gareth van Onselen
Editor: Inside Politics

To follow Inside Politics by e-mail simply go to the bottom of the page and fill in your address. When you confirm it, you will receive an e-mail the moment any new post is loaded to the site.