When the mainstream gets over the “shock of the blog”, it will better understanding the real value of the blogging revolution.

The UK Press Gazette ponders the Westminster follies, and discovers the journos are in fighting mood: [The bloggers] have just put on the web something about a name that everybody knew about, but had no evidence on. That’s neither brave…

There will forever be people with opinions who rant about things without having to check the facts or back up their story…

I’m actually a member of the Labour Party.

What creates room for optimism in all this is that there’s a sizable body of political bloggers who, whatever their party alliegances, are first and foremost democrats who believe strongly that all governments, of what ever party, shoudl be held to account.

It’d be a fucking shame if the Brit blogging scene turned out to be nothing more than rightwing sycophants”

Hopefully by then they’ll be enjoying it too much to stop. And they’ll be joined by many others.

It’d be a fucking shame if the Brit blogging scene turned out to be nothing more than rightwing sycophants.

To some extent the story begins more than 12 months ago, when Alex at the Yorkshire Ranter that the casino was the dealbreaker on Anschutz’s deal for the Dome – all he missed at the time was the precise reason why.

The MSM get the credit for first flagging up Prescott’s meetings with Anschutz, although their main interest was in the matter of whether it should be declared as an interest.

Next up, Guido piled in with the third mistress story, which Iain linked to – that pushed their profile right up.

Meanwhile both Iain and myself started (independently) to try an unpick the detail of the casino story – Iain got the what, it terms of Prescott meeting with AEG execs after the trip to the ranch – I got into the why, which amongst other things amounts to a 15% kickback to English Partnership as their share of the profits if Anschutz gets the casino licence.

Whta’ largely happening now is that the MSM are playing up Guido and Ian because it suits them to label bloggers as purveyors of tittle tattle on this one while trying to claim the real story – which is the casino, for themselves.

For example, it wasn’t until Sunday that anyone in the MSM pointed out the massive conflict of interest in the Dome/Casino deal (Matthew Ancona in the Torygraph), which I spotted and posted on on Wednesday.

That’s not to say that the MSM isn’t finding new material – Matthew Norman in today’s media section in the Indy has pointed out that Anschutz hired Matthew Freud to handle his PR in the UK, who conveniently happens to be married to Elizabeth Murdoch (yep, Rupert’s daughter). Norman also states that Freud arranged for Anschutz attend a dinner party with Tessa Jowell – where they ‘obviously’ didn’t discuss casino licences as that would entirely inappropriate for the Minister at DCMS, which is overseeing the award of the licence.

THe whole thing stinks of vested interests all the way and doesn’t stop at Prescott and Jowell – for one thing there’s no way that English Partnerships could have cut a profit sharing deal on the Dome without Treasury approval, nor, indeed, would responsibility for casino licencing have been moved from the hard-line Home Office to the ‘soft’ DCMS without approval right from the top.