{"id":102894,"date":"2017-05-03T13:35:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T13:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=102894"},"modified":"2017-05-03T13:43:36","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T13:43:36","slug":"blogger-spotlight-mike-small-bella-caledonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/blogger-spotlight-mike-small-bella-caledonia\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger Spotlight: Mike Small, Bella Caledonia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bella Caledonia is a pro-independence Scottish blog providing a counterpoint to what it sees as an increasingly Unionist media in Scotland. With contributions spanning not only politics<\/strong>, but also arts, culture and the media, Bella Caledonia blog posts give intelligent and often damning<\/strong> take downs of the status-quo. <\/strong>In this spotlight, Mike Small chats to us about how he makes Bella Caledonia<\/a> stand out from other political blogs, the snap election, and the up-and-coming independence referendum.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What inspired you to create your blog?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>The dire state of the Scottish media and the need to bring together longer-form commentary and political analysis with cultural stuff.<\/p>\n

What do you think makes your blog different to your competitors?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>We are\u00a0interested\u00a0in\u00a0creating a space for new writers and for changing the tone of the debate.<\/p>\n

Blogging is a very competitive market now. How do you make your content stand out (in comparison to other political bloggers)?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>We are working more with photographers,\u00a0musician, filmmakers, animators now as\u00a0well as writers. Many bloggers are really stenographers.<\/p>\n

How do you define the success of your blog? Do you do this through the level of engagement with your audience or unique visits?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>I think the quality of debate is as important as unique visits. Jeffrey Archer sold a lot of books.<\/p>\n

Do you consider social media an important tool in directing traffic toward your blog?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Yes. Follow us on twitter @bellacaledonia now!<\/p>\n

The snap election has come as a surprise to many \u2013 what do you think Theresa May\u2019s motivations were for calling this?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>To avoid humiliation.<\/p>\n

With the independence referendum coming up, what do you believe will be the deciding issues for the outcome of the vote? Will Brexit negotiations play a major role, or will this go beyond the EU?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>I think people having only a residual sense of shame may be a problem.<\/p>\n

If the outcome of the independence referendum is a \u2018no\u2019, what will the next steps be for Sturgeon and the SNP?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>What independence\u00a0referendum? We\u00a0don’t have one yet. But with a second No vote certainly Sturgeon would resign. I think many people would leave Scotland in that situation. I’m not in the SNP – so you’d need to address the question to the wider movement.<\/p>\n

Labour seats are diminishing in Scotland, and (if the polls are correct) it can also expect big losses in Wales.<\/p>\n

Do you think the time of Labour influence in what were traditional strongholds is over?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>We’ll see. It’s difficult sometimes to see through the\u00a0weird running commentary against anyone who\u00a0challenges the orthodoxy of\u00a0mainstream neoliberal\u00a0politics. They’ll certainly lose Glasgow. It depends what happens in England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this spotlight, Mike chats to us about how he makes Bella Caledonia stand out from other political blogs, the snap elections, and the up and coming independence referendum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":102899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7272,4038,6980,1449],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102894"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102960,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102894\/revisions\/102960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}