Well, I’m going on holiday to Australia and Japan in a few months, stamping my carbon footprint onto the crying face of the earth.

While I’m there I’d love to take some holiday snaps, firstly to annoy people at work by emailing them in while they’re slogging away and I’m on the beach. Secondly, so I can bore people with some kind of slideshow when get home.

Sadly my ancient digital snapper seems to be coming apart at the seams (pretty much literally since I dropped it a few months ago). So I was hoping one of you talented photographers out there could recommend one for me to get. Ideally I’m looking for one that is (in order of importance):

• Cheap - 200 notes at an absolute most, ideally less than that
• Reasonably small, portable and tough
• Capable of taking good quality pictures
• Packed with manual features so I can play around and do arty stuff

From reading one of my gadget-porn magazines it seems like this one might be a decent bet, and cheap to boot, though lacking in the fancy-dan photographical features. Any comments or suggestions?

…well we all get a bit wrapped up in our work from time to time. In my previous post I might have laid it on a bit strong at the cops, not that I disagree with any of what I said - personally at least.

But the problem is this isn’t just a personal blog. It’s got my job title up there at the top and my largest source of what I write about is taken from work, mainly because it’s the largest part of what I do with life.

So if I’ve got comments or opinions I want to make, then it’s not unlikely people are going to relate that to their view of the Birmingham Post.

I guess what I want to know is how much do people connect a blog with a writer, the subject, and the job that writer does?

And what’s the best place - if anywhere - for a reporter to record their own personal opinions on a topic?

A while back I was talking to a friend who said she wished she’d thought to start blogging anonymously so she didn’t have to worry about what she’d said. And it’s a difficult one, because our online presence means more about us is being exposed to the world every day.

I remember being horrified the first time a work contact added me on Facebook because it was a space that was previously just about my social life. But unfortunately it’s almost impossible to keep work and life separate, especially with social media and the like making both our social and work lives constantly accessible from the outside. There’s no more taking the phone off the hook and declaring yourself away for the weekend.

So maybe I’ll think more in the future about what I say online - or how I say it.

Well, I had a fun time bullying West Midlands Police about their conduct
over paedophile priests in the 1970s and 1980s last week.

Now they’re trying to get their own back by complaining about this story in
today’s paper about an abuse victim’s campaign for justice.

They claim they did investigate the Catholic church thoroughly at the time,
which their victim denies absolutely. Unfortunately – or perhaps not – for
the cops, they say they’ve lost the documentation left to prove it. How
convenient. Understandably the victim is spitting feathers, considering how long he’s
spent looking for some recognition. I’m hoping to meet him this week and
we’ll be hammering out some questions that need answers:

• Why did it take 20 years, and multiple official complaints from the victim
  to get any sort of answer from West Midlands Police?
• Why has the press, and the victim, been kept in the dark to such an extent
  over the years?
• Will they be moving to extradite this priest - living the high life in
  California decades after his alleged crimes?
• Why did they claim not to know where he is, despite the man being exposed
  and confronted on the BBC?
• Will they be paying compensation?

And many more. Answers to come? Don’t hold your breath…

The fetching Julie Kirkbride, MP for Bromsgrove, has been named the second most fanciable MP in parliament in a Sky News Valentine’s Day poll of the best-looking members of parliament (yes, I know, two days late here).

The delectable Ms Kirkbride was beaten only by party colleague and Shadow Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt, and was the only representative from our fair region on the top ten list.

So who do you think is the looker among our elected overlords in the West Mids? Fortunately (or perhaps not) the Birmingham City Council website has plenty of pictures of the fine chaps and chapettes that run the city.

In the interest of political I’ll run through a brief selection of candidates from all the parties.

• Salma Yaqoob, half of the embattled RESPECT party’s presence on the council.
• Internet superstar and Edgbaston blogger Deirdre Alden
• Knight in shining armour, elder statesman and my local councillor Sir Albert Bore
• Honourable member and ladies man John Hemming

And an extra special mention for council supremo Mike Whitby, who mysteriously has a high-quality action/glamour shot on his council website section, compared to the passport photo/mugshot-style pics doled out to the others. Look at that cheeky little grin. He’s probably sharing a clever joke with someone equally clever and good looking. Think we might have a winner here…

Any more suggestions from across the region more than welcome.

Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves has started blogging. Read all about it here. Unfortunately I was miles behind in the scramble to get the first comment in :(.

I’m sure it will make jolly good reading in the future. Marc is a fine fellow, knowledgable, hard-working, innovative, handsome…

In completely unrelated news, staff at the Post are currently negotiating a pay review. Just saying, you know.

After a long and bibulous night out, I got up just about in time to slump on the sofa and catch the Politics Show on the telly (click link to watch it again in a slightly more hi-tech way).

Although I’d completely forgotten, I had been planning to watch it for an expected piece on political blogs in the region. It started with some silly introductory stuff about ‘internet weblogs’ and a stretched link with Lloyd George starting a riot at the Town Hall (although the footage was great).

But the majority of the clip was brief interviews with local political bloggers like Adrian Goldberg, John Hemming, Paul Uppal, politicalhackuk and of course the new “e-government minister” Tom Watson.

As a regular reader of all the above and more, it was a pleasure - of a sort - to see them in the flesh talking about what they do. Also brought it home quite how many political bloggers and commentators there are out there, even on a regional basis. Would anyone else like to see something bringing together political bloggers in the region together to make some kind of online politics community - kind of the way Created in Birmingham does for the creative communityin the city.

Does anyone know if such a thing exists? If anyone’s interested in this I’d even think of doing something myself, not that I’ve really got the ability. Just something like a collection of all the latest posts in one place would be useful for me, anyway, wondered what other people thought. I suppose the problem is the political community doesn’t exist as a whole in the same way as the creative one, too many people with differences and enmities perhaps.

Finally, has anyone got any recommendations for good West Mids political bloggers that I might have missed? Let me know.

Yes I know it sounds like a fatuous slogan from a patronising ad made by Bob Geldof or someone similar*

But today I’ve been writing a short piece about Action Enterprise (a group I know frankly nothing about) giving entrepreneurial lessons to Somalian refugees in Bordesley Green to encourage them into business.

What a great idea.

Firstly because having a refugee set up their own business probably does more than anything else to dispel the ’sponging illegal immigrants’ myth.

Secondly because it marks an acknowledgement that business can be a great way for these people to help make money for themselves, and also for others they work with, instead of relying on government money.

I don’t get enthusiastic about much, but I’m fully behind this one.

Incidentally, if you are, or know, a refugee who wants to get into business, contact Adam Hersi and Action Enterprise on 0121 260 1611.

*Personally I prefer Terry Pratchett’s version: “Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

This has had a mention before (original link doesn’t seem to work) but community organisers are looking for support for the UK’s first solar-powered community radio station, starting in Kings Heath, Moseley, Brandwood and Billesley.

Organisers Peni Whelan and Nick Shough hope to get the community-run station a trial run in June/July this year, and are currently looking for funding. If you live in South Birmingham, the more people that get in touch the more likely it will be to go ahead.

They also hope to be bringing in local people to DJ if it takes off, so if you’ve always wanted to be South Brum’s next Jon Gaunt (or whoever) then give it your support.

Contact Peni on sbcradio@talktalk.net or go to www.e-voice.org.uk/southbirminghamcommunityradio for info. (Website is a bit out of date but will be updated momentarily I’m told.)

More to come in next Monday’s Media and marketing in the Post. Or read the Post copy here.

Wow, it’s so easy to let time slip by without blogging. A week plus on this one, which is bad enough, but more than a month for my pub blog. I guess I’m just too professional to go out drinking regularly.

Anyway, I’m back off the blogging and drinking wagon, so please start reading my pub reviews at Pint Sized again. My latest review is the Bartons Arms.

It was supposed to be a groundbreaking live pub review on the BA’s wifi system but alas, it didn’t work.

Coming up soon, my trip out to Moseley.