I see that both Tom and Luke Akehurst has tried to broach the issue tactfully, which I guess leave it to me to come right and say what needs to be.

If there is a shoddier and more overrated piece of crap in the British blogosphere that Labourhome then I’ve yet to come across it and short of dragging round the lower reaches of the conspiracist fringes I doubt very much I’ll find anything worse.

Let’s get something straight here, its not just today’s poll of ‘activists’, which the Indy has splashed all over its front page and the manner in which that’s been handled – and Alex, you can fuck what passes for standard practice amongst professional pollsters, the standards out here in the blogosphere place a premium on openness and transparency of a kind that demands that you disclose trivial little things like the fact that the poll had been commissioned by the Indy.

Oh, and if we’re going to talk about polling standards, where’s the demographic information that pollsters collect as standard in order to balance their polls and ensure their statistical validity and what’s the margin of error on the numbers and… fuck it, you get the picture here – DON’T start citing the standards used by the polling industry in your defence if you can’t produce the evidence to show you’ve been working to those fucking standards.

But I digress here, because, the problem(s) with Labourhome don’t just stop at one shonky poll, they run through the entire fucking site, so let’s take a shot at enumerating a few of them…

1. It looks like a piece of shit!

Seriously, first impressions count and the first impression you get on visiting Labourhome is ‘Ugh!’ shortly followed by ‘what a bunch of fucking amateurs’. It’s not difficult to turn out a reasonably well presented site and if you’re struggling for design skills yourself then crib some ideas from somewhere else or go visit one of the many sites providing themes and templates for WordPress, Joomla and other on-line publishing systems, pick up something that looks the part and adapt it.

A day or two’s works is all it would take to improve the look of the site and improve the impression it creates.

2. Sort out the fucking platform and, at the very least. use something that supports the use of search engine friendly urls.

Again, this ain’t difficult to figure out. If you click a link and the page you end up on has a URL that looks like someone’s bank account and national insurance numbers then you’re doing something wrong.

In fact, better still, why not put your egos away and switch to a standard platform like WordPress, which everyone knows and understands and which supports not only SEF urls but, with a few judicious chosen plug-ins, can provide support for video-blogging, podcasting and whole host of other useful facilities and features.

3. And while we’re on the technical side, get a platform that has its own built-in fucking search facility.

If I type something in the searchbox at Labourhome – not that I do that very often – then what I want is a list of articles ON Labourhome that include that search term, not a bunch of fucking advertising from Google and a link to click if all I want is result from the site.

Jeebus-H-fucking-Christ – you search for ‘Labour’ using LH’s search facility and the first thing you get are three adverts for employment agencies – sigh.

4. As Matt Wardman correctly pointed out – get an editor not a janitor.

Better still, start being a little more selective about who does and doesn’t get to write for the site rather than allowing it to turn into a incoherent and shambolic free for all.

As things stand, Labourhome operates as little more than a vehicle for people who want to ride around on their personal hobby horses, some of whom would struggle to get comments from linkspammers if they tried to run their own fucking blog.

Fine, so you get a bit of variability in quality whenever you run a group blog but just because it is a group blog it doesn’t follow that giving a platform to bunch of inarticulate morons comes with the territory. Try to inject just a little bit of quality control here and if that means excluding a few people then so what – they can get their own fucking blog.

5. And you know all that internal stuff about selection contests and NEC meetings…?

No one really gives a shit, so get it off the fucking front page!

If you must have that kind of stuff on their put it in its own section where the people who are interested in it get easily get to it if they’re interested it that kind of thing but don’t make it a feature of the fucking site because most people don’t a flying fuck about that kind of thing and won’t bother to read anything at all if what they see is post after post of anal retentive procedural crap.

I mentioned, in commenting on last year’s Dale 500 that there were one or two blogs on the list that I wouldn’t read if you paid me, well listen up Alex because LabourHome is one of them, in fact I don’t even both to pick up the RSS feed because there’s so rarely anything worth reading and the few contributors who are worth bothering with have all got their own individual blogs which I pick up anyway.

Even when it not feeding the Indy with stupid pre-conference stories – and FFS what kind of twat couldn’t see this coming the moment they waved the fucking cheque book in front of them – LabourHome is still a fucking embarrassment.

So, Alex – now you’ve got your bit of investment from the New Statesman, either pull your finger out,  sort it out, and turn it into something worthwhile or give it up, because in the state LabourHome is in at the moment, no one would miss it if it keeled over and died tomorrow…

…except Guido and the other Tories who must be pissing themselves over what a complete sucker you’ve been.