I spend more time than is probably quite healthy hanging out at Harry’s Place. I find the views of its bloggers often, if not absolutely always, congenial. One of the things which immediately struck me about this blog was its blokish atmosphere – and I’ve often been moved to grumble about sexism or misogyny on the comments.

I was recently invited to write a guest post – a slightly daunting prospect as HP is famous for its light touch moderation policy and the comments can get quite nasty. If anyone visits HP for the first time via my blog they may think I was given a hard time – but it can get much more vicious.

If it achieved nothing else, my guest spot did have the effect of getting Alexto take a look at HP – I keep on telling him he’d love it. He was a bit confused – ‘why is this man talking about his penis?’ - though, as a veteran of the standards wars he was completely unfazed by the critical comments!