'These views are mine, and not those of the BBC.'

Now in my case this is demonstrably true. I don't work for the BBC, and I never have, so no issues for me there. If you follow some of the people who do work for the BBC on Twitter though, you'll know how large an audience they get, and I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that while their views are personal, the fact that they're on the TV or radio just might get them a larger audience.

My point? Well, Twitter's a strange beast at times. I've been involved in a conversation today about this piece, which caused something of a furore when I asked Melissa Cole (amongst others, my wife being one of them) whether they thought it made a fair comment about women as customers. It was originally re-tweeted by a very well-respected figure in the wine industry. I follow him because he led a superb class on Italian wine I took as part of my wine diploma. I was interested in reading the article because it was written by my ex-boss. Now, however much a claim to fame being my ex-boss is, I think it's pretty safe to say it isn't the reason why Julian Grocock is writing on the 'Inapub' website. No, it's because he's both a licensee, and chief executive of the Small Independent Brewers Association. So there is the problem. If you say something that is, shall we say, controversial, and your reason for being considered worth listening to is because you are the head of something, then anything you are documented as having said will always reflect on your organisation. Is that fair? Probably not, but it is human nature.

Gnomes: small.

I know some bloggers can get quite caught up in their reader statistics, but being a 'person worth listening to' seems to me to be both blessing and curse. Sometimes people will listen to you; then you have to be careful what you say. It might be worth bearing that in mind next time you're wondering whether your next blog post is worth writing because nobody will read it. Here's to the little guy!