Every time you visit the internet it appears that there is another blog or website devoted to Stoke Newington life. As a rule, good luck to them.

As one of the oldest websites covering the parish – we’ve been going for eleven years and in January alone received over 245,000 hits and over  16,000 unique visits – we don’t worry about competition, indeed we welcome it and have good relationships with several other local websites and blogs, as it all contributes to the quality of local life in N16. However, there are exceptions to this.

For instance, the Daily Mail is in town! A new site, stokenewingtonpeople.co.uk, has been launched, advertising itself as a local site, and it is a division of the same company which owns the Mail, publisher of some of the most right-wing, strident and illiberal news and views in British newspaper life. Not exactly the Stoke Newington ethos. Their site comes across as a cuddly-feely, up-to-the-minute commentary on Stokey, but local? Don't think so.

And the website is part of a ‘local’ group which also covers, among many others, Yeovil and Berkhampstead via Surbiton and Midsomer Norton, and around 60 other small towns. Don’t be fooled. This is a corporate and cynical attempt to cash in on the soaring popularity of our increasingly trendy and economically flourishing parish. We do not wish to appear reactionary (we’ll leave that to the Mail) nor do we seek to be the ultimate arbiters of life in this manor. But we would welcome openness and honesty from this particular website, although given its parentage this is unlikely.

Sour grapes, you may think, but after eleven years we are entitled to complain about incomers who give the impression they are concerned and passionate about the area, but who simply want to colonise it on behalf of their owner. Another new site – stokie.net – has also recently appeared and this again does not appear to be local, given that its contact address is City Road, EC1. When is the next one going to appear?

Just so you're warned.