It’s not even a year since I started this blog, and I have to say that I’m incredibly pleased I did. If I have any regret it is that I didn’t start it sooner. The response has been far better than I ever anticipated, I’ve had some truly interesting conversations as a result and I would like to think that it’s made me think a lot more about some of the issues and subjects about which I’ve written.

And while I suspect the quality of my writing has remained at a pre-GCSE level (and by that I mean GCSEs when I took them, when they were hard) I hope that at least some of the posts have proved informative and perhaps even sparked some thinking within you, the reader.

One thing that hasn’t changed that much is the content. It’s remained a resolutely local blog, with occasional flashes of the personal and political. And that is going to change slightly – there’ll be a few more political posts than usual.

In part this is because I have become much more interested in politics. I have touched on my previous passion to be an MP, and how it disappeared somewhere before 2005. If I’m honest, that loss of that ambition saw a diminuation in my interest in politics. I remained a loyal Conservative foot-soldier, but I also began to recognise that the battle of ideas that first attracted me to politics and the Conservatives just didn’t exist anymore, it was largely a discussion over who would best manage the country. Now, of course, we are starting to see a real difference emerge between the parties on how to tackle the spending crisis we face – and politics are becoming interesting again.

And in part it’s because I’ve been asked to be one of the regular Conservative contributors to House of Twits (a very interesting site that started aggregating political discussion on Twitter and has expanded into blogging and YouTube, well worth a visit if you are interested in politics.) Clearly this is purely ego. For that I make no apology. Even despite my boycotting of the Total Politics blogging awards I recognise any blog is partly an exercise in ego because the blogger, for whatever reason, thinks people will want to give their time to read the blogger’s thoughts. This is my blog, and while – as I have said – I hope some people have found some of the posts of use, I recognise that it’s an awful lot to ask people to give up their time to read me.

Additionally, given that I spend a lot of time knocking on doors and hoping people will vote Conservative (both locally and nationally) next year I don’t suppose it is unreasonable for me to post some commentary on why I think that’s the best vote.

The change will not be substantial. I still recognise this is largely a local blog and don’t anticipate more than one or two political posts per week (which will be cross-posted here and on the House of Twits site) and I have no idea how long the arrangement will last. While it does I would be interested in any feedback you have on the change (good or bad).

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