Ten years of blogging: 2009

2009 continued the trend from 2008 of sporadic and irregular blogging, with some months entirely missed out, and others packed full of posts. This is the inconsistent blogging pattern I’d keep up for a few years, always happy to think of myself as having a blog, even if I rarely put any actual content on there.

January featured an announcement that an announcement on the new Doctor was going to be made, but then no actual reaction to it, not even on the new official White House blog.

Twitter jumped the shark in February when I announced the creation of my account and then began worrying about Kessler Syndrome and if satellites crashing into each other could close the window of opportunity for getting off the planet.

I started the blog around when Britain and the US were beginning the great war for freedom, democracy, Saddam being a bad bad man and whatever else you wanted to say. Six years on, things didn’t look so positive.

Despite my prediction, Harlan Ellison is still with us.

I wrote a poem in tribute to Hazel Blears. It didn’t attract me a literary patron, so I went back to writing about politics and giving my thoughts on primary elections. And on primaries, later in the year the Open Up campaign started and got my views.

In July came the news that I was going to be part of the One and Other artwork on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Was it art? Well, art is what you can get away with, after all. The day came around, and my abiding memories of it are rain, paper aeroplanes and jelly babies.

For some reason, that prompted me back into regular blogging, with at least one post every day during August. One of my first posts from then sets out quite clearly my view on why councillors should be able to engage with Twitter from the council chamber.

Meanwhile, Peter Mandelson was trapped in the House of Lords. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail was following the Blair Doctrine and planning an invasion of Zimbabwe.

I started writing more about Essex County Council round then as well, as the controlling Tories started to clamp down on dissent and find ways to grab more power for themselves. I was also sure that someone pretending to be Lord Hanningfield was conning Conservative Home.

Apparently, the NHS would have let Stephen Hawking die. This remains the craziest statement made during the years of health care debate, even when Daniel Hannah was demanding that his friends should be given whatever drugs they want without question.

If I link to this piece, I’m completing the nostalgic look back at a nostalgic post loop, aren’t I? This will result in the BBC commissioning their ‘I Love The ‘I Love The 60s/70s/80s/90s’ series’, and death by nostalgia creeps closer for all of us.

I only link to this post about a Twitter storm and a blog feud because it’s truly nostalgic for a time when both Charlotte Gore and James Graham were Liberal Democrats.

I got thinking about reopening old railway lines, and this is still something that gets me thinking from time to time, especially when I’m trying to get anywhere in the East.

I should have taken this idea to Dragon’s Den.

I spelled out just why I find the term ‘progressive’ so meaningless, and looked at other glittering generalities we like to trot out. Nick Clegg proved how meaningless it was a short time later.

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