Six years and counting – Happy Birthday to my blog!

Reading through the 5-year blog anniversary post I wrote a year ago today, some of what I wrote there has been curiously prescient – I talked about the possibility of 'hanging up' my blogging clogs, something which I did in fact do at the end of last September. However, that didn't last very long! It was in the second half of November last that I felt provoked into resurrecting my blog because of some things that were happening in the country at the time.

One of the things I did though, whilst this blog was in abeyance, was to start another blog devoted entirely to my adventures in Spain; indeed I began writing there the day after I [temporarily] ceased pontificating here. I think, in retrospect, what this indicated was that I had become somewhat jaded, bored even, with the prospect of writing yet more of the same kinds of post commenting on current affairs in the UK and beyond, when our government seemed determined to continue on its misguided economic and social path - quickly taking us back to some of the conditions that prevailed the last time Labour was in power in the 1970s. After writing about this for over five years, at that time, I began to feel that I was wasting my time banging my head against the wall of socialist stupidity, which might continue for several more years, and that I really needed to concentrate more on things I could influence in my own personal life, being relatively insulated financially, as I am, from the worst aspects of the Labour government's ideas on how to run the country.

However those couple of months when I wasn't writing here coincided with a growing realisation among many British people of just how awful had been 10+ years of Labour rule for the country. Although I have thought that way almost since May 1997, far too many of my fellow Britons seemed to believe the 'hype' of Blair/Brown that they would run the country sensibly and prudently - I saw through their smoke and mirrors a long time ago! Now that more people were beginning to appreciate just how catastrophic Brown's lengthy spell as Chancellor has been and just how badly he is performing as Prime Minister, I began to feel that there was a real possibility of Labour being turfed out at the next election - so I thought that writing here was no longer quite so pointless. So I brought the blog back.

Of course I haven't touched in this post yet about the equally grave damage that Labour have caused to civil liberties in Britain with their seemingly unabated desire to inflict yet more and more authoritarian policies on us. It's true to say, I think, that relatively few people have become overly alarmed about this - basically the complacency of a population living in a relatively prosperous and peaceful country which is prepared to let the government do what it wants, for the sake of an easy existence. By the time people do wake up to what has been going on it may well be to late to reverse the change to post-democracy, where no-one even pretends very much any more that the views of the electorate count, provided they vote the 'correct' way at the tiresome elections they are still obliged to hold, for form.

So, there is all to play for. Hence my return to blogging here, albeit sporadically whilst I am in Spain with many more interesting things to deal with here. As I write this I am sitting with front and back doors open, in my shorts, a T-shirt and my sock-less deck shoes, listening to the classical music station put out by RNE, the Spanish national broadcaster - it's very much in the style of BBC Radio3, my preferred radio station (apart from Radio4) in the UK; of course I listen to those too in Spain through the digibox attached to my television. It's currently 23.3 degC - now that the irrigation has been installed (this morning) in the planting areas in my garden I will this evening order some soil, gravel and of course plants to finish off the external landscaping that has been going on for the past couple of weeks. I'll try and blog about other matters more the usual style for this blog either later today or in the next few days.

Finally, but very importantly, I'd like to thank the gentle readers who visit my little blog from time to time and those who take the trouble to comment on what I have written; feedback is always useful and I am grateful for it.