This Here Blog

It's been a quiet time in this corner of the internet lately. The continuous stream of posts have stopped. The rapid succession of takes on the latest Tory traumas, or the slippery emptiness of Starmerism have not arrived with their customary rapidity. And there's a very simple reason for it. I cannot write at the pace that has sustained this place for most of its existence any more. It's not only tiring having to wade through the same politics bullshit day after day and then spend a couple of hours most evenings fashioning something coherent to say. It's trying, and I've had more than enough of my fill.

This site started out as a few musings about the experience of doing a PhD, and quickly moved into offering commentary on politics and culture from a critically-minded Trot point of view. The blog built a following during the fag end of the Blair/Brown years, and after an 18 month hiatus came back as a soft left partisan of Labour loyalism. And it stayed that way until experiencing the pathetic, treacherous politics of the Labour right while reading (well after publication) Hardt and Negri's Empire trilogy. These effectively re-radicalised me and gave my writing an energy and a clear sightedness that saw me all the way through to the beginning of this year. It was then the compulsion to keep going started fading, as hinted at previously. And sadly, as the year comes to a close I've reluctantly concluded I don't have the energy to maintain this as I have. Other things need attention, like finding the head space for the work projects on my plate, thinking about the research I want to do, keeping up with sociology of power/politics literature, and finding time for living a life and doing other things.

Now what? It's probably going to return to what it meant to be in the first place - an occasional sounding board. A place for jottings, a place for pinning up pieces published elsewhere, a place for rarer longer screeds not immediately about politics and, yes, a place again for regular posting if the mood occasions and situation demands. We're now entering the long afternoon of the blog's existence, and one led at a leisurely pace. I'm not shutting up shop. The blog isn't going into retirement. But it will spend more time reclining on the sun lounger taking in a good book, occasionally casting an eye over the scene, and muttering to anyone who'll listen about the poolside goings-ons.