Paul Walter has split his blog into two. Liberal Burblings continues to carry his postings on politics and the Lib Dems, but he has set up a new blog - Hit by a Thought - to carry his thoughts on "entertainment, sport, beer, whisky, music and goodness knows what else".
It's an interesting move, and I suppose I could do something similar with Liberal England. I could keep writing about politics here, give Lord Bonkers his own blog, have another one for my postings on obscure British films and another for those vital news stories from the Shropshire Star.
But I am not going to do that because my hope is that one day I shall work out how all my enthusiasms fit together. More generally, if Liberalism is to remain a vital political philosophy then it must have something to say about wider culture as well as what goes on at Westminster. A hundred years ago, when the Liberal Party was a party of government, there were Liberal philosophers, Liberal intellectuals and even Liberal novelists.
Lord Bonkers does have his own website, but I have got very lazy about updating it because it is much easier to post his Diaries and other thoughts here. I have bought the domain http://www.lordbonkers.com/ but done nothing with it. If anyone could help with designing a new site for him there, I would love to hear from you.
My blog's always been a random mix of stuff - given it's name, I think it's the politics that would have to move elsewhere if I ever split it. But I wouldn't, for similar reasons to yours.
ReplyDeleteI was really commenting to let you know that Lord Bonkers needs to update his link on his .com site as it's missing http:// at the beginning.
I actually think you learn something about people's politics by learning about their views on entertainment, sport, etc. Separating them out makes for a sterile blog.
ReplyDeleteI agree. It was a positive decision by me that my blog would not be a diary as such, but also not be a political sounding board. It would be a place where issues that entered my head far enough to make me want to write a few paragraphs would see the light of day. I am keeping my thoughts in one place. I agree with you and Nich, the wider person says much about you.
ReplyDeleteTime to put some Jazz on my blog!
You forgot to mention serendib.
ReplyDeleteI fiddled with the two blog idea a few years ago, and tried launching a group blog last year, but both fizzled out. The original idea of my blog was to explore the nexis between politics and comics. That ended up being far too narrow a focus and I got into mainstream (well, Lib Dem) politics. I kept the comics-related name though, and I quite like having long rambling articles about land value taxation interspersed with reviews of that week's 2000AD. Everyone's gotta have a quirk.
You mean I have to post politics on my blog. Ooops ;)
ReplyDeleteI love the fact that when reading LibDemBlogs I get everything from the Leadership Election to the latest film reviews.
The thing is, I was trying to say things about politics and then you would suddenly get "Bob Monkhouse's love child is presenting the BBC weather" or "All that rain brings a vast apple crop" or "Those few precious sunny hours". Those sorts of posts didn't really sit comfortably alongside posts about the West Lothian Question and Single Transferrable Vote. It was doing my head in. The two blogs are only one click away from each other. I now feel a lot more freedom to write about what the heck I want on my other blog.
ReplyDeleteSadly, my second blog can't be added to the aggregator apparently, but I will forge on.